It seems to me that a church cannot be both spiritual and
non-religious. Religion is merely a community of people that agree to worship
together and agree on their spiritual tenets. The implication of spiritual but
not religious would be that one believes in the supernatural, but there is no
centralizing of those beliefs. So how could a church, which is a place of
worship for people that share a centralized belief, be spiritual, but not
religious? The two ideas are obviously in opposition. A church cannot be both
spiritual and non-religious.
A church can be spiritual and religious, which I’d really
hope is going on in a church, but the moment you get a group of people together
believing the same thing, it becomes a religion. Just because that religion may
not have a name yet doesn't mean it isn't religious. It is merely a means of
identifying similar belief structures, akin to identifying as American, or Canadian,
or Mexican-American. Labels are not the evil things we seem to think they are.
Our brains need to label things in order to be able to identify them. If you didn't label anything, it would be difficult to communicate the idea of
something without that label.
And just because people have done bad things in the name of
their religion doesn't mean religion is evil. Religion helps us to identify,
vocalize, and live out our spiritual beliefs. It helps us to find community,
fellowship, and acceptance. It is why cliques form, like-minded people enjoy
being together. It is much easier to communicate with and understand someone
that believes like you.
