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Spiritual But Not Religious: The Controversy Around Lillian Daniel’s Column

There have been a lot of plaudits as well as a lot of Bronx cheers going around in response to the Rev. Lillian Daniel’s (to me) wonderful column lambasting some “spiritual but not religious” Americans for their sentimentalized sense of religion and their self-and-child worship. The longer article is here, and I unabashedly love it.

I don’t want to debate at length with the many offended people who have complained that Daniel seems to be insulting them, I simply want to make public my support and appreciation for Lillian’s article. I love that she is direct. I love that she dares to express her frustration with people who buttonhole her as a clergywoman and proceed to unload their grievances against the church –and to declare their emancipation from it — as a bold and original move that they presume will rock her little Christian world. In this article, Daniel lives into my vision of contemporary religious leaders as people who are honest and authentic, who refuse to function as incarnate straw men-cum-punching bags that “spiritual but not religious” types so love to construct in the clerical image and then knock the stuffing out of.

I should state right up front that I do not understand the motivations of my clergy colleagues who welcome the kind of testimonial Daniel derides. I think many of her critics are conflating “spiritual but not religious” as an identity that refers to openness to eclectic spiritual influences and practices with what Daniel describes: self-made and self-referential religion.

The sort of “sharing” Daniel describes as boring in her article is not the heartfelt confidences of a person who needs to talk about the ways that a clergyperson, church community or doctrine hurt their soul so that they can reach some sort of resolution. That is a conversation that I  have had many times in which I have received such confidences with sadness and humility as a representative of the Church. What Daniel mocks is the cliched narrative of the person who has abandoned religious life for the life of easy, undisciplined, uncritical and unaccountable “spirituality,” defined as whatever fuzzy thoughts keep them happy, comfortable and self-assured. Central to that narrative is their spiritual superiority over the poor souls who still gather for public worship and the structure of traditional religion.

I am not at all offended by “spiritual but not religious” people. Neither does Daniel seem to be. What we both find objectionable is the (to use a favorite term of mine) sense of terminal uniqueness among the “SBNR” crowd who insist on enlightening clergy about their higher path.

Spare me.

I consider myself a teacher of church tradition and an upholder of it. I did not break my back for ten years of seminary education (I have earned both an M.Div and a D.Min), go $65,000 into debt at Harvard (and spend another $12,ooo or so later at Andover-Newton), leave a relationship and a beloved teaching career so that I could encourage people to invent their own personally pleasing religion. I am a trained theologian and expert in church practice, called by God and conferred the honorific “Reverend” by congregational ordination, and obligated by the Church to witness to its relevance and power.

Does a heart attack patient in the ICU, when the cardiologist comes to make her rounds, feel entitled to point out all the deficiencies in the medical sciences and then proceed to inform the doctor how he intends to treat himself? And does that patient expect the doctor to stand patiently in the door and nod in warm admiration and affirmation while he does so?

If you think you have everything you need to heal yourself, don’t go to the hospital. Don’t waste the doctor’s time. The doctor has other people to see.

Clergy have an obligation not to indulge those who have no use for tradition or for religious teaching. We should not be so proud that we have welcomed those who are spiritual but not religious and have allowed or even encouraged them to remain that way. It is our job to teach religion, not to merely listen supportively to the stories of what seekers have left behind. That’s why we call them “seekers:” they are seeking life more abundant than they can create by themselves. Presumably we have the tools to give them to construct that life, together in community.

Along with one of my closest spiritual friends in my congregation, I am quite fond of joking that I am religious but not spiritual. I am not sure what spirituality is except for fleeting moments of transcendence, granted by grace and recollected in tranquility and gratitude. Religion, on the other hand, is a set of commitments, faith claims and practices that I rely on to instruct and shape my character, mind and soul in accordance with my professed values. Spirituality is what I feel when I am fortunate enough to have eyes to see and ears to hear. Religion is what I do, whatever I feel and whatever I sense (or not) of the Holy Presence on that day.

I am not any more impressed by the designation “spiritual but not religious” than I am by the designation “Christian.” The “SBNR” person makes what I now assume are immature generalizations about religion and religious people (“What religion are you NOT,” I always want to ask), and the title “Christian” is equally as meaningless in the face of the multiplicities of Christianities in the world.  I am not interested in hearing about the religion that you rejected (that you presume resembles my own) unless this is an actual conversation and not a pep rally for the church defector or rejector’s ego.

