Spiritual but Not Religious

It’s a statement that’s often heard: “I’m spiritual but not religious.” When reading publications on spirituality written by followers of various religions, the discussion of the phrase “spiritual but not religious” is often viewed as confusing and conveys something of an insult toward those who follow a religious tradition. Conversely, when I page through publications on spirituality written by people not involved in a particular religious tradition, the phrase seems to convey a sense that the practice of religion precludes the possibility of a well-formed spiritual life. In turn, I’ve often been asked how I understand the phrase, “spiritual but not religious” by those who describe themselves as religious and by those who describe themselves as spiritual.

My starting point about spirituality is that spirituality is a foundational aspect of what it means to be human. Each of us has the ability to experience something more in life than is immediately apparent to us on the surface level of life events. For example, what prevents work, which is often routine and ordinary, from being drudgery is that we can experience something more than the ordinary routine in daily tasks. We have the ability to create meaning and purpose in our daily tasks, even very routine work. Spirituality is our capacity to discover or create something more in the ordinary events of life.

In a pure form, spirituality isn’t about one’s beliefs. Each month, I gather for meditation with a group of people who have very different beliefs. There are Jews, Muslims, Sheikhs, Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus. Spirituality is an important part of the lives of each participant, but the beliefs held by individuals in the group all differ one from another. Spirituality functions as the energy, the capacity, and potential for transforming our lives into something purposeful, meaningful, and valuable. From that perspective, spirituality really isn’t about religion.

From another perspective, many people find that their experience of spirituality is informed by particular beliefs. Those beliefs may be religious, or cultural, or uniquely personal. When analyzing the beliefs one person holds, it may appear that the constellation of beliefs a person holds are incompatible with each other. For example, I know many people whose spirituality is heavily informed by Christianity which contends that each person has one life that extends through eternity. At the same time, some Christians also have strong beliefs in reincarnation – a belief in multiple lives. While it seems that these two beliefs contradict each other, for the individual they may be perfectly complementary.

There are also those who clearly describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. What that means can vary a great deal from one person to another. Among people who use this description are people who may not have a belief in a deity but who practice meditation because meditation is proven to support healthy brain and emotional functioning. There are also those who may have been raised in a family that maintained rigorous religious practices but as an adult these practices were rejected in preference for personal rituals and practices. There are those who have chosen a variety of elements from different sources that have personal meaning. The consistent theme among people who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious is a preference to maintain a certain distance from religious organizations and to focus on personal spiritual development.

Many people – but not all – who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious practice meditation, yoga, light candles, burn incense and may even have a designated meditation corner or altar at home. Burning sage or sweet grass, drumming, and other practices may also have value. Living in a Euro-American culture, holidays like Christmas and Easter often have significant meaning. In other words, while describing themselves as spiritual but not religious, these individual’s choose not to recognize that what marks one’s spiritual life are practices that are fundamentally rooted in specific religious traditions.

Because practices that were developed and refined in religious traditions, like mindfulness meditation, yoga, or a sweat lodge ceremony, are used as building blocks for personal spiritual development, it is my opinion that the phrase “spiritual but not religious” is generally not accurate. Instead, it’s a term of convenience that is politely saying, “I am actively choosing what’s right for me in my spiritual development.”

It’s also my opinion that given the way religion is infused in American culture and many other cultures around the world, it’s very difficult to be spiritual without being religious. That’s because the tools and practices used in spiritual development grow out of religious traditions. Those traditions may be unknown and truly foreign to an individual, but that doesn’t make the practice any less religious in its origin.

Ultimately, I understand the phrase, “spiritual but not religious” as a critique of religion and religious institutions. The critique is simple: religious institutions have often failed to convey the spiritual wealth that’s really at the heart of their tradition. Because of this fundamental failure, many people choose to pursue their own spiritual growth and development apart from a religious institution.

While I affirm that each person should actively make choices about spiritual development in much the same way we should actively make choices about our health and well-being, I am also aware that there are ethics involved in these choices. Many people from countries and cultures that were colonized by Euro-American powers have expressed the concern that taking religious practices out of their context for use in personal spiritual development engage in a form of spiritual colonialism. Lakota writer Vine Deloria addressed this in his book, God is Red: A Native View of Religion. Deloria compared non-native peoples engaging in Native American practices as being like an Indian who entered a Roman Catholic Church, put on the priest’s vestments, walked to the altar, read the prayers from the missal, and then claimed that the ritual was a Roman Catholic Mass. Just as Roman Catholics would find this scenario to be sacrilegious, so too have Native peoples, Buddhists, and Hindu writers express ethical concerns about the ways their practices have been co-opted by Westerns in search of spirituality.

In the end, while the term “spiritual but not religious” may be convenient for many people, it’s meaning can vary a great deal from one person to the next. The common theme among those who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious is that they have made individual decisions about the spiritual dimension of their lives. While that’s a very positive thing, I also suggest that those of us from Euro-American cultures need to be aware of the ethics of the choices we make so as to not continue a history of colonization in the name of spiritual development.