Killing for God's sake: The spiritual crisis in religion and society

Unwittingly, religion often fosters or, at least, supports violence. Yet in a pluralistic society where religious tolerance is safeguarded, it is difficult to adjudicate public opinion that claims a religious base. This paper proposes a response-to tease apart religion and spirituality and to explicate spirituality as a human, and not necessarily a theological, thing. The core of such an understanding is the self-aware and self-transcending dimension of the human mind that can rightly be called spirit and to which numerous thinkers have pointed. Especially the thought of Bernard Lonergan contributes to a detailed account of this matter. Inherent in humanity as such, spirituality is essential to any society. Perforce spirituality is a necessary public concern, and it is a legitimate subject matter for the human sciences. On the common ground of spirituality, religious, political, and scientific collaboration could generate a shared ethos that supports social cohesion and proscribes violence from whatever source.