Faith is our experience of God and belief is our attempt to express that experience in words and symbols.

When we attempt to describe our experiences of God, we necessarily express ourselves in the symbols, words, and rituals that are products of our culture.

All of our concepts and all of our experiential interpretations are shaped to a great extent by the culture and the language out of which they emerge.

There is no belief without culture; but there can be a culture without belief. This, of course, is the situation in which many people find themselves today: in a belief desert.

Right now a lot of my friends are talking about the Pew Research Center's recent report "Modeling the Future of Religion in America".

That September 13th report predicts that, if current religious membership trends continue, Christians could make up less than half of the US population within a few decades.

It estimates that in 2020, about 64% of US Americans were Christian but that by 2070 that figure could well be at about 54% or lower.

The rise of the "nones"

The group that continues to expand is what we call the religious "nones" - those people who, when asked about their religious identity, describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular."

Researchers suggest that the United States may very well be following the path taken, over the last 50 years, by many countries in Western Europe, countries that once had overwhelmingly Christian majorities but no longer do.

In Great Britain, for example, the "nones" had already surpassed Christians; and they became the largest group in 2009.

In the Netherlands, the Christian exodus accelerated in the 1970s. Today about 47% of Dutch adults say they are Christian. And in Belgium, where I currently live, we have a population of about 11.58 million.

Just under 60% say they are Christian (most of them Roman Catholic) but less than 5% of them go to church regularly. Many unused churches are being converted into apartments, stores, bars, and restaurants.

Some observers blame secularisation for our current situation.

As a historical theologian, I understand the process of secularisation; but blaming secularisation is far too simple.

As my friend and Leuven graduate, Ron Rolheiser, often observed, "Bad attitudes towards the Church feed off bad Church practices."

For example: Catholic teaching still forbids women from becoming deacons, priests, bishops, cardinals or popes, misinterpreting Jesus' and his disciples' maleness as sanctioning an all-male liturgy and clergy. (Of course there were women disciples and women apostles.)

The Church also condemns homosexual acts as a sin and considers gay individuals as "intrinsically disordered."

People lose interest in institutional religion when they find that the Church's expressions of belief and what they hear from the pulpit no longer resonate with their minds, their hearts, and contemporary life experience.

When a religion speaks more in the name of authority than with the voice of compassion, it becomes meaningless.

Moving our spiritual journey forwards

We need to find ways to understand the Divine presence, not "up there" or "out there" but "here and now" at the center of all reality, because that is where we live, love, and think.

Perhaps we need to disconnect regularly from our cellphones and drop our earbuds. We need meditation times. We need a truly contemporary spirituality.

Animated by the life, message, and spirit of Jesus, we can then move ahead in our life journeys and accompany others in their own life journeys.

There are good examples if we look closely.

A Catholic pastor, whom I visited this summer, holds contemporary faith discussions in his home. He invites young women and men in their twenties and thirties to share, discuss, and reflect together with him about their faith and their life experiences.

Some other priests whom I know, and a good handful of bishops, are trying to "rebuild the church" by returning to a 1950's style Catholicism.

They now have Latin Masses, done with their backs to the congregation. Many of these are also contemporary book-banners. History warns us, of course, that people who ban books also ban people.

A healthy spiritual journey moves forwards not backwards.

Nostalgia is fun for a while, but there is no virtue in turning-back the clock. To become a religious child again would mean to abandon the capacity to think and make one's own judgments on the basis of critical principles.

That is why the upsurge of fundamentalism today is so dangerous. It is a narrow and closed vision, which most-often nurtures fear and aggression.

Valuing the past, but not living in the past

Thinking about our human life journey, I have always been greatly concerned about education. We must insist that broad-based and honest information be passed on to the next generation.

But I am particularly concerned about the formation of teachers.

Most students who fall in love with learning do that not because of their instructional materials and school curriculum but because they encountered a teacher who encouraged them to think - to reflect on life, to ask questions, and to search for answers.

When pondering our belief today we need to hear and to help people hear the "call" of the Sacred. We do this by interpreting and thereby re-creating the meaning and power of religious language.

The truly contemporary believer has one foot anchored in contemporary life and religious consciousness and the other in historical critical consciousness. We value the past but we don't live in the past.

Our communities of faith — our churches — should be centers of excellence where people can speak courageously about their awareness of the Divine Presence and where continuing dialogue and collaboration are patterns of life.

When we explore our belief - when we reflect in depth about our faith experiences - we necessarily express ourselves in the symbols, words, and rituals which are products of our culture. We also look for resonance and dialogue with tradition: with the theological expressions of earlier cultures.

Truly authentic Christian belief, of course, can never be simply the expression of one's individual and subjective experience. We are a community of believers - a faith community. We need each other.

Expressions of belief are the result of deep reflection about my faith experience, your own faith experience, and the faith experience of the community. As I told one of my bishop friends: "We need you but you also need us!"

Belief relies on culture but can never become locked within a particular culture. Nor can it just unthinkingly venerate any particular culture. Some Roman Catholic Church leaders, for instance, are locked in a late medieval culture and still dress and think that way.

