Coming to terms
The first in a series of five-minute posts while I’m writing a book on the religious/nonreligious mixed marriage.
One of the biggest challenges in writing this book is the damn terminology. Some of the most important terms and labels in this area mean very different things to different people.
Start with the basics: religious and nonreligious. Most people think of someone as religious if they believe in the existence of a God or gods. But many Unitarians, Buddhists, Humanistic Jews and others consider themselves religious even if they do not believe in God. They embrace aspects of religion unrelated to theistic belief, including identity, shared values, community, and tradition.
On the other side is an old friend of mine who believes deeply in God, prays daily, attends church weekly, and has Psalm texts painted around the border of her living room, but once told me she is “little if at all religious.”
She’s not alone in this. A slew of surveys show that millions of Americans believe in God but consider themselves nonreligious. Even more surprising are the six percent of respondents who identified as atheists in a 2007 Pew survey but said they believe in God — something Sam Harris says is like claiming to be “a happily married bachelor.”
Capturing this categorical mess nicely is a message I received from a nontheistic humanistic rabbi whose husband is an agnostic Catholic. “Steve would say we are a religious/nonreligious couple,” she said, “and I’m the religious one!”
In terms of the main message of the book itself — more on that eventually — all of this line-crossing ambiguity is PERFECT. But for the purpose of communicating with people outside of my own head, it would be nice to have some terms that mean roughly one thing each.
DING! (Okay, that was 9 minutes. More discipline next time.)