Is "Spiritual But Not Religious" Real?

By Monte Sahlin

Nancy Ammerman's new book, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes is excellent. I recommend that you read it! One interesting question she raises is about the category that is currently getting a lot of attention, the people who say, "I am interested in spiritual things, but I am not interested in religion." So much study is currently focused on this category that it now has a label among scholars and professional research writers: SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious)

Dr. Ammerman calls SBNR a "unicorn," a species that does not exist in real life. Closer examination, she reports, finds that the people in her surveys who were "most active in organized religion, were also most committed to spiritual practices and a spiritual view of the world." She suggests that the SBNR thing is simply a device for people to tell their zealous friends to back off and leave them alone on topics related to values, spirituality and religion.

A reviewer in the Feb. 4 issue of Christian Century makes the observation that SBNR may be a media invention. "Dominant U.S. media don't seem to know how to talk about religious congregations" or spiritual life in general, so "lacking such capacity" they pretend that places exist that are not there in reality, observes Anthony Robinson, a UCC pastor.

Unlike Ammerman and Robinson, it seems, I have met a lot of people who are SBNR. Once they trust you as a friend, they are more than happy to talk about both religion and spiritual life. They express concerns, beliefs, emotional connections with the Divine; they pray, express spiritual sentiments and ask religious questions. They are turned off or simply unimpressed by the usual round of things we religious people do to express our faith both in the context of congregations and in our private lives.

Let's be honest, a lot of what we do is tradition and ritual, and not all that vital or vibrant even to those of us who enjoy it. To make faith real requires a level of creativity and authenticity that we are usually not willing to invest in. It breaks through at funerals, weddings and similar very important occasions, and sometimes even unexpectedly, but it is almost impossible to sustain daily or weekly or even once a month. That is why many religions invest so much value in "revival" or "renewal" or "reformation."

The incongruous thing about the emphasis on "revival" is that often the people who talk the most about it are the largest opponents to real change. We want the benefits of an edgy, powerful relationship with God while keeping it safely under control and limits. That is the real unicorn! I got news for you; there is no such animal. Either your experience with God is risky and upsetting, turning over things you would like to cling to, or it is boring and meaningless ritual that most of the people around you will not see a reason to give particular respect, time or energy.

SBNR is simply one aspect of being people real about organized religion. We want the riches without paying the price. We are just a little bit cheap and fraudulent, but we want people to treat it as if it were the wonder of the universe. Get real .... one way or another.

Comments

[Eileen]

I appreciated this review right up until the last paragraph. Then Monte negated the premise of "spiritual but not religious" by defining it as one aspect of an obligatory organized religion. I think the primary issue for SBNRs is precisely the way in which organized religion tends to stamp out spirituality! For many people the organized religion is so toxic, the only way to maintain a spiritual life is to stay away from religion and religious people! And suggesting their spirituality is a fiction unless they function within the organized church only flogs them one more time across their departing backs!