“Spiritual but not religious”

“Spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) is a popular phrase and initialism used to self-identify a life stance of spirituality that rejects traditional organized religion as the sole or most valuable means of furthering spiritual growth.

The term is used world-wide, but is most prominent in the United States where one study reports that as many as 33% of people identify as spiritual but not religious. Other surveys report lower percentages ranging from 24% to 10%. The term has been called cliché by popular religious writers such as Robert Wright, but is gaining in popularity. The SBNR lifestyle is most studied in the population of the United States.

Definition

SBNR is commonly used to describe the demographic also known as unchurched, none of the above, more spiritual than religious, spiritually eclectic, unaffiliated, freethinkers, or spiritual seekers.

In 2013, Rabbi Rami Shapiro introduced the phrase “Spiritually Independent” as a new term to replace “SBNR” with a more positive statement which looks to the “politically independent” as a role model. Younger people are more likely to identify as SBNR than older people. In April 2010, the front page of USA Today claimed that 72% percent of Generation Y agree they are “more spiritual than religious”.

Those who identify as SBNR vary in their individual spiritual philosophies and practices and theological references, referencing some higher power or transcendent nature of reality, without belonging to a religious affiliation. In the USA most SBNR people without a religious affiliation believe in God.

Religion and Spirituality

Historically, the words religious and spiritual have been used synonymously to describe all the various aspects of the concept of religion. Gradually, the word spiritual came to be associated with the private realm of thought and experience while the word religious came to be connected with the public realm of membership in a religious institution with official denominational doctrines. Zinnbauer and Pargament (2005) write that in the early 1900s psychology scholars such as William James, Edwin Starbuck, G. Stanley Hall, and George Coe investigated religiosity and spirituality through a lens of social science.

• Books such as Robert C. Fuller’s Spiritual but not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America and Sven E. Erlandson’s Spiritual But Not Religious: A Call To Religious Revolution In America highlight the emerging usage of the term.
• In January 2012, Jefferson Bethke furthered the SBNR movement among evangelical Christians with his YouTube film “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus,” in which he criticized organized religion as superficial and hypocritical. More traditionalist Evangelicals have countered that it is possible to have a spiritual relationship with God and follow organized religion. Some have argued that discarding religion is dangerous in that it removes the needed standards of doctrine and the Bible, which they claim are the avenue to true spirituality.

In the field of psychology, spirituality has emerged as a distinct social construct and focus of research since the 1980s. With the emergence of spirituality as a distinct concept from religion in both academic circles and common language, a tension has arisen between the two constructs. One possible differentiation among the three constructs religion, religiosity, and spirituality, is to view religion as primarily a social phenomenon while understanding spirituality on an individual level. Religiosity is generally viewed as being rooted in religion, whereas this is not necessarily the case for spirituality. A study of the differences between those self-identified as spiritual and those self-identified as religious found that the former have a loving, forgiving, and nonjudgmental view of the numinous, while those identifying themselves as religious see their god as more judgmental. Among other factors, declining membership of organized religions and the growth of secularism in the western world have given rise to this broader view of spirituality. The term “spiritual” is now frequently used in contexts in which the term “religious” was formerly employed. Both theistic and atheistic camps have criticized this development.

Luc Paquin

Esotericism

Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and the Perennial Philosophy

Esotericism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group of those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek, either from the comparative (esôteros), “inner”, or from its derived adjective (esôterikos), “pertaining to the innermost”.

The term can also refer to the academic study of esoteric religious movements and philosophies, or to the study of those religious movements and philosophies whose proponents distinguish their beliefs, practices, and experiences from mainstream exoteric and more dogmatic institutionalized traditions.

Examples of esoteric religious movements and philosophies include Alchemy, Druze, the Alawites, Anthroposophy, early Christian mysticism, The Fourth Way, Freemasonry, Gnosticism, Hermetism, Kabbalah, Magic, Neoplatonism, Numerology, Perennialism, Rosicrucianism, Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism, Tantra, the Theosophy of Jacob Böhme and his followers, the Theosophist movement associated with Helena Blavatsky.

