Confession: Whenever someone says, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” I bite my tongue. Because if I didn’t bite my tongue, I might say something uncharitable, like, “Really? I’m fairly certain that, without religion, you wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what spirituality is.” Or, “Tell me, please, what is spirituality, exactly? Define it in a way that distinguishes it from what I’ve learned from the religions you so deride.”
But here’s the thing: I know what folks mean when they say “I’m spiritual but not religious,” and, truth be told, what they mean captures, at least in part, what John Wesley meant when he said Methodism “is the religion of the heart.”[1] It is the heart religion, not the head religion, because our founder himself insisted that Methodists worthy of the name “do not lay the main stress of our religion on any opinions, right or wrong,”[2] but concentrate instead on forming communities that become “united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation and to watch over one another in love . . . .”[3]
So . . . we need to remember: However simplistic it may strike those of us who take our “religion” seriously–including those who, like me, can barely abide the vacuous din emitted by a seemingly endless supply of self-styled “spirituality” gurus–the fact remains that John Wesley’s Bible-based instruction, delivered more than once, was that we ask only this before taking each other’s hand: “How is your heart? Is it true to mine, as mine is to yours?”[4]
[1] John Wesley, “Thoughts Upon Methodism,” reprinted in John Emory ed., The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. VII (New York: J. Emory and B. Waugh, 1831), 315.
[2] John Wesley, “A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion,” reprinted in John Emory ed., The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. V (New York: J. Emory and B. Waugh, 1831), 172.
[3] John Wesley & Charles Wesley, “The Nature, Design and General Rules of the United Societies,” in The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church (2016), ¶ 104 at 78.
[4] Compare John Wesley, “Catholic Spirit,” in Herbert Welch ed., Selections from the Writings of the Rev. John Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon Press), 106 et seq., and John Wesley, “Thoughts Upon a Late Phenomenon” (Nottingham, July 13, 1788), in John Emory ed., The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. VII, (New York: J. Emory and B. Waugh, 1831), 321, with 2 Kings 10:15 (RSV) (“Is your heart true to my heart, as mine is to yours?”).