Open Source Religion project for Wired-NYU reports on Our Story Thus Far ... (Part 1)
UPDATE from the front lines of the Open Source Religion Project at Assignment Zero, a project co-sponsored by Wired Magazine and New York University's School of Journalism: Spirit Scholars and the Detroit Free Press are co-sponsoring the Open Source Religion project within the larger Wired-NYU effort. Your Editor here at Spirit Scholars has been heading up that team, which recently produced our first public "progress report."
Based on 31 responses from men and women across the U.S., we've offered our online team members -- and the general public -- this open-source version of ...
Our Story Thus Far … (Part 1)
The biggest story in Open Source Religion can’t be found in any single program, congregation or Web site. The Big Story lies in ourselves as Americans.
This basic truth already has been demonstrated by our team at Assignment Zero, 31 of whom have filled out our first Questionnaire, a brief personal inventory of our spiritual experiences. As a group, we don’t pretend to be a random sample of all Americans. Among other things: We’re too small a group to represent the whole country’s attitudes. We’re heavily weighted toward the Midwest. And it’s clear we’re more “up scale” in various ways than the population at large. BUT – we do represent a fascinating diversity of American religious experiences. We’ve got a nice mix of ages in our team and a broad array of religious faiths, including those of no faith.
What’s most valuable about our insights as a group is that collectively we represent a highly sought-after range of people from the viewpoint of religious recruiters. We’re motivated, articulate, up-scale, reflective, compassionate. In short, we’re the kind of people, overall, that religious groups would love to recruit and engage as members. Of course, some of us already are leaders in congregations and – beyond that – some of us already are teaches and writers about religion.
That leads to the second, striking observation about our group: Given how attractive we are from the point of view of religious groups (and how some of us already are highly committed within religious groups) – it’s stunning how ambivalent we are, as a group overall, about what organized religion is offering us and how many religious leaders are focusing their attention and resources.
Just read our voices in our Questionnaires and you’ll see this basic point reflected in dozens of ways.
Consider Team Member Marcy Jeffree Corneil’s experience, which is so common across the U.S. that it’s a powerful example to highlight.
Read her personal inventory and you’ll want to meet this woman. She’s 62 and lives in small, up-scale town near Albany, New York. She’s fascinating, compassionate and enjoys good cinema. Who could resist that combination in a friend?
Yet here’s how she describes her religious experience at the moment –- stuck between her own open-source instincts toward faith and a local leadership that seems to her to be slamming doors in her face:
“I continued at the same level of religious involvement for the first 61 years of my life, teaching Sunday school, holding church offices, being deeply involved. The church I am a member of has gone through three very trying periods of pastoral problems; we are currently served by a weak and ineffective – but not offensive – senior pastor and an annoying – to me – uber-evangelical junior pastor. I can’t seem to relate to either of them and am personally frustrated with more right-wing lay leaders. I have pulled back from my level of involvement and from my attendance – my husband refuses to attend now.”
And then – then – Corneil writes this line: “But I find myself reading and thinking more about religion than I have in the past.” And she pointedly underlined the word “more” in her response – an almost achingly heartfelt plea for a new approach to religion from a 60-something American who’s far from any of the obvious communities of change like college campuses or big cosmopolitan cities.
That, in short, is a great snapshot of this fascinating mosaic of the cultural shift toward Open Source Religion that we are forming in our Team here.
The Larger Forces at Work ...
And these observations aren’t a matter of casual observation by your Editor here.
Consider this: The data from multiple waves of World Values Surveys, analyzed by University of Michigan sociologist Wayne E. Baker in his 2006 book, “America’s Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception,” demonstrates that a cluster of values concerning religious faith are very strong and widespread across America. (Americans rank with traditionalist countries around the world, places like Pakistan, in the strength of our religious values.) But Americans also are almost off the chart in another powerful value – our desire for individual self-expression. (We rank with Scandinavia on that scale.)
(And – yes, that Wayne Baker who I’m citing here is a member of our Team.)
So, faith matters deeply to us – but the reality of Open Source Religion is that we, as Americans, expect to be able to crack open the doors of religion and chart our own most meaningful journeys through the resources and traditions we find there. The problem is that religious gatekeepers aren’t as willing or as inviting as we are.
