How can "Spirituality" be distinguished from "Religion"?

Question

Are spiritual persons necessarily "religious"?
Are religious persons necessarily "spiritual"?

Answer 1

Religious is following a set of rules for believing in god.
Spiritual is believing on your own terms.

Answer 2

Interesting question. I always see religion as 'organised'. I also see it as rigid, often formed over a long time and steeped in ritual and absolute belief that it is the only true path of life. Which when you look at it objectively is ridiculous when you think that there is zero probability that a religion could possibly hit on exactly the right balance of worship/rules/rituals to appease a God and allow the followers to progress to the next stage of life whatever that may be.

Spirituality strike me as a somewhat more free interpretation of religion. Almost like hedging you bets one way or the other. While not following any particular religion 'spiritual people' seem to believe there is a greater power out there so as long as they believe in something they will be ok when they die. It also means they can have that reassurance without having to perform the rituals demanded by most religions.

I'm neither religious of spiritual. A small part of me respects people with a faith in a particular religion, even if I do find it a bit hard to understand. But when someone say to me, 'I'm not religious but I am a spiritual person' I just makes me cross, not only does it sound like a cop out, but it just sounds psthetic, like no real thought has gone into that statement. I'd prefer people s to have convictions so that they could have strength in them!

Sorry to anyone I'm likely to have offended.

Answer 3

Religion is a set of beliefs often propounded by a person who has attained high spiritual levels through self contemplation and meditation.

Spirituality on the other hand is a constant effort on an individual's part to better himself from the within and at the same time think of the betterment of his/her surroundings.

Religion is a means of attaining this spirituality. Religion helps in doing so by following a set of principals which are aimed at cleansing from within. like practising non-violence, abstaining from eating non-vegitarian food, chanting of mantras, regular meditation, etc. All these help our mind and heart to focus and concentrate, which is important for self contemplation and developing of inner vision.

Spiritual persons might not be religious as they have passed that staeg of being religious. Also not all religious people may be spiritualists, as they still have to atain that stage.
some people may be able to strike a balance between both religion and spirituality, which is also good as they know the meaning of religious rituals as in why certain things are done and whats its true purpose.

Answer 4

Spirituality means that you are in contact wit spirit, word, Tao, calma, shabd, etc... call it any name you want. At any time and place spirituality lies inside you and not outside anyway.
There are different degrees of spirituality. First one is found on astral plane, the second on mental and the third is true spiritual 'plane' that is out of space and time, out of duality.
Religion is a concept that leads toward spirituality. You can call a concept religion only if it is sending your path toward the so called God.
All religions are man made and starts from some more or less spiritually experience. We should be aware that the practitioners of those experiences have big problems to convey what they have realized and experienced. This is why is so wrong to understand scriptures so literally on one hand, but on other our mind have the tendency to relativate all that had been sad or shown and to explain it in his own way.

Answer 5

Religion is organized belief, generally practiced by a large amount of people. Spirituality is simply believing in a higher power, and is not governed by rules other than that of the person practicing the spirituality. Spiritual people can be religous, but they don't have to be. And the same goes for religious people. They can be spiritual, but they don't have to be.

Answer 6

Interesting question. It would be determined first if the word spiritual is referring to the world's religions now wouldn't it? One could say they are spiritual and mean they worship angels or voodoo,Satan,many things. To be religious refers to following a certain belief or creed in a formal sense, like attending a church or mass. If your question is referring to Christianity, then a spiritual person would be someone that has their own beliefs or ideas without following a certain religion of sect. Many would claim in being non- denominational.

Answer 7

Religion is a set of principles, practices and methods that define code of conduct for life based on spritual philosphies. Religion is not just workshoping God. It is holistic art of living the life while keeping God as focus and goal of your life.

Religion become matter of disrespect and gets correpted when we loose the principles behind it. When characters and stories become more important than the moral of the story, religion take the degraded face that we see today.

Sprituality is the power that connects Human in its material form to higher forms of consciousness in the Universe. Religion provides a framework to utilize this power called sprituality to allow human beings to elevate themselves to a path to reach God.

Religion without sprituality means nothing, can't exist. Sprituality without religion can happen but required extra ordinary capability to be able to pratice laws of sprituality without having to go through props of religion.

Hope that clarifies to some extent, if not all.

Answer 8

Religion is your Character and behavior is your Spirituality. Can you distinguished your Character from your behavior, If Yes than that's the difference.

Answer 9

religion is something that u r taught by others, telling you what to believe in. spirituality is something that u carry, something that u r. Spiritual persons usually are not religious and vice versa.

Answer 10

To a certain extent on both accounts, yes but what you need to know is that God is not religion, God is the Holy Spirit.

Man invented religion.

Some things regarding religion have made God either happy or mad with man. Because when man gets his own ideas and try to add to what God already deems good then really man is putting themselves above God and is above all His creations.