Comments on Spiritual, but not in the Classroom

• Religious vs. spiritual -- a growing dichotomy
• Posted by Bill Dockery at University of Tennessee on March 1, 2006 at 9:15am EST

• I find it interesting that this study and this story differentiate between "religious" and "spiritual." To me, this has always been a distinction without a difference, though in contemporary culture it's clear that many people -- especially those who are not affiliated with an organized religion -- believe there are separate meanings for the two words.

  Imagine Wm James writing "The Varieties of Spiritual Experience" and you may get a sense of the difference. Religion (religious, etc.) are terms that describe religious(& spiritual) events, organizations, etc. as phenomena, from the OUTSIDE, as it were, whereas spiritual describes individual religious feelings as they are experienced subjectively, from the INSIDE.

  Spiritual has a fuzzy, touchy-feelly connotation -- someone who has religious experiences or impulses, for example, but who hasn't subjected them to rigorous introspection and analysis. Religious carries implications of experience organized, systematized, reasoned upon.

  I don't know when this distinction began to arise, but clearly it is useful to people who are uncomfortable with so-called organized religion but who still have religious impulses, which they then choose to label "spiritual" to differentiate them from traditional and increasingly discredited notions of religion.

  Interesting article.

• Oh Wow!
• Posted by RWH on March 1, 2006 at 9:20am EST

• I will admit that I find studies like the UCLA study of spirituality deliciously compelling. It’s like being in the checkout counter of your favorite grocery store and there are all of those really sleazy magazines sitting there inviting your curiosity (why did Angelina Jolie’s father, Jon Voight, sucker punch Brad Pitt?). You know you shouldn’t look, but you just can’t resist.

  I am interested in this thing – “spirituality” – for two reasons. First is the fact that when I surf Match.com (the zip code is irrelevant) for ladies between the ages of 50 and 65, I discover that waaaay more than 83% either list a religious preference (almost always Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish) or – and I see this more and more these days – claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” My oh my, “spiritual but not religious” ... what could that possibly mean” I have decided it means, “I used to be a very religious person ... but I seem to have lost my religious zeal ... but I’m still carrying around a lot of guilt for having given up religion ... and I do believe in God ... oh, I know, this religious baggage I’m carrying around must mean I’m spiritual but not religious.”

  Second is the fact that I was a pre-ministerial student as an undergraduate (I had a double major in Philosophy and Religion and Mathematics), and my own personal evolution over the next forty five years went from being very religious (in a conservative Christian sense) to being the terminal agnostic I am today. It was very painful.

  I am assuming that if one is religious (whatever that entails), one is spiritual; but the converse is not true. Indeed, I think these days the set of Americans who are spiritual but not religious must be very, very large ... and, as you can tell, I have no clue what “spiritual” means in that context. So, just like when I’m waiting in line at the grocery store, I went to the National Study of College Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose and read the “Spirituality in Higher Education” report. I was not disappointed.

  Although I read the entire report, I should have stopped when I got to the working definition of “spirituality.” Here it is; and I promise you I’m not making this up ...

  “Spirituality is defined as seeking out opportunities to grow spiritually, considering oneself a spiritual person, and having an interest in integrating spirituality into one’s life.”

  Ahhh ... now I understand completely. Once I was blind, but now I can see. Seriously though, it brings a smile to my face when I imagine Alexander Astin and his pals sitting around a table in a conference room cooking up that “definition.”

  Anyway, since spirituality is apparently whatever I want it to be, I decided I might learn something about the concept by integrating my Match.com experience with my National Study of College Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose experience. I didn’t get far, but I do believe this: If someone responding to the NSCSSMP study happened to confuse being spiritual with being horny, he would have no difficulty whatsoever completing the questionnaire. Indeed, I imagine having an active commitment to the ideals of the Ku Klux Klan would make one spiritual according to their definition.

