Spiritual But Not Religious....

Like many, for much of my adult life, I considered myself "spiritual but not religious" ... and now I'm not so sure....


As a developing young person, I had what I have come to realize is a uniquely diverse religious upbringing.  I was christened in a Presbyterian church as an infant, attended a Lutheran grade school, attended a Catholic junior high and high school (during which time I considered both converting to Catholicism and becoming a priest), was baptized in the (Southern) Baptist church of my mother and maternal grandparents (in which I became an altar boy), participated in a high school youth group at a Congregational church and went to a WASPy college where many of my friends were Jewish. Oh yeah, and my next door neighbor and close family friend growing up was an elderly Scot who considered himself an atheist.


In my adult life, I was largely "unchurched" for the first half-decade after college until I married for the first time.  Reflecting a desire to share my entire life with my then-intended, I converted to being an Episcopalian.  The religious affiliation has lasted ever since (even though the marriage has not).  During this time, I have become a religious "seeker," exploring not only my own chosen faith but others as well.  So now, if anyone asks, I usually declare myself (proudly) to be an Episcopalian ... but in reality I'm more of an Episcopalian with Buddhist and Taoist leanings.


What led me to consider myself "spiritual but not religious" in my young adult life was that I enjoyed the exploration of my spirituality greatly, but didn't consider myself particularly attracted to the church as a religious institution generally and as a spiritual home/community specifically.  And then I met a charismatic Episcopalian priest who had a way of preaching that really spoke to me for the first time in my life ... so then I began to come to church a fair amount, say, two times per month.  This was a revelation for me - not only to feel welcome but enriched by a church environment - and for the first time in my life I wanted to go to church voluntarily.


By contrast, in my youth, I very much equated church with jail in the sense that I had to serve time there two to three times per month with and at the behest of my beloved mother.  And though it was my choice to be baptized - one that surprised both her and me at the time - generally I abhorred the two-hour-plus service with its roller coaster emotionality and positively stultifying moralizing. Paradoxically, it's why I became an altar boy (and, later, captain of the altar boy team): altar boys got to hang out in the basement of the church for the first hour of the service and didn't have to go into the sanctuary until just before the sermon (after which followed our recitation which was the prelude to the communion rite).  (And, I am sad to report, because we usually sat in the balcony during the service, my fellow teenage altar boys and I could get away with napping through the sermon a good deal of the time and having a little competition to see who could get the biggest piece of the Communion cracker during this solemn rite.  Shameful, I know: I'm so embarrassed that I'm glad that my late mother never fully realized this ... but I also have to admit that I think back to those times occasionally and chuckle reverently when I am receiving Communion now, especially when I involuntarily assess the size of my piece of the Bread of Life....)


What I liked about the high school youth group at the Congregational church was that it was religion-lite: we talked about issues confronting the typical teenagers whom we were and the (adult) leaders of the group 'slid' the religion into the discussion quite deftly.  I was being schooled spiritually it turned out, but so subtly that it didn't trigger my natural teenage tendency toward cynicism and impenetrability.  And the parties that we threw to raise money for our college tours were great: it's where I deepened my interest in music and discovered my skills as a DJ.  (What's funny to me now is that I don't remember ever going on one of those college tours!)


In college, though I had access to a liberal, inclusive spiritual home in the chapel of my university, I think that I only went there one time.  In fact, the preacher was a renowned, urbane, witty and wise biblical scholar whose ability to relate ancient scripture to modern life meaningfully was legendary.  Yet I was too immature - both in life and spiritually - to appreciate this at the time, so I saw him outside of the sanctuary more than in it.  You would think that my enjoyment of the several salon-like dinners that I attended at which he was a featured speaker would have drawn me into the church more but I remember myself at the time as too burned out from my Baptist phase to be open to more worship, even if I knew that worship to be materially different and better relative to my spiritual interests and tastes.  (In fact, this is one of the top five regrets that I have from my collegiate career.)


After college, as a young professional in New York City, I had no spiritual home and in conversations with friends and acquaintances didn't even hear of one that seemed worth investigating.  Given the plethora of outstanding spiritual centers in the City then (and now), it boggles my mind that I didn't check any of them out.  I suspect that this is a reflection of two realities: the aforementioned "Baptist burnout" and the reality of how secular my world had become.  What I remember of that period is that not only didn't I have a spiritual home but I wasn't concerned about this, either.  Until I decided to marry for the first time, that is....


