I don’t often find fault with the esteemed data collecting and interpretation done by the Pew Research Center. However, its latest work, a highly touted new “religious typology” that claims to define people according to their beliefs rather than by their denominations, has set my teeth on edge. The reason for my molar-grinding reaction: the survey seems to be based on the flawed premise that it isn’t possible to be both traditionally religious AND spiritual at the same time. That flaw runs counter to the foundations on which all major world religions rest, if the late Huston Smith, a world-renowned religion expert and United Methodist, was correct in his lifelong work.
I base my objection to the Pew religious typology on extensive personal experience and study. I work primarily in religion journalism and have professionally observed and written about organized faith systems for the past 30 years. I have an additional vocation that is both religious and spiritual. I am a certified spiritual director, a graduate of the spiritual direction program at United Methodist-related Perkins School of Theology. I am also a practicing monastic as a member of The Order of Saint Luke, an ecumenical association of clergy and lay women and men focused on liturgical scholarship and sacramental living through our Rule of Life and Service
I entered into my “second act” religious vocation after some 20 years in a United Methodist office then known as Lay Speaker. I was a conference-certified instructor of adults in the (then) Lay Speaking ministry. As an instructor, I taught almost every topic available in the Lay Speaking curriculum. The course I was most often asked to teach was “Spiritual Disciplines in the Wesleyan Spirit,” exploring the spiritual practices of Methodism’s founder John Wesley that he recommended for Christian disciples.
St. Augustine of Hippo
Boticelli's painting of St. Augustine of HIppo. (Public Domain Photo)
In short, my own faith journey, and that of hundreds of people I’ve taught and known, has been one of constant spiritual seeking within the orderliness of organized religion. Therein lies the rub for me: having taken Pew’s quiz on where I fit in its religious typology, I find its characterization of my faith journey as a “Sunday stalwart” to be both inadequate and insulting. It’s inadequate because of the basic flaw I mentioned earlier, that the Pew typology ignores the reality that it’s possible to be both religious and spiritual at the same time. It’s insulting because the category’s name skews toward Christian observance, when there are millions of American Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and other practitioners for whom Sunday isn’t their Sabbath. (This proves especially disturbing since Pew claims the typology is supposed to ignore denominations). There are even some of us – like the thousands who practice prayer and other spiritual disciplines – for whom our experience of God extends beyond Sabbath throughout our daily lives.
A background article about the new religious typology says that Pew used computer algorithms to search through already-collected data to find commonalities on which its categories are based. High-scoring questions from these previous surveys were then gathered and sifted until the researchers came up with a set of questions to use in determining religious types. While the method may have been a fun exercise for statisticians, it does little justice to the true nature and variety of religious and spiritual observance. “Big data” in no way can plumb the depths of the human spirit in its constant search for union with the divine. We seek communion with our spiritual source because of what the Jesuits call our “existential poverty,” i.e., we all die. Each of us will die, and confronting our mortality elicits more questions: What happens when my physical body dies? Do I really have a soul? Does my soul survive? If so, where does it go? Will I still be “me” after death?
If I’ve learned anything during my five-year vocation as a “soul friend” (I love the Gaelic term for soul friend, “anam cara”), it’s this: the deeper one goes into one’s own faith tradition, the more one discovers the Source of all. Whether we acknowledge this or not, we all seek this deep well-spring of transcendence, because as Augustine wrote, “our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” The greatest failure of Christendom has been to abandon its original path of seeking God to create instead a worldly empire of pomp and power. That, more than anything else, is what the Pew typology says to me: my own faith tradition has failed to carry forward the spirituality at its heart, so that religion and spirituality have lost their essential connection. This failure has left organized religion prey to institutional decline as people run after momentary, self-deluding exaltations. Ultimately, however, spiritualities devoid of the context and discipline that religion provides are like mist; they dissipate in the blinding light of life’s harsh realities.
Pew’s religious typologies may work to pigeonhole people for surveys, but from my perspective as a religious disciple, they don’t illuminate the true nature of the religious and spiritual journey. I counsel that we use Pew’s typologies cautiously, if at all, in daily religious and spiritual practice.
Cynthia B. Astle, OSL, serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.