"Spiritual but Not Religious"? Are You Sure?

"Have you ever come across someone who qualifies her opinions about gender-related issues by assuring her listener that she's "not a feminist or anything"? That comment wouldn't be surprising coming from denizens of the Bible Belt or the MAGAverse who are in favor of women's subservience to men, but it's disconcerting to hear such a disclaimer from reasonably progressive women. One has to assume that what they're distancing themselves from is a strawwoman - a tendentious caricature of feminism as humorless man-hating."

"I recently found myself wondering whether something similar might be going on when people who are uninterested in, or even actively put off by, the faith in which they were raised, disclaim labels like atheist or agnostic and insist that, though they're not religious, they consider themselves spiritual. What exactly does that last word mean? Could its appeal rest partly on dubious assumptions about the first two words?"

"That this is a ridiculously false dichotomy is a lesson I learned from my daughter when she was four years old. Abigail had a mad crush on Clifford the Big Red Dog at the time, so she was practically jumping out of her skin when she spotted a six-foot Clifford one afternoon, greeting children at a fair. She dashed over and wrapped her arms around his fur, excitedly informing him that she had seen him on TV."

Many people preface gender-related opinions with disclaimers like 'I'm not a feminist' to distance themselves from caricatures of feminism as humorless and man-hating. Others avoid labels such as atheist or agnostic and describe themselves as spiritual despite rejecting organized religion, often implying spirituality carries intangible virtues. Popular culture can frame skeptics as lacking imagination, as suggested by Miracle on 34th Street's portrayal of nonbelievers. A child's reaction to a costumed character demonstrates that recognizing literal truth does not preclude emotional engagement, revealing that belief and symbolic participation can coexist.

Read at Psychology Today