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I’m a Spiritual Person, Not a Religious Person

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When I was in fourth grade, my mom decided to start taking my older sister and me to church. My dad is a firm atheist and opted out of church from the very beginning, but my mom wanted us to experience religion.

When I was younger, we had gone to a few other churches but mostly just because we knew some of the priests who were employed there. I grew up in an area that has an Episcopal Seminary, where people are educated and trained to be priests, so a lot of my neighbors were men and women who had moved their families to our town in order to attend this school.  Two of our closest family friends are from this movement; so, church and religion were concepts with which I’d been familiar for many years.  Still, we never went to church with any frequency until I was eight years old.

Christ Church in Old Town, Alexandria, is a beautiful building that was built before the American Revolution. It is steeped in history and has a lot of funding, which allows the church to take an active part in the philanthropic community. When we first arrived, we sat in the second floor pews and that’s when I saw the church choir come out. Throughout the service, this small but powerful choir led the hymns and then sang a beautiful song during communion. I was mesmerized. That very afternoon, I had my mom sign me up to be in the Christ Church choir. For the next ten years, I went to choir practice every Wednesday and Thursday night. I’m not sure my mom, my sister, and I would have continued to go to Christ Church for as long as we did if I hadn’t been involved, but my commitment meant that from ages 8 to 18, I was actively going to church every week.

Attending church every week and discussing religion in general became a regular practice. But, outside of church, I lived a fairly unreligious life. My parents didn’t discuss religion very much, and I knew that my dad didn’t believe in any of it, but they were very conscious about letting me decide for myself what role religion would play in my life. They knew it was, and is, a very personal decision to make, and I am lucky I lived in an environment where I could ask questions but wasn’t expected to believe in any one thing.

All that time spent going to church made me think a lot about higher powers and what, if anything, is out there watching over us. Each Sunday, I would hear a sermon about the religious readings and then I would talk them over with my peers in Sunday school. This increased my knowledge about religious history and practice, but, honestly, none of it really stuck. I couldn’t find, or make, a real connection with the Scripture. Even though each week different people who had found inspiration and companionship with Christ surrounded me, I couldn’t fully empathize with them or understand how they were able to make such a bond.

Despite this, there was something I really loved about going to church every week. I liked singing in the choir and I liked hearing the interpretations of the different priests on the Scripture. The routine was nice, as was the community. By the time I was 15, I was pretty well known in the Christ Church community and many of the priests I came to know took the time to give me volunteer opportunities and made themselves available if I had any questions or concerns about life in general. Because of their generosity and guidance, I decided to get confirmed in the Episcopal Church, as I believed it would help solidify my feelings towards religion in general.

Now, at the age of 22, I still can’t say if I have any solid feelings towards religion. Growing up in a religious environment made me very aware of organized religion and the politics surrounding it. But it also gave me a new way of thinking about religion and spirituality that I would not have gotten otherwise. In all my time at church, I have come to realize that I am certainly a spiritual person, but not a particularly religious one. What I mean is that I firmly believe that there is something keeping all of us balanced and that miracles and divinity are possible, but I can’t fully believe what the Scripture says happened so long ago.

Religion is so personal, and how one interprets or embodies religion is unique to each individual. I’m happy that I’ve had such a broad education in world religions and Christianity because I feel like I can make an informed decision about what role religion plays in my life. But I also feel as though I am not tied to any one belief, which allows me to grow and change with my spirituality. Religion and spirituality, like so may other things, are fluid. I may not have one particular belief now, but allowing myself to be open to spirituality and, in turn, open to new experiences, makes me feel as though I am a part of something greater than myself. And that, more than anything, gives me hope about what’s to come.

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Brainfood

A Religions Overview

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In A Religions Primer, I introduced the basic elements of religions and reasons you may or may not be interested in exploring particular faith practices. Below are some of the (still-very-general) specifics of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam—the top four world religions by population.

Photo by Sara Slattery

As I write this, my heart is trembling a little bit. My personal faith practice is a huge part of who I am, and I have close friends for whom different beliefs play just as big a role in their lives. My goal here is to give a general overview of a few world religions, hopefully in a way that helps you learn more about a certain faith. But I am a student of religions, not an expert: if I at all misrepresent a part of your faith, please leave a comment below so that I can remedy the mistake. Rather than in-depth or comprehensive descriptions, consider the following as a springboard for you to continue your own education and exploration. In the interest of space, I won’t mention the many other smaller religions and faith practices out there.