  In my Christmas letter to friends, I wrote, “Indeed, if the Christmas season could bring me anything of value it would be either the gift of a believer’s ability to accept the truth of unknown concepts without resorting to reason (i.e., faith) or the gift of the atheist’s certain knowledge that all of this happened without the existence of an unmoved mover (i.e., someone’s God). As it is, I remain – as expected – a terminal agnostic.”

  I often feel a certain coldness from being a terminal agnostic ... but when I read research like that reported by Scott Jaschik ... well, it warms my soul.

• "Religion" as a Loaded Word
• Posted by Karen Hughes Miller , Dr. at U of L on March 1, 2006 at 10:45am EST

• Bill Dockery's comments are well taken, but there is an additional aspect to consider.

  It today's touchy educational enviroment, especially within state institutions, we are safer discussing issues relating to the self, ethics, and moral decision making in terms of spirituality rather than religion. The very word religion implies that there is an organization behind a particular set of beliefs, while the word spirituality is individual, interpersonal, and somehow unique.

  In some ways, we use spirituality as code for religion because it allows us to tread into those waters without upsetting or turning off students who are sensative to those issues.

• Oops ... Sorry
• Posted by RWH on March 1, 2006 at 10:45am EST

• Just as soon as I hit the “Submit” button on my previous post, I thought I may have left something off. Then I read Bill Dockery’s thoughtful post and knew what it was. You see, Dockery suggests there is no (or, to be fair, little) distinction between religion and spirituality. I think those who are “religious” constitute but a relatively small subset of those who are “spiritual” ... assuming we had decent definitions of those two terms.

  Below is a Uniform Resource Locator for a quite wonderful video of E.O. Wilson being interviewed by Robert Wright. It’s very interesting (about an hour and six minutes long), and Wilson discusses numerous important intellectual issues in a coordinated and comprehensive way. Realizing, of course, that we are only guessing what good definitions might be – and admitting they may be impossible to formulate – I predict Professor Dockery will conclude that E. O. Wilson is an example of a spiritual person who is not religious.

  http://meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=wilson&topic=complete&list=topic

  Two notes:

  1. Edward O. Wilson is Pellegrino University Professor emeritus at Harvard. His awards include the National Medal of Science and two Pulitzer Prizes.

  2. This site has other interesting interviews. I especially enjoyed the one with Freeman Dyson.

• Why this terror of "spirituality"?
• Posted by John Martin on March 1, 2006 at 11:20am EST

• If Mr. Dockery had bothered to read William James's book, rather than just quoting its title with ironic snideness, he'd know that it isn't about "religion" (as Mr. Dockery defines it), but about "spirituality" (as Mr. Dockery derides it)--that is to say, it's about subjective experience (psychology) rather than theology, social practice, or institutional organization. James chose his title as a way of distinguishing his subject from the fairly recent trend called "Spiritualism" in America (the communicaiton with dead souls through psychic mediums), not as a way of conflating spirituality and organized religion.

  I'm not entirely certain why the term "spirituality" seems so provocative to the traditionally "religious" person and the adamant atheist/agnostic alike (though I suppose its comforting that they find common ground somewhere). Spirituality is a fairly traditional description of the subjective experience of the divine/the demonic/the numinous/etc. that is neither synonymous with organized religion, nor "new age" in its origins. People were spiritual long before they were "religious," and have used many words to describe the phenomenon: the mystical, the sublime, the holy, the ecstatic, the "oceanic feeling," enthusiasm, the aesthetic...the spiritual. And there have been a number of famous atheists who were quite eloquent in their spirituality--Shelley, Keats, and Edgar Allan Poe, among others. These spiritual people were also quite rational, introspective, scientifically literate, and rigorous in their thinking. So I'm not sure where the notion of spirituality as some uninformed and undisciplined orphan of "religion" comes from.

