Understanding Religion and Spirituality Bruce McNab [Revised from Chapter 1 of his booklet, Discover the Episcopal Church, 2009] AS ONE LEARNS ABOUT THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH (or any other church), it may be helpful to consider the relationship between spirituality and religion. For Episcopalians, the two are closely connected. I d like to begin by offering my own definitions of these words. I understand spirituality as dealing with our relationship with God (or the Divine, the Sacred, the Beyond). This is the realm of the spirit more than mind or heart, yet woven together with the intellect and the emotions and with the physical reality of the human body itself. To speak of spirituality is to speak of the soul, the locus within the Self where communion with God occurs. For Christians, spirituality is usually about prayer in its many different forms, and I regard prayer as any deliberate activity meant to turn us toward God. I use the word religion to refer to the systems of communal human response to the Divine, involving established patterns of worship which have evolved over a long period of time, sacred texts, models of ethical behavior, doctrines, traditions, customs and disciplines. Spirituality is highly esteemed in American and European culture today, while traditional religion, particularly Christianity, is in decline. At least on the surface, Americans and Europeans at the beginning of the third Christian millennium see spirituality as a good thing, but regard religion with suspicion. If they don t treat religion as an overtly bad thing, at least they think of it as old-fashioned, restrictive and narrow-minded. The apparent ideal in western culture these days is some form of religionless spirituality, and many people are actively shopping for a bespoke spirituality, custom-tailored to their private needs. Giles Fraser, lecturer in Philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford, wrote these very interesting observations as he reviewed a British television series, Spirituality Shopper, for The Guardian newspaper a few years ago, Spirituality has become the acceptable face of religion. It offers a language for the divine that dispenses with all the off-putting paraphernalia of priests and church. And it s not about believing in anything too specific, other than in some nebulous sense of otherness or presence. It offers God without dogma.... It takes the exotic and esoteric aspects of religion and subtracts having to believe the impossible, having to sit next to difficult people on a Sunday morning, and having to make any sort of commitment that might have long-term implications for her wallet or lifestyle... 1
Around the end of the 19th century the idea began to gain in popularity that there was a central core to all religious belief that, while overlaid by culturally specific ideas and practices, could be accessed directly by personal experience.... So strong is the association between spirituality and religious experience that it has become common for some of the great spiritual writers of the Christian past to be read as describing esoteric experiences when, in fact, they are virulently anti-experientialist. For popular writers such as Meister Eckhart or the author of The Cloud of Unknowing the significance of the mystical dimension in theology lies precisely in its rejection of the idea that God can be the subject of direct experience. The idea that spirituality represents some innate human aspiration to the ultimate is a piece of modern candy floss that neatly accords with the desire to participate in religion without any of the demands it makes upon you. It is religion transformed into esoteric self-help for those with something missing could it be a Porsche, could it be a new man, could it be God? For the Christians of the early church, spirituality not that they would have called it that was about the death of the old person and the emergence of a new identity modeled on that of Christ. It s not something that one can dip into or an intriguing and unusual fashion accessory for the person who has nearly everything. [The Guardian (6/6/05)] Often the claim to be a religionless spiritual person simply means that one has an appreciation of non-material human values, like truth, beauty, goodness, and compassion, and is in touch with the part of the psyche that prizes such non-material qualities. Prayer plays no part in this kind of so-called spirituality. With other people, the claim to be spiritual means that they have created or evolved a uniquely personal, self-directed, autonomous, private spirituality one that is life-affirming and personally meaningful to them. A private spirituality, however, being totally self-created and personal, cannot truly be shared with other people. If it includes a belief in a deity, the deity is defined by the subjective judgment of the spiritual person, operating on the premise that one should be allowed to have whatever sort of god one wishes. Being unique and intensely personal, private spirituality does not entail spiritual community of the sort provided by a religion. As a person ages and passes through life changes especially crises involving, hurt, loss, and grief the religionless, private spirituality morphs from one shape to another, as the individual tries to adapt an autonomous spirituality to the changing and sometimes unexpected events of life. Usually detached completely from relationship to a sovereign God and lacking any concept of a Savior external to the self, a self-created, 2
