How To Tell Spiritual from Religious
A significant number of Americans define themselves as "spiritual, not religious," in various studies that have been conducted in the past decade or so. But one difficulty with those surveys and studies is that they use largely subjective ways of defining the term "spiritual." Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote in a recent column about the subject and offered a couple of cogent insights. At the conclusion of the piece, he offered his own test of spirituality:
I don't find his questions all the illuminating but I would say that any of the people I know who responded positively to three or four of those questions is probably someone I'd think of as spiritual. The opposite would also be true. What do you think?
Describe how positively or negatively you react to the following:
*Spiritual advice from Oprah.
*Your child coming home from college and announcing he or she has changed religions.
*Any sentence beginning, "As Jesus, Gandhi and the Buddha would say..."
*John Lennon's "Imagine."
I don't find his questions all the illuminating but I would say that any of the people I know who responded positively to three or four of those questions is probably someone I'd think of as spiritual. The opposite would also be true. What do you think?
