What is a Religion?

I see religion, substantively, as the shared experience of faith. This I juxtapose with spirituality, which I see as the individual experience of faith. Here are some of the ways that this definition works itself out practically. Religion has to do with institutions, with systems, and shared values. Spirituality has to do with the internal, individual experience. Can we have religion without spirituality? I would say, "yes." Religion without spirituality is what every renewal movement has tried to correct; it is the phenomenon of people going through the motions of ritual and tradition without internal interaction. Can we have spirituality without religion? Similarly, I would say "yes," and that this most adequately describes most of the Western milieu. The old institutions have lost public credibility, for the most part, and so people pick and choose from what they like of each religion. This faith "a la carte" leaves nothing in common between its subscribers, except the common experience of having picked for oneself. Finally, I believe it is possible and indeed ideal for spirituality and religion to coincide. An example of this would be the individual in the congregation. She prays and sings and listens with the congregation and in this way partakes in "religion." Yet her experience is unique, the message speaks directly to her situation, and she applies it in a way that no one else does. This is part of her spirituality. And still, she can share some of her spirituality with others, because of the shared experience of faith - religion - that they have in common. This is the overlap of spirituality and religion.

I also think of religion, functionally, as whatever we use to "make the leap." At the root of every decision we make is a fundamentally unknowable, uncertain, and abstract choice. Take eating, for example. The choice of what to eat for supper may be completely irrational - simply the product of social conditioning and personal appetite. But suppose we have made a choice to be healthy, and we have consciously chosen healthier foods. Then the choice is based in reason, and yet it is still irrational, for why should health be preferred to unhealth? We could rationalize this choice - that health is more comfortable than unhealth, or that health increases our life expectancy. But then, why should comfort over the long run be preferred to the immediate comfort that a less healthy food choice provides? Or why should longevity, or survival, be preferred to death and non-existence? Is there a meaning to life? The answer to this question is essentially unknowable. It can only be asserted, not proven.

And this is where religion comes in. At the root of every decision we make, and consequently every action we perform, is an essentially unprovable assumption. These assumptions can be questioned, modified, or even replaced; they may be unknown, ignored, or denied; but they can never be annihilated altogether. These assumptions, when linked together, form an interpretive framework that filters and organizes the information that we receive and consequently the decisions we make based on those assumptions. Moreover, those assumptions are faith - and faith in its purest form. They are true faith, because they are based on no certain knowledge, and because we always live our lives strictly in accordance with them. If we do not believe in ghosts, or the supernatural, then we have limited a priori what can happen in reality, and we filter our experiences through that grid. We will be skeptical of people who report supernatural experiences, and find ways to rationalize that information to conform to our "faith." If we really believe that there is no point to living, then we will stop making the decision to eat. If we really believe that we are responsible for pollution, then we will take steps to limit our negative environmental impact.

All of this is to say that, for me, religion is the network of assumptions that I make and link together - also called faith. These assumptions interpret and organize my experience of the world, and dictate how I respond. I surround these assumptions with narratives - myths - in order to bind them into a cohesive, accessible unit. (I can understand and criticize the story of the gospel much more easily than the assumptions that lie beneath that, most of which I am not even aware.) Many of these myths are passed down to me, and I pass some on to others, and in this way myths and groups of myths become prominent and become known commonly as "religion," and so they are, but they only represent the final stage of the process.