Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Doctrine of Life 13
Recently we were told that our church would be featured on television1, and I
tuned in to see what was toward. It turned out to deal mostly with a survey of Americans’
beliefs by PARADE Magazine.2 When we were informed that it showed how many
people proclaim that they are “spiritual, not religious”, something snapped… I had heard
this phrase one time too many.
So we may well wonder exactly what this means. One of the first things I noticed
is that while many claim to be “spiritual not religious”, hardly anyone is ready to say he
is “religious not spiritual” – apart from the 600 Facebookers who joined the group of that
name, probably for the same reason I did.
When we make another attempt to find out just what “spiritual not religious”
means, we often run into complaints about “religion” troubling us with what are labeled
“dogmas”. Apparently “spirituality” means that we should stop at generalities about how
it would be if we would only just be nice to each other, and not bother with a lot of
complicated specifics.
I would suggest, on the contrary, that the content of our faith means paying some
attention to what it is that we believe and why. (And this is one of the things I have found
most satisfying about the New Church). I find it hard to improve on the treatment given
by Dorothy Sayers7, in dealing with an expostulation by a don who dismissed all such
matters are solely “interesting to theologians”.
Well, perhaps being “spiritual not religious” means not going to the trouble of
coming together to engage in all sorts of repetitious practices which are, after all, only
“rituals”. They can’t be important to being “spiritual”, can they?
The next part of my thesis is that once we know what our faith’s content is, it
should obviously follow that we go about expressing it through a form or forms. That is
what we are doing when “two or three are gathered together.”
And arriving in Heaven does not mean being done with this kind of “religion”.
For Mr. Swedenborg assures us that in Heaven, all the preachers are from the Lord’s
spiritual kingdom, and are readily received by audiences from His celestial kingdom.8
Indeed, it would seem that we could hardly help being “spiritual”. For each and
every one of us is a spirit!
Is there any reason to think that this means we should eschew being “religious”.
Rather, hark back to our reading which tells us that anyone who leads a spiritual life will
as a matter of course lead a moral and a civil one. I think that if Swedenborg were among
us today, he would write that there are those who exhibit a religious life without a
spiritual one; but anyone who leads a spiritual life will as a matter of course have a
religious life. And if we guide ourselves by these principles, we will have no need to
worry about being “religious not spiritual”.
William Linden
1
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/02/sunday/main5358799.shtml
2
http://www.parade.com/news/2009/10/04-how-spiritual-are-we.html
3
And yes, I used quotation marks so as to retrieve the whole phrase, not just anything with all the words.
4
By Wayne Clark Roof. http://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Marketplace-Remaking-American-Religion/dp/0691089965/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255751255&sr=8-1
5
The Third Peacock, Image 1972, p. 100 http://www.amazon.com/Third-Peacock-Robert-Capon/dp/B000HMWYWI/ref=sr_1_8?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255751545&sr=8-8
6
That must be why they keep referring to “herding cats”.
7
Creed or Chaos? (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute
Press, 1995), 36-41.
8
Heaven and Hell 225