  It's entirely possible, and indeed common, for people who don't subscribe to very narrow and artificial theologies or attend religious gatherings and rituals, to experience "spirituality." And whether you define this as a psychological, a paranormal, or a divine phenomenon, there's very little reason to doubt that it can have a profound impact on a person's moral, social, and intellectual life. Dismissing it as something fleeting, illusory, or undisciplined only marks the writer as hostile, ignorant, or fearful of the realities of human experience. Neither rationalism nor religion has a monopoly on defining that experience or that reality. So please, climb down off your intellectual and political high-horses and acknowledge the importance of something very real and present.

• Posted by Thane Doss on March 1, 2006 at 11:50am EST

• I find many people use the word "spiritual" where I would simply use "humane." Indeed, before I came to Japan (rated by _Time_ a few years ago as the most rational country on Earth, on a scale where the opposite end was "religious"), people fairly often told me _I_ seemed like a really spiritual person. I would say that I had no idea of whether a spirit world existed or not, but that I was quite aware that I woke up in a human world every day.

  A problem here is that the religious right made "humanism" a dirty word a couple of decades ago, and people are still afraid to use it. As regards my own behavior and attitude, there's little difference between "secular humanist," which the religious right sought to demonize, and simply "humanist." But humanism seems to me a big enough tent to also include religious humanists, who see ethical behavior towards other humans much the way I do, but also have some religious beliefs that I do not.

  I personally think that in objective terms, "humane" or "humanistic"is more concrete than "spiritual." While I wouldn't cop to being spiritual, I'd admit to thinking of myself as basically humane or humanistic. Apparently, however, some past acquaintances would have listed me as "spiritual," though I wouldn't have.
  So as far polling goes, "spiritual" seems just too slippery a term. Unfortunately, asking "Do you consider yourself a humanist?" would most likely present its own series of problems, and therefore is no better.

  Maybe someone should do a poll that asks, "Do you basically like people, or do you wish God would just wipe 'em out so you could get on with it and go to heaven?" {I do realize the second choice is a complex question, but like/hate doesn't really express the dichotomy I'm interested in.}

• Posted by MR , One definition on March 1, 2006 at 12:35pm EST

• I assisted in a psychology study which included a measure of spirituality and religion. Spirituality and spiritual practices were defined as "matters concerned with a person's mental or moral nature." Questions included items such as "pray to God, Goddess, or a divine being," "use new age rituals," "use alternative body therapies," and even "use astrology." Participants were also asked how much they agreed with statements such as "I believe in miracles," "A higher power cares for me," and "There is life after death." There were other questions that asked about formal religious practices. It seems to me that this is the general way people conceive of spirituality, though there are of course many individual variations.

• The spiritual is inherent to human nature
• Posted by Dr. Andre Antao on March 1, 2006 at 12:35pm EST

• As humans we are both body and spirit. If it's a normal and an ordinary fact of life to care and nuture the body should it not be the same for the spirit? I think nuturing and caring for the spirit is what makes one spiritual! Religion is the institutional agency for the spiritual - whether it achieves it today is a question. If education (check out the etymology)is not only about graduation then educators/mentors could not BUT value their spiritual nature.

• Response: "Why this terror . . ."
• Posted by Bill Dockery at University of Tennessee on March 1, 2006 at 12:40pm EST

• John,
  1. I HAVE read "The Varieties of Religious Experience." I UNDERSTAND that James was a psychologist (did you know that he had a brother who wrote novels?). I'm also aware of the Spiritualism that was contemporaneous with James.
  2. James looked at religious experience as a phenomenon of personality, from the OUTSIDE, in essence objectifying it. And as you said (to my complete agreement) "[s]pirituality is a fairly traditional description of the subjective experience of the divine/the demonic/ the numinous/etc." Your definition fits right in with the INSIDE part of my earlier comment. We're not in disagreement on those points.
  3. I didn't express any partisanship for any particular religion; nor did I "deride" spirituality. I merely commented on the growing distinction between two terms that overlap to some degree in meaning but increasingly not in usage.
  4. I have also read Shelley, Keats, & Poe (poets, right?). What their spirituality/agnosticism has to do with the way late 20th/early 21st century folks use the terms "spiritual" and "religious" is not entirely clear to me from your post. They are, after all, dead, and for a long time.