What Daniel says, in essence, is that she is bored by people who proclaim their uniqueness for rejecting of conservative doctrine and for exiting churches and finding spirituality in nature alone. As Daniel observes, there’s nothing unique about that journey, nor is there the slightest bit of a problem with finding spirituality in nature. Good Lord, of course we do. Who doesn’t find spiritual inspiration in nature?

Daniel’s critique, if I follow her correctly, is that (1) there’s nothing original about jettisoning church for homemade, vague “spirituality,” and she’s tired of people’s broad naivetee on this point and (2) the homespun theologies of reverence created by such folks is thin gruel, theologically speaking, and does not result in a sustaining faith that helps create deep meaning for life’s deeper and more painful truths. She reserves special ire for the ways that this childlike (and often child-generated) spirituality may spiritually starve children of well-meaning parents.

Having been one of those children, I deeply appreciate Daniel’s willingness to make this accusation. And I think it is this accusation that really rattles Unitarian Universalists. Do our children really need another exercise in self-referential wonder? Do they need another meditation on the beauty of the growing flowers? Along with Daniel, I answer “no,” or “probably not.” Cancer is also natural, Daniel argues. Yes, and bacteria and fungus and frontal lobe brain damage that apparently causes some human beings to commit the most heinous and sadistic of crimes. “Good luck with your homemade spirituality,” she is saying, “when those realities hit.”

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Whatever You Decide Is Perfect

One of the things about being a parish minister is that your schedule is constantly changed by people’s needs and crises. You’re on your way out the door when you get a phone call: someone needs to talk, so you talk. It could be a church leader who just wants to review an agenda, it could be someone who’s daughter is driving her crazy, or it could be the music director wanting to check something about Sunday’s service. Whatever it is, you need to be present to it. Most ministers are the only person being paid to devote their attention to the church on a full-time basis while others are either very part-time or volunteers, and we don’t want someone who is volunteering their time to church leadership to wait around for our availability. If someone calls on church business, we want to pick right up. And of course if someone calls in need of pastoral support, we want to pick right up for that, too, and jump in the car to be with an individual or family who might appreciate us showing up for them.

The end result is that we’re…. well, I’m late for social plans a lot. I don’t like this and I know I’ve angered and upset and just plain disappointed a lot of people (family included) along the way, but it also means that I’ve learned to cherish flexibility as a major virtue. There’s a reason that religious professionals tend to hang together: we don’t have to explain to each other the last minute switches and weird things that come up to interfere with our schedules (“I can’t make lunch today, I’m going to the vet in an hour to be with someone who is euthanizing their cat.” “My secretary is going on vacation so I have to finish the Christmas Order of Service three weeks early.”). Nod, re-schedule. Or in the case of hairy stuff, (“Someone’s house burned down” or “My board president just fell and broke both legs”) a blessing and “Good luck, call me when you’ve got a breather, and is there anything I can do for you?” We’re comrades in arms that way.

Awhile ago my friend Suzy said something to me that I haven’t forgotten and haven’t stopped wrapping around me like a quilt. Suze is a high school friend whom I hadn’t seen for a long time, and I was going to stay with her in Connecticut this past winter and use her home as a jumping off point for a brief stay in NYC. I would drive to her house in Connecticut from Massachusetts and Suzy offered to drive me to the commuter train station so I wouldn’t have to bring my car into the city.

It was snowing hard the day I wanted to leave; there was that. I had to drop my dog off with other friends the day I finally could leave; there was that. Something small came up at church, of course; there was that. So I had to text Suzy several times to apprise her of my new ETAs. She is the mother of two small children and has a lot going on in her own life (contractors in the kitchen being one thing, as I recall), but she remained gracious and affectionate in response to each harried message, replying at one point:

“Whatever you do is perfect.”

