Why Isn't 'Spirituality' Enough?...Continued from page 3

In truth, the vagueness of these statements undermines any claim to make a serious intellectual argument. Lerner's idea of "spiritual yearnings" gets him nowhere--what exactly is spiritual about these yearnings? Without reference to some specific truth claim or structured thought, this becomes little more than nonsensical wordplay.

This, too, is nothing new. When pressed to define spirituality, pragmatist William James replied: "Susceptibility to ideals, but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about them. A certain amount of 'otherworldly' fancy."

Call me hardheaded, but I just don't see reaching out to Americans who identify themselves as being "susceptible to ideals" and interested in "otherworldly fancy" to be a winning political strategy in today's America.

Does it Even Matter?

Liberals will have to make their own decisions, and they are certainly not going to look to me for political advice. Nevertheless, I have more respect for a clear-headed secularist than for someone who espouses this kind of mind-numbing relativism. If spirituality simply means a "susceptibility to ideals," does it even matter what those ideals are?

Responding to a similar call for an embrace of spirituality, Paul Powers of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon argued: "Softheaded spiritualism is its own form of fundamentalism. The suggestion that the 'true essence' of all religions is spirituality implies that if only people were not so stupid as to believe what their tradition teaches them, they would see that behind all this mere cultural baggage is the supreme 'spiritual' truth. Religions and religious people are mind-bogglingly different. Why American liberals who seem so happy to embrace difference in various contexts want, when it comes to religion, to sweep [different truth claims] under the rug of some invented, undefined, supposedly universal 'spirituality' remains one of the true religious mysteries of our times."

In reality, it isn't really such a mystery after all. Spirituality is all that is left when truth claims are removed. Spirituality represents little more than an effort to claim higher "values" without the demands of truth, revelation, and obedience.

Of all people, Christians should be the first to see this for what it is--an effort to replace the Christian faith with an empty "spiritual" shell. Biblical Christianity is profoundly spiritual--but Christian spirituality is an expression of Christian truth, not its substitute.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com . For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu . Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com .

See also the most recent entries on Dr. Mohler's Blog .