The growing attention to non-affiliated often assumes they are biblically illiterate, but many are actually engaged with the Jewish and Christian scriptures, even if in a non-traditional and individualistic way, writes Elizabth Drescher in the Jesuit magazine America (June 8-15). In her research and soon-to-be published book on the non-affiliated, or the “nones,” including both atheists and agnostics as well as the “spiritual but not religious,” Drescher writes that she was surprised “by the degree to which many of the unaffiliated continue to find Scripture—especially the parables of Jesus—spiritually meaningful and morally relevant.” Among the more than 100 nones she interviewed, the author finds that they appealed to the Bible in a way that was very different from the church-going population. Drescher argues that even if most nones are not necessarily seeking a church or religious home [the recent Pew study shows that only one-in-ten nones are], they are seeking religious answers from diverse sources and they are in contact with the religiously affiliated in everyday life. In her interviews, Drescher finds that the nones are “deeply conversant with Christian traditions, especially Scripture. What is more, regardless of where they fell on the atheist-to-spiritual continuum, the nones who talked with me often retained considerable regard for the Christian Scriptures, especially the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament.”
The nones had a high regard for Jesus, though not doctrinal beliefs regarding his divinity, but rather with “stories of his healings, his embrace of social outcasts and his critiques of religious hypocrisy and government-sponsored violence and injustice…” This embrace of Jesus as a moral and spiritual exemplar, what Drescher calls the “Good Samaritan ethic,” stresses his humanity and social action over his divinity or his miracles. Thus, these nones are different than the non-doctrinal churchgoers identified as “Golden Rule Christians,” according to Drescher. While Golden Rule Christians are also uninterested in church doctrines, they focus instead on congregational practices and doing good to those in need in their immediate communities. In contrast, the nones who “engage Scripture tend to do so by way of inspiring cosmopolitan rather than communitarian action. The starting point for engagement is a recognition of otherness rather than a reinforcement of commonalities…that the realm of religion, faith, spirituality, moral action—all those things that used to be seen as the exclusive purview of institutional religions—begins outside the doors of the church rather than inside.”
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