A pair of (somewhat) related articles came across my desk yesterday that seem especially relevant with the new ‘Work and Play’ issue of The Mockingbird shipping today. The first is the latest dispatch on that cultural flashpoint known as Busyness. In a pithy blogpost for The Huffington Post, Scott Dannemiller contends that “Busyness Is a Sickness”. […]
Spiritual but Not Religious (and Constantly Navel-Gazing)…
Wow! This Huffington Post editorial from a couple years ago by Lillian Daniel pretty well hits the whole “spiritual but not religious” thing in the mouth. Hard not to relate to her exasperation:
Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn’t interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.
Thank you for sharing, spiritual-but-not-religious sunset person. You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating. Can I switch seats now and sit next to someone who has been shaped by a mighty cloud of witnesses instead? Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community? Because when this flight gets choppy, that’s who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply putting up with me, just like we try to do in church.
According to a 2013 Gallup survey, as many as 1 in 3 Americans identifies as “spiritual but not religious,” and in 2010 a USA Today survey claimed that more than 70% of Generation Y identify as “more spiritual than religious.” So the question becomes, why? Why are so many Americans clinging to spirituality but divorcing it from organized religion? Is this a legitimate outgrowth of American self-determinism, or is it simply postmodern navel gazing?
Another Week Ends: Life Stories, Vacation Days, Literary Grace, Curved In Worship, Baby Morality, Sleepy Hollow and Eagleton on Moz
1. We’ve spoken before about why we so often feel the need to conceive of our lives as a narrative of progress or upward-sloping trajectory. We’ve tried to highlight the dangers this poses, especially when the progress is understood to be moral or spiritual in nature. An instinct that can sometimes help us make sense […]
Halloween/Reformation Day Linkathon: Equal Opportunity Holidays, Fat Letters, Midnight Coteries, The Returned and more Lou Reed
A quick grab bag in honor of the day: 1. Over at Liberate Nick Lannon reflects on the gratuity of Halloween relative to Christmas, stating from the outset that “Halloween has become more Christian than Christmas”. He’s not wrong: “Consider the theological implications of Halloween. Halloween is the ultimate equal opportunity holiday. EVERYONE gets candy. […]
Another Week Ends: Gucci Addictions, Narcissism Epidemics, DFW, Phone vs. Heart, PZ on Drones (on CNN), R. Crumb, Tale of Two Suedes, and Kung Fu Grandpa
1. The author of the original Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger, dropped as offbeat and not-quite-repentant a tale of addiction on GQ this month as I have ever come across. A convergence of shopping and sex addiction rooted in Law-induced despair (never being able to measure up to initial success) and plain old powerlessness, the […]
Cowboy Jesus Gets a Fresh Pair of Gloves: The Gospel According to Buck
There’s no shortage of tear-jerking moments in Buck, Cindy Meehl’s the award-winning 2011 documentary about horse trainer/whisperer Buck Brannaman. But none is more poignant than when Buck recounts his first interaction with his foster father. We find out at the beginning of the film that Buck and his older brother spent their childhoods as trick-roping […]
Forgetting Forgiveness (and Forgiving The Huffington Post)
Most of us, regardless of conviction, would say that we could use more forgiveness in our lives, not less. The world sometimes feels like it’s divided into those we wish we could forgive and those that we wish would forgive us – at least if our recurring dreams are to be trusted… So why does […]
