Religion and spirituality are often used synonymously, the assumption being that religious people possess spirituality, while spiritual people practice religion.\u00a0 However, a simple glance into the etymology of the two words is enough to conclude that they are speaking of very different dynamics, and should not be casually paired.<\/p>\n
Religion, from the Latin religio, suggests a bond between humanity and the gods, and offers institutional teachings on how to best promote this bond. Spirituality, from the root spiritus \u2013 soul, courage, vigor or breath \u2013 speaks to an individual, experiential and existential search for, and expression of, personal meaning and transcendence without a mandatory institutional component (although institutional involvement is certainly an option).<\/p>\n
Not only is it possible to be spiritual but not religious, spiritually non-religious people are a rapidly growing portion of the nation\u2019s religious landscape.\u00a0 They have discovered, whether tacitly or consciously, that adhering to religious doctrines often causes more psychological distress than benefit, where as spirituality is kinder and gentler to their minds and spirits.<\/p>\n
Multidisciplinary research data now suggests that a growing number of people consider themselves \u201cspiritual but not religious.\u201d The 2007 Pew Forum Religious Landscape Survey finds that 16% of the U.S. population considers themselves to be \u201cnot affiliated with any particular religion\u201d, making them the nation\u2019s fourth largest \u201creligious group\u201d (with numbers similar to those of the mainstream Protestant churches).<\/p>\n
Worth noting is that 5.8% of them say that \u2013 despite their lack of affiliation with any particular religious group \u2013 religion is important in their lives. The report calls these 1.8 million people the \u201creligious unaffiliated.\u201d Close to 100,000 of those polled actually used the phrase \u201cspiritual but not religious,\u201d\u00a0 and the acronym SBNR is now in use worldwide.<\/p>\n
But what do people mean when they proclaim themselves spiritual?\u00a0 Dr. Bernard Spilka, Professor Emeritus at University of Denver, attempted to operationalize what he calls the \u201cfuzzy concept\u201d of spirituality by conducting a comprehensive review of literature on the topic.\u00a0 He found that spirituality has three broad categories: 1) A God-oriented spirituality; 2) a world-oriented spirituality stressing one\u2019s relationships with ecology or nature; and 3) a humanistic spirituality, stressing human achievement or potential.<\/p>\n
God-oriented spirituality allows for connection with a higher power of choice.\u00a0 Nature-oriented spirituality (sometimes known as Pantheism) allows for connection with and protection of the natural world.\u00a0 Humanistic-spirituality allows for connection with the existential givens of existence \u2013 freedom, choice, death and loneliness \u2013 and the resulting hierarchy of needs for safety, shelter, love, belonging, esteem and self actualization.\u00a0 These aspects of spirituality offer some of the same comforts as organized religion, and emotional comfort is one of the main reasons people seek religion to begin with.<\/p>\n
Why has this category of religious nomad grown more rapidly than any other in recent decades? SBNR seekers are hungering for a personal connection with a higher power of their choice, while at the same time feeling hesitant about locking themselves into any one paradigm. The Pew Survey respondents admitted to perceiving religious people as judgmental and hypocritical.\u00a0 They thought religious institutions were too focused on rules, and religious leaders were too fixated on money and power.\u00a0\u00a0 And they are often correct in their assessment.\u00a0 Religion has historically been synonymous with the institutional promotion and protection of specific doctrines.\u00a0 These doctrines define how members should act morally, and how their relationship with the divine should be tailored and tended to.\u00a0 Hierarchical in structure, the few hold power over the many, creating a system of leadership that places the masses at the bottom of the pyramid while suggesting that those at the top are somehow more competent or more connected to the divine.<\/p>\n
The religiously unaffiliated don\u2019t buy the belief that any one single religion holds the complete truth.\u00a0 Perhaps, like the Dalai Lama, they have come to believe that \u201cit is more important to create a safer, kinder world than to recruit more people to the religion that happens to satisfy us.\u201d\u00a0 Consciously or unconsciously, they may have found that adhering to a personally defined spiritual belief system feels better than participating in a specific religious tradition.\u00a0 The relationship with divinity is an intimate and individual one, far too vast for the dogma of any one tradition to comfortably hold as there are simply too many contradictions \u2013 between personal truth and institutional dogma, between religions claiming to possess the one true path to salvation and within religious texts.<\/p>\n