Buddhism

Basic Ideas

Buddhism is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who abandoned his wealthy life in order to seek enlightenment. He achieved enlightenment after meditating under the Bodhi tree for forty-nine days, after which he sought to share what he had learned so that others may be freed of life’s suffering. He advocated a balance called the Middle Way between self-indulgence and self-denial, and he delivered a set of teachings called the Dharma that reveal how to achieve freedom from suffering. They include the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, among others. Buddhism teaches that there is rebirth after death, but not because our individual souls keep living; rather, we continue being reborn after we die until we attain enlightenment and freedom from suffering. BuddhaNet is a good next step if you want to keep digging deeper.

Weekly Practices

Following the Buddha’s Dharma is the place to start. Meditation is an important daily practice in Buddhism; in order to free yourself from suffering, you need to be aware of your own sources of suffering. The practice of mindfulness—being aware of yourself, your actions, and your motivations—permeates daily life for many Buddhists. Community service is also highly valued.

Faith Community

The Buddha Dharma Education Association has compiled a World Buddhist Directory of Buddhist centers and organizations around the world. You can narrow your search by continent, country, state, and type of Buddhist tradition, making it fairly easy to find Buddhist communities in your area.

Christianity

Basic Ideas

The foundation of all Christian denominations is the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth: raised as a Jew under the Roman Empire, Jesus was  the prophesied son of the monotheistic creator God, sent to redeem humankind. Jesus performed miracles of healing and gave many teachings, the basis of which form the Gospel books of the Bible. Jesus of Nazareth was sentenced to crucifixion for the crimes of claiming to be divine and creating political and cultural unrest. Christianity teaches that Jesus was resurrected three days after he was entombed, visited with his disciples and followers, and then ascended into heaven. The Gospel books and books written by early Christians form the New Testament, which in combination with the Jewish Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, form the writings that inform Christian religious practices. One core belief is that humans are imperfect and need redemption to be worthy of an eternal afterlife in heaven. Jesus’s crucifixion is believed to be the sacrifice necessary to redeem humankind’s failures, so acceptance of him is seen as the way to baptism and redemption. Each Christian denomination interprets the Bible differently, and here is a chart that gives a sense of their main differences.

Weekly Practices

Most Christian practices revolve around a gathering or service on Sunday, often in a cathedral, church, or other designated meeting area. Services may include singing hymns or other songs of worship; a message delivered by the priest, pastor, or minister; and spoken or silent prayer, along with other rituals. Outside of the Sunday gathering, practices range from meeting in small groups for prayer and Biblical study to individual daily following of Christian principles.

Faith Community

Churches of many denominations are easily found throughout the United States.  If you’re not sure where to start, this directory has a fairly comprehensive list of churches by denomination, so you’ll be all set to explore.

Hinduism

Basic Ideas

Hinduism doesn’t have a particular founder, and its various forms may follow one deity, many deities, or the sacred nature within all of existence. The Vedas are a collection of scriptures that contain many of the beliefs that Hindus follow, though there are several other sacred texts as well. One core belief is that Truth is the one Reality, but this belief can be expressed in a variety of ways—Truth can be thought of as Brahman, the sacred nature that is all-inclusive, eternal, and that encompasses all existence in the universe. Gods and goddesses in Hindu traditions are considered expressions of Brahman, and a person’s soul in relation to Brahman is often described using the metaphor of a drop of water in the ocean. The dharma is what Hindus strive to achieve in their lives, and can be interpreted as morality, duty, or right conduct. (Sound familiar? Gautama Buddha was raised in a Hindu society, and his Dharma came out of his experiences with Hindu dharma.) Unlike Buddhism, Hinduism holds that our individual souls are immortal and are reincarnated into new bodies after we die. Karma, your actions in this life and all of your past lives, determine what kind of body your soul will inhabit in your next life. The ultimate goal is moksha: liberation of the soul from the cycle of life and death by realizing its true nature and uniting with Brahman.

Weekly Practices

Many Hindu practices include daily or weekly rituals centered around shrines with sculptures and images of deities in their own homes—these follow bhaktimarga, or the path of devotion. Other practices called jnanamarga, or the path of philosophy, don’t involve deities at all and instead focus on Brahman through meditation. A third branch of practices—karmamarga, the path of works and action—is based on fulfilling the social and moral roles specific to one’s lot in life. All three paths are equally valid. For more specific rituals and practices such as Ayurveda, different types of yoga, and the daily puja, here is a list to get you started.

