I want to know the meaning and differences between spirituality and religion. What does spirituality mean, and how does it differ to religion?
In: 7
I’m not expert on this so please prepare some salt.
Spirituality is more of sense and attitude of individuals on how they face the concept of something in higher order such as mother earth, cosmos, soul, reincarnation, afterlife, overseer, whatnot.
Religion always involves doctrine. There’s always idea of what is right and what is wrong. Religion is usually developed around the sense of spirituality, but often systemized in extent to the point of capitalizing on faith to sustain the system itself.
Spirituality is the general belief in a power great than one’s self, and typically this power is supernatural in origin.
Religion may have a _basis_ in spirituality, but it is more the codified systems, structures, and rules associated with expressing a particular spirituality.
So, for example, an abstract belief in God would just be spirituality; Catholicism, with all of its rules and conditions around that belief in God, is a religion.
I’ve always thought that religion is just organized spirituality.
A little oversimplified maybe but this IS eli5
You can see spirituality as a free formed religion. You could be like windows or mac than there Linux where there are a dozen different distros that fall under the name Linux, kinda like that in a sense. You need to play by Mac and windows rules but for Linux you can just change what ever you want. But that level of freedom may put someone on the wrong path. But how I see it religions are also on the wrong path since over time and a lack of understanding corrupted them.
The difference is really between spirituality and *ritual*.
Spirituality is all that, well, spiritual stuff: belief in higher things (such as gods), supernatural abilities and phenomenons, purpose and teleology… There’s not much to say about that. I mean, there is, but not on this sub and not by me.
Ritual is some sort of behavior for which you have rules. Rituals can be entirely personal, as in something that only you do and only you have the rules for that, such as putting your left shoe on before the right. Or they can be share between many people, and all of them know the same rules (or at least they think all the other people know the same rules) such as getting presents on Christmas. Rituals can be secular, like shaking someones hand when you meet them. Or they can be spiritual, like the Christian mass. The rules can be written down somewhere and they can be controlled by some authoritative institution (like in the case of catholic mass), but often they are not, they can be just given by way of word (like in the case of a lot of secular rituals we have, like shaking hands).
Religion is basically what you get when you combine spirituality and ritual.
Spirituality is personal. It is your personal beliefs, your personal (and very real) connection to god, the universe etc. Religion is organized and occurs outside of yourself.
Being spiritual and religious are not mutually exclusive. Buddhism is a great example, its a spiritual belief structure but is often categorized as a religion.
My personal way to break them down is how their believers act.
A spiritual person might look inwards for answers, through meditation or other ritual. While a religious person might look outwards for answers, praying to God or some other entity.
Its all BS of course but of the two, I know the kinds of people I have a lot more time for and it aint the God-botherers.
The difference is about as meaningful as communism and socialism. Some philosophers have defined them with differences, but there’s no consistency and often a lot of outright contradiction in those differences. Spirituality is mostly a term used by people who feel religion is ick/cringe/bad but still want the trappings of religion.
I am neither, and am not passing judgement on either, but generally:
Spirituality is believing in things that cannot be explained, like souls, an afterlife, some kind of grand plan.
Religion is following the rules of a specific grouping of people who believe in a specific God or gods, or specific afterlife, or way of life that has greater meaning than simple ethics or custom, or some combination thereof.
Religion is essentially organised and structured spirituality.
Latest Answers