Traditionally understood, religiosity is about belief and action, about faith in God, and about acting in accordance with God’s guidance of our fellow human beings.  By contrast, spirituality is all about feeling. It knows nothing about God and postulates nothing about ethical obligations. The locus of the feeling can be located in the experiences and emotions of the affected person.  God, if God matters at all, constitutes a mere afterthought.  (Peter Schotten, Religious Belief, American Democracy, and our Inescapable Culture: Some preliminary Observations, Conversations, Autumn 2012)

Quite often I hear, “I am a spiritual person, but am not religious.”  I have always felt this was a justification for someone not wanting to observe mitzvot, for someone trying to find a way of justifying why they won’t commit to a set of guidelines that is supposed to bring holiness into the world through a person’s behavior.  Given the distinction posited above, it could be challenging to have one without the other.