Although esotericism refers to an exploration of the hidden meanings and symbolism in various philosophical, historical, and religious texts, the texts themselves are often central to mainstream religions. For example, the Bible and the Torah are considered esoteric material.

Definition

Among the competing understandings of what unites the various currents designated by “Esotericism” in the scholarly sense, perhaps the most influential has been proposed by Antoine Faivre. His definition is based on the presence in the esoteric currents of four essential characteristics: a theory of correspondences between all parts of the invisible and the visible cosmos, the conviction that nature is a living entity owing to a divine presence or life-force, the need for mediating elements (such as symbols, rituals, angels, visions) in order to access spiritual knowledge, and, fourthly, an experience of personal and spiritual transmutation when arriving at this knowledge. To this are added two non-intrinsic characteristics. Esotericists frequently suggest that there is a concordance between different religious traditions: best example is the belief in prisca theologia (ancient theology) or in philosophia perennis (perennial philosophy). Finally, esotericism sometimes suggests the idea of a secret transmission of spiritual teachings, through initiation from master to disciple. It should, however, be emphasized that Faivre’s definition is one of several divergent understandings of the most appropriate use of the term.

The “perennialist” or “traditionalist” school is represented by authors like the French René Guénon (1886-1951), the Indian Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), the Swiss Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998), the Italian Julius Evola (1898-1974), the Iranian Seyyed Hossein Nasr (born in 1933), both scholars and esotericists. They postulate that there exists a Primordial Tradition of non-human origin.

• “We say that it [the origin of the traditions] is polar, and the pole is nomore Western than it is Eastern. It is only in a later epoch that the seat of the primordial tradition, transferred to other regions, was able to become either Western or Eastern. We consider the origin of the traditions to be Nordic, and even more to be polar, since this is expressly affirmed in the Veda as well as in other sacred books.”

In perennialist usage, esotericism is a metaphysical concept referring to a supposed “transcendent unity” of all great religious traditions. Esotericism is the metaphysical point of unity where exoteric religions are believed to converge.

• “Our starting point is the acknowledgment of the fact that there are diverse religions which exclude each other. This could mean that one religion is right and that all the others are false; it could mean also that all are false. In reality, it means that all are right, not in their dogmatic exclusivism, but in their unanimous inner signification, which coincides with pure metaphysics, or in other terms, with the philosophia perennis.” (F. Schuon, 1995).

After all, the esoteric tradition may be recovered if the seeker undergoes initiation.

• “Initiation is essentially the transmission of a spiritual influence, a transmission that can only take place through a regular, traditional organization, so that one cannot speak of initiation outside of an affiliation with an organization of this kind. We have explained that ‘regularity’ must be understood to exclude all pseudo-initiatic organizations, which, regardless of pretention and outward appearance, in no way possess any spiritual influence and thus are incapable of transmitting anything.”

Luc Paquin

Neo-Vedanta

Neo-Vedanta, also called Hindu modernism, Neo-Hinduism, Global Hinduism and Hindu Universalism, are terms to characterize interpretations of Hinduism that developed in the 19th century. These modern interpretations emphasize ideas, such as Advaita Vedanta, that are asserted as central or fundamental to Hindu culture. The development took place partly in response to western colonialism and orientalism, contributing to the Indian freedom struggle and the modern national and religious identity of Hindus in the Republic of India. This societal aspect is covered under the term of Hindu reform movements. Among the main proponents of such modern interpretations of Hinduism were Vivekananda, Aurobindo and Radhakrishnan, who to some extent also contributed to the emergence of Neo-Hindu movements in the West.

From their origin and through much of their history, and continuing in the present, the terms “Neo-Hindu” or “Neo-Vedanta” have also been used polemically, the prefix “Neo-” then intended to imply that these modern interpretations of Hinduism are “inauthentic” or in other ways problematic.

