It’s Not a Religion, It’s a Relationship, Right?
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
There is a common cliché among many evangelical Protestants that goes, “Christianity isn’t a religion. It’s a relationship.” After all, the Christian faith teaches that humanity cannot attain salvation by our own merits, but rather, we are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. It is God, not us, who is the primary actor who enters into a personal relationship with us, setting us free from our bondage to sin and death and clothing us in righteousness. This, of course, is true. Our justification is solely a gift of God that is firmly grounded on our belief and confession that we are sinners in need of grace and that grace is found sufficient in the death of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, who loves us and gave himself up for us. In other words, we place our faith in Christ, and God enters into our hearts. There is nothing we do to earn this special intimacy with our Creator. Clearly, Christians benefit from a personal relationship with God.
The popular slogan certainly has truth in it, but it’s not the complete truth. In fact, I find it exasperating. One reason for this is that religion itself is extraordinarily difficult to define. The most significant feature the overwhelming majority of world religions share in common is the idea that there exists a higher moral standard for humanity to strive toward and attain. Religions don’t always agree on what that standard is, but that there is some sort of measure of virtue is a universal belief.
That aside, religions definitely have their differences. There are religions with countless deities, and religions with no god. There are religions that emphasize community, and there are religions that are deeply individualistic. There are religions of mythology, and religions of rationality, and religions of both. There are religions that believe in an afterlife, and religions that maintain that the life we have now is all there is. Religions vary in belief and practice to considerable degrees, and this is exactly why defining religion is oddly perplexing.
There are numerous indicators of religious belief. Having a belief in a higher power is undoubtedly a characteristic of religion. Belief in an afterlife is undeniably a religious attribute. Intentional worship through rituals that keep the faithful in touch with their higher moral standard is a feature only religion can provide. These are just a few marks out of countless that one can name. Keeping these things in mind, it seems strange that one might cling to the claim that Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship. Christianity arguably shares many of these religious qualities.
The first time I heard this expression I was at a youth group function for church. It was a quippy alliteration that felt right to me. It contained an important truth that I needed to hear at that time: I have a relationship with God. It also gave me a reason to shrug away an annoyance: I no longer need to align myself with religious baggage that may make me seem weird, intolerant, and hateful. Therefore, I was able to have faith in a God who loves me, and I wouldn’t need to irritate my unbelieving friends because my belief is not technically a religion. I could have the best of both worlds because I could still have my faith without the baggage of religion. It was plain to me that there was something about Christianity not being associated with religion that somehow made it more accessible and palatable.
It wasn’t until several years later that I began to question the merits of this sentiment. I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts featuring two hipster Anabaptist pastors from Canada. The way in which they spoke about their faith was incredibly intriguing. I found myself listening for hours at a time. They began to affirm this notion that Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship. They fortified this position by pointing out that Jesus only argued with those who were religious. I couldn’t disagree. Shortly after, however, they mentioned something that caused me to pause and consider what was being discussed. In fact, I listened to it a few times as I was trying to sort out my own thoughts. They proposed that baptizing babies is an illegitimate practice, and that baptism is only for those who have made their own decision to follow Christ. I knew what Anabaptists believed about baptism, so it wasn’t the statement itself that caught me off guard. It was the implication. Not even two minutes before, they were discussing how faith in Jesus is a relationship, and that all of that religious nonsense is what humans add to muddy the waters. I couldn’t help but notice, however, the glaring incongruity of this belief, juxtaposed with the “proper way” one ought to baptize. I found myself asking, “Well, isn’t that religion?”
In fact, it is religion. Baptism involves a very specific, ritualistic formula used in order to initiate the believer into the church body. Much like other means of grace like prayer, reading one’s Bible, worship, holy communion, doing good, and seeking justice, it is a personal and communal ritual through which we relate to God and God relates to us. This is important because these acts of religion draw us into God and God, in turn, leads us into sanctification.
“Ritual” is not a bad word. Neither is “religion.” They are simply the ways by which humanity can relate to God. Everyone utilizes ritual. Many have their own daily rituals. Some wake up in the morning to the sound of an alarm clock, get ready for the day, go to the kitchen for breakfast and coffee, send the kids off to school, and then head to work, where more rituals await. We have prescribed formulas in which we go about our daily routines, and if one thing is out of place, it could ruin the whole day. Our daily rituals keep our lives organized. The same can be said for religious ritual. Every church service is full of ritual, whether we recognize it as such or not. Praying, singing, the preaching of the Word, partaking in the sacraments, even the day we choose to attend worship, the church service is determined by these formulaic routines that help us to connect with God. They create order. One can even say that ritual is Godly because that’s what God does; God brings order out of chaos. Religion, then, is built upon the rituals utilized by Christians to keep an orderly faith-life.
