In America, we think of religion as one of our freedoms. As a result, we approach our religious and spiritual lives with a can-do spirit. Meaning we can do whatever we want! For the most part, nobody cares what your religion is except maybe your parents (and for some of you, from tighter religious communities, many, many others DO care)!
Because of our freedom, we go in all directions. One direction is toward a personal spirituality without institutional connections. Those ‘nones’ I wrote about earlier do not claim any religion. They are roughly 25% of all Americans, and that percentage is growing quickly. In the circles I run in, living in Portland, Oregon, a west-coast liberal enclave, I would swear that percentage is much higher. Sometimes it seems as if nobody claims religion here!
I have mixed feelings about all these people living without a religious community. Buddhism has a teaching called the three treasures: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. To be a good Buddhist, you need all three. Even before I became a Buddhist, I loved the idea of honoring the Sangha, or religious community, as if it were a treasure. (The other two treasures, Buddha and Dharma, mean the founder of Buddhism and the body of sacred practices and knowledge built up over the centuries, respectively.)
Religious communities aren’t always great. I’ll put that out there right up front. As the neuroscientist, Lisa Feldman Barrett says about us, “the best thing for a human is another human, the worst thing for a human is another human.” A religious community can break your heart as easily as any human community, maybe more so because you come in with higher expectations. And yet, I wouldn’t do without Sangha in some form. Right now, I have two religious communities, which shows an excess of enthusiasm on my part. I belong to a Buddhist Sangha and a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
Some of you have run screaming from religious organizations that you feel have stifled or damaged you. I get it; If your heart races with fear when you think about going into a building with a religious symbol on the steeple – skip the rest of this post, or at least read it knowing I don’t mean you.
Why, then, do I encourage considering a religious community?
Part of it is just practical. There are gyms for working out, churches, synagogues, and temples for religious practice. A healthy spiritual community gives you spiritual companionship and regular education about your spiritual path.
Religious communities are filled with other people who are like-minded but also different from you. Although you might make friends in a spiritual community, your bond with fellow community members differs from friendship. They are someone to dialog with, pray with, and be supported by. A solid spiritual community will often have ways to give back to the community.
My Buddhist Sangha has opened my eyes to how much help a spiritual community is in deepening your spiritual capacity. I never had a regular meditation practice, but I am constant because I meditate regularly with my community. I love that my working motivation for meditation comes mostly from joining others in my Sangha rather than depending on my willpower. Willpower is overrated in America.
A spiritual community also connects to your life in ways other organizations do not. It has rituals and theology that support you when you marry, have a child, and someone in your life dies. When my Father died, I realized how important my church was to me and his church to him.
I never considered my Father religious, even though he was a Catholic. Once, I tried to draw him out about his death and what he thought was coming next. He told me some form of ‘they want you to believe in God so they can control you!’ I still laugh inside when I think of that conversation. Me, so earnest, and then realizing, OK, time to pull way back here! Dad doesn’t want to talk about an afterlife. Lesson: never try and be a minister to your own family!
But when his death was much closer, his Catholic priest showed up and anointed him. Did it matter that he thought God was a scam? — apparently not. The ritual went right past his intellectual beliefs around God. My Father was moved and grateful. After his death, the church had a funeral mass attended by hundreds, and a volunteer came to the house regularly to give communion to my mother.
As for me, I have been a member of a Unitarian Universalist church for 30 years. The next time I attended after my Father died, I arrived heart-stricken. I was actually speeding up as I moved from my car toward the door. I wanted the comfort of my spiritual home. Several women hugged me before I went into the service, and I found myself crying easily, almost happily. I hadn’t done much crying on my own about my Father, but here the tears flowed freely. I felt no self-consciousness.
Many of us are busy and/or lazy, and having a community guards against some of the spiritual slackness that comes with that. Just how spiritual but not religious are you? Is it just a phrase or how you move in the world? If you are OK on your own, great. We are individuals, and what works for one might not work for others. However, if you can admit to yourself that your spiritual life is a bit – undeveloped – think about finding your people.
My next posts will be about where you can find Natural Religion and spiritual community together. I will first cover the big ones: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Wiccan. I don’t have the inside scoop on Islam and Hinduism because of my background as a western minister, but I will do my best. If you have sources for these two, let me know. At least one post will be on Indigenous religion and the special considerations of those groups. Some communities function partially as spiritual communities without claiming spiritual intent: Hiking clubs, friendship groups, book clubs, and others. I will write about them. Let me know if I have left someone out. Or, if you think I should interview you!
Your posts make so much sense for to understand 'religion' better. Thank you, Katie.
I'm enjoying your posts, Katie!
Kit