De-ligion

Have you ever heard someone say that she is "spiritual but not religious"?

Personally, I don't think I have. BUT, I've heard (and read) lots of other people talking about how many people out there ascribe to this stance on the sacred--spiritual but not religious. And I have no problem agreeing that there's probably a lot of people who would say this about themselves. Heck, there's been times when I would've said it about me. 

There's a short moment in the movie This Christmas where a man is talking to a deacon of the local church, and says he doesn't really do church. The conversation continues: 

Deacon: Church ain't something you do. It's a place you go to commune with God in God's house. 

Man: I don't believe in God. Not in a traditional sense. 

Deacon: Not in a traditional sense...?

Man: I mean. I'm a spiritual person. You know, I believe in a higher source. 

Deacon: But you don't believe in God. 

Man: I don't believe in your god. 

This is one of Hollywood's presentations of the "spiritual but not religious" position. 

I was looking up the etymology of the word "religion," and I was delighted and surprised at what I found. One of the possible sources of the word (there are a few different possibilities) suggests that the root word of religion is "lig," as in ligament, meaning to connect or bind. The prefix "re-" means again. Used in the arena of those seeking the "higher source" the inference becomes obvious. The initial meaning of the word religion was to re-connect or to bind-again humans to God and to one another. Religions becomes then a means of meeting, of reuniting with the sacred and with people. 

Along with that, I would contend that this is similar to the way we use the word 'spiritual' or 'spirituality.' We often say or suggest that someone who is spiritual, is in tune with the things of God, always looking for connections to God. 

Unfortunately, use of the word 'religion' is not usually as wholesome, due to organized religion's history of demanding conformity under the threat of exclusion. (If you're not like us, we will de-connect with you.) But this is not religion at all, because religion is meant to re-connect, not disconnect. Brian McLaren suggests that we ought to use the word "De-ligion" for those times and those people who are misusing our religious institutions causing disconnect where reconciliation and reuniting is the chief goal. Dressed up deligion divides people based on arguments over creeds, holy lands, denominational differences. It creates in-groups of elites and out-groups of excluded others. 

This isn't a new problem either. Many of the Pharisees in Jesus' day were practicing deligion--casting out the unclean, asserting oppressive purity laws on large populations elevating the few that had the time and resources to abide by them above the masses. This, in essence, was the quarrel between Jesus and the religious (or should I say deligious) leaders of the time. 

People in Christian circles often use the image of wine and wineskins. Back in antiquity, wine was kept in wineskins (basically a leather pouch or bottle often made from goat skin), but eventually the wineskin would go bad causing the wine to sour. New wineskins would be changed out to keep the wine fresh. Imagine "spirituality" is the wine inside and "religion" is the wineskin encasing it. But too often the wineskin has aged and gone bad causing what we've named as deligion. 

McLaren brings it all home well when he writes: 

A spiritual life is a Spirit life, a life in the Spirit, and Jesus' life and work come into proper focus when we realize his goal was not to start a new religion--and certainly not to create a new religion that would seek to compete with or persecute his own religion, Judaism! No, his goal was to fill with Spirit-wine the empty [wine skins] of religion--his own religion and any other one...When people say, "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual," many of them, I think, see what Jesus saw, that the Spirit's realm of activity can't be limited to the sphere of religion in general, much less to any particular religion. 

So, if it ever happens that I hear someone say she is "spiritual but not religious," I'll probably find myself wondering how that is possible. And, I'll probably interpret them to mean that they are fed up with all the De-ligion around us, but they continue to acknowledge that there is something sacred out there worth pursuing. Most of us call it "God" (a placeholder word, since we don't actually have a name for God), some call it "the More." So, to all the spiritual but not deligious out there, may you continue your quest for Spirit, knowing that your quest is of value, is worthwhile, is beautiful.