Being spiritual and religious aren’t necessarily the same

According to the Pew Foundation, one of every five Americans identify themselves as spiritual, but not religious. I am one of those who find “spiritual but not religious” completely foreign. I am an unabashed religious person.

The good folk who grab on to being spiritual without being religious reject most institutions, especially those with which religion is identified. They pride themselves in belonging to nothing more religious than the chamber of commerce or the Rotary Club. Typically, they have bid farewell to the Roman Catholic Church, a Methodist Church, the Latter-day Saints or a Baptist church of some sort. They do not value showing up at the same time every week at the same place and going through rituals like communion or baptisms. They find the spirit of life more readily available in other ways, typically in silence or loneliness.

I am a religious person who gladly participates in religious activities. I participate in organized worship every Sunday. I love singing hymns of the faith, listening to the reading of passages from the Bible, joining in prepared liturgies, participating in the communion service, quieting myself in the context of worship with other believers and listening to a well-prepared and thoughtful sermon. I leave the worship service challenged in my thinking and reassured of the goodness of God and life. I not only participate in religious exercises, I am a religious person.

I recognize that I am a flawed person with some significant unconverted parts. I suspect the same things are true of every one of my fellow worshippers. In fact, one of the purposes of a good worship experience is to confess our imperfections. Religious organizations can always be charged with hypocrisy. After all, every worshipper, including the ordained leader, recognizes he or she advocates a higher standard of living than is practiced in everyday life. We all do things less than perfectly and leave a lot of things undone that ought to be done. In our religious rituals, I am challenged to live a life that is beyond human. In those same rituals I am assured of grace and forgiveness and am assured of a fresh start every day. We need a lot of grace because we are not a gathering of the righteous but of the flawed.

I am the great benefactor of my religious community. I have always been a gregarious person with a lot of friends. But my worshipping friends are special. When I see these same folks every Sunday, eat with them in church-sponsored dinners, talk, discuss and even argue with them in church-sponsored classes and discussion groups, they become something beyond acquaintances. They become close friends. We discuss together. We play together. We laugh and cry together. We mobilize together to do things we know ought to be done. We do things for one another.

Being religious is something we choose to do. Being a religious person is a life lived that is freely chosen and demands rigorous discipline. I like being religious because of the relationships, challenges and satisfactions that come in the religious package.

It is also in the context of being religious that I come in contact with the spiritual. As a Baptist, I have never believed that Jesus, the second person of a Trinity, is in any sense present in the bread or the wine (or grape juice) used in a communion service. For this Baptist, the bread and the wine are bare symbols. However, in the communion service I am reminded that love is a gift that is typically given at significant cost to the giver. I have a special agreement with the mythical Jesus for a meeting at the communion table. Jesus shows up and touches me with a healing hand. He makes me whole in a way that no M.D. can ever do. It is a spiritual highlight in my religious practices.

For me, being religious and being spiritual are necessarily tied together. Deny one and the other dies. Neglect one and the other becomes sick and weak.

I love religious institutions and I love being religious. I especially admire religious persons and religious institutions for three things they do. First, they identify evils in our society and speak up about them — racism, discrimination against gay persons, sexism, alcohol and drug abuse, child abuse, low wages, hunger, abortion. Religious institutions may not agree among themselves, but they have a unique ability to bring moral issues to a secular nation.

Second, religious institutions and people have an amazing record for the doing of good. When natural disasters strike, religious folk and institutions are among the first responders. Religious folk build schools, churches and hospitals. They run relief agencies, food pantries, counseling centers and medical clinics. They build housing for people with special needs.

Third, religious people have a unique ability to pass social and moral standards from generation to generation. They may disagree about the list of the standards, but collectively they pass the best of the past on to future generations for the wellbeing of all.

Being religious and living the religious life is exciting and exceedingly satisfying. To the non-religious I offer an invitation. Become religious and see how satisfying and fun life can be.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

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