What's the Difference Between Religion and Spirituality?

What's the difference between religion and spirituality? This is the second most frequently asked question I get as a scholar of religion, next to “Oh, so you're a minister.” And to be honest, folks tend to be disappointed by my answer to both.

When it comes to the religion versus spirituality question, that is often because my answer focuses less on defining the terms and more on the question itself. I am fascinated by what is really going on in people’s thought worlds when they want me to distinguish between religion and spirituality in the first place.

This week, I'm thinking through my own experiences alongside Robert A. Orsi’s Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton University Press, 2005).

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