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Here is my sermon from yesterday. A lot of people look for church homes in January, so I'm trying to give sermons this month that are welcoming to newcomers even as they challenge and speak to congregants. I hope this worked--we had several new people on Sunday, and one person who has been attending for a few months signed our membership book after the service. All is good.
Today, I bought Greg Epstein's new book Good Without God, referenced in this sermon. I'm looking forward to reading it soon, and think it will make for a wonderful discussion group at the Fellowship I serve.
The reading before this sermon, also referenced within, was Mary Oliver's poem "The Summer Day." You can find it on-line if you don't know it--it's astounding.
I hope 2010 is filled with joy, peace, health and love for all of you.
in peace,
Michael
Spiritual But Not Religious?
Rev. Dr. Michael Tino
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Northern Westchester – January 3, 2010
© 2010 Michael James Tino
When you hear the word “spiritual” or “spirituality,” what comes to mind?
For most of us (though not all of us, to be sure), this is a good word. It connotes a connection with something greater than ourselves—whatever we define that something to be. Perhaps you remember particular experiences you would define as “spiritual,” times when you felt something that transcended your simple existence, your sharply-defined body, your intellectual and rational understanding of what is around you.
How about when you hear the word “religion?”
Religion is a much more complicated word for most of us (again, not all).
For many people, the word “religion” brings up thoughts of strict dogma, of exclusion, and of a requirement that all believe in a supernatural God. The word “religion” brings up for some people harsh reactions against hypocrisy, negative feelings related to experiences of years ago, and anger over perceived religious intolerance for questioning or dissent.
This view of religion has led many people—and you might be among them—to label themselves “spiritual but not religious.” This phrase, which has become ubiquitous in our society, is often said as a matter of pride.
People throw that phrase around as if to say, “I am in touch with something beyond myself but I have transcended the narrow-minded ways of idolatry, dogma and belief. I have evolved past a need for such things in my life.” It is used to cast religion in a derogatory light—as if it were something to be overcome instead of something to be celebrated.
I believe this is because many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of what “religion” really is.
In re-defining the notion of “religion” to mean something fundamentally suspect and worthy of derision, “spiritual but not religious” has gone from a simple statement of a lack of relationship to an organized faith tradition to being a pretentious and self-serving phrase that does real harm in our society. As you can probably tell, it’s not a description I particularly like.
And yet, some twenty percent of Americans—one in every five people—used that phrase to describe themselves at the beginning of the last decade, and that number has only increased since. (Fuller, Robert C., “Spiritual But Not Religious,” http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/B
Why is this?
Robert Fuller, in his book Spiritual But Not Religious, gives us part of the answer when he writes that:
“Before the 20th century the terms religious and spiritual were used more or less interchangeably. But a number of modern intellectual and cultural forces have accentuated differences between the ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres of life. The increasing prestige of the sciences, the insights of modern biblical scholarship, and greater awareness of cultural relativism all made it more difficult for educated American to sustain unqualified loyalty to religious institutions. Many began to associate genuine faith with the ‘private’ realm of personal experience rather than with the ‘public’ realm of institutions, creeds, and rituals. The word spiritual gradually came to be associated with a private realm of thought and experience while the word religious came to be connected with the public realm of membership in religious institutions, participation in formal rituals, and adherence to official denominational doctrines.” (Fuller)
We do ourselves and our society a great disservice by repeating and reinforcing this false dichotomy. Religion and spirituality were not meant to be separate. Further, the public realm of the spirit—the realm we most readily identify as “religious” is not something to be shunned.
We do ourselves and our society a disservice when we glorify the individual experience of spirituality and denigrate the collective experience of religion.
And Unitarian Universalism—my religion, this religion—is as guilty as any other group of doing these things. Unitarian Universalists too often embrace the rampant, narcissistic individualism of our wider society because we mistakenly think it’s the only way we can protect our individuality.
We rush to embrace Ralph Waldo Emerson and his Self Reliance and Henry David Thoreau with his cabin in the woods as our spiritual ancestors without pausing to understand the consequences of their hyper-individualist approach to spirituality.
We proudly proclaim “the right to conscience,” affirmed and promoted in our fifth principle and so often misconstrue it to mean that our conscience has no responsibility to be accountable to a wider community.
We have practically bestowed the title of Saint upon Mary Oliver for her uncanny ability to capture spiritual experiences in words without understanding that poetry is not an individualist experience but rather a means of rendering complexly beautiful concepts to communities of listeners.
We even participate in the misappropriation of great and deep religious traditions by ascribing to them the condition of being “spiritual but not religious.”
Take meditation, for example, most commonly understood as one of the major practices of Buddhism, and a practice that is attractive to many who would embrace spirituality without religion.
Many people engage in the practice of meditation alone. For a growing number of the spiritual-but-not-religious, mindfulness meditation is an attractive spiritual practice, focusing on breath and presence, tuning out the static in the world around us.
