S.B.N.R. - Outside Reading

December 9 2017
A large portion of the United States today identify as “spiritual but not religious”. They describe themselves as wanting a connection to their idea of the divine without associating with traditional religious institutions and their beliefs.
Some preachers and other greatly religious people believe that the label SBRN is an excuse for people to be lazy. They see it as a way to be unique for going against the status quo. A community, they argue, such as churches bring people together for a good cause. Religious institutions see SBRN as selfish. Instead of challenging themselves with community service and other activities that prove their faith, they only worry about self-improvement and understanding their own version of God or whatever they choose believe in.
Others, such as Dr. Bender, see SBRN as their own community. The stereotype of SBRN is people who enjoy solitary walks in nature and hold themselves higher than religious people and institutions. In reality, SBRN’s participate in discussion groups on their spirituality, participate in yoga classes, and try to better themselves and support others attempting to find their own understanding. When Dr. Bender interviewed SBRN’s, she found the most common belief was SBRN’s thought religion focused on the past while spirituality was more about the present.
Based on the definitions of religion and spirituality that Oppenheimer applies to these two viewpoints, religion is based around institutions such as churches. Spirituality is described as focusing more on the self than a community; however, both have their own form of communitas.
According to Lane in Landscapes of the Sacred, religion is defined as a and sense of a constant presence and wholeness while spirituality is concerned with addressing this presence and giving it a personal understanding.
Through Lane’s definition, people who are SBRN could be considered religious and vice versa. I believe it is almost impossible to address a presence if one does not sense it. It seems that spiritual cannot exist without religion; however, religion may be independent. One may sense a presence, but not attempt to understand it.

Examining the Growth of the ‘Spiritual but Not Religious’ - Mark Oppenheimer 7/18/14

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Outside Reading #3

Themes of wilderness and the presence of God are especially evident throughout the psalms. Some examples include: Ps. 63:1-2 "You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and glory." Ps. 78:14-16 "He guided them with the cloud by day and with light from the fire all night. He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them water as abundant as the seas; He brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers. Ps. 136:16 "to Him who led his people through the wilderness; His love endures forever." Ps. 107:4-6 "some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle. They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress." Woven into these examples, is the idea that wilderness puts us ...
Read more

Landscapes of the Sacred #2

In Landscapes of the Sacred, Ch. 10 discusses the tension between place and placelessness is Christian Spirituality. It discusses the two approaches to sacred place: kataphatic and apophatic.  Kataphatic rejoices in discerning the presence of God in the “thisness” of various places [place] while a pophatic: skeptical of an image’s ability to contain the mystery of the Holy [placelessness]. In one specific section, The Christian Imagination and a Theology of Place, Lane discusses how God is here, but not only here. He writes, “A theology of transcendance will never be comfortable with place.” He goes on to describe 5 “motifs by which the religious imagination is able to ‘create’ places or landscapes that become embodied means of experiencing the divine presence.” The first comes from John Calvin, he “spoke of the natural world as a theater full of wonders in which God’s glory becomes apparent..” The second is n ature as a ‘second book’ alongside scripture as a way to read the presen...
Read more

Reading - see my journey on facebook

Kendall Bredehorst 12/16/17 "See my journey on facebook" briefly discussed the effects of technology on pilgrimage. As each year goes by, an increasing amount of people are using technology in their day to day lives. Technology is turning into an necessity rather than a non-necessity. This trend is overflowing into how people experience pilgrimages and thru-hikes. To fully experience the trail people need to completely immerse themselves in the expedition, which means ditching the phone. Due to the additive characteristic of technology, people can hinder their pilgrimage or hike through the use of technology.
Read more