GOOP Soup
You Need Theology: Part 3
I'm sharing parts of my Masters of Divinity thesis here in my effort to Robin Hood gems about spirituality out of seminary and to other "Spiritual But Not Religious" folks in nonprofitland.
This is Part 3, exploring what it means to engage in multiple religions and how to do it in less tacky ways. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
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Over the past 4 years at (wait for it...) seminary, I studied the beliefs and practices of multiple religions.
I also studied the specific practice of engaging, learning, and worshipping across multiple religions, which is known as interreligious engagement, or "IE" for short. The fusion cuisine of theology!
You know that switchy lens thing at the eye doctor? You look through it and compare the crispness of your vision through dozens of different strength prescriptions? Apparently it's called a phoropter. IE has been a bit like that.
The process of asking questions starting with zero understanding, building a mental model for an unfamiliar theology, participating in unfamiliar rituals, and the flood of ideas and comparisons and reflections and questions that unleashes has revealed more about my own concept of the sacred than anything else.
It has also stretched -- like sideways, upside-down ways -- my understanding of "justice" because each religion's concept of justice and ethics flows from it's particular and unique worldview.
As a "spiritual but not religious" person, I found that studying multiple existing religions deeply enriched my spiritual life, and it didn't require converting to any of them.
And not for nothing -- IE has also transformed my ability to connect with more people, more deeply.?
I also realized that by virtue of being a SBNR (spiritual but not religious) floater-person, I am basically always doing IE. And we know SBNRs can be very, very tacky. So we should try to do it well.
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I want to spend some time sharing what I've learned in class about approaching IE ethically.
The first rule of thumb is to “locate” ourselves. Where is your religious location?
I grew up in an extended family of Catholics on both sides, attending a white Episcopalian church in my Boston suburb sporadically. My sister, Mom and I attended church without any particular level of devoutness or piousness (am I wrong?). We celebrated Christmas and Easter with family and went to some of our cousins’ first communions. I do have a very specific memory of my mom writing J-E-S-U-S in marker on my little elementary school hand so I wouldn't mess up a choir performance where we spelled his name.
I don’t currently belong to a congregation, denomination or religion even. I have ties to a few religions through my upbringing, spiritual practices, and studies, but I don’t feel compelled (or called) to ensconce myself in any one of them.
If you are, like me, a spiritual but not religious (SBNR) person, you know that we don't have a pithy or straightforward "religious location."
So what is my "religious location"? None?
Some might say, somewhat pejoratively towards SBNRs:
Christian-lite? Capitalist-Christian? Shopper in the marketplace of spiritual beliefs?
Swimming in the GOOP soup, where spiritual practices are flattened into trendy, overpriced retail objects?
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I live in the United States, an overwhelmingly Christian country with a legacy of legal and cultural Christian supremacy and a malevolent current of white Christian nationalism.
So even though I don't identify as a Christian in my belief system or religious affiliation currently, I know that I benefit in many ways from having a Christian identity and Christian social conditioning. School and work holiday calendars, for example, reliably have Christmas off.
I’m also aware that the two other religious traditions that I’ve engaged with most deeply, Judaism and Buddhism, both have more social status and acceptance in the United States than some of the other religious traditions I studied in grad school, including Islam and Santeria.
I try to be conscious of my religious location as I engage with other religious traditions, because if I don't, I can't attempt to interrupt toxic power dynamics of religious bigotry.
It's important for us -- especially those of us who grew up with Christian and/or white privilege in America -- to spend time developing the skills of understanding religious power dynamics, and interrupting structural injustices as we practice spirituality and engage with practices from multiple different religious traditions.
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The second skill we can develop to engage in IE ethically as SBNRs is to recognize religious appropriation.
Religious ethicist Liz Bucar warns SBNRs that our location outside of any religion makes us especially liable to appropriate.
She points out the rich irony of how SBNRs “criticize the very idea of ‘organized religion,’...[and] belittle deeply held religious beliefs, while trying on religious practices for personal political, pedagogic, or therapeutic reasons.” Appropriation does run amok among SBNR people as we reach and grasp for wisdom. ? ?
According to Bucar, behavior crosses the line from religious borrowing into harmful religious appropriation when any of the following three things happen:
She notes that in instances where people with power or privilege could engage in religious borrowing to the detriment of others, we must just say no.
These three indicators of exploitation can help us examine the urge we might feel (some of us more than others) to ornament ourselves with religious practices from other traditions.