There’s not a more striking example of this than in the responses of our Team Member who calls himself Mani. He’s a 30-year-old Hindu from New Jersey, who has a wonderful spirit of inclusion and spiritual exploration. And yet, as you read his responses, he hit a snag when he tried to visit a Zoroastrian temple – “and was told it was forbidden for people of outside faiths.”
Now, restrictions on access are common across religious groups – but Mani’s responses suggest that there are some barriers he’s had a little trouble crossing. “I wish to go to a synagogue and a mosque,” he writes. Yet, somehow that hasn’t happened yet.
He seems to be an ideal potential visitor. He reveres sacred spaces so much that he takes off his shoes when he enters a house of worship! Why wouldn’t religious groups want to throw open their doors and welcome such a visitor?
Old Definitions Disintegrating ...
Even our definitions of God, as we describe them in this public forum, indicate that the decades-old Gallup Poll protocol for categorizing Americans’ theistic attitudes is beginning to disintegrate. For decades, Gallup has reported that about 9 out of 10 Americans believe God exists (with about 2 in 10 in the most recent survey wave last year saying “probably exists” -- with some level of “doubt”).
However, do you see the flaw in the traditional question? Gallup assumes that Americans agree on what the term “God” means.
Surely many evangelical Protestants who say “yes” to belief in God are thinking of a significantly different God than the one affirmed by Team Member Mel Bricker from California, who writes, “I believe in the Divine as a loving, creative, life-giving, transformative, evolutionary river running through all the universe both within it and the universe within the Divine.”
Beyond what the actual data say, our growing diversity calls into question the whole implication that’s often drawn -- unfairly -- by observers of the Gallup data. You’ll find this sort of reference showing up sometimes in media reports, political speeches or TV talk shows – a casual reference to that 9-out-of-10-belief-in-God data as a good measure of spiritual life in America.
Well, among the flaws in that casual assumption? For example, most Americans don’t have a clue that Buddhism, one of the world’s most important spiritual traditions, is non-theistic. To put it in stark terms: Belief in God isn’t a part of that spiritual system.
Our own Team Members Geri Larkin from Seattle, Washington, and Joseph Naujokas from California are Buddhist – and Naujokas pointed out this growing disconnect with the Gallup-style questions right away. He immediately spotted the traditional questions at the top of Questionnaire No. 1 and prefaced his responses with this note: “Interesting questions, but not exactly unbiased - indicative of an overall pro-theist attitude in American culture.”
Impatience With Old Walls ...
Overall, as a group, we’re saying to the array of figures who have been “religious leaders” among us: Most of us don’t want to throw away religion – far from it! We’re powerfully drawn to the traditions you represent. But, don’t try to own us. Don’t try to count our heads as your own and don’t try to build walled-in fiefdoms with our offerings. Many of our spiritual journeys don’t conform to your neat labels and barriers.
Team Member Shelley Ketcham-Bates, a high-school teacher in Michigan –- like many Americans –- was stopped in her tracks by the Gallup-standard question “What is your religious preference,” which for decades has generated a neat list of frequently cited religious labels.
“I guess I’m an agnostic Protestant who meditates. Is that one of the categories?” she wrote. She continued: “I don’t feel a church is required in order to pursue a spiritual path, but I do believe that each religion possesses tools and wisdom gathered over the ages, and it’s a lot harder to study and access this amassed wisdom all by yourself. It’s easier to work out when you have a partner at the gym, and the same goes for spiritual work.”
Frankly, we should take our Team on the road to provide regional “listening sessions” for religious leaders to hear things like this. Ketcham-Bates isn’t a religious scholar or clergyperson -– yet, she “gets” the potential power of religious groups -- that is, if they only open up the doors and windows.
She’s probably going to find a home in a Protestant congregation, she writes –- but don’t fence her in. “My spiritual journey has been most enriched, over the last 10 years, by readings in the Buddhist tradition.”
We're Not Anti-religious, so Give Us a Little Spiritual Elbow Room ...
That's right -- Overall, we are not anti-religious. Even the personally non-religious among us are fascinated by religion.
Team Member Anna Wood from New York City, 18 and starting her undergraduate work, is a self-described Atheist. Yet, she’s part of our group here and says, “I am very much interested in religions’ evolutions and roles in society, and I am considering being a religions major.”
Most of us go even further than that -- and we care deeply about our faith in a personal way.
