Celebrating SBNR
Every day, I enjoy conversations with students who fit into the category of SBNR - "spiritual but not religious". In my role as Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, I advise an exceptional group of students called the Interfaith Council. There are about 30 students who come to it regularly, and many others who visit on occasion, for its Tuesday night meetings over vegetarian pizza. (Fellow interfaith activists, here's how I make it: I buy cheap frozen cheese pizzas, top them with fried pasilla peppers and tomatillos, add some extra cheese, and bake them. The students seem to like it, and it satisfies kosher, halal, and vegetarian religious scruples!) Interfaith Council meetings are the highlight of my working week. The students share about their faith traditions, they do service projects together in the South Central LA neighborhood surrounding our campus, they play together, go on retreats, and sponsor campus-wide events about world religion. They have become very closely-knit and supportive of each other outside of the meetings, too. They're a community. "Interfaith Council is my home on campus," I've heard many of them say.
About one third of these students have no religious affiliation. They're SBNR's. But these are among the most active in the group, and constitute most of its leadership. They are interested intensely in religion and in matters spiritual and ethical. They want to know all they can about the faiths of the world. Their eagerness to learn is infectious. They want to go deep, and deal with the tough questions. They understand all religions aren't the same, though they notice the many similarities. They are spiritual explorers. Some of them may someday "settle down" and join a traditional congregation - but I'm willing to bet that is not the case for most of them.
These students, and the many, many other SBNR students on our campus whom I've met, prove to me that just because more and more people in America are opting out of formal religious affiliation, that does not mean that they are all shallow in their spirituality or that they are disconnected from the soul-journeys of others. We're witnessing the emergence of new forms of spiritually-centered community life, outside of churches and mosques and synagogues.
There is a lively conversation going on in the progressive Christian movement now about this subject. Rev. Lillian Daniel, a fellow United Church of Christ pastor, argues on Huffington Post that SBNR is "boring" and trivial because it isn't tested by commitment to community. She complains about sitting on airplanes next to people who, upon finding out she's a pastor, declare that they are SBNR. "Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community?" she asks. Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity for the Rest of Us, suggests on Patheos.com that liberal Christians should take SBNRs seriously. "Maybe the SBNR are pointing the way toward a different kind of church or a new kind of Christianity, if only those of us who still care about old denominations and traditions can receive the criticism of their absence and learn from it, even as it comes with a sting."
Here's another way to view the SBNR phenomenon: religiously unaffiliated but spiritually engaged people are in fact encountering God in real human communities that don't look like traditional congregations, so why not celebrate that? The USC Interfaith Council is a wonderful example. Another is The Church of Beethoven in Albuquerque. I visited its site this summer. It happens in a warehouse by the railroad tracks. Inside, it's a "loft" space with a nice coffee bar. On Sunday mornings, people come there to listen to wonderful chamber music. In the middle of the performance there is a time of silence. There's also a time of sharing about events and needs in the lives of the "regulars" at the "church". No creed, no sermon, no religious lingo - just the spirituality of music and the company of a caring community. The only thing that is redolent of traditional religion is a clever machine in front of the building. It is a tub of water with a rotisserie motor above it that slowly lifts and drops a pair of bars with shoes attached to them. Turn it on and the shoes walk on the water.
Book clubs, informal meditation groups, friends who gather regularly to hike while talking in depth about matters of the soul, and yes, old-fashioned religious congregations: all offer the comforts and the challenges of grappling with the ultimate questions with other people. Spirituality, like most everything else today, has gone 24/7 in time and everywhere in space. It's both in religion and out of it. This is neither a bad development in itself, nor is it some kind of lesson that church people ought to learn so that we can change our marketing strategy and worship style to attract the SBNRs. No need to switch seats on the plane, Lillian! Just look out the window of the plane if you don't feel like talking. It's a big world out there! We who go to church on Sunday represent one little part of it... and that's okay.
Remembering Jim Adams
Jim Adams, founder of The Center for Progressive Christianity, now known as ProgressiveChristianity.org, died on September 13. For years he was the rector of St Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill in Washington, and in his retirement he decided to spread the gospel of openness and creativity that made his church grow significantly during his tenure. He came up with the 8 Point Welcome Statement that describes succinctly a theologically and socially progressive form of Christianity. He was a wonderful friend and mentor to me and many others in the national progressive Christian movement.
There will be no laugh that quite can replace the laughter of Jim Adams, who with straight talk and good humor blew away prideful religious puffery and made expansive space for a kinder, humbler, happier form of faith. Jim Adams was a leader who encouraged others to lead the progressive Christian movement. He embodied what it was about. He went with the flow: he didn't try to control it. He sensed where people needed and wanted it to go, and supported their initiatives, and that was the whole point of The Center for Progressive Christianity from day one. I'll never forget a conversation we had at one of our board meetings, when we were discussing a possible change in the 8 Point Welcome Statement. Someone said that it would not work to make any changes, since the original statement was what so many churches had ratified by listing themselves on our website. Jim and the rest of us - including the person who made that statement - paused, looked at each other, and started laughing. And proceeded to modify the Eight Points. (Which have been modified since - and, I pray, ever shall be modified.) As it was with Tillich, so it was with Jim Adams, who knew that theology was impossible without beer. So let us raise a dark brew in happy memory of this warm and kind and caring man who electrified so many people around the world with a way of opening Christianity to make room for those who felt shut out from it in the past.