This post was borne out of a conversation with Feb, a colleague. She had said that she believed in God but she didn't believe in religion.
The stand is interesting because it's somehow predicated on a common but limited view of what religion is, a view that Thomas Moore had debunked in his essay "Religion". In place of this view, he opted for a more transcendent definition of religion, a definition worthy of the immense power that religion had wielded over humanity in the course of our history.
In the essay, he says:
Many people today assume that the word religion refers to an institution - an organization weighed down by outmoded authoritarianism and irrelevant traditions. With this definition, they can argue against religion quite easily. But their idea of religion is a straw man, a caricature, or a bad personal experience generalized into an indictment of religion as a whole...
Let me suggest a definition of religion I think might satisfy our desire for personal spiritual experience and yet appropriately go beyond it. Religion is an attitude of reverence and a method of connecting to the mysteries that we find in our world and in ourselves (emphasis supplied)...
I've chosen the words in my definition carefully. The word "reverence" (quotes supplied) refers to awe and honor. Its root refers to watchfulness. Religion is a way of regarding the world and everything in it. Basically, to be religious is to be capable of awe and respect, two qualities that usually disappear when secularism begins to dominate...
I refer to religion also as a method. This is an ancient idea found in many traditions: that religion shows us how to be reverent. What worries me most about a spiritual movement that separates itself from religious traditions is that its methods will be personal and ephemeral. We have much to learn from traditions about sacrifice, ritual, prayer, atonement, healing, and many other basic elements in the spiritual life...
In my definition, I use the word "connecting" (quotes supplied) because one meaning of the Latin re-ligare (from which the word religion is derived) is "to connect". Re-ligion is like a ligature. Religion allows us to be in touch with the great mysteries of our lives: illness, birth, death, love, failure, creativity, meaning. The fully secular person is disconnected in this way and therefore might feel lost and aimless...
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