John Green: Hi. I'm John Green, welcome to Crash Course: Religions.

Do you ever get the feeling something or someone is watching you? Maybe it's a tingle on the back of your neck, a perfume in the air, as strange noise coming from your attic, your email getting inexplicably hacked by a user called Fancy Bear—

Putin!

It could be Vlad, of course, but it could also be a ghost.

About 4 in 10 Americans believe the dead can communicate with us, despite religious affiliation dropping over the last few decades. 

So how does the paranormal fit into the bigger picture of religious beliefs? Are spirits a part of spirituality?

[Theme music]

The paranormal is a broad umbrella encompassing everything, from ghosts to telepathy, from aliens to Bigfoot, and a lot of weird, spooky stuff in between. 

It's often used interchangeably with the supernatural, but usually paranormal describes something that's both unexplained by science and not a generally accepted religious belief.

But of course, that brings us back to the Christianity shaped box that so much of religious analysis has used to understand a religion. So we might say that God is a supernatural concept and Hamlet's dead father is a paranormal one.

But then we get into issues like, paranormal to who? 

And then we get into issues like, paranormal to whom??? 

I've never known, Stan, and more to the point, I'm not sure anybody knows.

All that acknowledged, take UFOs, a phenomenon that's gained a lot of steam in recent years. They've even got the attention of the US Congress, which as we all know, is not easy. 

Reports of UFOs stretch back decades, and in some cases, centuries.

One thing we won't acknowledge is the term UAP. It’s just it's not going to happen, space force.

But when it comes to intelligent extraterrestrials, zipping around in flying saucers, they're neither scientifically proven nor accepted by a mainstream religious institution, so we would consider them paranormal. 

Please don't sue me, Church of Scientology, as repeatedly established in this series. I love you,  specifically I love when you don't sue me. 

But let's compare UFOs to something like Angels, which are usually considered supernatural or religious phenomena.

Roughly 70% of Americans say they believe in angels. And you'd think all those folks would be religious themselves — Christians, Jews, Muslims, and even Wiccans. But 33% of those who reported believing in angels said they don’t identify with a religion. 

Maybe they're all just fans of It's A Wonderful Life. 

Myself, I prefer a biblically accurate angel. Put one of those on screen, Stan. Yes, yes, that's what I'm talking about. Put that in It's A Wonderful Life! 

Stan just informed me that references to old black and white movies are not particularly hip with the kids. My apologies, but for context, It's A Wonderful Life is like that Muppets Christmas Carol, which is like Charles Dickens's Christmas Carol, which is like Scrooged, which is like Elf. Y'all saw Elf, right? Are there even — do they make Christmas movies anymore?

So what do we make of all this? What does it actually mean to believe in angels if you aren't also religious?

Oh no, is that who I think it is, Stan? [Answers ringing phone] Hello?

Devil's Advocate: I'm back, baby! I got to say, I know a few angels. Some of my best friends are angels. In fact, you may not know this, but my boss used to be an angel, and they'd tell you that you can't believe in angels and not be religious. It just doesn't make sense. 

John: Well, but there are a lot of people who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, right, meaning they believe in some things typically associated with religions but don't consider themselves members of a particular religion. But it's funny, I don’t think you're completely off. 

Devil's Advocate: OK, sure, but what about — wait, hold on, did you just agree with me?

John: No, I wouldn't go that far, what I'm saying is the phrase spiritual but not religious can imply a kind of binary where spirituality and religion are like separate things, but that's not always the case. 

Devil's Advocate: So, I'm right!

John: That's not where I'm going with this, spirituality and religion are subjective terms. Though, right, like people can use spiritual to refer to the supernatural or themselves, whether they're inside or outside of religion, but a lot of people who identify as spiritual but not religious see those concepts as separate and define them in moral and political terms.

Like, they want have spiritual connection outside the confines of organised religion precisely because they find that organised religion discourages the kind of connection they're seeking. 

Devil's Advocate: What, so like being spiritual means they have an individual authentic direct experience with the divine or whatever. 

John: Exactly. Whereas, to some folks, being religious is an institutional inauthentic and moderated experience.

Devil's Advocste: Wait, did I just agree with you? 

John: I think you did. 

Devil's Advocate: This is awkward. Yeah, I'm out. [Hangs up]

John: Bro, I think I'm getting through to him. 

Anyway, the point is, this concept of spirituality is very flexible, and that flexibility has proven popular.

In 2023, 7 out of 10 adults in the US describe themselves as spiritual and over 20% of those respondents identified as spiritual but not religious. 

Like I was telling the Devil's advocate, people who identify with this label often see themselves in opposition to religion.

Like, a Pew study found that Americans who identify as spiritual but not religious are much more likely than religious Americans to believe that religion causes division and intolerance, and that religion does more harm than good. 

Now, these beliefs can be rooted in one's politics, like objections to how organised religions can marginalise women and LGBTQ+ people, but rather than swear off anything with a whiff of religion, these folks aim to extract some elements of religion from what they may view as corruption institutions. 

That way, they can create their own version of spirituality outside of a specific religion's rules and regulations.

It's sirr of like putting Taco Bell sauce on foods that aren't Taco Bell. 

To get a better idea if what this looks like in practice, let's consider Shinto. 

Many non-Japanese practitioners of Shinto find themselves attracted to it because they see it as being in tune with nature, plus it has no founder doctrine or mandated sacred texts. 

