Religion WITH Spirituality

How is the institution seen. A big factor in what you've mentioned is whether the spiritual adhearants of the religion in question believe that their religion is based on divine revelation or institution.

For example, the Catholic Church believes that the core of her doctrine, her rituals and her structure was instituted by Jesus Christ, second divine person of the Blessed Trinity. In other words, to be a Catholic, for example includes the contents of faith, the means to sanctity and a connection with other Christians.

(I just use the Catholic Church as an example, because I am familiar with it).

Religions require structure. Given that in some religions there is an aspect of a society of the faithful, there necessarily needs to be some structure. Again, in the Church I am a member of a distinction is made between the spiritual connection between Christians, called THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS, and the visible physical organisation, called THE HIERARCY.

Connection to a religions in isolation from structures. It seems that it is possible to have a connection with the living faithful (the hierarcy) without any actual, visible interaction - but only through a spiritual brotherhood/sisterhood: many Catholic saints were hermits (monks who lived in complete isolation, with very rare contact with others).

The obvious difficulty in any religion seems to be maintaining a consistent connection between the visible structures and the spiritual relationships present in that society.

 

As I've observed, the religious institution of which I am a member (a particular Lutheran church) is not perfect, yet there is spiritual value in it's teachings for me. When I was young, I basically separated myself from exposure to my church's moral understanding and sought to objectively construct a moral understanding of my own. After several years, however, I returned to the Lutheran church and found that it's morality was much the same as my own objective one.

I do know that I was as objective as I can be in determining my code of morality/spirituality/etc., and so since my church's morality/spirituality more or less lined up with my views, a fair amount of objectivity and truth must be attributed to my church's theology.