Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian: Johan blogs here about faith and life, something he calls “Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian.” What does he mean by “religion-less christianity”?
*What Do I Mean By “Religion-Less Christian”?
It occurs to me that I should regularly note just what I mean by “religion-less” Christianity. I think most people these days equate “religion” with formal God-minded organizations and the member disciplines there found. This, contrasted to what many then call “spiritual,” many want to stay away from because those organizations and disciplines are too restrictive and constrictive. People want instead of being “religious” with a “religion” want to still appreciate the metaphysical and God. So, what to call this? Usually people say they are spiritual and not religious.
And so when one hears “religion-less” many would think that’s exactly what they are: spiritual, or in other words, down with religion that is a confining life, up with spirituality.
But no, that is not what I mean by “religion.”
What I am doing with naming my field notes as “religion-less” is taking the term “religion-less Christianity” named by theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (see Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers From Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8, 2010, Fortress Press). It is a specific way of seeing God (and Jesus Christ), a specific consciousness of God and the world that Bonhoeffer called a “world come of age consciousness.” This “world come of age consciousness” is contrasted with “religion” or a “religious consciousness.” Religion (religious consciousness) can be characterized if not defined by a couple of significant ways of seeing God (and thus, too, the world): 1) God is a supernatural being if not simply a theological hypothesis to explain all the unexplainable things in life 2) God is a “deus ex machina,” a supernatural being who is called upon to be involved and intervene in human affairs to correct or make right what has gone wrong. A world-come-of-age consciousness can and does see the world and all its natural and social processes but does not need to posit or turn to divinity to face or answer life’s questions and challenges.
Bonhoeffer engaged and embraced this world-come-of-age consciousness but simultaneously embraced and engaged God. He asked, in the letter of April 30, 1944 to his friend Eberhard Bethge, where he first mentions his developing thought on a “religion-less Christianity,” “…who is Christ actually for us today?” In other words, who is Jesus in our world-come-of-age consciousness. It was not “in this world-come-of-age there is no Jesus and no God.” It was rather in this world (come of age, not a world of religion) who is Jesus and God? Bonhoeffer rejected a religion that saw persons at the center and God on the periphery where God is called upon to assist the human endeavors, however laudable, or where God is called upon to redeem human failures, however actual. Instead, Bonhoeffer saw faith as the experience where God is at the center of all things, good and bad and indifferent, and God is trusted (faith) and followed (love).
So, back to “religion” vs. “spirituality.” Here’s what I have shared before about this: “Unfortunately, what happens more than not is that folks who believe they are now engaging ‘spirituality’ instead of ‘religion’ have more or less simply acquired another form of religion as we have defined it here. When people state they are tired of ‘religion’ but they still believe in God and are thus ‘spiritual,’ what they normally mean is not that they are tired of religion (God is the supernatural that explains the unexplainable and God is the ‘deus ex machina’) but rather that they are tired of religious practices (e.g. worship services, prayers, church membership and its requirements) and want to find or experience the God of religion (again, supernatural rescuer) in some more palatable if not enjoyable format. Most folks today are tired of the way of being religious but they are not tired of religion” (Religion-Less Christianity and Renewing the Church: On Being a Follower of Jesus in God, for God, without God, Johan Bergh, 2018, Amazon).
Rather than being an approach to the Christian faith that diminishes or drops bible, prayer, sacraments and service to others, religion-less Christianity embraces all of that while serving God who lives in the world, incarnationally so.
