Spiritual But Not Religious? Danger, Will Robinson!

I just read an article on CNN’s website; “Are there dangers in being 'spiritual but not religious'?” Apparently, it is “trendy” to say that one is spiritual but not religious, which as I understand it, is an assertion that the SBNR person feels free to pick and chose from various religious traditions those things that best reflect their own beliefs, without being tied down to the dogma of a single religion. It seems to me that this is a step in the right direction, if it steers the individual away from blind religious fundamentalism and closer to rejecting religion all together, but it still sounds like most of them are inclined to imbue philosophical writing with mystical, magical powers that don’t really exist.


The article asks (but doesn’t really answer) the question “Are there dangers in this?” As a slightly outspoken atheist (and observer of more outspoken ones), I can answer; yes. That is, narrow-minded religion bullies may try to get you fired from your job, driven out of your community, or even get you killed. However, none of the above was mentioned in the article.

Not surprisingly, Jesuit Priest, James Martin, who arguably has zero experience outside of organized religion, doesn’t like it and thinks it’s driven by egotism. "Being spiritual but not religious can lead to complacency and self-centeredness," says Martin. "If it's just you and God in your room, and a religious community makes no demands on you, why help the poor?" Gee, I don’t know, Father. Maybe you should get out of your church and ask some of the many, many non-religious people who are out helping the poor. Or, alternately, maybe you could talk to all the conservative Xian tea-baggers who prefer to spend their spare time advocating for the elimination of all government help for the poor. And do I have to point out all the complacency and self-centeredness that has had the Catholic church in the headlines recently?

The bottom line is that the dangers in being spiritual but not religious are that those people aren’t under the thumbs of purveyors of organized religion and could ultimately realize that the rigid, dogmatic demands of said religions are pure hogwash. Then they may point out to other people, maybe via, oh, I don’t know, a blog, that Catholic priests want to control everyone else’s bedroom although they can’t control their own, and fundy protestants want to quote-mine the Bible to legitimize the advocacy of bigotry and intolerance, and Islamic fundies just want to kill everyone who disagrees with them. Or maybe the danger is that the SBNR folks will miss out on all the fun of spending eternity with the aforementioned religious groups.

Christian Peace and Harmony

An article today in Yahoo news about a rift in a big Presbyterian church in FL, got me thinking about how often one sees claims that peace and harmony are among the benefits of being an Xian compared to the actual observed evidence. The above church is only unique in that it was one of the first mega-churches and that it has connections to Billy Graham and religious right leader D. James Kennedy. There's nothing at all unusual about seeing a headline that there is a rift within or between Xian denominations, and I suppose we should be glad that, at least in most places, the denominations aren't torturing and killing each other any more, but you'd think that when they make bumper stickers and song titles they might want to stick to claims that are less demonstrably false.

Most of the time when I hear of religious discord, I think of the bloody wars and suppression between Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Britain, but the first thing that came to my mind today was Africa. Have you ever wondered why there are so many followers of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, even though most of those nations were colonies of Xian countries? It seems that when the imperial Europeans decided to claim ownership of Africa, they included the traditional imposition of missionaries on the indigenous population, but the different Xian denominations spent so much time arguing with each other over who had more right to force their religion on the locals, that the Islamic missionaries were able to walk in with a monolithic message and convert everyone.

Maybe I'm the only one amused by this, but I'm always hearing about how the spread of Christianity, with all its manifest benefits, throughout the world is evidence of it being the true religion. Yet, it seems these guys are their own worst enemies and in spite of the constant discord, they'd like us to believe they are the primary force for achieving world peace and harmony.