SBNR is, to me, nothing more than the cry “I don’t want to be a member of a club that would accept ME as a member.” There are wounds involved, I understand, for many. They don’t want to be members of a club that would wound them like that again, or as they observe others to have been injured.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Spirituality doesn’t require being part of a community. True. Spiffy; fly… be free… enjoy.

But being human does; we’re pack–not herd–animals. We’re individuals, but not solitary beings.

Religion IS a tool, it’s a means of practicing spirituality in community. Like any tool, it can be abused, misused.

The responsibility lies with the wielders.

Personally, I find the plausibility of the “read over again” etymology absurd. Its assumption is that religion is a thing of literacy, that there had to be and have to be, scriptures and commentaries. But we know that human religion doesn’t have to be, and predates literacy (by which I mean any literacy, it exists in cultures that aren’t even aware of the idea of writing). And Roman religion’s earliest forms strongly, strongly suggest that it existed before literacy–that literacy was poured into it.

I liked Peacebang’s comments on SBNR folk…until I read “that SBNR guy or gal sits on the sidelines, judging and critiquing the liturgies and theologies and personalities of the actively religious” It hit a bit close to home; every January I endeavor to improve my “spiritual” life by deciding to find and join a church-and to stick with it. I never seem to make it though, because I’m largely afraid of leaving the relative comfort of the sidelines (I never actually even visit a congregation).

So maybe I need to work harder on this aspect and find a good local church; or heck, just start one myself

I don’t think CC’s (forwarded) response is considered airtight by the linguistic or etymological community. It is one very strong candidate, but a quick websearch* indicates that there are a number of possible origins and meanings of the word religio, and one expert’s opinion is still simply one expert’s opinion — even if it is much better informed than the non-expert’s. Generally, I think it is less the fact that we (the nonlinguists) have been uninformed for generations on the “true meaning” of religio, as much as the fact that the word is likely nuanced to have very many interpretations and applications, even from its origin. Look at the current problem of defining what makes a religion a religion, even among the experts…

None of this is really relevent to Peacebang’s general commentary, which generally resonates with me.

*I note here I am not a linguist. I do not play one on TV. However, I am fairly skilled in research and am quite good at assessing the scholarly value of resources, even on the web, and weeding out ephemera. So accept this as the research (commentary of a non-linguist, but professional researcher.

Actually, it doesn’t.

I know this because my friend the linguist told me and he is rarely wrong on such things.

I asked for an explanation for the layman and he wrote

“Dear SSW:
This is all that I can do, from the office.
Latin religio is a type of noun that can be formed either from a verb
ending in infinitive -are (like ligare “to tie”) or from one in infinitive
-ere (like legere “bring together, gather, collect; a late sense is “read”).
The identity of the root vowel in leg- is irrelevant since the leg- would
go to lig-in the middle of the word when the prefix is added by a Latin
phonetic rule which is well known although not quite clear in detail.
The adjective religens (attested in accusative singular “religentem”,
see Oxford Latin Dictionary)is formed as a present participle from the same
verb religo, religere. It occurs in a quotation which indicates that it
means something like “observant, pious”; thus it is formed from the same
stem as religio. A participle from religare “tie together” would be
religantem with an -a-. So presumably the semantically related religio is
formed from the same stem and is also from the infinitive re-lig-ere.
Once that point is made, it becomes clear that there are several words
forming a semantic nest, like negligere/neglegere “not be careful,
solicitous, be indifferent to” in which the neg- is a negative particle.
Mann develops that contrast. The -lig-/leg- alternation means nothing
because sometimes basic forms are restored in compounds (like
re-lig-io)under the analogy to the simple form (like leg-).
However, Thomas Mann did not claim to original in this etymology. He
was relying on a scholarly friend. His friend would have known that there
are good treatments which give the references and related forms in Alfred
Ernout and Antoine Meillet’s “Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue
latine”,
and in Alois Walde and J.B. Hofmann’s “Lateinisches etymologisches
Woerterbuch”. There is a monograph in English on the development of the use
of the term in Latin; I think that it is by Fowler and that the reference
is in Ernout-Meilet.”

Now, if you want to question the vaildity of assertions made by a linguist who doesn’t quite understand the words “for the laymen,” feel free, but he’s generally right about such things.

CC
who WISHES “religion” came from that root as it sounds cool.