  5. I'm taken aback at the emotional burden your post carries. Let me ask you the same question the woman at the Delta ticket counter asked me the last time I took a plane: "Have you checked your baggage?"

• The bad connotations of "religious"
• Posted by Damon D. Hickey , Director of Libraries at The College of Wooster on March 1, 2006 at 1:40pm EST

• A depressingly-large number of students I know have experienced religion very negatively. They've been taught that religion is about going to church, believing certain things, never quetioning or doubting, and not doing things the church says are immoral (which can be a lot of things students do), all in order to get into heaven and avoid going to hell. This kind of religion has damaged them and they want nothing more to do with it, although it still haunts them. Yet they long for something deeper and "beyond," and that's what they mean by "spiritual."

• My mistake
• Posted by John Martin on March 1, 2006 at 1:40pm EST

• To Bill Dockery:

  It's true that I may have misread your definitions of spirituality and religion as being your own, rather than a commentary on the popular usage of those terms, and perhaps, confused your tone with that of RWH, who does, in fact, seem a bit hostile to the mere notion of "spirituality." If so, then I apologize. But if, as you say, the common notion of these terms is that:

  "Spiritual has a fuzzy, touchy-feelly connotation — someone who has religious experiences or impulses, for example, but who hasn’t subjected them to rigorous introspection and analysis. Religious carries implications of experience organized, systematized, reasoned upon."

  Then those of us who embrace the idea of spirituality--even a "humanistic," rather than "religions" version of it--have reason to be a bit defensive (that is my carry-on baggage, to answer your question). It's precisely this confusion of spirituality with the lack of "introspection and analysis," reason, or "seriousness" that makes people so hesitant to discuss it in a serious setting like the university. It's the assumption that spirituality somehow "belongs" to traditional religion and nowhere else that seems to cut short any conversation about it in the context of humanistic values, social relationships, political ideologies, etc. My point in mentioning the Romantics is that this chasm between Reason and spirituality is a fairly recent construct, and not one that anyone should take as "natural."

  My argument with you on James is simply that his title doesn't indicate some conflation of "religious experience" with the theologies and practices of the Church, which is what you seem to imply (but again, I may have misinterpreted). I think that James would be the first to acknowledge that spirituality precedes and exceeds the ideological functions of organized religion.

• As Long As You’re On A Roll ...
• Posted by RWH on March 1, 2006 at 2:20pm EST

• Holy smokes! ... “RWH does, in fact, seem a bit hostile to the mere notion of “spirituality”?

  Where, Mr. Martin, did you get that idea? Talk about misreading.

  I defy you to read my posts and report a single negative (or hostile) thing I said about “spirituality” ... not forgetting, of course, that my first post was about the NSCSSMP study.

  I certainly don’t want to prejudice your case, but, if I’m not mistaken, all I said about it is (1) there seems to be a lot of it around, (2) it shouldn’t be equated with religion, (3) at least one of my favorite scholars (E.O. Wilson) has it, and (4) I haven’t got a clue what it is. And, truth be known, after reading all of the comments to Scott Jaschik’s article, I’m only ever so slightly better off than when I started.

  Maybe it’s like pornography ... we can’t define it, but we recognize it when we step in it.

• Thanks for the clarification
• Posted by Bill Dockery at University of Tennessee on March 1, 2006 at 2:21pm EST

• John, you and I are not far apart in our understanding of both terms, which is why I was puzzled about the emotive valence of your first comment. "Spiritual" is used the way you describe it, but it is also used in the "fuzzy" sense I mentioned. The thing that interests me is that the rejection of "religious" in favor of "spiritual" is taking place widely, even in traditional religious settings.

  By the way, I thot Karen Hughes Miller's comment added a particularly interesting perspective on the discussion.

