spiritual but not religious

Media excitement continues over the latest Pew poll showing continued growth in the religiously affiliated. But do such data really tell us what we need to know about the Four F’s of Contemporary American Spirituality: Family, Fido, Friends, and Food?

Reasons to cheer—and possibly fear.

Why “spiritual, but not religious” is problematic and makes one academic want to punch those who say it in the face. Hard. Theologians are often open about their religious stance, so there shouldn’t be a double standard for critical, reflective atheist voices.

“What the feminist movement and the LGBT movement have become for religious communities is a test of hospitality. Are you really open to accepting and welcoming everyone? Is the personhood of the gay couple as welcome as the personhood of the straight couple? It’s not just simply what your political position is about the rights of these people, but are these people really people? And are they people with their full wisdom, their full experience, their full sense of who they are? Are they really, truly welcomed into the deepest realms of making community?”

Some relationships are so bad that the only thing you can do to save your life is leave. And that takes tremendous courage.

Something is clearly up (or down) with religious affiliation, but reading that data calls for the art for interpretation, not mathematical modeling. That’s what makes this story far more interesting—and far less funny.

If the traditional practice of prayer in the context of traditional institutional religions is increasingly meaningless for a significant and growing proportion of American believers and seekers, one wonders what the spiritual or civic value is of attempting to encourage the practice through governmental fiat.

Was Michael Jackson a supernatural magician or an icon of self-immolation? Both? The physical body is gone, the musical productivity has ceased, the capacity to speak for himself is no more, so now MJ is a wonderfully ambiguous figment of our imagination. Three religion scholars discuss the life, legend, meaning, and myth of one of the world’s most talented, successful, and perhaps tortured performers.

What would “a tranny hustler,” peeking through a rip in the stocking of space-time, think of our world 40 years later? What will the next Consciousness Revolution look like?

Though surveys of American religion continue to reveal a rise in the “no religion,” and “unaffiliated” categories the transcendent experience of a Wilco show can lead the way to a more nuanced understanding.