Christianity After Religion: The End of the Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening
by Diana Butler Bass
Diana Butler Bass is a church historian and a keen observer of contemporary religious phenomena in North America. In Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (2006), Bass writes about mainline congregations that defy the prevailing narrative of demise, finding renewal and growth through the recovery of traditional Christian practices. In her concise A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story (2009) Bass violates the orthodoxies of historians. She aims to recover a Christian memory that has room for the forgotten and excluded voices.
In Christianity After Religion Bass continues to violate the prevailing narrative and challenge orthodoxies. The church as we have known it is probably on the way out but, Bass suggests, all is not lost. Bass sees a future for an awakened church. What we grieve as change and decay all around she sees as proof a great awakening is upon us. A Fourth Great Awakening, like and unlike past awakenings that have transformed both church and faith. She also believes it’s possible to be both spiritual and religious.
“I’m spiritual, but not religious” is a phrase perhaps more spoken of than spoken. It may be offered with more detail: “I don’t go to church (anymore) but I still think of myself as a spiritual person.” “I believe in God in my own way.” “I have my own spirituality that doesn’t need church.” Bass writes of her spiritual-but-not-religious respondents across North America, the U.K and Australia, “No matter how hard they tried, most found it difficult to get very excited about religion. They have essentially substituted ‘religion’ for institutional religion and ‘spirituality’ for lively faith.”
Bass quotes religion scholar Cantwell Smith on the Latin root of ‘religion.’ Smith draws from religio, “a warm, reverberating, and sustained affirmation of a personal relation to [a] transcendent God.” Religion, thus defined, “enlivens the heart, opening the soul to others and to creation.” My spiritual-but-not-religious friend might say, “Amen.” I doubt he would consider going to find religion.
A congregation can recognize and turn from what religion has come to mean, toward the awakening spirituality Bass suggests now energizes the world around it. Bass doesn’t say the church must jettison its beliefs or practices. She offers new (old) definitions of “faith,” “belief,” even “doctrine” to replace meanings that represent religion as we have known it and others see it.
Bass says the spiritual-but-not-religious are asking three questions: The first is: “Who am I?” Bass hears this as a question of connection and place: “Who do I belong to? Where and with whom do I fit?”
The second question Bass frames is: “How should I act?” When a seeker finds an answer to “Who am I?” he or she then asks how to live a life that expresses who he or she really is.
Then, Bass says, the third is: “What do I believe?” The question about belief arises from experience. Bass presents these three questions under the headings Belonging, Behaving and Believing.
Churchgoers may identify with the three Bs. Isn’t the church all about community, ethics and faith?
The church, Bass says, usually puts believing first. Don’t people who go to church believe, or at least acknowledge, what the church says must be believed? Presbyterians may assume any newcomer to church already sees, or will soon pick up, what it means to see the world through Presbyterian eyes. We still put a formal test of belief before admission to membership.
We also watch to see if repeat visitors or candidates for confirmation know how to behave in church. Do they really want to take part in congregational life? Most denominations maintain standards of relationship and sexual behaviour that don’t match the majority view in society. We may show we are Christians by our love—within prescribed limits.
Belonging, at least in widespread perception, means membership. Membership is a privilege granted by those on the inside to those who have been kept outside, pending observation of belief and behaviour.
Even as you and I may protest this characterization, we know it’s still alive and well within our Presbyterian Church.
Bass sees a shift in the order of these values among many of the spiritual-but-not-religious. She includes those who give the church a first or second chance. Belonging comes first. Then behaving. Then, finally, believing. Each word has meaning church folk may not recognize right away.
Belonging means finding a place in a community where the welcome is unconditional, a safe place to bring questions and longings, a place of visible diversity and commitment to making a difference in the world.
Experience of such a community leads to the question, “What do I do now that I’m at home here?” This isn’t a question of personal morality—at least not at first. It is a question of ethics, and it’s answered by what we call mission.
The question of belief emerges from the experience of belonging and engagement with the world in community. Believing doesn’t mean assent to creed or acceptance of doctrine. Both will be helpful, though always open to examination. Believing means seeking answers to questions that emerge from life and testing ways to describe experiences of meaning, community, and God. Faith doesn’t begin with “I believe” any more than belonging begins with “I do.”
Much more could be written about this book. Bass’s historical analysis deserves another article. Canadian readers may not see the relevance of Bass’s exploration of awakenings. Yet church and society as we know both are rooted in the period of what she calls the Third Great Awakening. Bass’s approach and the way she expresses what she has concluded from all her observations are refreshing. She offers an accessible review of what she, with many others, has observed. Her analysis is grounded in a lively reading of history. Her conclusions suggest there’s hope for Christianity, and even for the church as we dream it, after the demise of religion as we have known it.
