A Spiritual Crisis?

Rev. Dr. DeWayne L. Davis

This Week at Plymouth, October 4, 2024

“Alienation is one manifestation of the spiritual crisis in American society; the deprivation of meaning and purpose in every aspect of daily life. So deep is the crisis that we are no longer able to recognize it — it seems to be built in to the structure of “reality,” a basic fact about the way things are.”

—Michael Lerner, Spirit Matters

In the years I worked in politics in Washington, DC, on occasion, someone would say, in response to several public policy issues and challenges, that we are dealing with a spiritual crisis. That phrase always raised my suspicion that they were offering a justification for the lack of will or courage to make change. However, as I got older and went deeper into ministry, I understood that a spiritual crisis does not mean that there is no nameable crisis. Spiritual crises manifest in many tragic and harmful policies, behaviors, and societal failures that can be recognized and confronted. I fear, along with Rabbi Michael Lerner, who called out “the deprivation of meaning and purpose” that flows from spiritual crises, that we may adjust ourselves to the spiritual malaise, giving up on meaning and purpose and failing in moral imagination. We must remain alert and prime for faithful action amid despair and hopelessness in these tense times.

Indeed, the spiritual crisis is manifesting in disturbingly apparent ways, including in the rise of Christian nationalism, faltering democratic institutions struggling to respond to deep polarization, an increasing abandonment of organized religious collectivities, and a growing number of those who have abandoned religious practice or identity. The crisis is also visible in an epidemic of loneliness, isolation, and disconnection, the rise of political violence along with the uninterrupted proliferation of guns and gun violence, and an appreciably worsening climate crisis with little will to respond with concrete measures to reverse the trends. How do we respond constructively and hopefully to the current manifestations of a collective spiritual crisis?

The church, our traditions, and the Bible have been helpful to us and our forebears in making meaning and responding to tense times of crisis. Unfortunately, the theological categories I am most familiar with and find nourishing and hopeful are contested, unreliable, unrealistic, and unhelpful for a current generation of people who have not known the grace and connection of the church. This heightens the spiritual crisis. I don’t believe people are more venal, more individualistic, more anti-religious, more nihilistic. People have not given up on making meaning, seeking community, relationships, and connections, and finding their call and purpose. Perhaps we have exacerbated the spiritual crisis because we have not been curious enough, humble enough, or generous enough to sit with questions that don’t reflect or reinforce the theological categories we know. Maybe we can start to address the spiritual crisis by addressing the alienation people feel and invite them to imagine and create with us a future filled with newness and possibility. May it be so.