‘Spiritual But Not Religious’: The Rise of Consumerism in Church
1st April 2021
I was raised Christian and the more I’ve thought about it, the more curious something about my upbringing seems. My church was constantly denying it was ‘religious’. By any objective social-scientific measures, the community was decidedly religious. Maybe we weren’t that organized (there was no website), but we recited historic creeds, we submitted to the authority of a sacred text and we practiced ancient rituals. We identified with the worldwide institutional expression of the body of Christ, yet we still liked to say we weren’t ‘religious’. Throughout my childhood I was reminded in sermon after sermon that we were ‘Spiritual but not Religious’.
Salad-bar Christianity in all its apathy.