Against Spirituality - personal spirituality versus social connectedsness through religion

Judaism, Summer, 2001 by Arnold Jacob Wolf

Jewish social capital still demands community, self-criticism, distance, and dialogue. Reverend Donna Schoper has warned us of the dangerous lure of spirituality:

The one thing you usually don't hear about at today's colleges and universities is God. In the name of not fettering the sacred to any one religion, God is fettered and the sacred frittered away.

Today, the sacred is strictly optional in liberal arts education, and most students are illiterate when it comes to religion. That ignorance makes it far too easy for people to don one of religion's many costumes, a ubiquitous "spirituality" that is clogging the Internet and cluttering campus bulletin boards. Unfortunately, the garb of spirituality is a bleached, if companionable, substitute for faith. Amateurish tai chi and yoga, quasi-Buddhist meditation, and New Age prayers are a far cry from the ancient practice of the Sabbath.

Deans need not be afraid. Spirituality has no staff, needs no offices, and writes no letters arguing for or against a particular institutional direction. That is the business of organized religion, which argues for a purpose to life that includes God.

Spirituality is more inner-directed; religion turns outward. Spirituality is a private matter, between a person and God. It needs no institutional framework. Indeed, spirituality rejects interference in the religious experience. Neither religious nor secular, it is a hybrid of the two.

In a world increasingly populated by Zen-leaning Lutherans, or Buddhists turned Catholic, or Jews turned Quaker, it's not surprising to find highly personal spirituality replacing institutional religion. We are so mired in the self that we are losing sight of the sacred. Religion, and its many imperfect institutions and spiritual expressions, promotes belief through its ancient practices and liturgies. Religion steeps people in its long history of reflection on ethics. At its best, religion offers time and space for spiritual experience. Spirituality gives us a quick fix that fits into our fast-paced, insular lifestyle. [5]

ARNOLD JACOB WOLF, a contributing editor, is Rabbi Emeritus of K.A.M Isaiah Israel Congregation in Chicago. Unfinished Rabbi: The Selected Writings of Arnold Jacob Wolf was published by Ivan Dee in 1998. His article, "Saul Bellow, Jew," appeared in the Spring 2001 issue.

NOTES

(1.) Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

(2.) Everett Carl Ladd, The Ladd Report (New York: Free Press, 1999).

(3.) Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence, The Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems, translation and introduction by Ben Zion Bokser (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), Preface II, pp. xvii-xxv, by Rivka Schatz Offenheimer.

(4.) Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, translated by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 48.

(5.) Reverend Donna Schoper, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8/18/00, quoted in Context, December 15, 2000, p. 2.