A few weeks ago, I wrote a column exploring the lack of participation of men in American religion. Much to my surprise, I received two kinds of comments again and again about the article.
The first category of commentator was pleased by the news that men were less religious, for, as they so verbosely wrote, religion is foolishness and men were to be praised for abandoning it in such numbers. To these people, I cheerfully blow a raspberry in your direction. Go pester Glenn Beck.
But a second category of responses is deeply intriguing. Those suggested that I had confused spirituality and religion: that, had I considered spiritual engagement rather than religious affiliation, I would not have found such discrepancy between the spiritual sex (women) and the Neanderthals (us guys). The religious human and the spiritual one, they claim, are different animals.*
Are religion and spirituality separate species? To the minds of most Americans, I think the answer is clearly yes. Even in as short a career as mine, I've heard the sentence, "Rabbi, I'm spiritual, not religious," hundreds of times.
This idea can also have a more aggressive cant. For many, religion is the primary obstacle to spirituality, if not its true enemy.
The widespread celebration of spirituality coupled with suspicion of religion is part of our American heritage. As a friend reminded me, the Transcendentalists themselves enshrined this idea. From Emerson's address at Harvard Divinity School:
Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.
As I recall, Emerson was not invited back. The separation between religion and spirituality has a hallowed history here.
I struggled for years even to understand this divide. I certainly didn't enter the rabbinate because I wanted to be "religious, not spiritual." Rather, I was drawn to a life of Torah and mitzvot (observance) through deep affinity with the spirit, and by a present desire to be close to God. I came into this work because I felt the Holy One's fire. That the two should be separate seemed nonsensical.
But, as with most things about which we experience complete certainty, I now think that I was wrong, and that there are two qualitatively different experiences so described.
First, spirituality, which takes its character from individuality. Spirituality lives in an individual's direct, personal connection to God. Its foundation is hitlahavut -- passion. It is spontaneous, malleable, and paradoxical. It is self-reliant, charismatic, and brilliant. Spiritual experiences are rarely defined because defining them would take one out of the experiencing of the moment, something anathema to the spiritual mind. Spirituality makes us feel alive.
But what people overlook is that spirituality is also self-centered. Because it is so personal, it tends to ignore bonds between people, and does not know that God's voice becomes textured when spread over community and time. Though it is smart, it is not wise: it rarely involves a relationship more than a generation old. Though fiery and inspiring, spirituality is, in a word, thin.
Religion, on the other hand, is as thick as it gets. It incorporates generations of learning and has grown wise and thoughtful. Religion is patient in a measure that spans lifetimes, and knows the depth of things. Its foundations are hesed -- care and tzedek -- justice. It has plumbed both our mortality and our divinity, and speaks to us of our greatness and our smallness in the same breath. Religion helps us understand life.
Religion is often so thick, however, that it smothers spontaneity and individuality. It struggles to see people as different from one another (a relatively recent psychological discovery, as an aside). It does not thrill with its quickness, for it is not quick, and prefers rhythm over syncopation, harmony over innovation.
The two are indeed different.
They are not, however, somehow mutually exclusive.
One of Judaism's holiest, most brilliant teachers, Moses Maimonides, taught us the virtue of the golden mean: that the apex of life is to be found in the middle of extremes. (Maimonides, The Eight Chapters, Ch.4) That spirituality and religiosity comprise the same spectrum cannot be denied: else, how could they at times appear as opposites?
It is equally as reasonable to doubt the motives of spirituality as to do the same for religion. An individual can be just as pathological as a group can be oppressive. Extreme spirituality is as dangerous as extreme religion. They both can also be equally sublime.
Remember that each of us has two sides to our hearts. Central to human greatness is our capacity to carry two ideas in tension. Enough with the idea that religion and spirituality are exclusive: it is a fallacy; we know it not to be so. Let us fill ourselves with both.
*It's worth looking at that Pew study again -- even a cursory examination will show that men participate less, regardless of whether we're talking spirituality or religion.
Rabbi Will Berkovitz: God, Life and the Spiritual Practice of Surrendering 'Complete Control'
Spirituality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
spirituality.com | from The Christian Science Publishing Society
What's Your Spiritual Type? - Beliefnet
"Use The Force, Luke! Use The Force." The idea here is to tap into a universal, underlying force that I, along with countless "others", suspect exists. Religion may be an attempt to systematize beliefs and behaviors (for whatever reason), but it is not for everyone, and especially not necessary for those who have read Nietzsche. Even The Buddha is said to have uttered, "Be ye Beacons unto yourselves". Keep your eyes open, listen to the world, learn, and do no harm.