So I converted to Episcopalianism.  I remember my confirmation class fondly: so many of us seemed to be becoming 'Episcopalians by default' as I saw it at the time: we weren't so much coming to the faith because of what it offered as we were running from other versions that we knew didn't work for us.  The joke in the class, first shared by a former Coptic Christian and then repeated most often by the several lapsed Catholic members, was "Episcopalianism: less guilt, more fulfilling!"  (Yes, we borrowed the formulation from a popular beer commercial of the period - how original, eh?)  For me, I liked that the faith seemed pretty loose (as in not particularly dogmatic) and diverse (as apparently a range of beliefs were not only tolerated but encouraged).  For the first time in my life, really, I felt like I may have discovered a way of being spiritual and of exploring/approaching God that worked for me.  It was a big tent, one in which I could roam around, be the natural skeptic and occasional heretic that I am and be welcomed nonetheless.  Cool.  So, at the age of 26, confirmed I was (by a crotchety old bishop who seemed far less progressive than the faith to which I was being introduced, but that's another story...).


And then, in a wonderfully coincidental way, I found that church home in the suburbs led by the charismatic and insightful priest.  It's a great story: having read the local paper incorrectly, we - my new then-wife and I - showed up late for the Sunday morning service - actually, after it - and were literally wandering on the lawn of the church trying to find an open door when the pastor found us like a shepherd reclaiming lost sheep.  I've been 'found' there ever since....


Sadly, as with so much of life, there was an unfortunate twist: a few years later that priest became embroiled in a larger scandal of which he was indeed a part and was forced to resign (both from our parish and from the priesthood, I believe).  Then our church entered what I half-cynically, half-kindly refer to as "the dark period" ... because after an interim rector/priest who was wonderful but chose to depart (too) quickly, there was a long-serving priest of uninspiring bent and then a succession of other temporary successors, a process that encompassed almost a dozen years.  During this time, though I became an usher, I went to church as little as I could, which meant only when the usher team of which I was appointed captain was obligated to serve (which was typically once a month).  The several priests who lead the church during this time of turmoil and recovery from scandal were not the most gifted preachers (with one or perhaps two exceptions), so I returned to a familiar mode in my churchgoing: serving time on Sundays - this time supposedly of my own volition - and, thankfully, at the far shorter Episcopal services in which the sermons disappointed and typically failed to inspire but did not offend me as much as the Baptist moralizing had a generation before.


So I went to church because I had to (because of my being somewhat involuntarily recruited to be an usher and then usher captain) and knew that I was supposed to: again I was "spiritual but not religious."


And then two wonderful things happened:  First, in contrast to the lack of fulfillment that I experienced in church during this period, I began to explore spirituality generally and in particular my own spirituality in earnest.  And second, our church called a new rector, a relatively young (mid-30s-ish) priest with great enthusiasm.  The former has been a continually enriching journey ever since and the latter has been a great blessing, too.


My 'new' rector, the Rev. John A. Mennell, turned out to be a 'rookie': our church, St. Luke's Episcopal, was his first assignment as the Rector/senior priest/spiritual leader and, effectively, CEO of the parish.  And it was immediately clear that he was well-suited to his calling: affable and engaging, his can-do attitude and sense of the Spirit were infectious ... and his ability to remember everyone's name and call them by it was, well, the clincher.  I became a huge fan and supporter and we have collaborated effectively and in a mutually beneficial way ever since.  And John's preaching was a great help to me on my spiritual journey as well.  He grounds his guidance in the real world application of spiritual/theological principles, so with his engaging delivery the experience is both enjoyable and enlightening.


Of particular impact was a sermon some years ago about the importance of community.  I had evolved in my churchgoing: now instead of serving as an usher at the 10:00am service - a time when my children would awake and we would celebrate a family breakfast on both days of the weekend - I became an "8 O'Clocker," a member of that small (but growing) and intrepid band of regulars at the earlier, spoken-word service.  At mid-life I had lost the ability to sleep late and found the gift of early, quiet and contemplative mornings, so the timing was right.  And the reality that I didn't have to sing - an off-key, painful experience since my vocal chords rebelled during puberty - and could be more quietly reflective during the service fit, too.  So I became a regular reader (of the non-gospel scriptural passages) at the service and eventually a Eucharistic Minister authorized to participate in the administration of the sacrament of Communion.  Finally, the environment of the service - serious and yet exploratively spiritual - and the people who were also regulars - genuinely nice, spirit-filled folks who were also friendly and contributory early risers - was right for me.  In sum, for the first time in my life I had found a true spiritual and religious home.


