“Made-to-order faith”
Martin Marty
As appeared in Context | January 1, 2001

Twice this issue we will bring up comment on one of the major themes of our time: How spirituality relates to religion and how both relate to the public order. First, David Blankenhorn writes on the distinction between spiritual and religious: "A new colleague served last year as assistant chaplain at Bates College in Maine. She reports that a remarkably high proportion of students at Bates describe themselves as 'spiritual, not religious.' Most students use exactly that phrase. It's a remarkable formulation, deserving of our attention.

"When I declare that I am 'spiritual, not religious,' I am disclosing two facts about myself. First, I am a searcher who is interested in, and yearns for, transcendence - some meaning and destiny that reach beyond the limits of the material world. And second, I avoid organized religion and reject institutionally articulated religious doctrines. In short, I am looking for spiritual nourishment, but not by going to church or synagogue.

"What does the growing popularity of this self-description tell us? It tells us that the human person is spiritually thirsty, whether or not there is any water to drink, and whether or not we even recognize what water is. My belief that organized religion cannot tell me what to worship does not change the fact that, because I am human, I must worship. Life's ultimate questions can change form or even put on funny clothes, but they never go away. For example, Christian shrines in New York City today are rarely surrounded by crowds of reverent young people. But all day every day, less than two blocks from where I live in Manhattan, young people from across the country and tourists from around the world crowd around a small shrine in central Park. They leave flowers, notes, and pictures of loved ones. They light votive candles. They meditate, read poems, and sing. The shrine says "Imagine' and commemorates the life of John Lennon, the singer-songwriter. Judith Martin, the 'Miss Manners' columnist and a member of [the Institute for American Values'] Council on Families, says that a growing trend today is people informally and spontaneously creating makeshift shrines, often connected to a public tragedy, such as the death of Princess Diana. The need does not go away."

Blankenhorn remains helpful: "The popularity of being 'spiritual, not religious' also suggests that large and probably growing numbers of Americans now individually customize their religious faith. This trend should give us pause. A new book by Bobbi Parish is called Creating Your Personal Sacred Text. The book is a 'step-by-step guide to writing your own scripture,' using selections from various texts of your choice as well as 'your own words.' More and more in our society, instead of the thing defining me, I define the thing. When the thing in question is, say, marriage, the trend is troubling enough. But have God and the moral law also become my own private creations?"

(Propositions, the newsletter of the Institute for American Values, Summer 2000)