The major concern in religion is that the relationship between faith and spirituality is a frequently debated subject among all Christians. Many people today have an intellectual belief in God but lack a two-way contact relationship with Him. The “faith experience” with God allows individuals to personally experience God’s faithfulness, compassion, and personal existence. Undoubtedly, faith is hard to achieve, as it is the belief that something is real or genuine despite the lack of credible proof, and it often ignores established facts that show the thing is not accurate or true. For these reasons, there is a rising problem regarding people’s faith and lack of it.
Indifferentism has been increasing in the 21st century, with the younger people ignoring religion and taking a more neutral stance towards religion. The study found that traditional Protestant churches and other branches of Christianity are declining, posing a significant threat to religion’s strong presence in person and societal life (Schneiders). Such a trend may be explained by the fact that younger generations of Americans have had less religious experiences as children than previous generations.
Faith is not the same as hope or optimism. And religious faith is not to be mistaken with confidence based on evidence or trust gained with time from experience since there are no gathered facts to validate confidence and no accumulated trust over time in religious faith. There may be speculation that leads to faith, but there are no details about the nature of any gods. In all cases outside of religion, faith is the product of getting at least some proof. When faith is involved, religious belief is completely devoid of facts. Earned confidence acquired over time through experience, on the other hand, is nothing like faith. Trust is confidence devoid of knowledge over time, taking us full circle back to faith, trusting in the reality or truth of something without adequate proof.
Among the religious society, several concepts for the relationship between religion and spirituality exist, as explained by Schneiders (2003). In the first model, people perceive religion and faith as two distinct notions. This is the viewpoint of young people who admire others’ religious commitments but are not interested in engaging in religion themselves. The second theory states that some people see faith and spirituality as contrasting truths that are inversely related to one another (Schneiders 164). The less religious one is, the more spiritual one is, and vice versa. Ultimately, some people see faith and religion as two facets of a single enterprise that, like body and spirit, are often at odds with one another but are indispensable for one another, together, create a single truth (Schneiders 165). Thus faith and religion have various perceptions and may be viewed from different dimensions.
Concluding, I personally agree with Schneiders’ attitude on faith and spirituality across all domains. Faith is something that is developed within individuals as a consequence of their religious education and personal feelings. The fact of the declining religious population explains the lack of faith and deep conscious involvement in the religion. The author argues about the concept of spirituality, giving substantial evidence to his statements, which evokes a feeling of trust and persuasion. He concludes that the confrontation between religion and spirituality is principally influenced by the shortcomings of the latter, which invalidate the former, as religious tradition is reduced to and equated with its institutionalization, which I entirely agree with.
Works Cited
Schneiders, Sandra Marie. “Religion vs. Spirituality: A Contemporary Conundrum.” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, vol. 3, no. 2, 2003, pp. 163–185, 10.1353/scs.2003.0040.