Institutional religion can offer certainty in uncertain times, helping us make sense of the world, our place in it and how we show up. But the boundaries that enable such certainty can also become walls that exclude people and blind us to need and opportunity in a changing world.
What if we perforate those boundaries to work with the uncertainty of a changing world rather than resist it? Instead of offering surety amid chaos, how can religion help people confidently navigate the chaos and infuse it with purpose and meaning?
Emergent spiritual innovation
A wave of spiritual innovation is inviting us to reimagine the design of our collective religious and spiritual life. While headlines have focused on declining religious attendance, innovation is quietly gaining momentum to offer fresh perspectives and practices that resonate with society’s evolving needs.
Spiritual innovation has occurred within all religious traditions across history. People experiment when the status quo breeds disillusionment. They build on the foundations of what came before to design something new. Today, innovators are exploring ways to live out the wisdom of religious traditions beyond institutions. A growing network of incubators, accelerators, funding and research has emerged to support this experimentation.
My organization recently joined other collaborators to conduct a national field study of the trend, defining spiritual innovators as groups inspired by the world’s religious traditions to create social change, often by disrupting traditional delivery systems or translating those traditions in new ways.
Many spiritual innovators operate outside of established religious institutions, either because they did not find support there or because they intentionally want to create an alternative. Yet, innovators and institutions need each other. Innovators possess the vision and energy to help institutions remain relevant, even indispensable, in today’s rapidly changing world. Legacy institutions offer stability and resources that innovators need to facilitate lasting impact. The institutions are also the carriers, in some cases over millennia, of the wisdom that the innovators seek to tap.
The two have much to learn from each other, but they sometimes sabotage the opportunity. Some innovators avoid institutions for fear of scaring off less religious people or because dogmatic barriers or patriarchal structures do not support their vision of inclusivity. At the same time, some innovators express a need for both the wisdom and the resources that institutions hold. Meanwhile, some have managed to forge partnerships with legacy institutions in creative ways.
How, then, do we harness the full potential of the spiritual renaissance offered by emerging innovators allied with the rootedness of legacy institutions? It requires a different design for our religious and spiritual life, one that nurtures local spiritual ecosystems where religious institutions and spiritual innovators engage symbiotically to support flourishing communities.
Faith in the era of collective intelligence
Religious institutions today operate in a societal landscape transformed by a shift from hierarchy to collective intelligence — the wisdom and capacity that emerge from interconnected communities aided by rapid technological development and widespread access to information. In this era of connection, decentralization and disruption, trust in institutions has declined. Legacy institutions, such as media and education, have had to adapt to remain relevant. The faith sector must do the same.
A high level of innovation plus diversity in structure and the networks that connect those structures have always characterized the faith sector. At the same time, mainstream religions largely organize within their own silos. They often have a difficult time, as a result, relating to spiritual innovators who may claim roots in a tradition but act in ways that the institutions don’t recognize as “church.” Nevertheless, in many cases these innovators are meeting spiritual and social needs in their communities, reaching people that religious institutions do not.
Consider Creche (Charles River Episcopal Co-Housing Endeavor), a community-focused alternative to the for-profit housing market in Boston that attracts people looking for affordable housing and faith-rooted intentional community.
Creche was created through a ministry grant from the local Episcopal diocese but alignment challenges led it to incorporate independently of the diocese. At the same time, each Creche house remains connected to a local congregation, with benefits to both. The churches show up to support the house residents, and the residents’ engagement with the churches has led to growing numbers of young people in those parishes.
Cultivating thriving spiritual ecosystems
A new generation of spiritual innovators offers us the opportunity to design local ecosystems where institutions and emergent innovators see themselves as interconnected contributors to the thriving of our local communities. In a natural ecosystem, a diverse group of living organisms engage symbiotically in their environment, each contributing to an interdependent network of energy and nutrients. Natural ecosystems are resilient and adaptable. They thrive precisely because of their diversity; each organism provides what it uniquely has to offer to the whole.
To nurture thriving spiritual ecosystems, we must overcome fear and uncertainty about tying our own flourishing to that of others who may have different ideas or beliefs. It will mean accepting that someone else’s spiritual needs may look different from ours but are no less significant. It calls for new roles, collaborations and funding models to support interconnectivity.
It starts with institutions and innovators both claiming their unique gifts while recognizing the gifts of others.
Maybe there’s a local Catholic church providing the stability and inspiration of weekly Mass and a regular meal for anyone struggling with food insecurity. They proudly espouse their Catholic beliefs, but they also see the nearby Hindu temple offering community to immigrant Hindus in their new home.
They see the minister who doesn’t seem to have a congregation as they know it but gathers nonreligious folks in neighborhood spaces to “honor the human journey.” They see the rabbi offering addiction recovery support — rooted in Jewish wisdom but open to all — out of the local YMCA. They also see the Muslim woman running a nonprofit using hydroponic farming to grow healthy food for people who need it. The minister, rabbi and farmer are based on real innovators interviewed as part of the national field study.
Using these examples, we can imagine how to nurture the ecosystem. Clergy and lay leaders of the Catholic church might cultivate their curiosity by visiting the Hindu temple and the farm or by scheduling coffee dates with the minister and the rabbi. They get to know others in the ecosystem and start collaborating in new ways.
Through co-hosting community meals welcoming new Hindu immigrants to the temple or referring those in need of recovery support to the rabbi, they find themselves working in concert, rather than in isolation or competition, to respond to the spiritual and social needs in their community,
Such collaborations already exist in many neighborhoods, but they require active nurturing. Religious institutions and spiritual innovators can cultivate partnerships that will enable local spiritual ecosystems to thrive. If we embrace openness and diversity and encourage collaboration, we can build a more inclusive and vibrant spiritual landscape and strengthen the social fabric of our communities.
