‘What Does It Mean to Be Religious?’ - Rev Adam Slate
/‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese,
high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Introduction: A ‘Non-Religious Church’
One of the first things that catches people’s attention about New Unity is how we once characterised ourselves as a ‘non-religious church.’ It is something we tried for a while before the pandemic, and at some point moved away from in favour of the tagline #BelieveInGood.
But the term ‘non-religious church’ has had some interesting staying power. I still occasionally stumble across it in remote corners of our website or on other websites describing us, and most notably it is still on the big vertical banners in front of the building.
I actually find the phrase kind of brilliant. Short and punchy. Unique. It helps reconcile different views that people bring. If you want to try us out but have not had good experiences with religious communities, we give you cover by claiming to be ‘non-religious.’ If the word ‘church’ is challenging, adding ‘non-religious’ softens it. If your faith makes you uncomfortable with the term ‘non-religious,’ adding ‘church’ balances it a bit. At worst, it is only partly uncomfortable no matter what you bring with you, and that’s often good enough.
Because we have officially stopped using the phrase, and because I think what we do here is religious work, I thought about coming up with something different to cover up that part of our banners out front, but when I sat down with our General Manager to brainstorm, we could not come up with something as succinct, engaging and thought-provoking in such a brief phrase.
So I started to make friends with it. I thought, maybe the way to go is to embrace its ability to get people through the door, and then once we are all inside we can talk about faith, and theology, and religion, and human purpose. I wondered if it might even be a powerful statement about our willingness to be inclusive, to be okay not having everything our way, if we had a tagline about religion that our minister did not even agree with!
But what really struck me was that, in the years that we have embraced the phrase ‘non-religious church’ and then moved away from it, I have heard little, if any, conversation about what it means to be religious or non-religious.
I wonder if we have been so eager to lean into the tagline that we have kept that conversation at arms-length, the way we might enjoy a favourite dessert and intentionally avoid reading the ingredients to avoid learning what mysteries make it so delicious.
But today, I am hoping we can flip the packaging over and dig into the ingredient list a bit to figure out what is and is not on it.
Our Western Frame of Reference
The first thing I want to put out there, right up front, because it is so central to how we think about religion, is that most of us are informed by a Western, Eurocentric perspective. And what is the most powerful and most influential organisation that has ever existed in the Western world? The Christian church.
Regardless of our individual religious background, regardless of our congregation having a large percentage of agnostics, humanists, and atheists—likely more than half of us—we are influenced by a Christian religious framework in countless ways. Some are quite obvious: We gather in a traditional Presbyterian-style meeting house: simple design, little ornamentation, pews. We worship on Sunday at 11am. Our service usually centres on a sermon, a product of the Protestant Reformation. So in spite of not being Christian in our theology, we reflect it in many of our forms and practices. That is probably worth exploring as part of our work to be more inclusive and more welcoming to more people, but I will leave that for another day. I bring it up here because our Eurocentric, Christian-centric perspective does not just influence how we look, it influences how we think, including what we think it means to be religious or non-religious.
But as a congregation, we are neither Christian nor non-Christian. We are composed and informed by the individual practices, beliefs, and values of each congregant here. So in thinking about ourselves as a religious or non-religious group, we have to make room for that diversity. We have to undo those misconceptions about what ‘being religious’ means that come from a very specific religious perspective.
The Misconception of Belief
The first and maybe biggest misconception is that religion is defined by our beliefs. That we believe in a God, gods, a messiah, or a specific story about creation or human purpose; that we have embraced a specific doctrine about these things. Many of us do hold specific beliefs about the universe and how it works. And there certainly are creed-centred religions, such as many Christian denominations, but what we believe is not a necessary component of our religion.
There are also religions that are not creed-based, or that prioritise practices over creed. In Japan, most people do not ascribe to the kinds of beliefs that we might consider religious; they may not actively identify with a specific religion. Yet Shintoism and Buddhism thrive there. Per capita there are more Shinto and Buddhist shrines and temples in Japan than there are churches in Italy or Spain, than there are mosques in Iran or Turkey, than synagogues in Israel. Many Japanese families have both Buddhist and Shinto altars in their homes—‘a Buddhist altar to honour deceased relatives and a Shinto altar… to bring blessings.’[1]
Looking at faith in Japan, we see an entirely different spiritual architecture, where the scaffolding of religion is built not on creed but on practice.
The Misconception of Eternal Truths
Another misconception that has made its way to us through the Abrahamic religions is that the truths that we embrace or rituals we observe are eternal, and apply in all places. That we are all united by a common purpose, such as salvation, enlightenment, or the return of a messiah; that at all times we can have a sense of where we are heading and how we are doing getting there. And supporting the idea that such faith beliefs, rules, and practices are universal, some religions have codified them into scripture to be handed down through the ages.
But again, this is not a necessary aspect of religious faith. Native American and other indigenous religious practices are often contextual to a specific place; gods, traditions, and religious stories may be connected to a nearby mountain or body of water. Similarly, newer religious traditions like the Baháʼí Faith, neo-Paganism and various strains of New Age spirituality have emerged to bring harmony and healing to a struggling modern world. The Baháʼí attention to racism and sexism, and its democratic governance structures, reflect a contemporary orientation. Modern Paganism strives to reconnect us to the natural world as a counterbalance to today’s technological world.
