The Decline from "Religious" to "Spiritual"

More Spiritual, But Not in Church from Inside Higher Ed reports, not surprisingly, that

while attendance at religious services sharply declines during college, students do in fact significantly progress along their spiritual quests throughout their first three years.

. . . researchers find that religious beliefs change only slightly during college, while religious observance drops dramatically. The proportion of students who believe in God dipped slightly from 77.1 percent freshman year to 74.2 percent junior year, while there were slight increases on other indicators of belief (see chart below). 38.6 percent of students report that they attend religious services less frequently than they did in high school, while just 7 percent say they attend more often as college students. The rate of non-attendance increased from 20.2 to 37.5 percent.

I post this because some of you may find the charts comparing freshmen with juniors of interest or use and also because I was so amused by the study's definition of "spiritual":

“The real change is relative to spiritual qualities – the growth in self-understanding, caring about others, becoming more of a global citizen and accepting others of different faiths,” said Helen Astin, an emeritus professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and co-principal investigator for the study.

Now, admittedly, "spiritual" and "spirituality" are words with meanings as wide as the Pacific (and often as deep as the puddle in the street out front), but the words should have some relation to some actual spirit, something from a world not our own, something supernatural, something that or someone who tells us things we do not know, judges us for our failures, and gives us ideals to strive for if not help in reaching them.

It's not a useful word if it doesn't refer to a real spirit. It's not a useful word if it means, as it does in the study, a general inclination or shape of mind or emotional pattern or set of attitudes or collection of values. There is no reason to call any of these spiritual.

Unless, of course, you like that little sense of importance and that comforting sense of social approval that our society still gives to "spiritual things," and if you are unwilling to admit that you live in a world divorced from any transcendent meaning, justification, and support. If, in other words, you want to live as if the world were secure because the creator still loves it, without actually believing that He does.

The effect of misapplying "spiritual" is to disguise what is actually happening to these young people. The terms "religion" and "spiritual" treat the changes in the students' lives as movements along a spectrum, one in which both poles are forms of the same thing, so that a move from one to another is not really a radical change. But what the study describes is a movement from some form of real religious belief — a real relation to a spirit — to a dressed up form of materialism. That is a radical change.

I am not suggesting that the researchers intentionally hid the nature of the change they observed, perhaps to avoid alarming religious parents still sending their children to secular institutions. I suspect they are as clueless as to the meaning of the words they use as everyone else, and like to dress up their favored attitudes by calling them "spiritual." It's a warm and fuzzy word. It's a cute cuddly bunny word.

Dr. Astin says, by the way, “I see it as very good news, to see that our students change in this way.”

Comments

[Little Gidding]

There are very few young people among those unincarcerated and free of serious illness--whether they are in college or not--who would not develop in this vague way simply by being around on this earth for four years. It's not news that you don't need organized religion to develop in this way. But, if that's all that religion is "good for" anyway, as the authors of the study apparently believe, then (here's the real lede for the headline writer) the whole religion thing has no value added and may even constitute an undesirable hidden expense for the "values consumer," q.e.d. (So please send your children to our college and not to church).

This so-called "study" reminds me of the one reported yesterday that "divorced parents do just as well at parenting as married parents," which, in fact, merely "discovered" that many divorced parents try just as hard (or even harder) than they did when they were married to fulfill their individual parenting "duties," ignoring the question of whether the children benefit as much from serial parenting as they do from having both parents continuously present, and ignoring also the question of whether the children of divorced parents might be additionally handicapped by lacking a model of a functioning family--surely maintaining the marriage itself is one of the parents' "duties"?

[W.E.D. Godbold]

I know this may sound harsh, but when people use the word "spiritual" in my hearing it makes me want to vomit. It's become an almost useless term of self-approbation. What "spirit" is at work here, pray tell? (Maybe the spirit of wrath in me :-)

[Joe Long]

"I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual" is just a college pick-up line. And by all accounts a pretty effective one. It means "you can trust me to be a moral person and not betray you, but not to hold YOU to any moral standards," and it is, of course, a lie.

[Bill R]

So "spiritual" = "politically and socially liberal"? Hmmm...how convenient!

[Judy Warner]

A woman I know once said to me, "I'm a very spiritual person." She continued, "Yes, I see spirits all around me."

[James A.. Altena]

A story told to me by an eyewitness --

Some years ago at a meeting of clergy in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, then Bp. Allan Bartlett told those present how encouraging it was to see the "Religion" section at Barnes & Noble expanding so much. "But, Bishop, most of that stuff is 'New Age' material!" one priest present objected. The bishop looked at him blankly, obviously puzzled as to why that should be a point of any concern, and moved on.

[Jenny Islander]

I noticed, just this year, a huge upsurge in the U.S. Wiccan/Neopagan "Tree of Life" symbol. It's being sold in catalogs of all types. I just spotted it in the Greater Good catalog, on a pretty wall hanging from (IIRC) Bolivia, a few pages over from the Christmas creches. It's also in a catalog aimed, no doubt, at Americans, full of tacky neo-Celtic silver jewelry. Often it's introduced as something pretty and spiritual and old, like angels or folk-art cats with wings.

I wonder if there are Wiccans or Neo-Pagans as annoyed by the mall-Santa-izing of their symbol as I am by the way you can buy little crosses for your ears in the dyed semi-precious stone of your choice, cheaper if you also get the little bear fetish and yin-yang earrings at the same time.

[Joe Long]

Indeed. Hallowe'en is now famously the second-biggest moneymaking holiday, and the Wiccans (unjustifiably) claim it (although, unlike their religion, it predates the 20th century). Do they have a "we're losing the True Meaning of Hallowe'en" conversation each year? What Would Wotan Do?! (It might be a sign of health if it became the BIGGEST moneymaking holiday - if that happened through a decommercializing of Christmas).

[Nick]

Joe,

Trying to see silver linings much? :)