Introduction
When I first sat on city council, I was struck less by the politics than by the rhythm. Agendas, motions, roll calls, and votes unfolded with a patterned regularity that reminded me of church liturgy. Yet what filled the chamber was not the voice of God but the voices of neighbors — sometimes harmonious, often in conflict, always pressing against one another like the currents of a river. Kurt Lewin’s field theory offers a language for this experience: human life is shaped by forces pushing and pulling, restraining and driving, never static but always in motion. To serve in public life was to feel those forces directly, not as abstractions but as the lived tension of community.
I have come to see all of my communities in this way: as concentric fields of belonging, much like Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. At the center lies the individual with daily rituals and habits. Surrounding this core are family and friends, then intentional communities such as monasteries, workplaces, or civic boards. Beyond these are the larger institutions of public life — schools, councils, museums — and finally the broadest sphere of culture, where millions are bound together by rituals of nation, memory, and shared imagination. Each circle exerts pressure on the others; each sustains and reshapes the self. To be religious but not spiritual is to honor these fields of belonging as sacred, not because they are ordained by the supernatural, but because they are the natural currents through which meaning and identity take form.
The Individual in the Field
Kurt Lewin’s original field theory begins with the recognition that no person exists in isolation. Behavior, he argued, is always the product of both the individual and the environment: B = f(P,E). To put it simply, who we are and how we act is never solely a matter of internal willpower or external circumstance but of their constant interaction. I have found this to be true in my own life. My daily practices — brewing coffee, journaling, turning prayer beads, or sitting quietly in meditation — are not merely private habits but responses to the fields around me. They anchor me against the turbulence of change, and they prepare me to enter the larger spheres of community that surround me.
These rituals, small as they are, form the first circle of community: the community of the self. William James, writing in The Principles of Psychology, called habit the “enormous fly-wheel of society,” conserving our energies and giving our lives direction. What I repeat each day becomes the baseline of how I meet others. Rilke, too, urged that if our daily life seems poor, it is because we have failed to recognize its richness. When I pour coffee carefully or sit with the rhythm of my breath, I am not escaping society; I am shaping myself to meet it.
Psychologists like Erik Erikson remind us that identity is never fixed but develops through stages, always pulled forward by new challenges and responsibilities. At midlife, Erikson identified the task of “generativity versus stagnation” — the call to invest in others rather than retreat into isolation. My individual rituals are not ends in themselves but the groundwork for generativity. They equip me to teach, to serve, to vote, to sit at a family table or council chamber. Without them, I am untethered; with them, I am steady enough to face the competing forces of larger communities.
Sociologists like Erving Goffman described the self as a performer on the stage of daily life, always presenting, negotiating, and adapting. I feel this acutely: in the classroom, I am one version of myself; at the city council table, another; with family and friends, yet another. But beneath these roles lies the individual field, the set of practices and rituals that give coherence to all the masks I wear. My private liturgy sustains the public liturgies.
To be religious but not spiritual begins here: with the recognition that even the self is not solitary but formed in tension with its environment. My rituals are not sacred because they invoke heaven but because they prepare me to live within the natural field of forces that constitute human life. The center of community, then, is the individual — a fragile, constructed self, held together by daily practice, already shaped by and shaping the worlds beyond.
Family and Friends
If the individual is the center of the field, then the first forces pressing in and shaping life are those of family and close friends. Charles Cooley, one of the early American sociologists, described these as “primary groups” — the intimate circles where identity, affection, and loyalty are first formed. They are the places where we learn how to belong, long before we ever enter classrooms, churches, or civic chambers. For me, that primary group was most vividly embodied in the Sunday meal at my grandparents’ house. Week after week, the table gathered us together in a ritual that was both ordinary and profound. After my grandfather’s death in 2002, the ritual did not dissolve. We rearranged the seats, and I took his place. That shift taught me something about continuity: communities endure by adapting. Ritual binds us not because it is static, but because it absorbs change into its rhythm.
Psychology confirms what my experience suggests. Erik Erikson noted that intimacy — the capacity to form lasting bonds with others — is the developmental task that follows the identity work of adolescence. Without it, adulthood becomes isolating. With it, the self finds roots in something larger. My seat at the table was not only my own; it was part of a generational flow, one place in a long pattern of belonging that began before me and will continue after me. Similarly, friendships forged on baseball trips or museum visits with my brother are not just leisure activities. They are living rituals, anchoring us in companionship while allowing memory to weave our shared story.
Émile Durkheim’s insight into ritual as the glue of society fits here as well. He argued that rituals transform the ordinary into the sacred by affirming shared identity. The table, the ballpark, the road trip — these were not sacraments in the theological sense, but they were sacramental in their power to bind. Martin Buber’s insistence that “all real living is meeting” captures this truth: in family and friendship, we encounter the other not as an abstract category but as a face across the table, a voice in the car, a presence beside us in the stands.
