{"id":797,"date":"2014-04-01T09:11:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T09:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/spiritual-but-not-religious-an-oxymoron.html"},"modified":"2014-04-01T09:11:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T09:11:00","slug":"spiritual-but-not-religious-an-oxymoron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/spiritual-but-not-religious-an-oxymoron.html","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual but Not Religious an Oxymoron?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\u201cReligion\u201d has become a bad word for many Americans. This does not necessarily mean that Americans have become any less religious. Instead, many people have come to prefer different language to describe their religious beliefs and practices. This is because the word \u201creligion\u201d has accumulated negative connotations. Americans tend to equate religion with Christianity. And especially, people think of guilt-inducing proscriptions on behavior, seemingly arbitrary rules, hell-fire preaching on sin and judgment, unreasoning insistence on dogma and doctrinal orthodoxy, divisive sectarianism, and aggressive proselytizing. Relatively few people want to be religious if that is all it means. Many people may prefer to describe themselves as interested in \u201cspirituality\u201d or the \u201csacred.\u201d Even many Christians dislike the word religion, and insist that Christianity is not about religion, but \u201crelationship\u201d with God.<\/span><\/div>\n
Even so, public-opinion polls show that a majority of Americans self-identify as both spiritual and religious. According to one large-scale\u00a0survey\u00a0<\/a>reported in 2008, three-fourths (74 percent) of Americans describe themselves as very or somewhat \u201creligious.\u201d Two-thirds (66 percent) identify as \u201cspiritual.\u201d And more than half (57 percent) accept both labels. Although 20 percent of Americans responded to a 2012poll\u00a0<\/a>by declining to identify with a specific religious institution, 68 percent of the religiously unaffiliated believe in God, and 37 percent describe themselves as \u201cspiritual, but not religious.\u201d Two-thirds of religious \u201cNones\u201d affirm metaphysical or paranormal beliefs, such as the existence of nonmaterial energies, angels and demons, or the possibility of psychic communication.<\/span><\/div>\n
Just how different are religion and spirituality? Some people use the term spirituality to denote an individual\u2019s private seeking after sacred meaning untethered to public adherence to traditional religious institutions, doctrines, creeds or rituals. Yet, religion and spirituality fulfill many of the same functions, for instance, affirming a person\u2019s place in the cosmos and offering a sense of purpose, meaning, and hope. It may be more useful, for analytic purposes, to think of spirituality as one way of being and talking about being religious, rather than as something distinct from religion.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cReligion\u201d has become a bad word for many Americans. This does not necessarily mean that Americans have become any less religious. Instead, many people have come to prefer different language to describe their religious beliefs and practices. This is because the word \u201creligion\u201d has accumulated negative connotations. Americans tend to equate religion with Christianity. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSpiritual but Not Religious an Oxymoron?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""Religion" has become a bad word for many Americans. This does not necessarily mean that Americans have become any less religious. 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