Spiritual but not religious

In her June 5 column for Christian Century magazine Debra Dean Murphy, associate professor of religion at West Virginia Wesleyan College, described how she has learned to love the SBNR (spiritual-but-not-religious) neighbors she has been given. “They’re my students and colleagues,” she said. “I want to talk with them, not about them.”

      Murphy suggested that the term spiritual here is not so much a name for a staked-out territory in a post-Christian landscape as it is a form of cultural rhetoric—a way of drawing distinctions on any number of issues.

      The SBNRs register deep distrust of religious institutions, she said, and the scandals that seem—even to the religious—endemic and never-ending. “None of this is surprising or new.”

      Murphy adds that she’s inhabited enough different spaces, both personally and professionally, to know that the SBNR claim can be uttered sheepishly or confidently. It can be met with welcome or derision. It can engender respectful debate or it can shut down conversation entirely.

      Her solution?

      There is no agenda other than thinking afresh about her neighbors and communicating to them when she can, however she can, “their own intrinsic worth and belovedness.”

      Murphy’s column reminded me of the best book I’ve read so far on this subject: When “Spiritual but Not Religious” Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church.

      It's by a congregational church minister, Lillian Daniel, and was published by Jericho Books in 2013.

      Daniel is honest and funny—as the eight words in her subtitle confirm. And she always gets the best out of her wide-ranging conversations with inquisitive friends.

      Her adventurous pastoral experiences, have introduced her to many people who have stepped away from church in favor of nature worship, Sunday sports, newspaper reading, beach walks, or whatever they have identified as a more convenient religion of their own design. “And they say they’re thankful,” she adds with a smile.

      But Daniel is quick to point out that the hungry don’t get fed that way; the homeless don’t find shelter; and the world doesn’t change.

      “We can’t sit back and simply feel gratitude, or feel lucky,” she writes. “No, as Christians we expect more, way more, like a new heaven and a new earth, and because we follow Jesus, we better expect to be involved in making it happen, alongside other people.”

      And it’s Daniel's harangues that ultimately bring her back to the honesty I mentioned at the start. 
      She confesses: “In criticizing others in their faith, I hardly live up to the best in my own faith. Perhaps the people who irritate me the most are exposing my own false doctrines. … This is why I need a community.”

      And for Daniel, along with Murphy, that sense of community is more than just linking arms with “spiritual” people in an effort to promote good in our neighborhoods.

      It’s a readiness to let the Bible truths that underpin our “religion” sweep us into a church where joy and healing have been celebrated for centuries!