The Babies and the Bathwater

We live in a culture that doesn’t acknowledge or tend to the parts of us that are most uniquely human.

We have these incredible nervous systems that mean that as well as hard crunchy analytical power, and language, and dexterity, we also have a wealth of emotional complexity. Our emotional selves — and the parts that are sometimes called spiritual selves — can easily get in our way if they’re not supported. We can feel sad, and anxious, we can be angry at each other, we can feel despondent and lost, we can withdraw, we can behave in unhelpful or damaging ways, we can hurt people around us.

Not much in our culture does support these emotional and spiritual selves, and there is a lot that gets in the way of what is helpful to them, or actively harms them. Our culture is pretty individualistic, and there is so much around us that tells us the story that we’ll get happy by buying things, or earning more money, or trying to make ourselves more physically attractive (according to a narrow set of rules that is impossible for most people to meet).

Our culture even hides the idea that our emotional and spiritual selves are important. There is still stigma around mental health, and we are expected to be breezy and happy all the time, despite our natural healthy range of emotions. Our culture is very secular, with the idea that only people who belong to religious organisations might have spiritual needs. Many people may not use that term, but what I mean by spiritual needs are the universal human longings for connection, belonging, meaning, purpose, the sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves, and the recognition of the interconnectedness of all life. No doubt there are others that belong on that list.

Because people have turned away from religion in large numbers in recent decades, and it is not typical at all in the UK for people to be part of a faith group, we have lost the main places where people got their spiritual needs met. There are still other options — being in nature, creative practices, community groups, and things like yoga and meditation that can act as ‘standalone’ spiritual practices.

But overall in Britain, this has left us with a huge spiritual deficit. Our needs aren’t being met and the impact can be seen in the prevalence of mental health problems, family breakdowns, social isolation, crime, addiction, political division, socioeconomic inequality, and climate breakdown. Obviously these are all complex problems with multiple causes, and I wouldn’t for a moment suggest that they can be neatly solved with a quick bit of church.

But our religious establishments (and I speak mainly about churches because that’s what I know best) have so many empty pews because they are not providing something that feels relevant to people’s lives. Many churches are hierarchical, dogmatic, and full of horrendous examples of abuse, as well as having pretty dreary songs and unappealing websites. Why would people sign up for that?

The secularisation of our culture, while healthily opening up space and power outside of the unhealthy old institutions, means that most people are ineloquent about their spiritual needs. How can you seek to meet them if you don’t know what they are? If you associate the word ‘god’ with an old man in the sky who directs events on earth, and doesn’t want gay people to get married, and you don’t feel like that fits your worldview, it’s easy and natural to write off the whole shebang.

My explorations in church over the last seven years have led me to believe that we’ve thrown the babies out with the bathwater.

This spring, I took on the role of Chief Officer of the UK’s General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, a hub in the national network of congregations. I took on the role because I see that what Unitarian practice, theology and ethos can offer has the potential to improve the spiritual welfare of so many more communities. Baked into its centuries of history is the idea of each person finding the way to meet their spiritual needs in the way that works for them, and doing so in community, not in an individualistic way. The structure of the church is non-hierarchical, with autonomous, democratically run congregations. There have been female ministers for over a hundred years, and same sex marriages in churches as soon as they were legal (which Unitarians campaigned for heavily). There’s no sense of being told what you should believe, or what your ideas of God should look like, or that your godlessness is unwelcome. There is unity in the sense of interconnection, community, love, justice, and wisdom-seeking.

There are empty pews and (dare I say it) some dreary songs here too, and many congregations have closed in recent decades, and look like they will continue to. The secularisation of our culture has affected Unitarian and Free Christian churches like the others, and no doubt there are congregations that have lost members because they haven’t kept attuned to what the communities around them are looking for.

But our society is desperate for the things that church can offer — ways to meet our spiritual needs.

So I’m interested in (maybe a little bit obsessed by) the ways in which we can create these spaces of connection and meaning and belonging in a way that really resonates with how people live now. I have been seeking out and I’ve been prototyping. There are all sorts of brilliant things happening, many outside of traditional religion. And all have their own challenges. Some have deep roots but are limited to a small number of people. Some have great branding and visibility but lack a depth of wisdom and practice. Some are based on unshakeable wisdom but haven’t managed to escape a culture of misogyny. And many communities meeting people’s spiritual needs are things that nobody involved would think have anything to do with church. A recent Atlantic article explored some of the challenges faced by secular communities, including Sunday Assembly, the global network of secular congregations where I was COO for a while, showing just how hard the work can be to create and sustain nourishing spaces. (I wonder whether some of these challenges are not unique to secular congregations, but to any organisation trying something new, only because of the central role that community can play in people’s lives, the stakes are higher.)

Although our culture is so secular, and hardly anyone actively takes part in any religious activity on a regular basis, there are stirrings away from secularism, particularly in younger people. A recent Huffington Post article described the way that many high achieving American women in their twenties are choosing to become nuns. St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation held an event on ‘Spiritual Activism and Generation Y’ earlier this year where people in their twenties and early thirties, mostly without a traditional religious affiliation, spoke eloquently about spirituality in a way I couldn’t imagine people a generation older doing. The How We Gather report illustrates the communities millennials are seeking when they don’t see religions offering what they want. And in a recent episode of On Being, Jonathan Rowson of Perspectiva described how “people in their 20s and 30s, when I speak of the spiritual and the political in the same sentence, they don’t flinch”.

I don’t think it’s a passing fad, with faith as this year’s avocado toast, but that these stirrings reflect how those in precarious positions are seeking something to fill the gap that mainstream culture isn’t filling. Young people mainly have no hope of owning their own home, or even having a permanent employment contract, even with privileges like a university education — something that must feel alien to baby boomers. And of course we are all in a precarious position because of climate breakdown — something that many younger people feel more acutely, as they can see how it will have a huge impact in their lifetime. So it makes sense that more people are sniffing around outside of our consumerist, individualistic culture that has created the challenges we are facing. And perhaps for younger people, it helps that they have grown up far enough away from a time of regular church-going so that they can come to spirituality afresh, with less of the baggage surrounding ideas of god and worship.

In this new role working with the Unitarian churches, I can see that this carefully tended, centuries-old spiritual infrastructure has so much of what people are crying out for, and its inherent design — organisational and theological — means that its able to be just about the babies and not about the bathwater.

My aim with this blog is to share some of the explorations and learning as we find out how to express ourselves anew in our changing culture.