Religion or Spirituality
March 6, 2008 by katinkaspiritual
Religion has a bad name in alternative circles. It’s associated with the Christian church and all it’s crimes (real and perceived). Religion is associated with dogma, stifling rules that don’t fit our day to day lives and worse of all: authority. A preacher to tell me what to do in my personal life? Never!
In my religion classes at Leiden University very different definitions of religion are taught. I’ll use a famous one by Clifford Geertz to sum up the point:
“Religion is (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”
[Geertz wrote in 1966, just before political correct formulations would have replaced 'men' by 'people'.]
The basic point here is that religion is that which gives direction to our lives, helps us establish priorities (consciously or unconsciously) and helps us understand our lives - in such a way that our worldview and priorities seem uniquely realistic.
That definition actually includes spirituality. We have symbols: Ying & Yang, the Buddha and the Tibetan flag (1). We have ideas about the universe we live in which often include: holism, karma, alternative health, aura’s etc. (3). These ideas about life and the universe seem real to us (4) and therefore the lifestyle that comes with them does too (2, 5).
The obsession with the difference between religion and spirituality comes, I think, from the bad reputation the Christian churches has with many of us. Religion has often been defined as ‘organised religion’.
Spirituality - taking place in yoga classrooms, alternative bookstores and retreats - is not organized in the same clear way. One can be spiritual within any religious system. The main thing is that one hasn’t settled for dogma’s, thinks for oneself and keeps ones own spiritual and ethical growth as a top priority (2).
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[...] ç¥ã®æµã¿ã¯ãæ&atild… wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptReligion or Spirituality March 6, 2008 by katinkaspiritual Religion has a bad name in alternative circles. It’s associated with the Christian church and all it’s crimes (real and perceived). Religion is associated with dogma, stifling rules that don’t fit our day to day lives and worse of all: authority. A preacher to tell me what to do in my personal life? Never! In my religion classes at Leiden University very different definitions of religion are taught. I’ll use a famous one by Cliffor [...]
I love Geertz, but I had never seen that incredibly insightful definition of religion. Fantastic.
And yes, one of the problems with ’spirituality’ is that is lacks a common set of symbols (or rather acts as a buffet of symbols reflecting the capitalist colonization of spiritual domains), and has yet to prove an ability to establish “pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations”.
I frequently find myself defending religion for the very reason that it remains the single greatest treasure house of symbols, shared meanings and art. Definitely an appropriate domain for heeding the warning not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
That’s funny - I haven’t read more from Geertz than part of the article that quote is from. It’s a favorite of my favorite teacher. He brings it up in every class he gives - usually handing it out on paper as well. We had to memorize it too. I’m not very good with memorization, but I do know this quote well enough to notice that another teacher who used this quote used different words from the ones I memorized.
Alright - here’s a more serious response.
I personally do think there are pervasive and long-lasting motivations in spirituality. Read Hanegraaff’s book New Age Religion and Western Culture and you’ll see an awful lot that hasn’t changed much since the 19th century. Also - ‘the secret’ is in there, even though the book hadn’t been published yet (you should read that as well, if only to ignore it after. It’s a very small book so you won’t have to waste more than an hour if you read fast).
On the other hand - sociologists like Luckmann (I’m planning to read more from that guy this semester) seem to agree with you that spirituality is fragmented, not unified and therefore not good for giving people guidance.