Faith Community

Temples, ashrams (religious centers or monasteries), shakhas (Hindu theological schools), and Hindu cultural centers are good places to get plugged into communities of practicing Hindus. This comprehensive directory lists such places located in the United States.

Islam

Basic Ideas

Somewhat similar to Christianity, Islam is founded upon the belief that there is one all-knowing God (Allah) and one man (Muhammad) who was chosen to communicate divine truths to humankind. The central creed of Islam is called the Shahada: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God.” Unlike Jesus, Muhammad was not divine; rather, he was the last in a line of great prophets who received messages from God to give to humanity. The Qur’an is the central scripture of Islam and contains the teachings given to Muhammad from God through the angel Gabriel. The teachings show how to live life in a way that pleases God, so that after death one’s soul will be judged worthy of spending eternity in Jannah (paradise) rather than in Jahannam (the abyss).

Weekly Practices

The Five Pillars of Islam are considered the essential practices of the faith. They include the Shahada, or confession of faith; the Salat, or ritual prayer performed five times a day; the Zakat, or alms tax; the Sawm, a period of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan; and the Hajj, a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. (Exceptions to the Sawm and the Hajj are made for Muslims who are physically or financially unable to fulfill these duties.) Certain sects of Islam have other practices in addition to the Five Pillars.

Faith Community

Muslim places of worship are called mosques, but many Muslims also gather at community centers and Islamic schools. Here is a directory of mosques and Islamic schools in the United States.

Still interested? Or want to learn about a religion I didn’t cover? There are a lot of great resources out on the web. ReligionFacts.com and Pluralism.org are good introductions to a wide range of religions practiced worldwide and in the United States. Pluralism.org also includes a great directory of religious centers, organizations, and places of worship in the United States.

Brainfood

A Religions Primer

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I’m not sure that there is any other part of human existence that is so often disputed as religion. Alongside politics and money, most won’t touch it with a ten-foot-pole in polite company, yet belief systems have formed and continue to form the foundation of life for many societies and individuals. “Religion” can be many things to many people: a set of guidelines for how to live a good life, a part of their culture, a guide to connecting with the divine, a source of oppression and violence, or simply nothing at all. My goal here is not to give the end-all-be-all breakdown of world religions and how to choose one—you can do that here, or here, or with this (taken with a grain of salt, of course)—but to look at the tip of the iceberg and share some ideas that might be helpful if you are interested in exploring a particular faith or faiths.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Let’s take a moment or two to consider why humans have gravitated towards religion throughout our existence and what basic characteristics distinguish religions from each other. A little “Religions 101,” if you will.

There are several main camps into which people fall when you look at their perspectives of religion: materialistic, functional, and belief-based.

  • A materialistic perspective proposes that humans have imagined that the supernatural exists, when in fact the material world is all that is real. (Marx and Freud fell into this camp: Marx felt that religion provided a false security to people and was used to oppress them; Freud thought that religion was no more than a “universal obsessional neurosis.”)
  • A functional perspective proposes that, regardless of whether or not the supernatural exists, religion is useful for both societies and individuals to create harmony and health, to further the human species, and/or to create a sense of purpose and security.
  • A belief-based perspective proposes that there is a larger-than-life supernatural reality, and religions are humanity’s responses to that reality. (Many names have been given to encounters with that reality, like enlightenment, realization, illumination, kensho, awakening, self-knowledge, gnosis, ecstatic communion, and “coming home.”)

If you feel that you have a functional or belief-based perspective about the supernatural or divine reality, exploring the kinds of religions that might suit you could be the next step. However, it’s helpful to be aware of how your perspective influences your interest in religion. If you have a functional perspective, then the lifestyle, daily practices, or community aspects of a religion may be the most important to you. If you have a belief-based perspective, then the ideas and beliefs of a religion may be more important, though those often will still include the lifestyle, practices, and community elements.

Once you know why you want to explore religions, it can help to think about the different kinds of religions that are out there, in case certain types resonate with you more than others.

Some religions (like Christianity or Judaism) distinguish between the profane existence of our everyday world and the sacred existence of the spiritual world. Some religions (such as Taoism) say that the profane and the sacred co-exist or aren’t different realities at all. Certain religions (like Buddhism) teach that the sacred is immanent or present in our lives, whereas others (such as Hinduism) teach that the sacred is mostly transcendent, existing in another sort of reality that can be accessed through prayer or ritual.

