One of the problems with covering the same religion-beat topics for multiple decades (in other words, I am old) is that you tend to see many “new” news stories as pieces of puzzles that are actually quite old.
Consider, for example, the Religion News Service feature that was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).
The headline on that RNS piece stated: “A 300-year-old church hopes to connect with spiritual but not religious neighbors.” Here is the overture from this story by religion-beat veteran Bob Smietana:
For three centuries, Trinity Episcopal Church has tried to meet the spiritual needs of the small community of Southport, Connecticut, about an hour and a half outside of New York.
As more and more of the church’s neighbors ditch organized religion but not faith, leaders at Trinity hope a new initiative will help them find meaning and purpose in life even if they never attend a Sunday service.
The church recently launched the Trinity Spiritual Center, which offers lectures, classes on meditation and contemplation, and a sense of community during a trying time, said the Rev. Margaret Hodgkins, the rector of Trinity Church.
We will come back to some of the specifics of this piece — details that link it to several trends that are (#SIGH) decades old in the aging, shrinking world of mainline Protestantism and, to a lesser extent, parts of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, liberal Judaism and other established religious “brands.”
The Big Idea in this RNS piece is that an Episcopal parish that has some resources to spend has decided to help spiritual seekers find their own paths to the top of Mt. Eternity without proclaiming any of those narrow, tacky doctrines linked to 2,000 years of Christian faith and practice. You know, all that stuff about the Resurrection of Jesus, eternal salvation or moral theology (warning: veiled reference to the “tmatt trio”).
In other words, the goal appears to be a sort-of parish in honor of St. Sheila, the patron saint of “Sheilaism.” Here is some background about that term, drawn from one of my “On Religion” columns:
While working on the 1985 book "Habits of the Heart," the late sociologist Robert N. Bellah met "Sheila," who described her faith in words that researchers have quoted ever since.
"I can't remember the last time I went to church," she said. "My faith has carried me a long way. It's Sheilaism. Just my own little voice." The goal was to "love yourself and be gentle with yourself. … I think God would want us to take care of each other."
A decade later, during the so-called "New Age" era, researchers described a similar faith approach with this mantra – "spiritual but not religious."
For the past decade of so, people have started seeing these St. Sheila followers as one kind of believer who fits under the broad “nones” umbrella — as in people who are “religiously unaffiliated.”
In the case of the Trinity Spiritual Center, it’s safe to say that we are talking about — to use the helpful analysis of political scientist Ryan Burge (a GetReligion contributor) — the more white-collar elements of the “nones” world, not the larger flock of blue-collar people who, when it comes to religious ties, can be called “Nothing in Particulars.”
Let’s head back to the Smietana RNS piece for two helpful chunks of background about this “spiritual center” in the greater New York City area:
Mark Grayson, a former children’s television executive and member of the Trinity church vestry, said the idea for the center grew out of some planning the nearly 300-year-old church was doing as members envisioned their next 100 years of ministry. The group had been working for several years on a strategic plan and realized that while the church could remain healthy, there were needs in the community it was not addressing.
More specifically, they saw people in their community and in the broader culture who were looking for meaning, purpose and balance in life, said Grayson. But those folks were turning to meditation apps or books about wellness and not to the church or other religious institutions.
“There was just this annoying feeling that even if we greatly improved or perfected the model that we now have — it wasn’t going to respond to the trends that we were reading in the broad population and specifically in our community,” he said. …
Grayson, who has long practiced meditation, wondered if there was a way for the church to create a space where people could gather, connect and share their spiritual journeys, no matter what they believed.
This leads to more information about the assumptions and ground rules for this project:
While the center’s ties to the church are clear and its events are held in the Trinity parish hall, there’s no proselytizing or promotion of exclusively Christian beliefs. During its startup phase the center will remain under the umbrella of the church but it is treated like a community service, more akin to the preschool that operates at Trinity than a church program.
Cecily Stranahan, an interfaith minister, therapist and former parishioner at Trinity, said the center’s programs help people pay attention to their lives and connect with something bigger than themselves — whatever they call that higher power.
A self-described “Buddhist Christian,” Stranahan, 87, has taught meditation classes for nearly four decades, after a midlife crisis led to a spiritual awakening.
So here’s the question that “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken asked about this “new” trend, as reported by RNS: How does this fit into other trends among declining religious groups and liberal Protestantism in particular?
As I see it, there are three major trends here:
(1) Hope that the crisis can be addressed through better management of declining resources. In other words, close some parishes and merge their tiny flocks (usually urban or rural, as opposed to suburban) into other congregations that seem to have a better chance of survival. This is a strategy used by many Catholic shepherds.
In the context of the Church of England, see this recent essay at the Spectator: “Holy relic — what will be left of the Church of England after the pandemic?”
(2) Pull in funds by renting all or parts of older church buildings to growing congregations (often these younger flocks defined by ethnicity or evangelism) and/or social-work ministries and agencies that fit with the congregation’s worldview and might even pull in money from secular foundations or government programs.
For example, see this recent GetReligion post that ran with this headline, “Saving urban churches: Associated Press feature dances around several important issues.”
(3) Openly push church resources and energy into what a close friend of mine — former Episcopalian, now Orthodox — has called an “NPR at prayer” approach. The result is part academic think tank, part arts center and part Unitarian-Universalist outpost. This approach, because of its stress on arts and culture, is especially popular with Anglicans.
You can catch hints at this approach in the brave, blunt work of a church analyst up north — the Rev. Neil Elliot of the Anglican Church of Canada. Here is a final chunk of information, drawn from a recent “On Religion” column entitled “Anglicans are wrestling with 'climate change' in their pews: Will they adapt and survive?”
Signs of church "climate" change? In the early 1960s, Anglican parishes in Canada had nearly 1.4 million members. But that 2018 report found 357,123 members, with an average Sunday attendance of 97,421. The church had 1,997 new members that year, while holding 9,074 burials or funerals. …
People have one of three reactions when faced with these kinds of numbers. The first "is denial. People are saying, 'We're, we're … It's not happening,' " said Elliot, while counting the options on one hand. "Then there's people who say, 'We can stop it.' And then there's people who say, 'We can adapt.'
"The adapt language is much more rare and I'm only starting to hear it on the media in the last few months. … That's what I'm trying to get us to do within the Anglican church. It's, 'How do we adapt to it?' not, 'How do we stop it?' or … people burying their heads in the sand."
Now, read this next part carefully and think about the Trinity Spiritual Center:
The decline is real and cannot be denied, said Elliot. However, he is convinced this "decline is going to bottom out, or change. That is, IF we are going to take the opportunity to reframe who we are. If we still say, 'No, we're all about a prayer book that was written 400 years ago, then people are … going to arrive at our doorsteps and go, 'Nah. I don't think so.' "
See the connections?
The big question: Do people who have rejected any and all concepts of binding doctrines and traditions WANT to be part of a spiritual body with other believers?
Long ago, the seeker David Brooks — in his 2001 book "Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There" — discussed what he called “Flexidoxy” as part of the yin-yang lifestyles of the people he called "bourgeois bohemians." Here is the money quote:
The Bobos, said Brooks, struggle when they try to fly solo through life's major transition times, such as marriage, birth and death.
"Can you have freedom as well as roots? Can you still worship God even if you take it upon yourself to decide that many of the Bible's teachings are wrong?", he asks. …
"Can you establish ritual and order in your life if you are driven by an inner imperative to experiment constantly with new things? ... The Bobos are trying to build a house of obligation on a foundation of choice."
Yes, that book was published 20-plus years ago.
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FIRST IMAGE: Uncredited illustration at the Road to New Adventures website.