Light On Dark Water

On the “spiritual but not religious” trend

Via Image magazine on Facebook, here are two articles by the same person, Lillian Daniels, a liberal Protestant (United Church of Christ) minister: You Can't Make This Up and Spiritual But Not Religious? Stop Boring Me. Surprisingly, the second one is at the Huffington Post. It's just a few paragraphs; the first is more substantial.

She's amusing in places: speaking of the people boast that they see God in nature, not in church, she mentions a man who's very proud of his child for doing so:

The children see God in nature—and because they are children and have bigger eyes and high voices, they do so in much cuter ways. "I think there will be doggies and birdies and grandma's candy bowl in heaven." But let's take that idea a little further. Will there be sharks and snakes in heaven too? How about vampire bats? How do you like that, you little junior theologians?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with seeing God in nature. There is also nothing particularly original or special about it. I think most people who believe in God do so. What's annoying is the presumption that it's evidence of spiritual superiority. One of things that Christianity explicitly and strongly forbids is any such assumption of superiority.

If we made a church for all these spiritual-but-not-religious people, if we got them all together to talk about their beliefs and their incredibly unique personal religions, they might find out that most of America agrees with them. But they'll never find that out, because getting them all together would be way too much like church. And they are far too busy being original to discover that they are not.

In church, we hear scriptures like the one in which Jesus says to ordinary, fallible Peter, "Upon this rock I will build my church." In other words, you people are stuck with each other.

 

Maclin Horton

10 responses to “On the “spiritual but not religious” trend”

  1. godescalc

    Reminds me of the awesome Bad Vicar sketch – “you’ve thought about eternity for twenty-five minutes and you think you’ve come to some interesting conclusions…?”

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  2. Mac

    Awesome indeed. I start laughing as soon as I see the vicar’s face.

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  3. Louise

    one of my favourite sketches ever!

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  4. Mac

    I passed it along to my wife, who didn’t find it funny at all. I said someone had posted it in a comment on my blog and she thought it must have been intended maliciously. I don’t know anything about these guys (Mitchell and Webb) and suppose their general intentions toward Christianity may be negative, but it’s an effective satire of a certain sort of Christian, and at least in my mind at least as effective against the vicar’s shallow victims.
    I just watched it again (which I shouldn’t be doing at the moment) and am laughing out loud. “Spirichul. Are you testing me, Satan?”

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  5. Louise

    Hehehe. Just thinking about it makes me laugh! I even wonder whether the sketch is actually more scathing of the vicar’s victims than the vicar. It’s not like “spirichul” secularism looks attractive here, particularly since the vicar (horrid as he is) makes some very good points.
    And the vicar is David Mitchell of “Dear America” (I couldn’t care less) fame, if you didn’t already know.
    Humour… it’s an interesting thing, isn’t it?

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  6. Louise

    I’m just going to watch it again… hehehe…

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  7. Louise

    “…talking about your views…”
    man, that one line is really scathing if you think about it.
    “… I know where they’re going eventually, but in the meantime, Daventry…”
    “…Satanic Arms House conversion…”
    hehehe

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  8. Mac

    I just watched it again, too, and I still break up at “May I help you?”–it’s all in the face and the tone. I think it probably is intended to be anti-Christian (“2000 years of darkness and bafflement and hunger”). Still funny, though.
    Are there really any CofE vicars like this anymore? One gets the impression that they’re all spiritual but not religious nowadays.

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  9. godescalc

    I don’t think many denominations have vicars like this anymore, even the calvinists. CofE vicars, tho, are a mixed bunch – the ones that attract media attention are the atheist/agnostic ones, and the more liberal ones sometimes draw blogger attention, but there’s a lot of vicars who actually still believe in Christian doctrine. In England, the CofE is simply The Church, and includes more or less the whole spectrum of English Christian types – anglo-catholics, low churchers, evangelicals, charismatics, and now syncretists, atheists and “spiritual but not religious” types. I get the impression it’s a bit less diverse outside of England, tho.
    As to the comedians’ opinions on Christianity, I think they regard it dimly.

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  10. Mac

    My experience of Americans in the Anglican tradition is that the majority are either fairly extreme progressives or evangelicals. It’s hard to imagine an American Anglican of any stripe delivering anything like this, not so much because of the hostility of it as the verbal skill.
    I suspect it’s possible that the comedians are actually 100% on the visitors’ side in this sketch, and might be surprised that we find the attack on their vapid ideas part of the humor.

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