Bucar is clear: religious borrowing can be positive when folks engage across lines of differences with a genuine openness to learning and encountering new values and ways of life. When we engage with an openness and humility, we might genuinely be transformed.
She encourages SBNRs to borrow by engaging more deeply: by taking the time to learn about and respect the entire theological thought world and the ethics of the religion that holds that tradition. This is the type of theological thinking that I want to invite more SBNRs into.?
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A third way to practice ethical IE is by distinguishing genuine religious pluralism from its disingenuous cousins: exclusiveness, inclusiveness and sameness pluralism.
Comparative religion scholar Kate McCarthy has parsed these four distinct attitudes about religious diversity through her historical and sociological research of Christians in the United States.
Exclusivism, the first approach, means acknowledging the existence of different religions while believing that others are erroneous and inferior. Shockingly, this approach is often derogatory and demeaning.
Inclusiveness pluralism assumes that every religion is a path up the same holy mountain (cough, Christianity).
This approach is more tolerant on its face...but IE conducted in this style often condescends to other religions by suggesting that they are incomplete or sweetly misguided interpretations of the speaker's own religion (cough cough, Christianity).
Further, who can assert that they have an objective aerial view of all religious pathways? AllTrails for Mt. Holy?
McCarthy also describes a third phenomenon: sameness pluralism. This approach to IE reduces all religions to some of their shared themes – for example, the “golden rule” – but it can mask condescension, like inclusiveness, and sand-paper over critical, rich and meaningful differences between religious systems.
Within inclusiveness or sameness pluralism modes of IE in the US, Christianity often maintains a central, dominant position because people premise sameness on what they’re most familiar with. Most SBNRs in the US grew up Christianity, so we have to be mindful of this trap. We can cause harm through clumsy or thoughtless IE.
We might also miss out on the richness and constructive challenges that live in the contours between different theological worlds, rituals, and ethical systems.
An entire reservoir of possibilities dries up when we only focus on what we view as points of sameness.
Genuine religious pluralism, and ethical IE, acknowledges and engages different “systems of the ultimate” with the belief that they may all be valid.
Pluralists believe that there's knowledge about the sacred and the human experience that can only be learned through engaging with other religious belief systems.?
Ethical IE must truly allow for religions to be different, and we have to build our ability to be with the differences rather than jumping towards the comfort of sameness.
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This Audre Lorde passage from The Master's Tools is fitting here:
"Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic."
IE is an entire field of study within academia. Jerusha Rhodes, a professor I studied with at Union, teaches that ethical IE is a commitment, a posture and a process more than a formula or an arrival point. It is dynamic and we can only figure it out if we're doing it right through relationships and conversations.
Nobody is going to "solve" what ethical IE looks like. But as SBNRs who locate ourselves outside of and in-between different religions, we have an obligation to pursue IE ethically – otherwise, we’re contributing to SBNR GOOP soup.
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While you’re catching your breath from these terms, I want to share a phrase with you that I learned from my professor, the feminist theologian Chung Hyun Kyung. She told us in class: “The text is your life.”
Religious people and theologians study sacred texts, like sutras and the Bible and the Qur'an and the Torah. Chung encouraged us to consider our lives as a type of sacred text, as well.
Our own experiences, crises, ethics and values matter and are worthy of contemplation and discussion.
As SBNRs, we often feel alienated by religion and confused about our own theological and spiritual lives. We’re not located within one tradition and we generally don’t have straightforward access to support for our spiritual growth like a religious community, regular worship, text study, or a faith leader to minister to us.
As we lean into exploring theology and undertaking IE as a way to grow spiritually, let’s recognize that all of our life experiences have worthy theological and spiritual meaning even when we are “all over the place with God," as my dear classmate Nastia Khlopina once said.
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Some questions for you:
What are the different religious traditions you engage with?
Are you spiritual but not religious?
Do you see different religions and spiritualities in your work or in your activism?
Does work feel spiritual to you?
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What is this doing on LinkedIn?
Ah, yes, I love answering this question. Why talk about spirituality and theology here?
I ended up studying religion after doing organizing, advocacy and nonprofit work in a materialist frame.
My own "faith" didn't feel up to the reality of profound inequality and injustice and the profound limitations of electoral politics. The existing leadership development offerings for nonprofit, advocacy and organizing leaders didn't feel sturdy or deep enough for existential questions. So I wandered into an inter-religious seminary.
Now I thread theological reflection, questions about faith, and spiritual practice into the coaching support I provide social justice leaders. Check out Soul Work Coaching and send me a message if you want to learn more.