NEW YORK TIMES: “Spiritual but not religious.” So many Americans describe their belief system this way that pollsters now give the phrase its own category on questionnaires. In the 2012 survey by the Pew Religion and Public Life Project, nearly a fifth of those polled said that they were not religiously affiliated — and nearly 37 percent of that group said they were “spiritual” but not “religious.” It was 7 percent of all Americans, a bigger group than atheists, and way bigger than Jews, Muslims or Episcopalians…
An ordained Presbyterian minister whose father was Catholic and whose mother was Jewish, Dr. Mercadante went through a spiritual but not religious period of her own — although she now attends a Mennonite church. For her project, she interviewed 85 S.B.N.R.s, then used computer programs to help analyze transcripts of those interviews. She found that these spiritual people also thought about death, the afterlife and other profound subjects…
For example, “they reject heaven and hell, but they do believe in an afterlife,” Dr. Mercadante said recently. “In some ways, they would fit O.K. in a progressive Christian context.” Because they dislike institutions, the spiritual but not religious also recoil from the deities such institutions are built around. “They may like Jesus, he might be their guru, he might be one of their many bodhisattvas, but Jesus as God is not on their radar screen,” Dr. Mercadante said… (more)
EDITOR: A big topic but, for the Times, a relatively superficial treatment.
What does “Spiritual but not religious” mean? One could apply it to liberal factions of virtually every religion who perceive accounts of the supernatural as useful mythology to teach life lessons.
What is usually missing in discussion of religion is the definition of terms, mostly what is meant by God. If discussions started with this definition, we suspect much of the population would divide between fundamentalist who believe in sacred texts and agnostics, who do not take them literally but see their value as metaphors.
