Why I Want Religion Over Relationship

Anyone who grew up evangelical-ish is probably familiar with the phrase “It’s about relationship, not religion.” This little maxim was usually intended to emphasise a classic tenet of evangelical Christianity—an emphasis on personal or individual piety and on developing an emotional, spontaneous connection to God.

To some reading this, the phrase might appear self-evident: of course being a Christian involves a ‘relationship’ with God, a relationship you have to make a concrete decision for at a point in time, to say a prayer, invite Jesus into your heart, and become, from this moment on, a born-again Christian. In this way of thinking about faith, 'religion,’ by contrast, represents a form of ‘dead’ faith, a simple ritualistic going through the motions, not engaging in worship or prayer with personal piety or emotional energy. 

But to other readers, perhaps those who grew up in different Christian or faith traditions, the phrase might strike them as a little odd. Why the binary, we might ask, between piety and religion? Relationship and ritual? Don’t these two things co-exist?

There are a few things I find interesting about this sentiment, expressed especially as it often is by white, western Christians like myself. For one thing, we’re not a particularly ‘religious’ bunch—conceived of as people who devote much time or attention to organised religious ritual or routine. In fact, most white societies in modern western cultures are notably a-religious, defined by a distinct lack of connection to the religious traditions of their past. This secularism is only more distinct in a place like Aotearoa where Pākehā settlers right from the beginning of colonisation to the present day were less church-going and confessionally religious than their European, American, or Australian counterparts. (One thinks of M. K. Joseph's observation of  Pākehā society and spirituality in his poem “Secular Litany”: “Saint Allblacks / Saint Monday Raceday … Pray for us.”) By contrast, it’s often people of colour who appear the ‘most’ religious in places like Aotearoa, whether it’s the highly communal Christianity of many Pasifika peoples, the ritualistic (a good word!) Islam of many African, Middle Eastern, South or South-East Asian peoples, or the various spiritualities and processes of tikanga Māori followed by many tangata whenua. 

These days, I find myself drawn towards the very religious and ritualistic traditions that my own faith upbringing and education told me to avoid. Instead of finding a stale or dying faith, it instead feels like the only lifeline I’ve got when my own ideas of worship feel all too shallow, insignificant, or unimportant amidst the onslaught of life, faith, and doubt. 

There’s a way in which such a spirituality of ‘relationship over religion’ individualises faith by drawing a false binary between individual, emotional connections with God (good) and more traditional, staid rituals and prayers (bad). Instead of being liberative, throwing off the supposed shackles of tired tradition and rigid spiritual practices, this way of thinking about faith centres my own ability to sustain a lively engagement with God and the world. Worship practices such as charismatic music or extempore prayer prioritise self-generated and spontaneous responses to God, relying on the individual competence and extroversion of the person singing or praying. There’s of course something beautiful in this: an emphasis on the personal piety and exuberance of one’s faith and joy of salvation—an emphasis that made sense, for example, in the early Methodist or dissenting Christainities which rose in response to the encrusted layers of nominalism and state religion present in places like seventeenth or eighteenth century England, the very traditions from which modern-day evangelicalism descends. But sustained in such ways week in and week out in modern secular societies such as Aotearoa, where scripts for living a compelling life seem to come more often externally from the church than from within it, it also becomes a narrow and increasingly thin practice of Christian tradition, serviceable only to very certain types of personalities and people.

"These days, I find myself drawn towards the very religious and ritualistic traditions that my own faith upbringing and education told me to avoid."

This fatigue has become even more apparent to me both in moving overseas and having to search for a new faith community, and as well as still trying to recover from the way in which COVID-19 has transformed the resilience and energy many of us have for gathering together at all. Simply put, the idea of seeking to participate in the profound extroversion of various CCM songs and the mostly cognitive engagement with prayer and preaching tires me out. This stands in marked contrast to the gift of more (for lack of a better word) liturgical communities in which the invitation to enter into a wider story of symbolism, sensory participation, and noncognitive mystery relies less on my contribution towards it and more to our submission and participation within it. 

This is by no means an apology for certain popular ideas among church leadership that we are moving into an age of digital Christianity or that we are called to participate in some sort of transhuman future that exists within the Metaverse. Quite the opposite; I find myself hungrier than ever for physical, embodied connection and tactile, communal spiritual practice. In fact, I’d argue that the very reason more charismatic or evangelical forms of Christianity seem to be more replicable online by posting a video sermon and couple of Hillsong tracks on Facebook points to just how disembodied and shallow such practices of worship can become.

Modern life is often both lonely and fragmented, and more liturgical traditions connect my faith to a wider, richer, and more ancient wisdom. Liturgical prayers and services have served and nourished the church long before I came along and will continue to be prayed by the church long after I am gone. Participating in such rituals help take the focus off my prayers, my singing, my worship and invite me into a corporate body to which I am joined. The worshipping ‘I’ fades into a collective cloud of witnesses who have faith for me when it feels dry, hold space for my doubt when it often overwhelms, who offer words of intercession when my own prayers have long fallen mute. 

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Andrew Clark-Howard is currently editor at Metanoia.

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