spirituality & religion

It's not uncommon these days for people to call themselves spiritual but not religious. It is easy to understand why when the connotations of religion are of tradition, repression and boredom. Hearing and seeing some of the things done by my denomination while we try and find a new minister to 'lead' us makes all of that much clearer to me.

However, I find the position a little trite and lacking coherence. What does it mean to be spiritual. It is a good thing, but altogether vague. Does it mean sampling from life's ala carte of world faiths, is it some vague sense of the transcendent? To be spiritual in the general sense is to realize that life does not reduce to the material only. Some philosophers (like the author of The Philosopher at the End of the Universe) would say that any sense of self, identity or meaning that we perceive internally is utterly at odds with the external evidence. This denies spirituality in any meaningful sense.

So to be spiritual is to identify a need in humanity for significance, meaning and contact with the other, and at the same time to suggest that this isn't epiphenomenal or some sort of illusion. So what is religion.

If you watch the same program faithfully every night, or you follow a music group, sporting team, political party or celebrity you are as religious as someone who attends mass every week. If you always put the left sock on first, or are a compulsive nose picker, you are as religious as the the one who genuflects.

If you always want to hear the same old story of how you were born, how your parents met, how the big bang happened or when Australopithecus left the trees, you are as religious as those who listen to sermons.

Religion is ritual, story, rite, pattern. Our lives are shaped and molded by symbols and stories. We are creatures of habit. The question is: do the habits promote religious growth or stunt it, lead us somewhere good or bad, reflect reality in some way or run from it.

To sum: spirituality without religion is narcissistic and mis-guided; religion without spirituality is dead.

More hairy chested atheism

Ok, I didn't get to finish The God Delusion. A two week loan on an unpleasant book, what can you do? I guess I'll have to read it one day....

But, I have a review copy of Against Religion by philosopher Tamas Pataki. Here's a sample:

‘Religion springs from fear, conceit and cruelty; it is responsible for a terrible record of moral obstruction and slaughter; it is a delusional way of confronting weakness and helplessness; it bends thought to its purposes, distorts reality, undermines reason, inhibits curiosity and imagination, obstructs self-knowledge, nourishes hubris secretly, conserves oppressive political dispensations, and forges pernicious group identities; given the opportunity, it persecutes difference and threatens the rule of law.’

Yes, and atheistic ideologies (market capitalism, communism, sportism, nationalism, etc) don't do these things. No, of course not. Can't wait. At least I don't have to give it back.

For Australian readers, the Dec issue of Zadok Perspectives should carry the review. The book is due out in June.

Recapturing the imagination

I've just been listening to the audio book version of Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety. One thing that captured my attention was his comment on the similarities between the Bohemian and Christian approach to status and hierarchy. They don't tear the ideas down but base them on other things (e.g. in Christianity it is spiritual status, not worldly status, all else is, or should be, egalitarian).

Likewise, the Bohemian movement gained ground, according to de Botton, at precisely the time that Christianity was failing to capture people's imaginations. Not doctrinal assent but imaginations. I wonder how much the iconoclasm of the Reformation played a role in this, along side with the scientific discoveries of the world. Richard Dawkins might say that there is better poetry in science now than religion.

It reminds me of comments Tom Wright makes in his book, Simply Christian, where he notes the role of art (high art in his case, a failing of the book), music and so on in regaining the imagination (and critiques Pullman's atheistic literature). Modern iconoclastic Evangelicals seem to elevate pews, fluorescent lighting and so on as being the only aesthetic appropriate to Christian worship.

I'd agree that the hard sell, modernist success story of the prosperity gospel is an inauthentic way to re-capture the imagination of the Modern or Post-Modern of the West. I would, however, demure at criticising the use of candles or other ways of creating an atmosphere in emerging to alt worship as some do, automatically as idolatry. Iconoclasm is often a form of idolatry in itself.

Consider this: Is nature dull? Why is there variety? Why is there natural beauty? Why can humans appreciate this? Why does it move us to worship (Psalm 19)? In the effort to avoid making idols for ourselves we risk fencing off the imagination and make ourselves pure spirit, or probably more appropriate, pure mind. God commands us to avoid making images, but he also commanded the Israelites to make a magnificent structure - the temple. To approach God properly didn't only require a good doctrine of God's transcendence, but a feeling of awe, fear and numinescence.

To worship an idol is to imagine God as something he is not. To worship God however requires our imaginations. Why else is so much of Scripture story or narrative? This suggests not all is reduced to proposition.

Scripture provides some controls on worship - it is in Spirit and truth, it uses music, it involves a clean heart, a contrite spirit, it may use incence. It cannot use worldy wisdom (hyped up rhetoric) or a slick sell. We worship God, not a product.

What can we use to capture imaginations as well as minds with this great gospel message, how can we communicate the authentic gospel? Not by being reductionists and mere gatekeepers.