Spirituality and Life Skills

Religion has to do with creeds, that is a corpus of beliefs about God; beliefs about life, morals and, often, unfortunately negative beliefs and attitudes to people who don’t agree with you. Religion means specific practices, recognised communities and, theoretically at least, either being ‘in’ or ‘out’. Religion in practice has a lot to do with belonging. This is the sort of bundle people are wanting to avoid when they claim to be ‘spiritual but not religious.’

It is an undeniable fact that the last fifty years have seen a stupendous change in attitudes to spirituality. Prior to then spirituality was hardly ever mentioned and religion was definitely something you didn’t speak about at dinner parties. The two terms were practically indistinguishable, any difference was nit-picking and you were probably a bit odd if you cared.

An exploration into the question of what makes traditional Christianity unappealing to a great many people who turn to alternative models of spirituality to nourish and support their personal growth. Such a vast subject cannot be dealt with in a simple blog but some major issues are introduced and considered within their historic context.

To simplify this topic, I am going to refer to the Human Potential Movement (HPM) as a blanket term for a phenomenon that does not have defined parameters, in which certain language, models and concepts revolve loosely around the term ‘the Universe’ to describe the Source, the Creator and Sustainer of all things.

My discussion of God, for the purposes of comparison with the current use of the term “the Universe”, is what I like to call “The God that Richard Dawkins doesn’t believe in”. I found this term in a review of a book by Dawkins in which the reviewer concluded “I don’t know anyone who believes in the God that Richard Dawkins does not believe in” I have tried to sketch some of the components of that mythical being.