religionless spirituality can leave the hurting person utterly alone and forced to seek strength, wisdom, and peace in times of need purely from the limited inner resources of the ego. There is no expectation that God might speak. There are no companions on the spiritual journey with whom to pray and share a common commitment to God and one another. Without roots in a spiritual tradition (read: religion ) with its sacred scriptures and disciplines, and lacking the support of a spiritual community that shares a common path, the religionless spiritual person can become a tragic figure narcissistic, self-absorbed, self-directed, self-contained and rootless. People like this are all around us, drifting sometimes from the fringes of one cult to another or one teacher to another, unwilling or unable to accept any spiritual authority or to make any lasting commitment. Religion provides the structures without which spirituality is formless, vague, and dependent upon purely private judgments and feelings. The Christian religion (that is, the Church with its Bible and its doctrines, ethics, traditions, and forms of prayer) provides spiritual formation for all those who respond in faith to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Church provides a context in which to live out our faith and learn how to be disciples of Jesus Christ. It teaches disciples how to pray, how to listen to God. In this age when many people, particularly younger people, seem reflexively suspicious of institutions, spiritual seekers sometimes shy away from organized, institutional Christianity. But it is important to understand that acting as a part of an institution is to act non-self-referentially. It makes our decisions and our behavior not just about me. The Church invites us into a community of faith grounded in the Biblical understanding that we need one another and that we re God s gifts to one another. The Episcopal Church offers its members a spiritual way of life formed by Anglican tradition, the Book of Common Prayer, and a sacramental understanding of how God works in history. Religion and spirituality have a necessary relationship for Christians. We might call religion the vessel or the package and spirituality the contents. One of the problems facing the Church in America and Europe today is that many people regard the Church as offering them a religious package with no evident spiritual contents. Or else the package is too hard to open, and thus the contents are unreachable. Therefore, they turn to Eastern religions or self-generated, private spirituality. Many people in our culture have been given the religious forms of Christianity without being taught how to make best use of them to develop a spiritual, interior life that would allow them to hear the Voice that always speaks, feel the nearness of the ever-present Presence, and speak to the One who continually hears. [Corinne Ware, Connecting to God (Alban Institute, 1997), 3.] In the Episcopal Church as in other churches we celebrate the birth of Jesus, which we understand as the Incarnation of God the moment when God entered our human history in the flesh. Lutherans are said to emphasize the doctrine of Justification 3
by Faith and Presbyterians, the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God. In a similar way, we Episcopalians emphasize the doctrine of the Incarnation. The Trinity is at the heart of the Incarnation, because Jesus Christ the second person of the Trinity is the Incarnation. The gospels show us that Jesus grew and worshiped and taught within the context of the religion of Israel, with all of its formal observances. He was faithful to the Law, even when he questioned how some people were abusing it. He attended services in village synagogues and in the Temple, he recited the ancient psalms and prayers his people had used for centuries, and he observed the sacred seasons and sacraments of his religion (to borrow a Christian word that Jews do not use). We find the practice of animal sacrifice hard to understand, yet there s no evidence that Jesus shunned it. Animal sacrifice was part of the tradition of Israel, ordained by Moses, decreed in the Torah, and Jesus accepted it. It was a prefigurement of the perfect sacrifice which was to come: his death on the cross. We might say that just as God affirmed his love for the physical world by the Incarnation, so the Incarnation shows God affirming our religion the physical forms, structures, sacraments, and liturgies through which we pass on our faith. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, and he made a connection for them between the externals of their religion and the new law that God had written upon the heart. He physically breathed his Spirit upon them (John 20:22-23), and he sent them into the world to baptize and to teach others what they had learned from him (Matthew 28:19-20). He taught them to break the Bread and share the Cup in the Eucharist as a sign of the new covenant relationship he was establishing. His body was raised from the dead and in his resurrection flesh Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father (Acts 1:9; 2:22-23). Therefore, we can say that, first, the Incarnation, then the Resurrection, and finally the Ascension and outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost (each of which depends upon the foregoing) all show that God planned to have ongoing communion with us in the spirit, and that we discern the presence of the Spirit and receive the gift of God s Spirit from Jesus. This is central to Christian spirituality. One who comes into the Episcopal Church learns about its external structures, forms, sacred texts, liturgies and traditions. One learns how these external forms can help a person develop a loving, life-giving, personal relationship with God, expressed in a regular life of study, devotion, prayer, and service. Learning about spirituality in the Episcopal Church begins with discovering how to use the Book of Common Prayer. Using the Prayer Book presupposes reading the Bible, since reading Scripture is central to Prayer Book worship. The texts of the services of the Prayer Book have shaped our spirituality, especially the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer and the Liturgy of the Holy Eucharist, with their mandatory multiple daily and Sunday readings from Old Testament, Psalms, Gospels, and Epistles, together 4
with the Collects for Sundays and special occasions. By giving Episcopalians prayers that we say together (which is what common prayer means) and passages of Scripture upon which we reflect together, the Prayer Book has also given us an interior vocabulary of prayer as well as a way of understanding the love of God revealed in the Incarnation of his Son, Jesus Christ. 5