  All the best.
  Bill

• Interior Life, Religious Life and Spiritual Life
• Posted by Stephen F. Miletic , Professor of Scripture & Catechetics at Franciscan University of Steubenville on March 1, 2006 at 2:21pm EST

• I appreciated the honesty of the threads and wanted to join the discussion.

  I work with the following distinctions about the "inner life." I'll share them and then comment about the theme of subjectivity and religious experience.

  We are all capable of art, be we tone deaf or color blind. THe capacity for art I call the interior or inner life. This is the life of the imagination --both saint and sinner are born with this. The capacity for imagination is also connected to memory, for we recall (=memory) through imagination. This capacity makes us neither "religious" nor "spiritual," just human.

  The religious dimension might be the interior drive for something ultimate, completely valuable, looking for God. Frank Sinatra apparently once said that "religion" is whatever gets you through the night. THe major way we seek God is through an experience of transcendence, natural or induced! This search is the religious dimension of our humanity, exercised via our ability to know, to imagine, and especially to undertsand.

  The spiritual dimension is when we find God or perhaps when God finds us first! The spiritual in effect is the inner and religious life connecting with God.

  In my experience of the search, God has found me more times than I have found God! God shows himself through the cloak of another's distress and discouragement as much as in the raising of the consecrated host (yes, I'm Catholic). THe connect is when all pistons are firing in me: imagination, understanding, openess and need, esp. need!

  What do I give in the classroom. A social science teacher once said to our class, "You teach who you are no matter what subject you teach!" This was a stunner! The way I teach and what I teach islike a cloth; who I am or am not, my faith or lack therefore is either a bright search light breaking through the cloth or a dimmed light from a wooden match not perceptible.

  It seems to me that I am most human and "spiritual" -- when connected to God. How can I not share this in what I do and say?

• Religion, yes! Spirituality, no!
• Posted by LogicGuru on March 1, 2006 at 3:15pm EST

• As a religious person I don't like this "spirituality" business because:

  (1) I'm interested in philosophical theology: arguments for the existence of God, logic puzzles concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, etc. "Spirituality" dismisses all this.

  (2) I like churchiness--church buildings, liturgy, sacred music, the material culture that spirituality also excludes.

  (3) Spirituality is generally a substitute for religion. People who have no interest in theology and no taste for churchiness have a nagging sense that simply being secular isn't quite nice so they characterize themselves as "spiritual" because they preserve a residue of religion--the niceness, uplift, and moral concern. As a religious person this threatens me because it means that there will be less support for the religious products that matter to me--theological discussion, church buildings and church services so that I'll have less access to the things I want.

  I'd like to know what it would be NOT to be spiritual. Is the idea that a non-spiritual person is an unreflective, crude money-grubber, without any moral concerns or aesthetic interests or what?

• Old Blue Eyes?
• Posted by Bill Melater , Believer in strong spirits on March 1, 2006 at 4:55pm EST

• From an earlier comment: "Frank Sinatra apparently once said that “religion” is whatever gets you through the night."

  Wasn't it John Lennon who wrote a song with that title--"Whatever Gets You Through the Night"? Or did both Dr. Winston O'Boogie and Old Blue Eyes have the same thought? And if Sinatra and Lennon did have the same thought, then surely The Truth Has Been Revealed To Us. Can I have an Amen?

  Or, to continue mining the same vein, maybe we should frame the discussion by juxtaposing John Lennon's "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and the title of Frank Sinatra's first big hit: "All or Nothing at All." Think about it. Nice metaphors.

  Anyway, I'm really surprised that American students and educators are talking so much about spiritual matters. After all, we have TV.

• For Bil Melater ...
• Posted by RWH on March 2, 2006 at 3:00pm EST

• You've got it Man ... Amen, Amen, and AMEN!!!

