“Spiritual but Not Religious” is Older than You Think (2024)

A growing number of people in the U.S. identify as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). According to Pew Research, these individuals “consider spirituality very important in their lives, but they neither think of themselves as religious nor say religion is very important in their lives.” This group, often described as “Nones,” aren’t simply out of the habit of attending church. They see little need for “organized religion” and gravitate toward autonomous, à la carte spirituality instead.

In Shaman and Sage: The Roots of “Spiritual but Not Religious” in Antiquity, Michael Horton argues SBNR isn’t new. It recycles several ancient cultural themes. At the heart of the growing SBNR trend is the pursuit of autonomy, a hallmark of our modern age. SBNR also emphasizes the immanence of the divine, especially through pantheism—a significant theme in theological liberalism as well as in our environmentally concerned world. This first of three volumes in The Divine Self offers a deep dive into ancient cultures and will likely influence conversations about religious trends in the coming years.

Same as It Ever Was

Theories about the rise of a nonreligious spirituality abound and are often associated with modern secularism. Intellectual historians find the roots of the malaise of modernity in Enlightenment rationalism, the Protestant Reformation, or the nominalism of late medieval scholasticism. These narratives sometimes represent SBNR as a reaction to modernity’s disenchantment from the naked materialism of the age.

Horton, a Reformed theologian and professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, upends these theories by looking further back into cultural history. He traces SBNR’s roots to the “Axial Age,” when, around 500 BC, several cultures developed a stronger concept of the individual and the potential for someone, without being in a sacred space, to connect with the divine. The shaman—a common, transcultural figure who “was the mediator between the underworld, this world, and the heavens” (23)—became the center of an alternative spiritual world that was much more pantheistic and enabled an escape from one’s place in society.

At the heart of the growing ‘spiritual but not religious’ trend is the pursuit of autonomy, a hallmark of our modern age.

The shaman was an integral figure in Orphism, which is the “teachings concerning the soul’s immortality, its fall into a bodily prison, and its reincarnation in various bodies” as a means of returning to the transcendent cosmic consciousness (24). This sounds very Eastern. It is, but Horton also highlights Orphism in the philosophy of Plato (with his sage, Socrates), which has sent tendrils into all of Western culture. The pantheistic tendency of modern Protestant liberalism, along with its demythologizing rationalism, isn’t a phenomenon born a few centuries ago. It’s a variation on a recurring theme in human culture, which Horton calls “natural supernaturalism.”

This discussion may seem esoteric, but intellectual history often reshapes how we think about our world. Horton’s exposition can bring nuance to helpful but simplistic models of modernity, like Francis Schaeffer’s “upper/lower story” description of modern culture. We need not discard such models, but we should use them carefully. Shaman and Sage provides significant food for thought regarding common interpretations of the history of ideas.

Retrieve with Caution

Audacious intellectual histories are risky. It’s tempting to find a common thread and immediately draw causal connections for some contemporary trend. Supporting the genetic connection of ideas between cultures, however, is especially challenging using ancient texts that don’t footnote their sources.

Horton avoids this danger by keeping his work in the realm of the descriptive rather than the prescriptive. This book highlights similarities between movements and ideas as they flow through human cultures, but he mainly draws dotted lines. He argues for recurring patterns throughout time rather than genetic connections.

For example, some form of SBNR pantheism, Horton argues, “has always been the native religion of Western culture. Challenges to the public religion of Athens and of Christendom have always asserted the ‘Religion of the One’—the perennial tradition of the One as everything and everything as the One” (31). That doesn’t mean contemporary pantheists are reading ancient sources, just that there are similarities across time. Horton helps us see broad cultural themes.

In this first of three volumes, which only gets to the 15th century with the Florentine Renaissance, we see why reading ancient sources—including patristic Christian authors—must be done cautiously. Many of us are unaware of certain intellectual currents and debates. Origen’s hermeneutic, for example, involved “spiritual exegesis,” a technique he borrowed from Orphic sources. That hermeneutic paved the way for confusion about the physical resurrection, which has influenced some modern theologians. Horton’s book helps us understand philosophical currents that run through Western culture and have, to varying degrees, been adopted or resisted by the church.

Impressive Scholarship

Shaman and Sage is an impressive book. When put alongside Horton’s substantial scholarship—his systematic theology, The Christian Faith, his focused doctrinal texts like Introducing Covenant Theology, and the two-volume work Justification—this volume is a bold effort. Horton has written solid academic and popular works to directly aid the church.

Meanwhile, he’s spent half a lifetime quietly absorbing primary and secondary literature on classical sources to present original scholarship that can bridge the gap between the history of ideas and Christian theology. This project would be ambitious if it came from an aged professor in the classics department of a major university; it’s astonishing in concert with Horton’s other efforts.

Horton’s book helps us understand philosophical currents that run through Western culture and have, to varying degrees, been adopted or resisted by the church.

However, because of the range of his efforts and the depth of this current volume, Horton may have outkicked his coverage a bit (to use an American football metaphor). His usual readers—Reformed Christians interested in the nuances of doctrines and their application to daily life—may find this latest volume is beyond their typical field of interest.

Additionally, Horton sometimes pulls secondary themes of classic writers to the front of his arguments. None of his theories is novel, but the emphasis on supernaturalism in Plato and Aristotle, for example, goes deeper than the usual “Greek philosophy was the source of rationality” reading of the classics. This text requires constant attention to follow what Horton is doing.

It may be a decade or more before we see the cultural fruit of this three-volume work. Once the project is completed, it should be the source of conversations at conferences and in faculty lounges, which will spill out in other theological, philosophical, and apologetic works. Horton’s work has the potential to influence theories of modernity and doctrinal development. It serves as a reminder of how important reading old books is for understanding our time and of how simplistic explanations for current trends mislead us.