Religion lends itself well to contradictions, and these contradictions can be bad for mental health. Attempting to reconcile an internal, unique and authentic definition of the divine along side of an external, conformist and institutional definition of that same higher power can quickly result in cognitive dissonance.\u00a0 Cognitive dissonance is a phrase coined by social psychologist Leon Festinger, to describe the unpleasant state of anxiety that occurs when two conflicting beliefs are held at the same time\u00a0\u00a0 People process countless thoughts, feelings and behaviors each day, and like them to be in sync, or congruent with one another.\u00a0 When thoughts, feelings and actions in the world are congruent, a sense of integrity results.\u00a0 When there is an inconsistency among the three, a state of psychological unease occurs.<\/p>\n
Using the example of a Catholic woman who greatly values her church community but is choosing to use birth control despite the church\u2019s prohibition against it, four conditions must align to create the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance within her.\u00a0 1) She must acknowledge that she has a choice (she can obey or ignore the prohibition).\u00a0 2) She must execute the action (of taking the birth control pills) even though it contradicts her beliefs about being a \u201cgood Catholic\u201d.\u00a0 3) She must be aware of the negative consequences of her behavior (she must know that taking the birth control pill is considered a sin); and 4) she must be unable to rationalize her actions (i.e. she is not taking the pill to help with migraines or unpredictable periods, she is taking it in order to not get pregnant).<\/p>\n
Participating in unrealistically simplified and dualistic beliefs requires and also causes what cognitive psychologists call \u201cdistorted thoughts.\u201d\u00a0 Distorted thoughts result from inaccurate interpretations of events.\u00a0 There are a common dozen or so, with descriptive names like \u201cover-generalizing,\u201d \u201cpersonalizing,\u201d and \u201cshoulds.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 If an employee gets a memo to report to the boss\u2019s office, a common first thought is \u201cwhat am I in trouble for?\u201d\u00a0 This is a misinterpretation of the event, a distortion known as \u201cmind-reading\u201d, and it causes the employee anxiety.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This self-sustaining loop of inaccurate thoughts causing feelings which influence thoughts can occur countless times a day, is largely habitual (often learned from caregivers who used the same distortions to explain reality), and comes with a long history.<\/p>\n
The Greeks and ancient Israel laid dichotomous theoretical foundations in which body and spirit were separate, and that belief remains common to this day.\u00a0 Matter and spirit are separated, as are earth and heaven, personality and soul, clergy and parishioners, id and ego, University of Name-Your-State and Name-your-State State University\u2026 the list goes on and on. This separation was a common topic of early philosophical speculation.\u00a0 Consider Plato, who conceived of a soul, immaterial and immortal, which had its permanent home in the world of perfect Ideals or Forms.\u00a0 Platonism considered the world to be an imperfect reflection of these ideals, and blamed the body and its lusts for hindering reunion with perfection. The Biblical story of the Fall describes humankind\u2019s expulsion from Eden as a result of Eve\u2019s desire for knowledge.\u00a0 It demonstrates both the separation of heaven from earth (God in Eden, humanity cast out into the secular world) and the separation of the Divine Feminine from her rightful place at the side of God (Eve as an equal partner to Adam, or Goddess as feminine counterpart to God). These unrealistically simplified polarities continued through history, and today the words \u201cright\u201d and \u201cleft\u201d are applied to no end of warring ideas and factions.<\/p>\n
This insistence that the truth comes in only two sizes sets the perfect stage for dissonance, as institutionalized religious beliefs\u00a0 necessitate that events be interpreted in a distorted fashion.\u00a0 \u201cEither\/or thinking\u201d is present in the belief that one is either inside the flock or outside of it, either doing it right or doing it wrong, either saintly or sinful, either leader or follower.\u00a0 \u201cFiltering\u201d is at play when a religion is able to filter the validity and humanity out of other religions in the assumption that theirs is the \u201cright\u201d one. Placing heaven at the end of life is a form of \u201ctime-traveling.\u201d\u00a0 Placing hell at the end of life is a form of \u201ccatastrophizing\u201d or \u201cwhat if\u201d thinking.\u00a0\u00a0 Double-binds can occur when neither option available is a good one; a gay fundamentalist Christian for example can either be a gay \u201cbad\u201d Christian or a good Christian who denies sexuality.\u00a0 Either way, it is a lose\/lose situation.\u00a0 Consider this quote from a study of 4,000 Catholic and Protestant women who wrestle to keep what is good in their religion and allow for truths that they feel but cannot find:<\/p>\n