And yet I still thought of my spirituality as a singular pursuit, as something that I did in part in the presence of others, sort of like an adult spiritual version of a child engaged in parallel play.  Until John's* sermon, that is.  When he noted that an important aspect of our faith is that it is meant to be experienced in community and then related this to the importance of community in Jesus' work, something clicked for me for the first time: not only was it important to me that I be a person committed to reflecting the example of my Patron in my own life, but I must do it with and in the context of others/a collective, as well.  This a-ha moment is what led me to value the opportunity to develop relationships with my fellow 8 O'Clockers and to consider how to serve the church and contribute to it with my time and talents as well as financially, which  in turn has led to my service on the Vestry (i.e., in effect, the church's Board of Trustees) and to my taking a leading role in helping to evolve the Spiritual Enrichment (i.e., adult spiritual education/formation) effort for the benefit of our parish and community.  In sum, John's exhortation to value the communal aspect of my faith fully has led to a whole new dimension of the experience of it, an enriching addition that has in turn deepened my faith and strengthened my commitment to its practice in my daily life.  The relationships that I have developed in this nurturing community are truly gifts and remind me every day of His Grace....


So, now, voluntarily, I attend church three out of four weeks in a month, on average, more even than my devout Baptist mother did and more than I would ever have predicted for myself.  At (what I hope turns out to be) mid-life, I am clearly religious, in the sense that I value, support, contribute to and benefit from my participation in a church community.


And I am ever more deeply spiritual, too.  In fact, I happily consider myself to be a "Christian heretic," struggling as I do with some of the orthodoxy of the corporate church (of which, thankfully, there is far less but still some in the Episcopal subsidiary thereof) and continually re-fashioning an eclectic sense of spirituality influenced by other faiths and belief systems.  For example, as I mentioned before, I'm very attracted to the wisdom of both Buddhism and Taoism, which I see an informative of and complementary to my practice of Christianity.


And my sense and experience of the latter has evolved, too: in a way, I'm getting more historical or at least more "seriously 'old school'" in my theology and praxis.  I am less enamored with the practice of my faith as the institutional church has created it than I am with the opportunity to get back to and emulate the example of Jesus Himself.  I am intrigued by the early century "Followers of the Way," as members of the Jesus movement were known in that early period of the faith before an institutional church was formed and His wisdom and principles were converted (or, as some would say, perverted) into an orthodoxy in His name.  In sum, it seems to me that the best way for me to express my faith is to be more a Follower of Jesus (to borrow Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks' term) than a Christian (especially given what so many of our ostensible fellows of a more fundamentalist bent have done to defame this label).


Along the way, I have discovered the work of numerous theologians whose insights have both broadened and deepened my spirituality.  In a Christian context, Bishop John A.T. Robinson's revelatory tome Honest to God comes to mind immediately, as does the challenging yet enlightening work of 20th century theological titans like Reinhold Niebuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich.  More recent work by the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks has also been enlightening.  His gift for relating timeless spiritual principles to complex modern life is as reassuring and inspiring as it is insightful.  And the person who has had the greatest impact on my spiritual development is, it turns out, my former/now retired (Episcopal) Bishop, the Rev. John Shelby Spong.  His body of work is as voluminous as it is impressive and I have been greatly informed, challenged and elevated by his theology, which I consider to be the most reasonable and therefore believable interpretation of the life, work and message of Jesus that I have yet encountered.


