When Carlos asked me to focus specifically on the idea, the concept of spiritual but not religious,

I know if this is exactly what you had in mind, but we have dinner afterwards or we can talk some more and take the question, answer,

conversation period in a slightly different direction.

Because I kind of got into this a little bit, and I'll get to Thomas

and Augustine eventually. So, and I'm going to, I'm not going to, I didn't make a handout,

and I'm not going to write stuff down, but I didn't realize that this is an official acronym,

SBNR, so spiritual but not religious or spiritual but not affiliated.

So this has become a commonplace.

Usually this differentiates atheists from non- atheists, but not necessarily.

So scholarly research into this phenomenon has done a great deal to draw

out generational and cultural differences and ideological commonalities across the spectrum of

people who describe themselves as being, I'm going to say SBNR, even though it's not very elegant.

Still there's a perplexing array of variations.

And I want to begin with a brief sense of what these variations are, what the commonalities

are, and then which ones are worthy of specific focus in light of the time that I have.

Then I want to offer a kind of argument that the dichotomy of spiritual versus

religious, even when understood in a sympathetic and historically sensitive way, can't work

for a Christian, especially a Catholic Christian. And I'm going to argue this mainly in light

of Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine and what they understand religion to be specifically.

And it's a pretty simple argument.

You can't have Jesus Christ without the church, vice versa.

But what about other religious traditions, practices, and movements?

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