Then there are the concepts of a sacred being or entity. Depending on the religion, there may be a personal being: a Mother, Father, Teacher, Friend, or the Beloved; or, there may be a specific being with a name and a life-story. These beings often serve to personalize some or all aspects of the divine in a way that allows practitioners to connect with it. These deities may also serve as examples for how humans should live. And, sometimes, the divine is characterized as something other than a person—as elements of non-human nature, as all of existence, or as a pervasive force or love that exists in the world supernaturally.

Religions are often categorized by the number of sacred beings or entities they believe in—monotheistic religions have one, polytheistic religions have many, monistic religions hold that there is a divine nature underlying everything, and nontheistic religions don’t attribute the divine to any particular being or entity.

Whether you are atheist (believing that there is no deity), you are agnostic (not sure whether the divine exists), you believe in something but want to give it more structure, or you were raised in one religion and don’t feel like it is spiritually fulfilling anymore, understanding why you are interested and what basic types of religions are out there is a good start! If you find that you want to learn more about particular religions, you can check out resources like BBC’s religions guide website; though beware of the plethora of biased and inaccurate information about religions that exists online. To play it safe, you can find many basic comparative religion books, like John Bowker’s World Religions or Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions.

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St. Patrick’s Day: Where you come from?

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St. Patrick’s Day—just another excuse for decent folk to get shitfaced and deface the world with obscene amounts of green. But that saint part isn’t in the title for show: Saint Patrick was a real dude who roamed around Ireland in the 5th century spreading Christianity to the pagan Druids. So how did a chaste saint influence a now not-so-chaste day of celebration? Join me for a little historical adventure.

Saint Patrick was like most saints: pious and devout. Born Maewyn Succat in Roman Britain, he was captured by Irish bandits at the age of 16, and sold to a druid in Ireland. For the next six years, he lived as a slave before a mysterious voice told him to escape. It said, “Very soon you will return to your native country. Look, your ship is ready.” Patrick diligently followed this voice, walking a measly 200 miles across the Irish countryside to catch a (pirate) ship back to Britain.

He then headed over to France for formal priesthood training and eventually left as a bishop, with instructions from the Pope to return to Ireland and convert the Irish peoples to Christianity. He spent the rest of his life wandering Ireland, converting everyone he could, and while it’s not clear what year he died—460 or 493 A.D.—historians all agree on the day he died… March 17th.

Fun Fact: He was also the first person ever to publicly condemn slavery.

How did we get from saintly Patrick to intoxicated Shamrock Day?

It wasn’t until 1000 years after his death that Luke Wadding (just some scholar) would champion the church to put an official feast day on the liturgical calendar. Even then, March 17th continued to be a minor holiday in Ireland until the 1970s.

Blame America for really revving up the green themed party (some even argue that St. Patrick’s Day was actually invented by Irish-Americans). Back when there were only 13 colonies, the first St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in New York City as a nod to Irish soldiers serving in the English military and, by 1848, it had grown to be the largest parade in the world. In America, St. Patty’s Day started and continues to be not just about the religious aspect of Saint Patrick, but a celebration of Irish heritage. How does this translate into green beer, green rivers and this?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Ireland has since come around, making it a public holiday (1903), making a law that forced bars and pubs to close for the day (1905), repealing said law (1970s), and finally creating their own St. Patrick’s Day Festival (1996) that sprawls for five days.

But why all the green?

The symbolism of the green comes from an anecdote about good ol’ Saint Pat. It is said that he taught the concept of the holy Trinity with a three leafed shamrock. The green of the shamrock then became associated with Irish Catholics. Since Ireland’s population is predominantly Catholic, this spread throughout the world, inexorably linking Ireland with green. It also helps that Ireland is literally green themed (cough: rich green landscape), hence its nickname the “Emerald Isle.”

Fun Fact: St. Patrick’s Day was originally associated with the color blue (St. Patrick’s blue), the connection being Ireland’s coat of arms which are blue and gold.

Extra Credit: The green in Ireland’s flag symbolizes Catholics while the orange is associated with Protestants (William the Orange), and so when the flag was adopted in 1919 it was meant as a sign of peace between the two factions.

Wait, St. Patrick’s Day is not always on March 17th?

Mostly, but no. When St. Patrick’s Day falls during Holy Week (the final week of Lent) it gets booted to a later date because solemnities are more important than feasts. Most recently it was moved in both 1940 and 2008 for this reason, but don’t worry: it’ll stay on the 17th for another 150 years (until 2160). And this only really counts if you’re celebrating the religious aspect of the holiday rather than the cultural one.

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Photo by Meaghan Morrison