I see religion as a "home" for spirituality. A person will have one or more spiritual experiences; but it is like a board game with a little "horse" in your hand but room for 15 other pieces. What are those pieces?
In a church, you find people who hold other pieces, and a great many people with no pieces at all but still interested in finding one.
Thus a religion is born, and putting all the pieces together you eventually get the game (Chess, in this example).
But if you "go it alone" and keep your "horse", you may feel pleasure in what you have but will likely never know what goes with it.
Another question: in the absence of evidence for a 'spirit', isn't it enough to just be a cognizant, observant human being, a citizen of a bewilderingly gorgeous universe?
Did you figure that out or just read it in the article? :-)
It is exactly a personal problem. Each person has spirituality (or not), collectively they are religion.
Religion is a system, whereas Spirituality is not.
Sounds spiritual to me.
You may think I'm being flip. I'm not: Consciousness, cognizance, observation, bewilderment, beauty, universality -- these are all vital concepts in the spiritualities I'm familiar with: Sufism, Zen, Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Judaism, even good old Christianity.
True, there are many practitioners and spokespersons for each that fail to embody or even appreciate any of these qualities -- but bad singers and corporate musak do not negate the value of real music: the real stuff is still there, if you bother to search for it. You just need to be a little discriminating.
The more deeply I delve into spiritual things, the more I long for religion. And I've been one of those 'spiritual' types for over 9 years now, but exactly like you said, I was standing by myself. No sense of community, no sense of tradition, no long lineage and history that I needed as a base.
Good and timely article for me. Thank you.
'Those suggested that I had confused spirituality and religion: that, had I considered spiritual engagement rather than religious affiliation, I would not have found such discrepancy between the spiritual sex (women) and the Neanderthals (us guys). The religious human and the spiritual one, they claim, are different animals.*'
I think the larger point is that some who consider themselves spiritual don't consider themselves religious. In other words your count of both men and women would be different had you included those who consider themselves spiritual but reject orthodoxy.
"But what people overlook is that spirituality is also self-centered."
In some cases that may be true but you're ignoring the mystical experience that arises for many people when they embrace, particularly non-orthodox, spiritual practice. In those experiences the self is annihilated for moments at a time. Transcendence of ego is sometimes the goal and sometimes a side effect of meditation, yoga, contemplation, and many other paths that people choose both outside of inside of religious context. There are other practices that may not bring about such transcendent experiences but none-the-less expand the awareness well beyond self-interest into greater understanding of and compassion for others.
I believe the writer is more or less equating religion with orthodoxy.
What is a religion *without* its orthodoxy? Nothing at all, I think, not even a philosophy.
Religion has no goals. People have goals. Animals have goals. Religions are the collective will of some people, but "religion" cannot have a goal.
Science reveals the workings of the macroscopic universe in addition to the quantum-mechanical realm, and witnessing the true interconnectedness of all physical reality permits an appreciation that religion simply cannot match. A black hole with a mass of 4 million suns is a little more impressive than a burning bush.
I'll take the majesty and apathetic terror of this beautiful physical reality over the manmade mythological nonsense being memetically perpetuated by scientifically illiterate clergy.
Or did the message get lost in the black hole and we're still waiting until we find out?
But to indulge anyway, altruism and compassion can be found throughout various creatures outside of our species. There are many examples to back this up, from the ability of chimps to mourn the death of kin to different species cooperating in order to benefit respectively (like when ants herd aphids).
Such practices emerge innately from biology, without any necessity of a deity and without the necessity of some explicit scripture (which, in the timeline of biology, is incredibly recent).
Every religion has gems of insight into how we should treat each other. But every religion also advocates morally destructive tenets, too. Taking these gems and divorcing them from all the superstition in which they're embedded is certainly worthwhile --- but pretending that the golden rule somehow validates that Jesus was the son of God, for instance, is yet another non-sequitur.
Besides, to say within that example, the golden rule dates back to Confucius, which obviously pre-dates the invention of Christianity. So expressions of morality certainly existed before today's monotheistic nonsense.
Actually, it *defines* it. Remove religion and morality suddenly becomes whatever you want it to be; and your definition will very likely differ from that of millions of other people and their definitions of morality.
God?
If you say God, which God?
Which scripture?
How do you know which one is correct?
If there is an absolute morality, who defines it?
We make it up as we go along.
Morality has always been claimed - close examination of the O.T. will confirm that it has always been in flux and does not match up well with 'today's morality' - whatever that may mean to you or the next guy - no global consistency even now.
'Re-defines it' may be a more accurate - if somewhat guarded statement - the existence of religion IN FACT seems to have very little effect on the alleviation of mans inhumanity to man.
We need to do better - hold out hope if you must that religion is capable of doing just that - those darn pesky facts keep getting in the way.