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You Don’t Have To Choose Between Religion and Spirituality

Religion has an image problem. This might have something to do with its patriarchy. Or its homophobia. Or its elitism. It could be about being sectarian and exclusive – allied to an inability to update its theological software, which, on its worst days, leads to schism and violence. Religion has been responsible for most of the wars in history, claim its critics, but for all that, it’s pretty resilient. As the American TV presenter Jon Stewart says: ‘It’s given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.’¹

Is it religion’s style that’s the problem? Or its content? Or that general enduring sense of impenetrability? Whatever it is, for many people religion no longer ticks their boxes.

Spirituality, on the other hand, does.

Spirituality does not have the same image problem. Unlike religion, spirituality is soft, not hard. Fluid not fixed. It’s about personal development and individual choice. If religion seems to be about guilt, duty and obligation, spirituality feels like its about growth and maturity. You have to fit into a religion but spirituality can be customised – it will fit in with you.

No wonder, as the comedian Lenny Bruce said, ‘Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.’²

But maybe religion doesn’t deserve such a bad rap. On its good days, religion stands up against power, and violence, and sides with the weak against the strong. It feeds the hungry, and teaches people to read and write. It inspires social movements that transform history for good. On its best days, religion produces the likes of Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King and Marilynne Robinson.

It inspires heartbreaking music, powerful images, extraordinary buildings and wonderful stories. Its rites and rituals remind us of who we are and where we’ve come from.

It provides a home and a community when we find life bleak and lonely.

And yet... the critics have a point.

The unpredictable flame of spirituality is often doused by the controlling hand of institutional religion.

And religion is only meaningful if it’s informed by genuine spirituality. If it provides a home for authentic experience. If it opens a window into ‘the other’.

True religion will always make room for a spirituality that will develop us, individually and collectively. A way to find ourselves. The American scholar Barbara Brown Taylor puts her finger on it: ‘Religion is the deep well that connects me to the wisdom of the ages. Spirituality is the daily experience of hauling up living water and carrying it into a dry world.’³

As someone once said: ‘Sitting in church on Sunday doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.’⁴