• Not always searching for the transcendent
• Posted by Erynn on March 3, 2006 at 2:10pm EST

• I consider myself both religious and spiritual, in the sense that I have various formal practices and theological beliefs, and that I engage in what would most likely be defined as mystical practices as well. My religion is not mainstream, and in fact is still very small and in the process of development. People who are a part of this movement often find that the greatest moments of their awareness of deity come from direct interaction with the land and waters, rather than the contemplation of some transcendent, higher being.

  I have found the greatest sense of holiness 60 feet down in a coral reef, or walking the wild Washington coast far more than I have ever found it in church architecture or passages from holy books. I find profundity in a feeling of oneness with the salmon spawning in local streams, and the observation of the cycles of time and season through the growth and falling of leaves, the bloom and ripening of berries and the sweetness in eating them in company with others who appreciate this everyday miracle.

  My religion deals in myths from Ireland and Scotland, but does not advocate their infallible reality or their historicity. We find value, rather, in the kinds of things they teach us about human nature, and the implication of the immanence of deity in the hawk and the dewdrop, the ocean's wave and the ripening berry. I've found great solace in its veneration of poetry and its reliance on virtue and encouragement rather than duty and punishment as an ethical basis.

  Given this, I think it's a mischaracterization to say that those of us who identify as "spiritual" (whether or not we also identify as religious) are therefore somehow feeling guilty about a loss or rejection of a formalized religion that we grew up with, or that we are somehow missing out if we're not planting our butts in a pew somewhere to listen to others tell us that being human is a disease of the soul.

  I found the article itself quite fascinating, though I thought the variety of questions asked (as reflected in the body of the article itself -- I can't speak to the actual study in question) was somewhat lacking. I would have been very curious to see what religious or spiritual traditions the respondents subscribed to, and found it interesting to see if there was a correlation between particular religious/spiritual identities and the percentages of people who talked about prayer, or identified as "religious" versus "spiritual".

  I found my way here quite by accident, through a link to another article on this site, but I'm very glad I followed my curiosity and clicked on the article title. Thank you for a thoughtful moment to begin my day.

• "Spirituality"?
• Posted by SS on March 4, 2006 at 5:10pm EST

• Re the comments about spirituality as that which gets one through the night:

  I recently heard someone put it a little differently, namely, that spirituality is that which makes her “get up and get going in the morning,” to which someone else (seemingly not friendly to the “fuzzy” connotations of the term she heard in the comment) replied, “Well, then, I guess my full bladder is a spiritual experience”!

  One perhaps more serious contribution:

  I have found the distinction suggested by American religious historian Martin Marty to be helpful in clarifying one of the terminological confusions. Marty talks about “moored spirituality” and “unmoored spirituality” to distinguish between that found within a particular organized religious tradition and that found elsewhere. At the least, this distinction can help to avoid the common implication that people in traditional organized religion are “religious” but not “spiritual.”

• Moored vs. unmoored & another brief comment
• Posted by Bill Dockery at University of Tennessee on March 9, 2006 at 12:10pm EST

• To SS: Thanks for the Martin Marty distinction. He nailed it (as he usually does).
  To Erynn: I, too, feel reverential at the various natural phenomena, creatures, etc. that you listed. I would have to add that religion/spirituality can find profound expression in community, and not just in a convent or monastery but in a mundane service in an ordinary church full of everyday people. Religion/spirituality is where we EXPERIENCE it -- it's not a property of the animal, vegetable, mineral, or group that's in front of us.

  And, by the way, I'm Unitarian Universalist. Interesting that in the final analysis we tend to want to know where others are affiliated in their own religious/spiritual spiritual experience.

• These data confirm my impressions
• Posted by Martha Goff , Clerk II at Sacramento City College on March 14, 2006 at 2:10am EST

• This study bears out what I have sensed, based on my experience both as a student and employee of various higher educational institutions. That is, one is much more likely to encounter "religious" or "spiritual" people at community colleges (50%) than at public universities (33%). It would be interesting to know WHY this is true.

  The findings about more religiosity/spirituality among blacks and females (and especially black females) also confirm my personal impressions.

  Thank you for this interesting article!