Spiritual But Not Religious
Encyclopedia
Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) is a popular phrase and acronym used to self-identify a life stance
Life stance
A person's life stance, or lifestance, is their relation with what they accept as being of ultimate importance, the presuppositions and theory of this, and the commitments and practice of working it out in living....

 of spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

 that rejects traditional organized religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

 as the sole or most valuable means of furthering spiritual growth. The term is used world-wide, but seems most prominent in the United States where one study reports that as many as 33% of people identify as spiritual but not religious. Other surveys report lower percentages ranging from 24%-10%

Those that identify as SBNR vary in their individual spiritual philosophies
Spiritual philosophy
Spiritual philosophy is a generic term for any philosophy or teaching that pertains to spirituality and spiritual realities. It may incorporate religious or esoteric themes, especially those from Theosophy or Neo-Theosophy, New Age thought, mysticism, and Eastern philosophy...

 and practices and theological references. While most SBNR people reference some higher power
Higher Power
Higher Power is a term coined in the 1930s in Alcoholics Anonymous and is used in other twelve-step programs. It is also sometimes referred to as a power greater than ourselves and is frequently abbreviated to HP.-History:...

or transcendent
Transcendence (religion)
In religion transcendence refers to the aspect of God's nature which is wholly independent of the physical universe. This is contrasted with immanence where God is fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways...

 nature of reality, it is common for SBNR people to differ in their ideas of the existence of God
Existence of God
Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others. In philosophical terms, arguments for and against the existence of God involve primarily the sub-disciplines of epistemology and ontology , but also of the theory of value, since...

 as defined by the Abrahamic religions
Abrahamic religions
Abrahamic religions are the monotheistic faiths emphasizing and tracing their common origin to Abraham or recognizing a spiritual tradition identified with him...

.

SBNR is commonly used to describe the demographic also known as unchurched
Unchurched
"Unchurched" means, in the broad sense, people who are not connected with a church. In research on religious participation, it refers more specifically to people who do not attend worship services...

, none of the above, spiritual atheists, more spiritual than religious, spiritually eclectic, unaffiliated, freethinkers
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...

, or spiritual seekers. Younger people are more likely to identify as SBNR than older people. In April 2010, the front page of USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...

 claimed that 72% percent of Generation Y
Generation Y
Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation , Generation Next, Net Generation, or Echo Boomers, describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when the Millennial generation starts and ends, and commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere...

 agree they are "more spiritual than religious".

The term has been called cliché by popular religious writers such as Robert Wright
Robert Wright (journalist)
Robert Wright is an American journalist, scholar, and prize-winning author of best-selling books about science, evolutionary psychology, history, religion, and game theory, including The Evolution of God, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, The Moral Animal, and Three Scientists and Their Gods:...

, but is gaining in popularity. It has even spawned a Facebook page where members discuss the attributes of the SBNR lifestyle.

The SBNR lifestyle is most studied in the population of The United States of America. Books such as Robert C. Fuller's Spiritual but not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America (ISBN 0-19-514680-8) and Sven E. Erlandson's Spiritual But Not Religious: A Call To Religious Revolution In America (ISBN 0-595-01108) highlight the emerging usage of the term.

Comparison of religiosity and spirituality

Historically, the words religious and spiritual have been used synonymously to describe all the various aspects of the concept of religion. Gradually, the word spiritual came to be associated with the private realm of thought and experience while the word religious came to be connected with the public realm of membership in a religious institution with official denominational doctrines. Zinnbauer and Pargament (2005) write that in the early 1900s psychology scholars such as William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...

, Edwin Starbuck, G. Stanely Hall, and George Coe investigated religiosity and spirituality through a lens of social science.

In the field of psychology, spirituality has emerged as a distinct social construct
Social constructionism
Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...

 and focus of research since the 1980s. With the emergence of spirituality as a distinct concept from religion in both academic circles and common language, a tension has arisen between the two constructs. One possible differentiation among the three constructs religion, religiosity, and spirituality, is to view religion as primarily a social phenomenon while understanding spirituality on an individual level. Religiosity is generally viewed as being rooted in religion, whereas this is not necessarily the case for spirituality. A study of the differences between those self-identified as spiritual and those self-identified as religious found that the former have a loving, forgiving, and nonjudgmental view of the numinous, while those identifying themselves as religious see their god as more judgmental.

The practice of spirituality without religiosity has been criticized by representatives of organized religion. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, has called the SBNR lifestyle "plain old laziness", stating that "[s]pirituality without religion can become a self-centered complacency divorced from the wisdom of a community". Jennifer Walters, dean of religious life at Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...

, points to the community aspect of religion and teachings of forgiveness.

Lillian Daniel writes:
Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.

Spiritual vs. religious identity

Wade Clark Roof writing in Baby Boomers and the remaking of American Religion (ISBN 0-691-10659-3) creates a four quadrant view of the two concepts spiritual and religious.
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