In a lot of ways, it embodies the idea of spirituality as an authentic individual connection to the divine, and indeed many global practitioners of Shinto identify as spiritual but not religious, enjoying the comfort of a religious framework one that they can mold to their own standards without the dogmatic adherence to tradition. 

But of course, there are traditions and institutions in Shinto, and sometimes when we pick and choose what parts of a religion we want to believe in, it can have unintended consequences. 

For instance, many Americans and Europeans have adopted Chinese Taoist spiritual practices. They might look for spiritual insight through reading the Taoteching, or practice Taoist techniques of meditation or tai chi, t gain a sense of calm. 

But they very likely have little interest in venerating Taoist gods, worshipping at shrines or other practices inherent to traditional religious Taoism. 

Many scholars view this Western desire to participate in non-Western religious practices as a kind of religious exoticism, where part of a religion is pulled out of context, rejecting important aspects of its original form. 

In other words, they turn something sacred to a big group of people into a buffet of take it or leave it options, picking and choosing what might fill their spiritual stomachs. 

Back in episode 1, we used the secularisation of yoga as an example of why trying to define religion can be so tricky, because while yoga has distinctly Hindu origins, many Americans and Europeans have extracted it from those roots, using it as a means of self-improvement and personal soul searching, instead of a way to unite your soul with Brahman, the spiritual core of the universe in Hinduism  

While of course cultures are fluid, and not all Hindus are against the de-religioning of yoga, others feel removing it from its spiritual context can lead to stereotyping, commodification, and the erasure of culture. 

So, as usual, it's complicated. 

But that's not to say that everyone who identifies as spiritual but not religious is guilty of appropriating a particular religion. Spirituality is eclectic and can evolve to include all sorts of beliefs and traditions and ideas and technologies, and also all religions borrow and change when encountering new cultural contexts. 

Like meditation apps and guided meditation workshops both in person and online have exploded in popularity in recent years, or the uber popular corner of TikTok known as Witch Tok is home to videos explaining the benefits of different crystals, which translates into profits for stores that sell them. 

Spirituality, the paranormal, religion, and culture are constantly meeting and diverging, continually influencing one another. 

And that influence goes both ways. 

While many people consider themselves spiritual but not religious, many others consider themselves spiritual and religious, and otherwise paranormal beliefs can find their place among religious ideas. 

Like, take ghosts, for example. Across the religious spectrum, including atheists and agnostics, over 80% of us adults believe that humans have souls or spirits.

And if you were to ask if they'd ever seen a ghost or spirit, a whopping 30% would tell you they have a belief in ghosts, as cross-cultural with spirits playing major role in many religious traditions and also many secular traditions. 

Like, ghost stories are popular parts of folklore across the world, from hauntings of La Llorona, the Weeping Woman of Mexico, to appearances of the Bengali skondhokata, the headless ghosts of train accident victims. 

But ghost stories are also popular in secular communities. Like, I heard them a lot growing up at summer camp. 

And ghost stories also show up in religious texts, like the story from the Hebrew Bible, of the deceased prophet Samuel, appearing to King Saul during a seance. 

In Hindu Vedic texts, there are Bhoota, restless ghosts of people who violently or without proper funerals. 

Or the spirits of the Hungry Ghost Festival in China. 

No matter where you stand on the existence and behaviour of ghosts, they're a part of how humans make sense of the world. 

To think about it another way, a belief in ghosts, or indeed a belief in the paranormal, can be seen as part of a person's lived religion, the everyday spiritual life they live outside of more formal religious settings. 

People who identify as spiritual but not religious aren't the only ones who pick and choose their religious beliefs and practices.

After all, like, you'd be hard-pressed to find a person who practices Catholicism in the exact right way. I mean, aside from maybe the pope, but only maybe. 

Like okay, let's say you're Sikh, but you happen to experience an unexplained light in a cornfield one evening, to you it looks like a UFO, even though you've never believed in UFOs before.

You might decide to add it to the list of things you do believe in after this encounter. But just because you decide you believe in UFOs, doesn’t mean you're no longer Sikh, or that the belief is influenced Sikh teaching. 

In the same way a Christian might practice yoga, use crystals to find balance, or cleanse their house with sage — all beliefs that aren't taught within Christianity, and might even be frowned upon in some cases.

But engaging in these spiritual practices doesn't mean that person isn't Christian, it just means their lived version of Christianity might look different from mine, just like mine might look different from my neighbours. 

Like, I believe there is a ghost in my barn. Now, my Episcopal priest won't exorcise it, but I'm still allowed to believe in that ghost, while also being Episcopalian. 

Each of us constructs our own eclectic versions of our lived religions, often drawing on ideas from the culture around us, be it the healing power of crystals or belief in aliens. 

In fact, most scholars see spirituality not in opposition to religion but as one of the many ways people do religion. 

Whether sanctioned by an institution or not. 

Ultimately, there's enough room within the eve widening borders of religion for all kinds of practices and beliefs, supernatural, paranormal, or otherwise. One can be spiritual but not religious, spiritual and religious, and even religious but not spiritual. 

In the end, it's the belief that matters more than the label. And I want to believe, I think we can all agree that this world is a better place when we believe on each other. Well, each other and Bigfoot. 

In our next episode, we'll leave the paranormal behind, and find out how religion and science may be more compatible than we tend to think. I'll see you then. 

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course: Relis, which was filmed at our studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.