There are those who would argue that the Christian faith is completely antithetical to religion by nature because Jesus was seemingly at odds mostly with the religious people in his day. He harshly rebuked the Pharisees for their religious practices on several occasions, but all pale in comparison to the account found in Matthew 23:13-39 in which he called them hypocrites, lawless, blind guides, greedy, self-indulgent, snakes, a brood of vipers. Then he asked them “How can you escape being sentenced to hell?” Is this what Jesus has to say against the religious?
The key to understanding Jesus’ righteous disdain is found in his own words at that very moment, it’s especially evident in verses 27–28 in which he calls the Pharisees “white-washed tombs.” They are beautiful on the outside, but filled with death and bones and decaying matter on the inside. Jesus’ problem with the Pharisees is not religion. Jesus himself was a very religious Jew. If that were not the case, his concern for how the Pharisees practiced Judaism would be senseless. Jesus disagreed with how the faith of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Zealots had been misdirected, and he, as a Jew, taught how to properly understand what it was that God desired from humanity. In the case of the Pharisees, Jesus took issue with the appearance of religion. His concern was with those who act religious but lack the love of God for their neighbors. Without the heart of the law, religion is relegated to a show. We are just pretty tombs filled with death and decay, no better than our natural state apart from the grace of God.
Empty religion and spiritual death is a legitimate concern for all Christians. Those of us who call ourselves “Methodist” ought to know this. After all, John Wesley once famously said in his “Thoughts Upon Methodism,”
I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.
Wesley gave his formula for Spirit-imbued religion filled with life and vitality in the Methodist movement: sticking to doctrine, spirit, and discipline. Simply put, they are the means of grace handed down to us through the faith—ritual with vigor and historic precedent. Wesley acknowledged the notion of empty religion as articulated by Jesus in his “empty tomb” analogy, but he also spoke of religion empowered by the Holy Spirit. Our religious duties are a direct response to the Spirit at work in our lives. Wesley’s third general rule speaks of this perfectly: “Attend upon the ordinances of God.” Go to church. Confess your sins. Partake in holy communion. Pray. Search the scriptures. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Tend to the sick. Visit the prisoner. Confess your sins. These are the things we do, not as a show, but as a result of being a new creation in Christ. The Holy Spirit’s work of redemption within us leads us to reattain the image of God that was tarnished in the fall, that we may become whole as God’s intended creation as we learn to love as God loves.
Christianity is not just a religion. Christianity is religion. It’s “pure religion,” as the Epistle of James submits. It is religion that makes a relationship with God possible when it comes to our own response to God’s grace at work within us. There is a certain segment of evangelical Christians that honors God’s gift of salvation to us by grace through faith alone, so much so, they believe there is nothing we can contribute to God at all. The act of trying to win our salvation by what we do, then, becomes the understanding of religion. This reestablishes the hollow rituals and dead religion of the Pharisees. However, a relationship with only one active participant is no relationship at all. By definition, a relationship requires a mutual connectedness. God certainly has brought us salvation by grace through faith alone, and it’s true that we can do nothing on our own to earn our salvation. However, by God’s grace at work in our lives, we can respond. And the practices by which we respond are collectively called “religion.” It makes our mutual connectedness complete. The formula is Grace + Religion = A Relationship with God. This is how relationships work; by doing our part to maintain a healthy and life-giving connection. Our part in our response is “attending to the ordinances of God.” God comes to us in grace. We go to God in religion. Together, we form a relationship that puts all other relationships into right-relatedness.
To be religious is to be whole. We need religion to relate rightly to God, to one another, and to creation. All the while, we rely on God to set our religion right as God continually renews our minds and forms us into a new creation, perfecting us in his image. Just as well, our mutual connectedness doesn’t stop with God. It carries over into the body of Christ through whom we share in our relationship with the Triune God. The love shared within the Trinity is shared with the church and the church takes that love out into the world, that all may know God and enter into this beautiful relationship that is setting all creation right. That’s our religion.
Jimmy Mallory is the pastor at Evangelical United Methodist Church in Union City, Ohio, and is a graduate of United Theological Seminary where he serves as the Writing Center Assistant.