Spiritual but not religious? The rant, the response and what it means for the church today

This week ministers across denominations were getting stirred into a frenzy by a very pointed blog rant by UCC Paster Lillian Daniel in which she vented her exhaustion with the pseudo-original standpoint shared by so many today that they are "spiritual but not religious."

Many pastors were amen-ing her digging into the consumer-driven selfishness that seems to be at the root of those who prefer sunsets and walks on the beach to living within the tension of real-life community - "Like people who go to church don't see God in the sunset! Like we are these monastic little hermits who never leave the church building," she writes. "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."

Others saw this rant as evidence of how out-of-touch churches are with society today. The infamous Pew Forum study was trotted out as evidence of the reality that while we may not like it - the sunset and beach folks are not coming to our churches and we better change now or die the slow death of cultural irrelevance.

Personally, I've been wondering a lot about these issues, and Rev. Daniel's post certainly struck a cord with me - enough so to drive me into the Facebook commenting fray that my less-than-holy side can sometimes succumb to. Anyway, so what does an emergent-Christian with a UU background think of all this? Here's where I'm landing:

• If you really look at the Pew data - you'll find that "spiritual but not religious" does not necessarily mean what you may think it means. Most unaffiliated Americans are not raving new-agers, agnostics or atheists, as I've sometimes understood many UUs to think. Actually, according to Pew "people who are not affiliated with a particular religious tradition do not necessarily lack religious beliefs or practices. In fact, a large portion (41%) of the unaffiliated population says religion is at least somewhat important in their lives, seven-in-ten say they believe in God, and more than a quarter (27%) say they attend religious services at least a few times a year." These are people who have some traditional framework of faith, but currently do not practice that faith within structured communities as they exist predominantly today.
• Rev. Daniels is spot-on when it comes to the integrity of religious tradition, practice and community that is much more demanding, life-changing and ultimately rewarding than keeping your thoughts to yourself and never engaging in life with others.
• However - this sort of life-giving and rewarding community rooted in tradition but open to interpretation is not the sort of community that most of our churches are creating in America - hence the unaffiliated masses.
• There will always be spiritual consumers who prefer to only ride the waves of mountaintop experiences without doing the work of living a religious life. When they look down their noses at those who are living for the sake of all God's children - then Rev. Daniel's rant will be there to affirm our venting.
• But for the majority of those drifting in the limbo of the "spiritual but not religious" - we need to start providing the right kind of communities that will actually engage them.

So what does this relevant religious community look like? I can only speak qualitatively from my own experience. But based on my own hopes and desires for the community I want but have not quite found yet, as well as what I'm hearing from the emergent world, it's this - a religious body:

• In deep and serious relationship with an ancient tradition offering many streams and paths to learn from - body, mind and soul. This is the biggest reason I struggle to remain a Unitarian Universalist.
• That, authentic to its own teaching, lives in service to others and not to itself. I think this is one of the biggest reasons people remain unaffiliated. I hate being part of a church that spends more time thinking about plans to re-carpet the sanctuary than it does about creating disciples who will change the world - one act of service and compassion at a time. I do not have "time, talent, or treasure" to give to a fraternal organization. Or if I do - it's nominal. Fraternity is why yuppies join climbing gyms today - not churches.
• That offers more ritual and practice, which is always open to personal interpretation, than it does dogma. This is part of the reason people are drawn to Buddhism today - and read Brian McLaren's Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices if you want to see how the emergent church is filling this need within Christianity.

So that's my thinking on the matter. Bottom-line: the rant was applicable, although not complete. Religion is awesome - we just need to be doing it better. What do you think?