"Spirituality" arbitrary, losing meaning

By Brian Reinhart     4/15/10 7:00pm

Most people agree that spirituality is a good thing - even essential to our human experience. Pundits worry that people are not satisfying their spiritual needs, and the Rice Student Association recently hopped on the bandwagon with a survey assessing resources for students' spiritual health.And, for the first time, there is now a distinction between faith and spirituality: More and more people tell researchers, "I'm not religious, but I am spiritual." Elaine Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice, conducted a study and found that 20 percent of atheist scientists still describe themselves as having "spirituality."

But "spirituality" has become a buzzword. What does it actually mean?

Spirituality means many things for many people. For the religious faithful, the term might signify a close, rewarding personal connection to a god or gods. For others, it might mean seeking transcendent experiences, meditating or getting in touch with the self. Maybe spirituality is becoming one with nature. Maybe it just means being happy.

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This kind of diversity is problematic; it indicates not that spirituality is a universal need, but that we are defining the word too broadly. If we define spirituality as something everybody practices in opposing ways, for different motivations and results, the term ceases to mean anything.

Ecklund gave her own tentative definition of the concept in a roundtable discussion at the Baker Institute on April 7. She had interviewed several "atheist spiritualists" about their combination of non-belief and "spirituality." She said these people had no gods but "wanted a moral compass and want a connection to something greater than themselves." She also noted that, for atheists, spirituality might be a connection to forces outside the self "that makes a difference in directing their actions."

But, given this framework, everybody is spiritual. We all have moral compasses, not all of which are based on religious texts. When atheists and Christians alike are described as being connected to "something greater than themselves," the word risks becoming meaningless.

Besides, the term spirituality could signify more than just religion. Dostoevsky, Shakespeare and Beethoven put us in touch with something greater than ourselves. Literature has the power to remind us of moral truths; the poet Rumi once said that "music uplifts the soul to realms above." Art can transport us. But does that make art spiritual?

Maybe it does. Art fulfills our souls. It inspires us. Perhaps that is the true purpose of spirituality.

Or perhaps that is rewriting the definition of the word. When I talked to devout Christians about Ecklund's encounters with "spiritual atheists," they laughed. "You can't be a spiritual atheist. It's a contradiction," one said.

His argument makes sense. Spirituality originally referred to the internal, individual aspects of religious experience. The phrase "spiritual but not religious" is used by some Christians who maintain a personal relationship with Jesus Christ but eschew church attendance and other structures of organized religion. Spirituality has thus traditionally signified a personal relationship with the supernatural.

What does it mean when non-believers say they are spiritual? All we can really tell is that they think they have some feeling which they choose to call "spirituality." They could feel inspired by a great sense of their purpose in life or could experience a supernatural but unorthodox connection with some sort of universal life force. Because of the absence of a central church or text, no two atheists believe exactly the same thing.

I therefore propose we either give the buzzword a concrete definition or stop using it. You might object by saying that people have hugely diverse experiences and desires, and to try to give them one definition is to belittle that diversity. That's exactly the point. Stop calling everything "spirituality." Either we are using the word correctly, and everyone has a different path to spiritual solace, or we are defining the word far too broadly in an attempt to categorize all of our most personal experiences. Maybe some of the things we refer to as "spiritual" are better described some other way.

We can find better, more specific terms for different ways people get in touch with themselves and others. Personal relationships with gods are called by many names in many faiths, but sociologists could call them "supernaturality." Meditation, reflection and soul-searching could be called "contemplation." And trying to connect with something greater than oneself is a quest we might call "being human."

Brian Reinhart is a Wiess College senior and former Thresher calendar editor.

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