So not every religion is as focused on eternal concepts for all times and places. Spiritual traditions can be rooted in what we need right now, where and when we are.
The Misconception of Sacred Rites
One more misconception about what is required to be religious is that there has to be some sacred element distinct from our everyday life; that there needs to be some separation between the Holy and the commonplace. We see this embodied by the High church tradition— ornate cathedrals, formal vestments, elaborate rituals—some of which can be quite lovely and awe-inspiring.
Some religious practices, though, seek to connect or harmonise religious observances with everyday life. The Pagan wheel of the year ceremonies such as solstice rituals are intentionally integrated with an annual cycle, marking and honoring the changing seasons and the deities that make it possible.
Christian communion ceremonies can be quite formal and ritualistic, but the impetus for Holy communion—Jesus saying a blessing over bread before a meal—was and still is a fairly informal act in the Jewish tradition. My grandfather said the same blessing over bread before every meal; communities say it together after Shabbat services, passing around a loaf of bread and tearing off pieces to eat after giving thanks. There is no requirement that religious acts have to be set off from everyday life in any special way.
That is why, in our Sunday gatherings, one of our beloved rituals is Joys & Sorrows; taking turns telling each other what is joyful or sad in our lives. The fact that we are talking about our jobs, our families and friends, or our hobbies does not make the practice any less sacred, any less religious. Maybe it makes it more so.
‘Wild Geese’
I picked for today’s reading—for today’s ‘scripture’—Mary Oliver’s poem ‘Wild Geese,’ which is probably familiar to many of you. I chose it because her work sidesteps Western assumptions about what defines religion. It resonates with many of us because of its emphasis on the inherent spirituality and sacredness of the natural world.
Her poems are religious without being dogmatic. In ‘Wild Geese,’ she invites us to live our lives without undue focus on rules about being good, instead finding our way by letting ‘the soft animal of our body love what it loves.’ She says that we ‘do not have to walk on [our] knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.’ These are not just beautiful images, they are theological statements. In other works, she talks about the nature of prayer, of loss, salvation, and being mortal.
She embraces a distinctly Humanist perspective emphasising our connection to and harmony with the universe in the here-and-now. In the world she paints, life calls to us ‘like the wild geese… over and over announcing [our] place in the family of things.’
And Oliver does not distinguish between the sacred and the secular. There is a Holy transcendence in her images of ‘the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain… moving across the landscape, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.’ In the wild geese making their annual journey home. These images remind us of the awe-inspiring wonder of what we find in every corner of our miraculous planet.
A ‘Religious Church’
These mostly Western, mostly Christian assumptions about religion that we have been talking about this morning, and that Mary Oliver’s work encourages us to let go of—about beliefs and creeds, about how religion entails universal truths or a universal purpose, that Holy places and things should be distinct from the everyday—if we think of ourselves as non-religious because we do not have these things, we are still defining our religiousness based on a Eurocentric, Christian definition.
I want to say that again: If we think of ourselves as non-religious because we do not have these things, we are still defining our religiousness based on a Eurocentric, Christian definition.
Anthropologist Christopher Kavanagh has said that ‘for the concept of religion to remain useful … it must be shorn of its Abrahamic assumptions and understood to refer to a range of concepts and traditions that not only cluster around … beliefs, but also practices, like rituals and festivals.’[2] If we are truly striving to be a post-Christian movement, one that is welcoming of all faith traditions, would we not be better served recasting our sense of what it means to be religious, rather than erasing ourselves from the religious landscape altogether?
We have much in common with other faiths that speaks to our religious nature. Our search for enlightened understanding that we share with our neighbour Buddhist communities. The desire not to force a God-concept on anyone that we share with our neighbour atheist communities. With our Christian neighbours, coming together on Sunday to think about life’s deepest questions. With our Jewish neighbours, our focus on a shared culture and heritage that transcends any one belief. And with our Muslim neighbors, fundamental faith elements like charity, worship, and prayerful reflection.
Conclusion
I love all the things that make New Unity religious: our Sunday gatherings and shared rituals; our attention to the moral choices necessary for human thriving; and that our theology is particular to this time and place—that we know it to be ‘true’ because it works for us.
And… I am also grateful for each of you who may have ended up at New Unity because you were drawn to this place by the phrase ‘non-religious church.’ I am glad you are part of this community, whatever brought you here.
I value that we are all wrestling similar questions, regardless of our background or assumptions about faith. We all want to be moral souls. We are all humbled by mysteries for which we may never have answers.
Thinking about our practices and our spiritual seeking, what more do we need to consider ourselves religious?
We are each welcome to bring our own definitions. There are hundreds of words for describing the Divine… all of them meaningful, none of them complete. Whatever you call what we do here, I hope it captures the full meaning of our purpose. And may your encounters with the Holy provide you with insight, wisdom, comfort, and transcendent peace.
May it be so.
Notes:
[1] https://aeon.co/essays/can-religion-be-based-on-ritual-practice-without-belief
[2] https://aeon.co/essays/can-religion-be-based-on-ritual-practice-without-belief
