Returning to Religion? [Video/Audio]
A few weeks ago, I invited you into a series of conversations on faith, religion, and where you find yourself.
Here I’m sharing the recording of our first conversation, a broader conversation:
Why are people returning to religion?
Note that the link is to a video, but you can certainly treat this as an audio.
You still have time to register for a much narrower conversation that we’re having this week on Wednesday at 3PM EDT.
PS: For those who are interested in the intersection of Christianity and social movements:
How can we reclaim Jesus for the Empire? h/t Our own Brittany Kotleles, for the heads up, check out her beautiful and related work here.
At Land Justice Futures, we help religious landowners pursue land justice — centering racial repair, ecological healing, and community power into decisions about how land is loved, used, and governed.
A few thoughts on our conversation on religion
When I first invited people into the broader conversation, I was interested in the ways many people seem to be turning back toward organized religion. Or at least toward the kinds of things religion has traditionally held:
Ritual
Community
Moral formation
Accountability
Beauty
Tradition
Mystery
A path that asks something of us.
The conversation itself became more subtle than the original question.
One person reminded us that the data may not point to a sweeping revival so much as “a pause in the decline.” That is important. The point was not to prove that everyone is returning to religion.
The point was to ask what are people hungry for?
A few themes stay with me.
People spoke about religion as a path, not as a set of answers. Not a promise that life becomes easy, but a way to keep walking, practicing, surrendering, and maturing.
We spoke about ritual and regularity. About the way showing up again and again, with other people, helps us to keep a sense of the sacred arc of time. In a world that moves at the ever faster, ever relentless pace of capitalism, it is a kind of sacred rhythm that matters.
We spoke about certainty, and how it can be both a longing and a danger. Some forms of faith help us live with uncertainty. Other forms try to eliminate uncertainty, and that is often where religion becomes rigid, fearful, and harmful.
We spoke about the loneliness of trying to invent a spiritual life alone, and the deep human longing for collective joy, collective responsibility, and
Traditions “worn smooth” by many generations of people wrestling with the same questions.
And we ended with what may be the central question:
Is it possible to recover the gifts of religion without reproducing the harms?
I don’t know.
But I was moved by the honesty of the conversation. There was tenderness in the room. A willingness to question my very premises and a willingness to stay together in the inquiry. I am inspired by people who are not trying to arrive at easy answers, but are still willing to stay in the question.
Maybe that is faith too.
To try without knowing.
You can watch or listen to the conversation here.
As always, I welcome your comments, notes, questions, voice memos, reflections, disagreements, and further wonderings.
May we continue to aim to walk the path of wisdom.
And may we do so together.