In 2011, preacher and author Lillian Daniel wrote an essay for HuffPost entitled “Spiritual but Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me.” Daniel addresses one of the major cultural dynamics at work in the twenty-first century: the divide between the religious and the spiritual. Daniel outlined what she regarded as naïve attitudes that come with faith on the spiritual side—the talk of sunsets and mountaintops and the lack of challenge that comes from having “deep thoughts all by oneself.” While I appreciated her critique, I was struck by the smugness in all of this.
Late twentieth-, early twenty-first-century faith has developed significantly, particularly in the rise of neofundamentalism. September 11 and the ensuing upward trend of religious radicalism is considered a turning point that put religion firmly back in the public sphere, leading to new interrogations of religion by mainstream culture. While those discussions are often marked by negativity and naïve critique, this resurgence of interest in religion nevertheless hasn’t been seen in Western culture for a long time.
The second issue is the rise of forms of spirituality that are characterized by hyper-individualism, which is often where the tension between religion and spirituality resides. Researcher George Barna once noted that while there are 310 million people in the United States, the danger is that we will wind up with as many versions of faith. So I understand Daniel’s resistance. I used to live in Los Angeles, where spirituality, sometimes mad versions of it, can be found on virtually every corner. What is sometimes missed is the debt owed to the institutional religions. Individual spirituality is often influenced by ideas and practices held throughout the ages by the very religions people dismiss.
When Daniel’s article came to me, the strangest part about it was that it was being passed around by people I know who view themselves as somewhat radical. But the real radical move is not to reject spirituality in favor of religion, but to reject both. Both are compartmentalized forms of faith and belief.
The chef and writer Robert Farrar Capon once said Christianity is neither a new religion nor even the best of religions; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. To him, the crucifixion is a sign that God is out of the religious business. I am not spiritual or religious—they both bore the fuck out of me right now.