Now, honestly. Who says that and really means it? “Whatever you do is perfect?” You could not possibly mean that, Suzy. It totally disarmed me. It gave me nothing to be anxious about, none of the usual insecure co-dependent poison to drink, none of the usual guilt to marinate in as I drove down the Merritt Parkway heading toward Greenwich. Whatever I did was perfect. There could be nothing more freeing, nothing more supportive to say to someone.  And the thing is, she meant it. Her friendly voice was unmistakably authentic. Of course I had to be sarcastic in the face of such maturity and graciousness. I was like, “Girl, whatever you’re on, I WANT SOME.”

We’ve known each other for a long time. We used to be teenaged girls who skipped class and sat on the roof of mutual friend Kelly’s house tanning ourselves in our bras. And we both turned out to be respectable citizens.

Whatever you do is perfect. I still can’t get over the sense of goodness that created in me, how much I appreciated hearing that. I mean, how many times have I heard –or just felt — in my life, “Hurry up, let’s go, you screwed up, you kept me waiting, you were here too early, you stayed too late, you left too soon, you got the time wrong, you got the date wrong, you inconvenienced us, you move too slow, you run too fast… nothing you do is perfect! It’s not even acceptable!”

Right? And these messages have increased 100-fold since I entered the parish ministry; I don’t think it can be helped. It’s the nature of the work. Clergy share this: we know that we have inconvenienced, hurt and neglected our friends and families by meeting the needs of the congregation and assuming that our loved ones will understand and accept why we were late/didn’t show/missed the school play/took the later train/skipped Christmas dinner because we were exhausted, or in a thousand other ways made a decision that was not at all perfect.

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Six Little Doses Of Happy

At about 3pm today I was flooded with a tremendous sense of calm and hopefulness, or maybe optimism would be the better word. I hadn’t been aware of feeling particularly pessimistic or hopeLESS, although my general temperament is geared more toward Russian melancholia than American sunniness, so my default setting is intensity. Thinking hard ’bout stuff.  I try not to steep myself overly much in the wailing and gnashing of teeth mood generated by the news but like all of us, I have been prone to feelings of tremendous sadness, frustration and defeat lately.

So I had this lovely little mystical moment while driving along Route 53 in Hanover, a commercial street not known for its ability to inspire transcendent experiences. I went to the very ugly, very American mall to do a bunch of errands where my feeling of hopefulness and optimism miraculously endured. Here is a short list of things that might have contributed to the feeling:

1. Guy in nursing home playing old show tunes.

2. A person I like a whole lot but don’t know very well informed me that she is becoming a grandmother for the fifth time in four years. Her two children are having lots of babies. This made me unreasonably cheerful, like fist-pumping-the-air happy. I have no idea why this news should make me feel gleefully triumphant. Maybe because people having babies is such a simple vote of confidence in life.

3. The Sleepy’s was closed when I went to peek in the window at Tempurpedic mattresses. Handmade sign on the door said “Back at 4:30.” What? Someone took an hour and fifteen minutes, minimum (I peeked in a bit after 3:00) to deal with something? And flouted what I assume are company rules about hours of operation? Good. I hope everything’s okay. I hope the sales guy (it’s always sales GUYS in mattress stores, have you noticed?) ran home to make love to his Most Significant Other. Maybe working with beds all day made him amorous. I don’t know. Whatever it was, sometimes you need to close the shop and inconvenience the shopper, interrupt commerce for a bit. People before profits. See you soon, mattress salesperson.

4. Two guys outside the local Verizon carrying sloppily little hand-made signs in support of striking Verizon workers. Real people with real signs on the real street make issues real-er than if we just read about them on the internet. Also good.

5. A little girl, probably about two years old, trailed her mother into Office Max dressed in a homemade fairy princess dress. It was floor length and pink with a tulle overskirt and off-the-shoulder sleeves that looked more than a bit grimy from wear. She was whining and being encouraged to hoof it by her slightly irritated mother. I liked her a lot. I liked the contrast between her crankiness and her beautiful, slightly grimy gown. Go ahead, Princess Crankypants. We’ll have high tea after your nap.

6. Young man and woman holding each other and kissing in the Panera parking lot. Ah, l’amour. I noticed that London is very much a lover’s city (Paris, watch your back!) but I don’t often see passion being played out in the American ‘burbs.  In fact, I worry about that. People need to kiss more. Yay for kissing in the Panera parking lot.

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