The Difference Between Religion and Spirituality

This topic isn’t really related to The Chosen, but it is a topic I am curious about, and I think people should understand the difference between religion and spirituality.

If you look up this topic in Google, it’ll be difficult to find an unbiased, objective explanation of the difference between religion and spirituality.  It makes sense as religion and spirituality are both very personal things. However, I did find one resource that provided a pretty good explanation right here. 

One problem when looking for sources on this topic is that most people claimed to say that religion has everything negative associated with it and spirituality has everything positive associated with it. This is not true, and it’s disrespectful to religious people to say that there is nothing positive about religion whatsoever.

What’s interesting about the term, “spirituality” is that is seems to be unique to America. People in other countries are either religious or nonreligious. America has a history of making religion a more personal and private thing, and spirituality is a way of doing so. What specifically is the difference between religion and spirituality though?

I seemed to have broached the difference in the previous paragraph, but let’s keep in mind that there is no valid difference between religion and spirituality. Spirituality is religious and religion is spiritual. The difference seems to be the difference between spirituality and organized religion. Spirituality is a form of religion, but it is a more personal and private form of religion. Organized religion seems to be more about community, public ritual, and organized doctrine.

The difference between the two is not all that clear, but people seem to agree on that distinction. I personally believe that someone can be a spiritual person and not believe in a god or gods. I always believed that spirituality is about a higher connectedness to the universe or a deeper understanding of the self. Of course, you can disagree with me—I’m sure that many people do!

I am a big fan of venn diagrams, and I found a terrific one that seems to highlight the differences between religion and spirituality:

What is the difference between religion and spirituality for you?