Of course, these forces are not only supportive; they are also sources of tension. Divorce reshaped my daily rituals. Death rearranged the seating chart of family life. Friends come and go, and even strong ties must adapt to distance and change. Lewin’s field theory reminds us that communities are dynamic systems, always subject to the push of tradition and the pull of transformation. The family table persists, but it persists precisely because it adjusts.
To be religious but not spiritual is to see in these primary groups a sacredness that does not depend on supernatural blessing. They are sacred because they are the first liturgies of belonging, the earliest rehearsals of loyalty, responsibility, and care. My place at the table, my seat in the car, my companionship on a trip — these are not trivial moments. They are the living field in which the self encounters others and learns the fragile, renewing work of community.
Intentional Communities
Beyond family and friends lie the communities we choose — intentional circles that structure life with greater deliberation. Monasteries, churches, civic boards, and workplaces all represent this sphere. Each is bound not only by affection but by rules, rhythms, and shared commitments. They are what sociologist Émile Durkheim would call “moral communities”: groups united by practices that orient individuals toward something beyond themselves.
For me, intentional communities have taken many forms. In religion, I was drawn not to evangelical spontaneity but to the structure of Episcopal and Catholic worship. Their liturgies, rooted in the monastic tradition, offered a rhythm of time that felt more honest and sustaining. I even associated with two monasteries — Saint Gregory’s Abbey in Three Rivers, Michigan, and Assumption Abbey in Ava, Missouri — where the discipline of ora et labora, prayer and work, was embodied in daily life. The attraction was never to supernatural belief but to the form itself: the bells marking the hours, the chanting of psalms, the quiet repetition of ritual. These practices did what all good communities do — they made time livable, giving shape to otherwise chaotic days.
Work has played a similar role. To spend nearly two decades teaching in the same district is, in its way, a kind of intentional community. The school day itself is a liturgy: bells, classes, discussions, meetings. The workplace, like the monastery, demands repetition and constancy, but it also requires adaptation as new students arrive and others depart. Kurt Lewin’s studies of group dynamics emphasized how work groups form what he called a “quasi-stationary equilibrium”: they hold patterns together through forces of stability while constantly adjusting to pressures of change. I have felt this truth in every faculty meeting, every classroom transition, every new policy introduced into the old rhythms of teaching.
Civic service has been another form of intentional belonging. Serving on city council or on a museum board is not a casual act of community; it is deliberate, rule-governed, and liturgical in its own way. Agendas, votes, and public comment sessions function like rituals, ensuring continuity and fairness. Clifford Geertz described rituals as both “models of” and “models for” reality — they reflect the world as it is and prescribe how it should be. Civic intentional communities embody this duality: they mirror the tensions of the society they represent while also pointing toward its aspirations.
All intentional communities share this paradox. They comfort by providing structure, but they also challenge by requiring accountability. A monastery disciplines the hours, but it also asks for humility and obedience. A workplace offers routine, but it also demands sacrifice and adaptation. A city council gives voice to neighbors, but it also forces confrontation with conflict and compromise. Lewin’s field theory captures this constant dynamic: forces of tradition press one way, forces of change another, and the community survives by negotiating their balance.
To be religious but not spiritual is to treat these communities as sacred not because they are touched by heaven, but because they enact human devotion in patterned form. Monastic prayer, classroom ritual, civic procedure, and even the grind of work are all ways of binding individuals into shared responsibility. They are fragile, always subject to fracture or fatigue, yet they endure because they remind us that meaning is not made alone. Intentional communities sanctify time and labor, turning the ordinary demands of life into the slow work of belonging together.
Civic Institutions and Public Life
If intentional communities provide stability through chosen commitments, civic institutions represent the wider fields into which those commitments flow. Here the individual, family, and work converge with structures that bind entire towns, states, and nations. They are less intimate but no less sacred, for they shape the rhythms of collective life. Hannah Arendt called this realm the “public sphere,” the place where human plurality comes into view — where diverse voices encounter each other and forge a common world.
I felt this most vividly during my years on city council. Sitting in the chamber, I witnessed how civic life is always a balancing act, much like Kurt Lewin’s field theory predicted: opposing forces of tradition and innovation, private interest and public good, preservation and change. Agendas and procedures might seem mundane, but they function like liturgy, structuring participation and ensuring that every voice has its place. A council meeting is not unlike a church service — a patterned gathering where individuals speak into a common life, where ritual and rule preserve order amid conflict.
Teaching is another form of civic priesthood. Robert Bellah described American civil religion as the set of rituals, myths, and symbols that sustain our democratic identity. In the classroom, I feel this acutely. The school day itself is liturgical — bells ring, students gather, lessons unfold, discussions rise and fall. These rituals are not only pedagogical; they are civic, training young people in the habits of dialogue, responsibility, and memory. As Parker Palmer reminds us, “we teach who we are.” To teach history, literature, or civics is to enact the priesthood of democracy, guiding students into the public liturgy of citizenship.