Yet sitting in meditation for thirty minutes a day does not make you Buddhist. Not even if you follow your meditation with an hour of reading from the work of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh; not even if you make a special room in your house and buy a Tibetan singing bowl—and really know how to use it.
Why? Because the practice of mindfulness is only one part of Buddhism—it is the central practice aimed at the first of the three jewels of Buddhism, the state of pure enlightenment known as Buddha. Studying the teachings of Buddhism is part of the second jewel of Buddhism—known as dharma.
And yet dharma is more than studying—it also requires a relationship with a teacher, which is where we break out of the private sphere into the public—the realm of spirituality often called “religion.”
And the third jewel of Buddhism? It is sangha—the community of practice and learning. Sangha is as required for Buddhism as are Buddha and dharma. You cannot be a Buddhist without such a community.
It is written in the Uppadha Sutta, one of the collected discourses said to be original teachings of the Buddha that:
“Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & comrades, he can be expected to develop and pursue the noble eightfold path.” (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/s
What does this mean? It means that a community of accountability—a community of people on the path to enlightenment, a community of people studying dharma together, a community of people accompanying you on the spiritual journey—this community is a necessary part of Buddhism.
And it is here that Buddhism becomes a religion—and not a spiritual path that we can pick and choose from.
Meditation alone is a wonderful thing. It is a fine spiritual practice that I highly commend to you. But spiritual practice done in isolation, done without a community of accountability, is a symptom of our over-individualist society, and not the way to enlightenment—in Buddhism or any other religious tradition.
Religion, you see, requires community. And this is a good thing. The word itself comes, it is widely thought, from Latin roots meaning “to bind together again.” Religion requires being bound to something beyond yourself—it requires relationships in which to learn and grow.
And human beings are meant to be in relationship with one another. We are not meant to be solitary creatures—we have evolved to need to be part of a group. Again—a good thing.
And religion requires only the binding together of people into a group based upon spirituality.
You wouldn’t know this from the ways in which the word “religion” is used in our society. All too often, “religion” is defined as the way in which one believes in a supernatural God. This is not what religion is.
Just the other day, I was forwarded a story on a new book, written by Harvard’s Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, called Good Without God. The suggestion was that it might make a great book for a discussion group here at the Fellowship. I agree with the wonderful suggestion—Greg is a thoughtful, grounded, minister with a sincere mission to explain humanism and atheism in a positive way (and not by attacking the theologies of others). Several reviews of the book from colleagues have highly recommended it to me, and I look forward to reading it—maybe with you.
And then I saw the subtitle of the book, and it made me nearly apoplectic. This positive take on atheism and humanism is subtitled “What A Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.” Non-theistic? Yes. Non-believing? Sure. Non-religious? No!
Greg Epstein’s entire ministry at Harvard has been the creation of a community of accountability for people who define their theology without reliance on a supernatural God. His entire point is to introduce people to religious humanism. He’s a chaplain, for crying out loud, ordained in the tradition of Humanistic Judaism, and accountable to (gasp) a religious tradition. Non-religious is not a word I would ever use to describe him.
And yet, there it is on the cover of the book.
Even some dictionaries get it wrong. Seriously! Of course, the job of the dictionary, as I was recently reminded, is not to tell us what words mean, but what people are using words to mean. So the dictionaries have cleverly—and accurately—picked up on the fact that more and more, religion is being defined as strict dogma, unbending adherence to a particular creed, and reliance on a supernatural deity.
Don’t believe it. Please.
The Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed writes that “the central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all.” It’s not about teaching one right way of looking at the world. It’s not about a specific theology. It’s about understanding our intimate and unbreakable connection to everything else in existence.
Religion is about connection. It is about community. It is about accountability.
Religion is about having people to share your spiritual experiences with.
Like those of Mary Oliver.
Long ago, on a summer day, Mary Oliver watched a grasshopper eat sugar from her palm. Like no one else in our world, she saw in this experience a connection—a spiritual moment.
And had she kept it to herself—had this remained in the realm of private spirituality, it would have been a nice day for Mary, I’m sure, but it would have stayed there, in her head and heart. Eventually that experience would have died with her.
But Mary Oliver wrote a poem. And she published that poem. And today, we can hear that poem and feel the soft touch of the grasshopper’s legs on our hand. We can feel the grass under our knees, we can feel the sun beat down on the back of our necks.
And we can be stunned to silence by her final question: “Tell me,” she writes, “what is it you plan to do/With your one wild and precious life?”
What is it you plan to do?
Sit on a cushion alone? Hoard your spiritual experiences as if they are finite, scarce and fleeting—and, as a result, making them so?
Or will you choose religion? Will you choose to be bound together with a group of people, all taking the spiritual journey together?
Might you choose a group of people who don’t all think the same way? Might you choose to study and learn alongside people who will support you and challenge you, who will ask you to see the world from their point of view?
Will you choose the path of relationship, of engagement, of solidarity, of connection?
I hope so. Life is too precious to do otherwise.