There’s not a Team Member more committed to faith than Sarah Alfaham, 21, of Sylvania, Ohio, who wrote, “I strive to insert Islam into every aspect of my life. Sometimes, I’m not so good at doing so, but I keep trying.” In fact, she doesn’t want to change anything about the pure core of Islam, she writes.
Nevertheless, she’s well aware of the frictions and changing attitudes toward faith that are unfolding all around us. The film with the biggest spiritual impact in her life over the past year was Ismael Ferroukhi’s superb 2004 film, “Le Grand Voyage,” which was just recently released on DVD in the U.S.
Alfaham writes that she appreciates this film because it “depicts a Moroccan immigrant who takes his French-born son with him to the annual pilgrimage to Makkah, or the Hajj, and shows the immense generation gap between them. It is very obvious how many people don’t know how to integrate their cultures together and thus this generation gap occurs.”
Alfraham’s affirmations about her life and the life of faith around her are an eloquent illustration of a faith-filled person (herself) realizing that she’s in the midst of world of enormous cultural change and friction. At age 21 as a Muslim American woman in the heart of the American Rust Belt, she wants to be an influential part of that reconnection of people with the purity of faith.
Those powerful affirmations she has made in our forum here –- coupled with her ability, along the way, to pick up a DVD copy of an otherwise obscure foreign film and bring that spiritual insight into the context of an American life in the Midwest –- this whole process she is describing is Open Source Religion in its purest form.
Weighing Annoyance, Irrelevance -- and Hope ...
Now, Alfaham is not critical of her religious leaders. So, we don’t want to miss the fact that we’re a mosaic, not a unison choir in this team. However -- Overall, our group is saying loudly and clearly to current religious leaders: You are often as much of a source of friction and division as you are a source of spiritual solace and connection. And, if you continue down this path of hierarchical ownership of religion, building barriers between people –- then, you’re risking not just annoyance but an even worse fate: irrelevance.
The poignancy in this era of cultural change is underlined in Baker’s book about cultural change – and shows up over and over again in our inventories: These cultural forces do not necessarily need to be in conflict. There’s a powerful fascination and desire for spiritual resources – and much of the friction and disconnection seems unnecessary and distracting to us.
Team Member Cynthia Hernandez, 24, of Lawrence, Kansas, underlined that “unnecessary and distracting” theme in her questionnaire.
She’s intrigued by some values and principles linked to the spiritual realm. She enjoys some passages from ancient scriptures, appreciates the value of “community” and her biggest spiritual question over the past year has been about the nature of death -– one of the timeless, human spiritual questions. Even the music she enjoys reflects on themes of loss. Broadly speaking, there are suggestions of some timeless spiritual reflections percolating in Hernandez’s life.
But, she doesn’t want anyone intruding unbidden into her private spiritual reflections – certainly not preaching to her about barriers that should be erected in her life. And, she wants full freedom to explore a whole range of culture and media. She enjoys science-fiction and is intrigued by the conversations among an email group of agnostics and atheists.
What’s her advice to religious leaders? “It kind of seems like a lot of religions – and values for those who don’t claim a religion – can be boiled down to the same general theme, but everyone gets so caught up in the details that make them different. It seems like there could be a lot more peace and understanding if less attention was given to differences and more attention was given to similarities.”
And, lest anyone think that this is a voice skewed by Hernandez’s youth, read her questionnaire against that of the Rev. John Emmert, a retired Episcopal priest living in Manheim, Pennsylvania.
After a lifetime as a religious leader himself, what’s his message to organized religion? “I would wish we could have a greater sense of being on the same ‘team,’ or emphasizing a common purpose, of respecting each others’ viewpoints and strengths.” And specifically to religious leaders, he writes: “I would ask them to focus more of their efforts on teaching and mission, less on maintaining the institution. I would also encourage them to speak with more courage and less arrogance.”
And yet – yet – there’s not a more eloquent reflection of a life interwoven with spiritual resources than Emmert’s personal inventory. In another pure reflection of Open Source Religion, Emmert has found in recent years an ecumenical group of clergy who meet bi-weekly “to support one anoher in facing the challenges of parish leadership in the community.”
Yes, the members of that group are religious leaders in their parish contexts -- but they’re meeting across religious boundaries and they’re sharing their lives in an Open Source way in this network. And, of that fellowship, Emmert writes, it has become “one of the most important professional-personal groups I have ever been part of.”
Well – that’s a whole LOT from Wave No. 1 of our work.
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