Additional lecture material
Religion and Spirituality

Being religious and being spiritual are not quite the same thing, but it is not easy to explain the difference. 

Let's imagine someone goes to a place or worship (it could be a Catholic church or a Buddhist temple or anywhere else identified with a specific religious tradition).  If a group has come together there will be certain activities that may or may not involve much participation.  Typically the amount of participation may be in an inverse relationship to the social status of those involved.  As sociologists have noted, there is a considerable difference in the noise level of an uptown Episcopalian church and a Baptist church in a poor African-American community: Episcopalians listen quietly to a more or less sedate sermon and sing along with familiar hymns while Baptists respond to a more fervent preacher and may become far more active in moving and shouting as a choir sings.  The explanation offered is that for those who are disadvantaged in society religion offers what Karl Marx called "the opium of the people" in the sense that iit is "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation."  Personal involvement, then, offers a sense of meaning that enhances an individual's feeling of having a value in a society that may in fact see him or her as worth very little.  For those more affluent, religious activities may be seen more as a duty, often enough a way of letting oneself be seen as someone important in the society, but there is far less emotion involved.

Over the last several decades in the United States there has been more attention given to the manner on which many individuals have turned away from familiar institutional structures in a search for spiritual fulfillment.  Psychologists might talk about this as looking to "beta needs" for personal meaning once the "alpha needs" of food and shelter are taken care of.  Much of this has been looking to Asian traditions or to so-called New Age movements that have borrowed key ideas (such as a belief in reincarnation and the practice of meditation) from Asian traditions.  Spirituality, then, is seen as something more personal, often enough free of commitment to any specific traditional set of beliefs or practices. 

One way of interpreting all this is to think of how a "born again" emphasis on Jesus as a personal savior holding the promise of a "sweet hereafter" offers a sense of relief to those who are less privileged in society while more affluent individuals, typically young people turned off by a perceived rigidity in the churches or temples they grew up in,  might look to Krishna or Buddha instead since, often enough, the image of Jesus becomes identified with hell and damnation for the non-believer.  Both are in search of a deeper meaning by turning to the supernatural, in one case because society regards them as relatively worthless and in the other because they are rebelling against a feeling that their worth is solely in terms of how they fit in as producers or consumers in an overly materialistic society.  One then can see organized religion very optimistically while the other cannot.  Also, one can see personal spirituality as completely linked to a religious outlook while the other might well see them as essentially incompatible. 

This is a very personal exercise I would suggest.

Think of the last time you were in a place of worship (a church, a temple, a mosque).  If someone were to have intercepted you on your way in in order to ask why you are there, how might you explain yourself in just one sentence?  Now imagine that on your way out that same individual is waiting for you and now asks what did you get out of having been inside.  Again, in one sentence what would you answer?

Many of you in this course are already what we might call believers--you personally accept the truth of the tradition in which you now participate.  Others are non-believers, either because you were not raised in a specific religious tradition or because you have, for one reason or another, stepped away from that tradition.  Think how being either a believer or a non-believer makes a difference for the answers you would provide for my two questions above.  Now here is a last question, again to be answered in one sentence.  If you are a believer, what are your feelings towards those who are non-believers not just in your tradition but in any tradition (you feel sorry for them, for instance, or you wish you could convert them, or you are just glad not to be in their shoes)?  If you are a non-believer, what are your feelings towards those who are believers (you feel sorry for them, for instance, or you wish you could convert them, or you are just glad not to be in their shoes)?

Put down these three sentences somewhere in the notes you mean to keep for this class.  When you have come to the end of the course, think about whether any of these three answers would have changed for you.