History

Unifying Hinduism

With the onset of Islamic rule, hierarchical classifications of the various orthodox schools were developed to defend Hinduism against Islamic influences. According to Nicholson, already between the twelfth and the sixteenth century,

• … certain thinkers began to treat as a single whole the diverse philosophical teachings of the Upanishads, epics, Puranas, and the schools known retrospectively as the “six systems” (saddarsana) of mainstream Hindu philosophy.

The tendency of “a blurring of philosophical distinctions” has also been noted by Burley. Lorenzen locates the origins of a distinct Hindu identity in the interaction between Muslims and Hindus, and a process of “mutual self-definition with a contrasting Muslim other”, which started well before 1800. Both the Indian and the European thinkers who developed the term “Hinduism” in the 19th century were influenced by these philosophers.

Within these socalled doxologies Advaita Vedanta was given the highest position, since it was regarded to be most inclusive system. Vijnanabhiksu, a 16th-century philosopher and writer, is still an influential representant of these doxologies. He’s been a prime influence on 19th century Hindu modernists like Vivekananda, who also tried to integrate various strands of Hindu thought, taking Advaita Vedanta as its most representative specimen.

Colonialism and Modernism

With the colonisation of India by the British, a darker era in the history of India began. Prior to this, Muslim rule over North India had had a drastic effect on Hinduism (and Buddhism) through systematic persecution. While the Indian society was greatly impacted, its economy however continued to remain one of the largest in the World. Muslim rule over Southern India was also relatively short-lived before the 17th century.

In contrast to the Muslim rulers, the British actively engaged in destroying the Indian economy as well.

The economic destruction wrought by restrictive British policies and Industrial revolution in Europe, led to the dismantling of the prevailing decentralized education systems in India in the 18th century. The British state-supported education system, after the English Education Act of 1835, emphasized western religions and thoughts at the cost of indigenous ones.

The British also nurtured and were involved, post 1813, in the aggressive propagation of Protestant Christianity. This was concomitant with the British propaganda machine’s involvement in the spreading anti-Hindu sentiments. In response to the British rule and cultural dominance, Hindu reform movements developed, propagating societal and religious reforms, exemplyfying what Spear has called

• … the ‘solution of synthesis’ – the effort to adapt to the newcomers, in the process of which innovation and assimilation gradually occur, alongside an ongoing agenda to preserve the unique values of the many traditions of Hinduism (and other religious traditions as well).

Reinterpreting Hinduism

Neo-Vedanta, also called “Neo-Hinduism” is a central theme in these reform-movements. Neo-Vedanta aims to present Hinduism as a “homogenized ideal of Hinduism” with Advaita Vedanta as its central doctrine. It presents

• … an imagined “integral unity” that was probably little more than an “imagined” view of the religious life that pertained only to a cultural elite and that empirically speaking had very little reality “on the ground,” as it were, throughout the centuries of cultural development in the South Asian region.

Neo-Vedanta was influenced by Oriental scholarship, which portrayed Hinduism as a “single world religion”, and denigrated the heterogeneousity of Hindu beliefs and practices as ‘distortions’ of the basic teachings of Vedanta.

Luc Paquin

Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement that developed during the late 1820s and ’30s in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest against the general state of spirituality and, in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School.

Among the transcendentalists’ core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both people and nature. They believe that society and its institutions – particularly organized religion and political parties – ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly “self-reliant” and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.

History

Origins

Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston at the early nineteenth century. It started to develop in the aftermath of Unitarianism taking hold at Harvard University, following the elections of Henry Ware Sr. as the Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805, and of John Thorton Kirkland as President in 1810. Rather than as a rejection of Unitarianism, Transcendentalism evolved as an organic consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason. They were not, however, content with the sobriety, mildness and calm rationalism of Unitarianism. Instead, they longed for a more intense spiritual experience. Stated in alternate terms, Transcendentalism was not born as a counter-movement to Unitarianism, but, as a parallel movement to the very ideas introduced by the Unitarians.