I find my current ideas about God at best paradoxical, at worst contradictory and full of tension.\u00a0 Brought up in a firmly patriarchal tradition, my habits of prayers, meditation, and study are all shadowed by patriarchal imagery, deeply ingrained.\u00a0 But my experiences as a female person\u2026are continually transforming not only my sense of who or what I am, but my sense of the nature and identity of God.\u00a0 I often experience a profound longing for an immanent, nurturing \u2018maternal\u2019 force in my life, but have difficulty catching more than a glimpse of a parental, rather than a paternal God.<\/em><\/p>\n Research has shown time and time again that the more distorted thoughts one is thinking, the more likely one is to be depressed or anxious.\u00a0\u00a0 The brain does not know the difference between a real or imagined event.\u00a0 If a student is catastrophizing about failing a test, the brain will respond to that fear with increased levels of cortisol and adrenalin.\u00a0 The body will then respond to the chemical intervention by speeding up the heart and respiration, which the brain will then interpret as further proof of danger, sending more chemicals to help.\u00a0 A distorted thought tips the first domino, and a powerful combination of chemicals and emotions assure that the rest will fall.<\/p>\n Just as four conditions must be met for cognitive dissonance to occur, social psychologists have found four ways to alleviate discomfort from the dissonance. The good Catholic woman taking birth control pills can : 1) change the offending behavior so that it corresponds to her belief (stop taking the pill); 2) add a new thought to lessen the anxiety caused by the offending action (plan to confess the sin and pay penance each week, and continue taking the pill); 3) attempt to ignore the dissonance; or 4) change the thought or attitude to make the behavior seem acceptable (decide that it is not necessary to follow the letter of the Catholic law – only the spirit – continue to taking the pill and practicing her faith).\u00a0 Changing the interpretation of an event resolves most cognitive distortions as well.<\/p>\n Spiritual but not religious people, by applying these strategies, are able to find a comfortable place to rest their existentially weary souls and bodies, as it allows them to keep the beliefs and practices that they find meaningful, while discarding the parts that feel incongruent.<\/p>\n Granted, there are liberal versions of religion which do not tend to cause cognitive dissonance because they avoid exclusionary absolutes, such as The 7 principles of the Unitarian Universalists :<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The inherent worth and dignity of every person;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.<\/p>\n and the Unity Church, which seeks to be \u201cfree of discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender, age, creed, religion, national origin, ethnicity, physical disability or sexual orientation.\u201d\u00a0 The Unity Church even uses the phrase \u201cspiritual but not religious\u201d on it\u2019s literature, in an attempt to establish itself as the church for those who don\u2019t like church.<\/p>\n These inclusive and non-judgmental faiths result in less cognitive dissonance among members than the more rule-bound religions do, offering members the same community, rites of passage, comfort and communion found in traditional religion.\u00a0 And religious people are not without their own cognitive strategies for creating existential self-comfort.\u00a0 Dr. Kenneth Pargament, who researches the relationship between religion and well-being, has identified three ways in which people access God during times of hardship; some leave it to God to take care of the problem, others collaborate with God to solve the dilemma, and the last group does not seek God\u2019s assistance at all, preferring to take care of the issue themselves.<\/p>\n The spiritually unaffiliated also pair well-being and spirituality, in an individualized combination of faith, free will and personal accountability.\u00a0 They are hybrids in their synthesis of east and west, thought and feeling, of self and others.\u00a0 Research shows that these spiritual free agents are \u201cmore likely to engage in group experiences related to spiritual growth, more likely to hold non-traditional \u201cnew age\u201d beliefs [and] more likely to have had mystical experiences. \u201d\u00a0 Another polarity they seek to reunite is that of religion and pop-culture, through the creation of what Belgium sociologist Adam Possami calls \u201chyper-religions\u201d, in which facets of religious traditions are combined with elements of pop culture.