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Can A Culture Have Spirituality Without Religion?

I have heard people say that they are spiritual but they disagree with organized religion.

My question is: Can a society or culture be spiritual without Organized Religion?

Or is Organized Religion necessary to maintain a high level of cultural Spirituality?

Religion Spirituality Culture Can

I would have to say yes a culture can have spirituality without a organized religion. The spirituality would be basic and not anything fancy but they can have it. If they come together to discuss their spirituality then they are organizing a religion to a point.

You do not have to belong to a organized religion to have religion either. You can believe in a supreme being and still be religious. Being a member of a certain religious group is just a way to reaffirm your religious beliefs and to share with others like you. This is what a organized religion is all about. It is how it got its start in the first place.

Can A Culture Have Spirituality Without Religion? Beliefs Religious General

Would there be religions such as Jewish, Muslim, or Christian without Organized Religion?

What type of spirituality would exist without organized religion?

Religion Spirituality Culture Can

You can not have a organized religion such as jewish, christian, muslim without spirituality. The organized religion is based on individual religious beliefs. There fore you can not have a religion with others outside a family without it being organized.

If you are not part of a organized religion you can still believe in a higher power. The belief in a higher power is spirituality is it not?

Religion Spirituality Culture Can

Based on this definition of Spirituality:

I do believe it is possible spirituality without organized religion. As a matter of fact I know many people who do not belong to any organized religion and they are more spiritual than those who do belong to one. Spirituality is such an individual, private matter that is definetely possible to achieve it without Religion.

Can A Culture Have Spirituality Without Religion?

Societies can and have flourished for centuries without "organized religion". Firstly, however I'd like to take a step back and clarify something. According to Webster's Dictionary the word "religion" means "anything done routinely". However it has come to represent ONLY a creed or organization supporting a specific creed.

That out of the way, there have been many civilizations who did not have an "organized" religion but had practices of faith that were universal among their people. Granted most of modern civilization would consider these societies primitive, American Indian cultures had few "organized" practices, faith in the All Father was something everyone practiced every day among most of the Tribes. Some exceptions would have been the Gatherings for the Iroquois Confederations, were usually opened and closed by a highly respected Medicine Man/Woman, the Ghost Dance of the Lakota, the Peyote Ceremony of the Yakee and others but for the most part, all "nature based" civilizations do not have "Organized Religion". And contrary to what most modern people have been taught by the government school systems and their own organized religions, these nature based religions are NOT "primitive superstition", at least not among the American Indians. The basis of the Iroquois faith is not that there are "spirits" of a lesser nature in everything but that God is in everything. Most American Indian faith structures were not pantheist or "pagan" as that word has come to mean "having many gods" they were "panentheist" - they saw everything as having the spirit of the All Father in them. As Christianity had forgotten this point by the time the Europeans came to this continent, they thought their "red skinned" neighbors were primitive and unschooled. If some of those Christian missionaries had sat and actually listened to the Medicine men and women instead of trying to convert them, they may have regained the truth of their own religion.

AS to the question of whether or not a civilization or culture can exist without "Organized Religion" look at Japan. The primary religion in Japan for thousands of years was Shintoism. My understanding of Shintoism is "ancestor worship" and there is no organized major religion involved in this, it is family oriented. Granted today there are more Buddhists and Zen Taoists and Christians in Japan than Shintoists but the civilization was at a high level of culture before the Western World invaded. Also the Iroquois Confederacy was actually a very polished cultural and political body before the Europeans discovered America. The fact that the people had no metal or gunpowder does not mean they were primitive. They weren't. Our American Constitution is actually based on the constitution of the Iroquois. It was not the only "culture" already in the Americas that did not have "organized" religion.

In my humble opinion, organized religion is just another way for a few to attempt to control the masses. It is no different than "Big Government". That is the reason I do not associate myself with any organized denomination or religion. I am of the opinion that God gave me an intelligent mind and a moral spirit, I don't NEED to be controlled by anyone else.