Emerson’s Nature

The publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1836 essay Nature is usually considered the moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Emerson wrote in his 1837 speech “The American Scholar”: “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds… A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.” Emerson closed the essay by calling for a revolution in human consciousness to emerge from the brand new idealist philosophy:

• So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, – What is truth? and of the affections, – What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. …Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.

Transcendental Club

In the same year, transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organization with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals including George Putnam (1807-78; the Unitarian minister in Roxbury), Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge. From 1840, the group published frequently in their journal The Dial, along with other venues.

Second Wave of Transcendentalists

By the late 1840s, Emerson believed the movement was dying out, and even more so after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850. “All that can be said”, Emerson wrote, “is that she represents an interesting hour and group in American cultivation”. There was, however, a second wave of transcendentalists, including Moncure Conway, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Samuel Longfellow and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn – Notably, the transgression of the spirit, most often evoked by the poet’s prosaic voice, is said to endow in the reader a sense of purposefulness. This is the underlying theme in the majority of transcendentalist essays and papers – all of which are centered on subjects which assert a love for individual expression. Though the group was mostly made up of struggling aesthetes, the wealthiest among them was Samuel Gray Ward, who, after a few contributions to The Dial, focused on his banking career.

Luc Paquin

Antagonism

Since the scientific revolution, the relationship of science to religion and spirituality has developed in complex ways. Historian John Hedley Brooke describes wide variations:

• “The natural sciences have been invested with religious meaning, with antireligious implications and, in many contexts, with no religious significance at all.”

It has been proposed that the currently held popular notion of antagonisms between science and religion has historically originated with “thinkers with a social or political axe to grind” rather than with the natural philosophers themselves. Though physical and biological scientists today avoid supernatural explanations to describe reality, many scientists continue to consider science and spirituality to be complementary, not contradictory, and are willing to debate.

A few religious leaders have also shown openness to modern science and its methods. The 14th Dalai Lama has proposed that if a scientific analysis conclusively showed certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then the claims must be abandoned and the findings of science accepted.

Holism

During the twentieth century the relationship between science and spirituality has been influenced both by Freudian psychology, which has accentuated the boundaries between the two areas by accentuating individualism and secularism, and by developments in particle physics, which reopened the debate about complementarity between scientific and religious discourse and rekindled for many an interest in holistic conceptions of reality. These holistic conceptions were championed by New Age spiritualists in a type of quantum mysticism that they claim justifies their spiritual beliefs, though quantum physicists themselves on the whole reject such attempts as being pseudoscientific.

Luc Paquin

Health and Well-Being

Various studies have found a positive correlation between spirituality and mental well-being in both healthy people and those encountering a range of physical illnesses or psychological disorders. Spiritual individuals tend to be optimistic, report greater social support, and experience higher intrinsic meaning in life, strength, and inner peace.

The issue of whether the correlation of spirituality with positive psychological factors represents a causal link continues to be debated. Both supporters and opponents of this claim agree that past statistical findings are difficult to interpret, in part because of the ongoing disagreement over how spirituality should be defined and measured. There is evidence that positive emotions and/or sociability (which both correlate with spirituality) might actually be prerequisite psychological features needed before spirituality can emerge (i.e. past association with psychological well-being measures might reflect a reverse causation), and that the effects of agreeableness, conscientiousness, or virtue – personality traits common in many non-spiritual people yet known to be slightly more common among the spiritual – correlate more strongly with mental health than spirituality itself.

Intercessionary Prayer

Masters and Spielmans conducted a meta-analysis of all the available and reputable prior research examining the effects of distant intercessory prayer. They found no discernible health effects from being prayed for by others.