I have always struggled with the aspects of Christianity that I was taught in my youth and that I had a hard time believing then (and have since) like the concepts of Original Sin, the Virgin Birth, the (physical) Resurrection, the Atonement, the inerrancy of the Bible (or the infallibility of the Pope), etc., or anything smacking of Christian literalism/fundamentalism.  So following Bishop Spong as he reassesses the tenets of Christianity and suggests an evolved construct for it has been thrilling ... and a little scary.  I admit to being unnerved that I no longer believe in concept of eternal life and Heaven that I was taught as a child, as I now understand Jesus' concept of the Kingdom of God to apply to our life on earth rather than solely after it as I was taught (or, to borrow Tolstoy's famous phrase, I believe that the Kingdom of God is indeed within us and can and should be experienced in this life/in our time on earth).  And yet there is an aspect of how we live this life that resonates eternally, which is supremely challenging and a daily struggle for me ... but this, of course, is less reassuring than that billowing-cloud-filled nirvana of a perfect Heaven where "everything is beautiful and nothing hurts" (to borrow Vonnegut's phrase) that I was taught so long ago....


And, as the Bishop suggests, I have come to agree that no religion can offer certainty in an uncertain world.  Yes, God may be absolute and supreme, but He/She/It allows us a freedom of choice that we humans have used for both good and ill - in the latter case, demonstrating shocking inhumanity throughout history made all the worse by the reality that so much of it is falsely cloaked in religious piety and attributed to being God's will - and thus the world will ever be characterized by some ugliness as well as by beauty and grace.  Bishop Spong's theology has helped me to reconcile this great paradox of humanity while deepening my faith.


And his suggestion that the proper aim of Christian life should be to live fully, love wastefully (in the sense of giving ourselves away fully in a loving way as Christ did) and being all that we can be - in other words, that being fully human is also the way to experience the Divine fully - has been a true revelation for me.  It's a high bar, to be sure, but I really can't think of a better way to 'practice what I preach' in daily life.  Emulating Jesus - being as fully human and humane, as loving and selfless, as inspirational and compassionate, etc. - is so very hard but it is also such a humbling and inspiring way to live that I continue to pursue it, failing at it every day as I do but hoping that I make progress at it over time.


All of which brings me back to where I started: as I think about it at mid-life, I no longer consider myself to be "spiritual but not religious."  I remain skeptical of the institutional church given that it is (and has proved itself to be) as flawed (and alternately wonderful) as the human beings who comprise it (myself included).  But, on a more personal level, having found a church community within which I feel valued and nurtured and to which I can contribute meaningfully, and having been so inspired by my learnings along my spiritual path, I realize that I have evolved to be both spiritual and religious and that this is a very good thing indeed for me.


In this spirit, then, I encourage those of you who may consider yourselves to be "spiritual but not religious" to reflect on my experience and see if it offers any suggestions for your own.  While I know that your journeys are and will be different, I hope that you will find that you, too, can be informed and inspired along your path by the gift of meaningful spiritual and religious experiences as I have been.  And in this vein, I encourage you to keep exploring until you find what you seek.  It may turn out to be a surprise (which simply means that you will learn meaningful things about yourself along the way).  Whatever happens, there is great value in the journey, as the effort to evolve yourself spiritually and religiously will likely pay great dividends in the long run (and provide numerous experiences to laugh about and/or to be amazed by).  Of course, it's always possible that after extended (or, preferably, continuous) exploration that you will conclude that you are indeed spiritual but not religious, but I can assure you that even if this proves to be the case, you will be greatly enriched by the journey.  Enjoy....


*  And that was another unique thing about my friend and informal spiritual director Rev. John Mennell: he asked that you call him by his given name and not an honorific, which was a first for me.  Rather than being informal, it struck me then and strikes me now as being a more symbolic invitation, to engage at a personal rather than official level, as a statement of his sense of welcoming and openness/accessibility.  I could wander off into an analogy to Buber's I-Thou construct, but to keep it real and simple, I'll just say that it has been great to be on a first-name basis with someone whom I respected, admired and followed spiritually.  And we have enjoyed what I would like to think has been a mutually beneficial and multi-faceted relationship ever since: he has been my spiritual advisor and guide, a partner now that I've joined the Vestry of the church (largely to support his efforts, as I had eschewed serving in such a capacity on numerous occasions in the past) and a friend whose perspective has been quite comforting as well as illuminating during crucial moments of my life.  In turn, I would like to think that my voracious interest in spirituality, capable leadership in my formal role as Clerk of the Vestry and my being a "good guy to grab a beer with on occasion" has benefited him, too.  He's my first and best priest-friend, a relationship with which I had no experience previously - priests and pastors were always august (spiritual) authority figures whom I knew superficially - and thus had not envisioned.  I recommend such a meaningfully personal relationship with a trusted spiritual advisor highly to all....