Heather Cariou, a New York City-based author who calls herself spiritual instead of religious, doesn't think so. She's adopted a spirituality that blends Buddhism, Judaism and other beliefs.
"I don't need to define myself to any community by putting myself in a box labeled Baptist, or Catholic, or Muslim," she says. "When I die, I believe all my accounting will be done to God, and that when I enter the eternal realm, I will not walk though a door with a label on it."

Spirituality without religion is largely impotent. You need both in order to have a fuller understanding of the divine and matters related to the spirit. To emphasize merely religion or spirituality by itself is choosing an incomplete picture on purpose, and you deprive yourself in the end.

It reminds me of Chesterton's remark about the modern world being nothing but fragemented virtues and vices running wild and doing great damage. The complete picture has been lost.

I ran across this article today on CNN.com that talks about this growing trend; one we've talked about here on the forum quite a bit. I thought it might be nice to share:

Excerpt:[INDENT]"I'm spiritual but not religious." It's a trendy phrase people often use to describe their belief that they don't need organized religion to live a life of faith...

The "I'm spiritual but not religious" community is growing so much that one pastor compared it to a movement. In a 2009 survey by the research firm LifeWay Christian Resources, 72 percent of millennials (18- to 29-year-olds) said they're "more spiritual than religious." The phrase is now so commonplace that it's spawned its own acronym ("I'm SBNR") and Facebook..."
[/INDENT]Full News article

"If it's just you and God in your room, and a religious community makes no demands on you, why help the poor?"

This is an intelligent, educated and subtle book about something real, which I have been discovering and experiencing for myself.

It has been pleasant to find David Tacey as a fellow-explorer, but I cannot accept him as teacher or guide. He is too committed to traditional Christianity (yet oddly coy about giving suggestions for further reading in his own mystical tradition, as if bending over backwards not to indoctrinate, in line with his convictions about education in spirituality), too snooty about 'spiritualism' and the paranormal (even though I completely agree with him about many of its manifestations, and it is pleasant once again to see my own thoughts put in words by somebody else), and insufficiently willing to grapple with the depressing (indeed, dispiriting) implications of scientism, particularly in the area of mental health, psychiatry and psychotherapy (where I feel he misses a great opportunity, perhaps because he is afraid of being put on the spot).

Generally he is just too vague, not concrete enough. I need more, and I have to go on exploring in my own way, although I yearn to share more than I have been able to share with this man, having been permitted a glimpse that some such sharing is possible.

He is also altogether too positive about 'postmodernism', which I still loathe. [Sorry, Reconstructo! But at least you didn't name yourself Deconstructo.] Again he fails really to grapple with some of the implications of what he writes about, particularly in regard to questions of the absolute (or Absolute), objectivity, reality (or realism), and so on.

There is a difference between spirituality and religion, although they overlap in many respects. Spirituality is concerned with the search for experiential and inner truth, while religion expects conformity to the rules and regulations of a body of believers.

What separates spirituality from introspection? I mean, if you search within yourself and find that the inner truth is that you hate other people, that seems like it wouldn't be spiritual. And that, to conform to the standard of spiritual, you would have to let go of the hate.

What separates spirituality from introspection? I mean, if you search within yourself and find that the inner truth is that you hate other people, that seems like it wouldn't be spiritual. And that, to conform to the standard of spiritual, you would have to let go of the hate.

The discovery or realization that you are possessed by animosity is the first step. In fact, quite often such a realization will in itself lead to a reduction in these kinds of feelings. Oftentimes those kinds of emotional impulses loose a lot of energy once they are exposed to the light of awareness. I suppose if it is deeply seated within you, like for example as a result of post-traumatic stress of having been victimized or abused in your past, then indeed you would need to undertake some kind of cathartic therapy to free yourself from it.