At the risk of annoying readers who are not religous (I think I have a few), I must express my irritation at this popular phrase. It’s both self-congratulatory and far less coherent than those who use it generally seem to realize.
The self-congratulation is in the clear implication that the “spiritual” speaker is superior to those who are merely “religious”—religion is something that defective people get stuck in because they’re incapable of progressing to spirituality.
The incoherence is in the odd usage of the word “spiritual,” which logically refers to something generally denied by the “spiritual but not religious” person: a real non-material world with its own order and inhabitants, in which we participate simultaneously with our participation in the physical world. Instead, it generally refers only to human psychology, and usually to a vague combination of emotion and ethics which can be summed up as a commitment to being nice, in the terms approved by contemporary secular liberalism.
I bring this up not because it’s either appropriate or welcome a few days before Christmas, but because David Mills at Touchstone has just written an excellent short analysis of the problems with it, saying more or less what I just said but more precisely and extensively.
I’m sometimes tempted to say, when I hear this phrase, that I’m religious but not spiritual. But the word “spiritual” is too important to be surrendered so flippantly.
UPDATE: no sooner had I posted this than I thought it required some acknowledgement of those who are genuinely seeking spiritual truth but have not found it, and so might use this phrase to describe themselves. I assure any such person that I intend no disparagement of you or your quest. I do ask you to consider one question: are you really open to the possibility of an answer?
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