Other institutions, too, bear this character. Museums, for instance, are temples of memory. To serve on a museum board is to curate collective identity, deciding which stories to elevate, which artifacts to preserve, and which silences to leave unspoken. Émile Durkheim argued that societies sanctify themselves through ritual; I see this every time a community gathers around an exhibit or commemoration. Museums remind us that public life is not only about governance but about remembrance — the stories we choose to tell and retell.
Max Weber once warned that modern institutions tend toward rationalization, the cold efficiency of bureaucracy. Yet even here I see the potential for sacredness. A budget line, a vote tally, a school policy — each may appear sterile, but each shapes the lived texture of communal life. Civic institutions are fragile, vulnerable to corruption, apathy, or exclusion. But when approached with reverence, they become spaces where meaning is enacted collectively.
To be religious but not spiritual is to treat civic life as a form of liturgy. The city council chamber, the classroom, the museum — these are my sanctuaries. Not because they are holy in a supernatural sense, but because they gather individuals into responsibility for one another. They remind us that meaning is not only private or familial, but public, woven into the fragile fabric of laws, schools, and memory.
Culture and Society
The widest field in which I find myself is culture itself — the broad rituals and symbols that bind millions into a shared identity. Émile Durkheim described this experience as collective effervescence: the surge of energy that arises when individuals are swept into a common rhythm. I have felt this in the roar of a stadium during the national anthem, in the silence of a Memorial Day service, and in the orderly ritual of standing in line at the voting booth. These are not trivial ceremonies; they are the public liturgies of a people, shaping belonging at a scale beyond family or town.
Psychology helps explain their power. Social Identity Theory (Henri Tajfel and John Turner) shows how individuals anchor their self-concept in group membership, experiencing pride and security when part of something larger. Terror Management Theory adds another layer, suggesting that cultural rituals buffer our awareness of mortality by linking us to enduring narratives. Whether in the stadium, the polling place, or the national holiday, I feel these forces at work — not supernatural, but deeply human responses to the fragility of life.
Sports fandom has been one of my most vivid encounters with this kind of belonging. To cheer for the Royals or the Chiefs is not simply entertainment; it is a ritual of loyalty and endurance. The ballpark or stadium functions like a cathedral, its chants and colors binding strangers into temporary kinship. The psychological pull is strong: shared victory and shared loss remind us that identity is not only individual but collective. In those moments of eruption or silence, I sense what Durkheim meant — ordinary time lifted into something extraordinary.
National rituals operate in a similar way. Robert Bellah described American civil religion as the set of ceremonies, documents, and symbols that give sacred weight to the republic. Inaugurations, presidential funerals, the Pledge of Allegiance, even the Fourth of July fireworks — all are civic liturgies, enacted not to honor a god but to remind citizens of their mutual responsibility. Hannah Arendt insisted that politics at its best is not power-seeking but world-building, the weaving of a shared space where plurality can exist. Civic rituals are the rhythms that keep that space alive.
Yet these broad fields are fragile. The same forces that unite can divide. Rituals of national identity can become tools of exclusion, as easily sanctifying tribalism as solidarity. Sports fandom can devolve into rivalry and violence. History shows that culture’s largest circles are the most susceptible to manipulation by ideology or fear. Karl Popper’s defense of the “open society” is urgent here: communities must remain self-critical, able to revise and correct themselves, or their rituals collapse into dogma.
Still, I do not abandon these circles. To be religious but not spiritual is to see culture itself as a sacred field, even with its dangers. The anthem in the stadium, the quiet at a graveside memorial, the casting of a ballot — none of these require supernatural sanction to matter. They are sacred because they bind us into something larger, fragile because they depend on our vigilance, powerful because they remind us that meaning is never ours alone.
In Closing
From the quiet of my own morning rituals to the roar of a stadium crowd, from the family table to the city council chamber, I see community as a set of interwoven fields — fragile, dynamic, and essential. The individual is shaped by family, family by intentional communities, communities by institutions, and institutions by the larger tides of culture. Each circle exerts its force, pushing and pulling in Lewin’s sense, creating the equilibrium in which life unfolds. None of this requires divine sanction; it is the natural flow of human existence.
To live religiously but not spiritually is to step into these circles with reverence. It is to treat the classroom as liturgy, the family table as altar, the council chamber as sanctuary, and the stadium as cathedral — not because they lift us out of the world, but because they bind us more deeply into it. Community is always in motion, shaped by time, memory, and responsibility. Its sacredness lies in its fragility, in the recognition that it endures only so long as we tend it together.
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