What does it mean to be “religious”?

For many, that term conjures up images of faithful people worshiping in church, praying at dinner tables or bedrooms, and studying the Bible in solitude or groups. For others, thoughts of those helping feed the hungry or sheltering the homeless – modeling servitude – come to mind.
But do common ideas of religiosity help define what being religious is not? In other words, can our images and thoughts about what is religious dictate what isn’t? If so, who decides what religiosity is, and therefore what it isn’t?

These questions came to mind recently when I read the story of Sister John Paul Bauer, a Roman Catholic nun with the Erie (Penn.) Diocese. Sister Bauer sees deer hunting as a spiritual endeavor and relates it to her religious beliefs. She also considers it a way to care for God’s created order; hunting for Sister Bauer is a means of conservation that ensures the deer population stays at a level that can be sustained by the land.

So, on the very first day of hunting season in northwestern Pennsylvania this year, Sister Bauer climbed up a deer stand and waited.

According to her, as soon as she said the rosary a 200-pound buck appeared.

“After I realized I got the deer, I thanked God,” she recounted. Afterward, she had the buck butchered for sausage and steaks and shared it with two families.

And then the deer droppings hit the proverbial fan.

The Erie Diocese posted on Facebook a photo of Sister Bauer, in her habit, holding her trophy 10-point buck by the antlers. Initially, responses were positive. But soon the comments became angry and mean-spirited, often using vulgar and profane language. As the page neared 1.5 million views with the majority of those commenting having taken offense by the photo, the Diocese, citing its “inflammatory nature,” decided to take it down.

Clearly, the ability of social media to create a one-way conversation is troublesome. People are able to hide behind a username, launch a grenade, and walk away with relative anonymity. Yet, that is not what I find so interesting.

What fascinates me is that so many comments had to do with the fact that the hunter was a Roman Catholic nun? In many ways, those posting were saying, “We would expect this from some reprobate named Bubba, but you?”

The many who skewered the nun with their vitriol seemed to suggest that not only is hunting not a spiritual endeavor (or have any relation to religiosity) but also that a religious person should never engage in it.

And that’s what bothers me. Not because I am a big hunter; I’m not. But rather because we have to be very careful when we start determining what “religious” ought to look like for other people or what any particular behavior means in someone else’s heart and soul.

Christians, in particular, can be good at making these judgments. We decide what it is that we want our religion to look like or to say relative to our life and world, and then we seek for ways to justify that viewpoint, often inferring from scripture concepts that are not present.

Alcohol? Can’t touch the stuff. Baptism? Full immersion or it’s not valid. Gotta be in the Bible somewhere.

But what I find is that the God of the Bible defies all our categories. He doesn’t fit into the little boxes (pro-hunting; anti-hunting, etc.) we like to put him in. He doesn’t always look like the God we might want Him to look like. He simply “is.”

God made us in His image. Unfortunately, we have been trying to return the favor ever since.