Spiritual Not Religious

Looking at the Newsweek spirituality article The Revealer dissects the phrase “spiritual but not religious” and what meaning it really has in such a broad and overarching survey.

“But the numbers are misleading, not least because the survey, as published, never bothers to define ‘spiritual’ as opposed to ‘religious’. Even by the surveys results, the majority of folks choose ‘religious’ as their first identifier. But the 24% who openly say ‘spiritual but not religious’ may not all be as touchy-feely as one might suspect. That’s a phrase we’ve heard from the mouths of a great many fundamentalists — secular and sectarian. ‘Religious,’ as a word, is most definitely in the decline; but rigorous, sharply defined beliefs are not. We’ve prayed with self-described fundamentalist Baptists who called themselves ‘spiritual but not religious,” and debated with ardent secularists who called themselves “spiritual but not religious,’ and danced around bonfires with witches — dogmatic to the extreme — who called themselves ‘spiritual but not religious.’”

A fair critique, but I do have to point out that I have read Sharlet’s (and Manseau’s) excellent book “Killing The Buddha” where he tells the tale(s) of his interactions with Witches at a Pagan festival and I hope he isn’t basing the “dogmatic to the extreme” tag on just that one trip into the Pagan territories. I mean he should at least visit Starwood like Paul Krassner did.