\u00a0 Jediism (Star Wars), Matrixism (The Matrix) and Da Vinci code-breaking Christians are all examples of hyper-religions, which are meant to be \u201cconsumed and individualized\u201d in ways not possible for traditional religion.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Spiritual people create kaleidoscopic belief systems with colorful pieces from all areas of their lives.<\/p>\n Yet caution must be taken not to set up a false division between religion and spirituality; the overlap between the two is substantial and the church does not own the right to pray any more than spirituality owns the search for the sacred. People do not chose the religion they are born into, and there is no great courage required to stay there.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether one chooses religion or spirituality is not important.\u00a0 What is important is that one chooses. To be spiritual but not religious is not easy.\u00a0 It requires enormous courage to leave the safety of a well-tended flock and to walk through the world balancing certainty that one\u2019s truth is true, with open receptivity to change and a fair amount of judgment from the major religious groups. Unlike the cognitive dissonance caused by staying in a religion that is too small for one\u2019s spirit, the existential angst of personalizing a spiritual belief system will not result in physical and mental illness, but rather in recognition of the Divine Light within, regardless of what it is called.\u00a0 The 13th century mystic and poet Rumi captures this all-consuming quest in lovely simplicity:<\/p>\n All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.<\/em><\/p>\n A Google search of the phrase \u201cspiritual but not religious\u201d takes three-tenths of a second to retrieve 5 million results.\u00a0 Irrespective of the particulars of the results, this suggests that an enormous search is taking place both concretely and metaphorically.\u00a0 Spiritual but not religious seekers may not know exactly where they\u2019re going, but like Rumi, they fully intend to end up there.<\/p>\n Endnotes<\/p>\n Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (2007) U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.<\/p>\n Spilka, B. (1993, August). Spirituality: Problems and directions in operationalizing a fuzzy concept. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association.\u00a0 Toronto, Ontario.<\/p>\n Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. (1956). When Prophecy Fails: A social and ssychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. New York: Harper Torchbooks.<\/p>\n Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapies and emotional disorders. New York: New American Library<\/p>\n Winter, M. T. (1995).\u00a0 Defecting in place: Women claiming responsibility for their own spiritual lives.\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Crossroad.<\/p>\n Seligman, M. (2006). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. New York City: Random House. ISBN 978-1400078394.<\/p>\n \u201cUnitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.\u201d Our Unitarian Universalist Principles.\u00a0 Accessed July 19, 2011.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.uua.org\/beliefs\/6798.shtml<\/p>\n \u201cUnity: A positive path for spiritual living\u201d.\u00a0 Honoring diversity within the Unity movement. Accessed July 19, 2011.\u00a0 http:\/\/unity.org\/association\/aboutUs\/whatWeBelieve\/honoringDiversity.html<\/p>\n Pargament, K. I., Kennel, J., Hathaway, W., Grevengoed, N., Newman, J., & Jones, W. (1988). \u201cReligion and the problem-solving process: Three styles of coping.\u201d\u00a0 Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, v27 n1, pp90-104. ISSN 0021-8294<\/p>\n Zinnbauer, B.J. (1997). Capturing the meanings of religiousness and spirituality: One way down from a definitional Tower of Babel. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University<\/p>\n Possamai, A.\u00a0 (2007).\u00a0 Yoda goes to the Vatican: Youth spirituality and popular culture.\u00a0 The Charles Strong Lecture Series.\u00a0 1-17.<\/p>\n Pargament, Kenneth I. \u201cThe Psychology of Religion and Spirituality? Yes and NO.\u201d\u00a0 International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 9, no. 1 (January 1999).<\/p>\n Rumi, J., & Barks, C.\u00a0 (2004). The essential Rumi.\u00a0 New York: Harper Collins.\u00a0 Pg 2.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Religion and spirituality are often used synonymously, the assumption being that religious people possess spirituality, while spiritual people practice religion.\u00a0 However, a simple glance into the etymology of the two words is enough to conclude that they are speaking of … Continue reading