Spiritual Experiences

Neuroscientists have examined how the brain functions during reported spiritual experiences finding that certain neurotransmitters and specific areas of the brain are involved. Moreover, experimenters have also successfully induced spiritual experiences in individuals by administering psychoactive agents known to elicit euphoria and perceptual distortions. Conversely, religiosity and spirituality can also be dampened by electromagnetic stimulation of the brain. These results have led some leading theorists to speculate that spirituality may be a benign subtype of psychosis. Benign in the sense that the same aberrant sensory perceptions that those suffering clinical psychoses evaluate as distressingly in-congruent and inexplicable are instead interpreted by spiritual individuals as positive-as personal and meaningful transcendent experiences.

Luc Paquin

Modern Spirituality

Transcendentalism and Unitarian Universalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a pioneer of the idea of spirituality as a distinct field. He was one of the major figures in Transcendentalism, an early 19th-century liberal Protestant movement, which was rooted in English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume. The Transcendentalists emphasised an intuitive, experiential approach of religion. Following Schleiermacher, an individual’s intuition of truth was taken as the criterion for truth. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the first translations of Hindu texts appeared, which were also read by the Transcendentalists, and influenced their thinking. They also endorsed universalist and Unitarianist ideas, leading to Unitarian Universalism, the idea that there must be truth in other religions as well, since a loving God would redeem all living beings, not just Christians.

Neo-Vedanta

An important influence on western spirituality was Neo-Vedanta, also called neo-Hinduism and Hindu Universalism, a modern interpretation of Hinduism which developed in response to western colonialism and orientalism. It aims to present Hinduism as a “homogenized ideal of Hinduism” with Advaita Vedanta as its central doctrine. Due to the colonisation of Asia by the western world, since the 19th century an exchange of ideas has been taking place between the western world and Asia, which also influenced western religiosity. Unitarianism, and the idea of Universalism, was brought to India by missionaries, and had a major influence on neo-Hinduism via Ram Mohan Roy’s Brahmo Samaj and Brahmoism. Roy attempted to modernise and reform Hinduism, from the idea of Universalism. This universalism was further popularised, and brought back to the west as neo-Vedanta, by Swami Vivekananda.

Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and the Perennial Philosophy

Another major influence on modern spirituality was the Theosophical Society, which searched for ‘secret teachings’ in Asian religions. It has been influential on modernist streams in several Asian religions, notably Neo-Vedanta, the revival of Theravada Buddhism, and Buddhist modernism, which have taken over modern western notions of personal experience and universalism and integrated them in their religious concepts. A second, related influence was Anthroposophy, whose founder, Rudolf Steiner, was particularly interested in developing a genuine Western spirituality, and in the ways that such a spirituality could transform practical institutions such as education, agriculture, and medicine.

The influence of Asian traditions on western modern spirituality was also furthered by the Perennial Philosophy, whose main proponent Aldous Huxley was deeply influenced by Vivekanda’s Neo-Vedanta and Universalism, and the spread of social welfare, education and mass travel after World War Two.

Important early 20th century western writers who studied the phenomenon of spirituality, and their works, include William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), and Rudolph Otto, especially The Idea of the Holy (1917). James’ notions of “spiritual experience” had a further influence on the modernist streams in Asian traditions, making them even further recognisable for a western audience.

“Spiritual but not religious”

After the Second World War spirituality and religion became disconnected, and spirituality became more oriented on subjective experience, instead of “attempts to place the self within a broader ontological context.” A new discourse developed, in which (humanistic) psychology, mystical and esoteric traditions and eastern religions are being blended, to reach the true self by self-disclosure, free expression and meditation.

The distinction between the spiritual and the religious became more common in the popular mind during the late 20th century with the rise of secularism and the advent of the New Age movement. Authors such as Chris Griscom and Shirley MacLaine explored it in numerous ways in their books. Paul Heelas noted the development within New Age circles of what he called “seminar spirituality”: structured offerings complementing consumer choice with spiritual options.

Among other factors, declining membership of organized religions and the growth of secularism in the western world have given rise to this broader view of spirituality. The term “spiritual” is now frequently used in contexts in which the term “religious” was formerly employed. Both theists and atheists have criticized this development.

Luc Paquin