Faith Works 8-7-21

Faith Works 8-7-21

Jeff Gill

In defense of religion

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SBNR is a thing, and churches along with religious leaders need to acknowledge it. It's short for "spiritual but not religious" and church leaders have been hearing about that as a status people claim, or a position they have adopted, or an attitude folks take, for some time now. It's a stance churchly people like to dismiss, but I think we do so at risk of not understanding the era into which we're called to preach the good news.

I can defend, in a way, this viewpoint. Religious organizations in general have not had a good . . . twenty-first century, let's say. Structural church bodies, call them denominations if you want, institutions if you're being grimly technical, are not in great shape, and don't seem to offer much to a spiritual seeker.

This doesn't mean being spiritual only is necessarily a good thing. I'd like to say a word in defense of religion.

My timing is, as always, terrible. Religious bodies and church structures on a sectional and national level are delaminating at a shocking clip. Denominational numbers and budgets are cratering; even independent and non-denominational institutions are struggling and collapsing, the closure of Cincinnati Christian University being one recent example. The preference today when it comes to faith and life is for autonomy and personal choice; most imposed rules or limits or forced decisions are seen as bad if not outright wrong. Consumer choice extends to where we go to church, where we get married, how we bury our dead.

This column's roots go back to an editor who asked me "can you speak, at least regularly, to people who are interested in faith but don't want to hear about church stuff?" I said yes, and here we are fifteen years later. And the number of people who would call themselves SBNR has only grown.

But I would and do still call myself "religious." Religion is word that evokes doctrine and dogma and confessions of faith in Gothic print with red-letter capitals outlined in gold, aka "old stuff." Spiritual implies a connectedness to one's own spirit and to how the divine spirit is at work in the world which I wouldn't want to deny, but I hear people say they're "spiritual" and I catch an undertone of "but without all that old stuff."

Okay, doctrine and dogma aside: are you certain you and your experience are really that far in advance of three thousand or more years of accumulated, sifted, spiritually validated religion? Because that's what's underneath the calligraphy and canon law and catechisms: the work of the Holy Spirit to form the canon of scripture, to move believers in community to set up guidelines and reinforcements and patterns of holy and whole living, to bring about a structure that is sustainable for not only centuries, but millennia.

The dismissal of "the old" is most often strongest when it comes to moral guidelines, older ways of being in relationship that today look dated to particular assumptions about people and gender and lifestyles. And yes, there's work of interpretation to do when the Bible takes concubines and multiple wives and slavery in stride. 

Yet the very idea of covenantal bonds, the having of moral limits: I affirm that these not only can be positive things, but that we need them. Can these categories be abused? Can bonds become handcuffs; can limits become unfair & even unjust limitations? Sure, but neither is an argument to do away with them entirely. If a property survey shows that a fence is in the wrong place, you take it down, but in most cases you set up a new one in the right place.

Religion is a word derived from older usage to talk about the ties that bind us together, like "ligaments." The roots are even in the term "college" where "bound together" are scholars and different viewpoints, coming together in a college of learning and study. To re-bind, or re-legio, is the work of religion: to weave and connect and tie us together in our spiritual seeking.

The fluid nature of spirituality, I believe, needs a container. Religion is what we call where we pour our spiritual experience, to carry it forward and to pass it along.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been religious for most of his life, spiritually speaking. Tell him where you pour your thoughts out at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.