Could the Word "Religious" Make a Come-back?

Everyone knows that people prefer the word "spiritual" to the word "religious." Spirituality means the freedom to follow your own path and to search for the divine without the straitjacket of institutionalized dogma and rules. 

Religion means get caught in the forms of churchy observance. Religion puts people in boxes and tries to sort them into "good" and "bad," "worthy" and "unworthy." 

Religion belongs to the past. Spirituality is the way of the future. 

That's the common line, at least, which is accepted in many circles as -- well, as dogma. 

But words are slippery things. I did my doctoral studies on theological trends in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Back then, "religion" was a good word. Religion meant a personal experience of the divine, as opposed to dry academic theories or ecclesiastical nostrums. It was "theology" that was the bad word. And nobody had ever even heard of something called "spirituality." 

John Pentland

Two years ago, I heard John Pentland speak at a conference I attended. John is minister at Hillhurst United Church in Calgary which has undergone a celebrated rebirth. When John went there, there were about 40 elderly attenders. Now, over 400 find their way to Hillhurst on a Sunday. It is just about as cutting edge as the United Church gets. 

John said something that really struck me. He said, "We're spiritual. Spirituality is central to who we are. But we are also religious. The word religion means 'that which binds us together.' We're not just independent seekers, but those who are bound by a community, a story, a tradition." (OK, I'm not quoting him directly, but I think that was basically what I hear him saying.) 

It was the first time in a long time I had heard someone use the word "religion" in a positive sense, without a tone of disgust in their voice. 

Recently, I've been reading Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber. Nadia is the pastor of

Nadia Bolz-Weber

The House of All Saints and Sinners in Denver, Colorado. She is also a former drug addict whose life was turned around when she experienced the radical grace of Jesus Christ. Covered in tattoos, with a bit of a potty mouth, she is not your typical Lutheran pastor. 

But she has gathered an amazingly diverse group of people around the story of the Gospel of grace, and the Eucharist -- the Lord's Supper. People of all different kinds of brokenness find that the Good News of Jesus has healing power. 

Again, Nadia Bolz-Weber is about as counter-cultural as you can get. But rather than describing herself as "spiritual but not religious," she unapologetically says she is "religious, but not spiritual." 

Listen, you'd have to read the whole book, plus Pastrix which tells her personal story and her unlikely journey to ministry. But here is what I think she means when she says she is actually religious not spiritual (cleaned up a little for those who might find her own language a little off putting): 

"I honestly can't think of what practices I do that help me become more spiritual. I can, however, talk endlessly about the way I've been thrown on my [rear end] over and over by the Bible, the practices of the church, the people of God. That is to say, by religion. 

"I recently was asked by an earnest young seminarian ... 'Pastor Nadia, what do you do to personally get closer to God?' 

"Before I even realized I was saying it, I replied, 'What? Nothing. Sounds like a horrible idea to me, trying to get closer to God.' Half the time, I wish God would leave me alone. Getting closer to God might mean getting told to love someone I don't even like, or to give away even more of my money. It might mean letting some idea or dream that is dear to me get ripped away.

"My spirituality is most active, not in meditation, but in moments when: 

"I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an [expletive meaning 'not very nice person.'] 
               and when I am confronted by the mercy of the gospel so much that I cannot hate my enemies,
               .... and when I have to bear witness to another human being's suffering despite my desire to be left alone, 
              and when I am forgiven by someone even though I don't deserve it and my forgiver does this because he, too, is trapped by the gospel, 
              and when traumatic things happen in the world and I have nowhere to place them or make sense of them but what I do have is a group of people who gather with me every week, people who will mourn and pray with me over the devastation of something like a school shooting....

"But none of these things are the result of spiritual practices or disciplines, as admirable as those things can be. They are born in a religious life, in a life bound by ritual and community, by repetition, by work, by giving and receiving, by mandated grace."
                                             Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People, pp 8-9

There is lots about "religion" that is bankrupt and oppressive and trivial and soul-destroying. But to be religious means to be bound to something -- or, for Christians, to Someone -- that gives meaning and purpose to life. I wonder sometimes if our haste to jump on the "spiritual-but-not-religious" bandwagon isn't throwing out the time-tested baby with the cultural bathwater; if it isn't just our latest attempt to pander to current trends in the hopes that today's consumers will find something to like about us. 

I predict that the SBNR (spiritual-but-not-religious) movement will fail to provide many people with what they need to equip them to live in today's world, and that we will see "religion" once again find a positive place in our vocabulary.  

Maybe I'm totally off base about that, but it wouldn't surprise me.