Nevertheless, when belief becomes so locked within a particular culture that it is hardly distinguishable from it, we are on the road to idolatry.

Christian belief, because its focus is on what lies within and yet beyond our culture, is continually engaged in critical reflection and critique of the contemporary and previous cultures. Critical thinking is a Christian virtue. Growth is part of life.

And so we continue our journey.

• John Alonso Dick is a historical theologian and former academic dean at the American College, KU Leuven (Belgium) and professor at the KU Leuven and the University of Ghent. His latest book is Jean Jadot: Paul's Man in Washington (Another Voice Publications, 2021).
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

They are nonetheless helping to spread a craze for Mary, mother of Jesus, wearing designer Brenda Equihua's splashy coats made from San Marcos cobijas: blankets found in many Latinx homes that commonly feature the Virgin of Guadalupe.

For Equihua, Mary's appeal is partly sentimental.

Of Mexican American heritage, Equihua identifies the Virgin of Guadalupe with home.

But there's something deeper than simple nostalgia going on in her designs.

"Wearing Mary in a fashion piece is unexpected," she explained. "I think what's cool is taking something out of context."

Religious figures are often (if scandalously) appropriated outside sacred settings, but the decontextualization of Mother Mary has been in hyperdrive of late.

Long a fixture on devotional medals worn by Catholics, Mary is so central to Catholic spirituality that Pope Francis earlier this year had to debunk the notion that Jesus' mother would be designated "co-redemptrix": "Mary Saves" tees are not coming to the St Peter's gift shop.

But if Catholics are content with her place as "a Mother, not as a goddess," as the pope put it, Mary has become an icon to a younger generation of all faiths and no faith that has put social justice at the centre of its hopes for a better world.

The Blessed Mother guitar pedal created by Heather Brown.

She's treated as a feminist beacon, her likeness appearing alongside that of Frida Kahlo, Joan of Arc and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Mary lends cred to high-end guitar pedals created by female gear makers and pops up with increasing frequency on Etsy.

Her story is being retold in provocative contemporary art and the theses of up-and-coming scholars.

But for all her trendiness, what makes Mary an appealing figure today is what has made her popular for 2,000 years: For all her connections to divine power, she has a lot in common with people who often get overlooked.

Ben Wildflower is a mail carrier by day and artist in his off-hours.

In 2017, he made a woodcut that showed Mary, her fist raised over her head, feet resting on a skull and a serpent (the former is a motif usually associated with Jesus' disciple Mary Magdalene, while the latter is in keeping with historical representations of Mary, Jesus' mother, triumphing over original sin).

In a circle around Wildflower's image are the words "Fill the hungry. Cast down the mighty. Lift the lowly. Send the rich away."

When he posted it on Instagram, it went viral.

Some critics called the woodcut's message "un-Christian," protesting that "God loves everyone."

The taunting language, however, was pulled directly from the Magnificat, the gospel writer Luke's version of a song attributed to Mary, that from earliest Christian times was seen as so revolutionary public readings of it have been banned in the past.

Wildflower, the child of evangelical Christian missionaries, now attends an Anglican church, is committed to living in solidarity with the poor and has been described as a "Christian anarchist."

He finds himself deeply drawn to the mother of Jesus and said he likes Mary's vision of hierarchies being turned upside down.

Non-Christians, he said, are often interested in his work on Mary as a way of "seeking the divine feminine" via a sort of "DIY spirituality."

Further evidence of this approach can be found on sites such as Etsy, which sells Mother Mary oracle cards and altars for charging "reiki-energized" crystals that feature Mary's likeness.

"Sometimes I'll realize I have an influx of followers on Instagram and I'll try to figure out what happened and it'll be from like, a witchcraft and herbal kind of account," Wildflower added.

But for Wildflower, Mary is a bridge to a Christianity far from his evangelical upbringing.

"For a lot of people who were raised in white evangelical culture, God's representatives throughout most of our lives had not been the best people," Wildflower explained, "but Mary's representatives were just kind of absent.

So it's not hard to relate to her as someone saying, ‘It's our job to bring God into the world.'

There's something relatable there because there's no baggage."

(For a clue to what kind of baggage he's trying to leave behind, look no further than another Wildflower illustration that depicts Mary shooting flames out of her hands at Nazi and Confederate flags, encircled by the words "O Mary, conceived without white supremacy, pray for us trying to dismantle this s_t.")

Catholic author and University of California, Berkeley lecturer Kaya Oakes is not surprised by the new attention paid to Mary, noting that her appeal tends to grow when times are hard.

"Mary represents this side of God that is nurturing and will stay with you when you're in pain," Oakes said.

"We're coming out of this really traumatic phase in world history with the pandemic, and people have needed images of God that were more resonant with that compassionate, rather than judgmental, side of the divine."

A Virgin Mary inspired dress stands on display in the front window of a shop in Rehoboth, Delaware in March 2021.

Mary traditionally shows up whenever she is most needed.

For years, apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe have reportedly distracted border guards to help immigrants stranded at the U.S. border slip into the country unnoticed. Similarly, the culture tends to put Mary at the centre of the conflict.

After Mike Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, Mark Doox's " Our Lady of Ferguson" depicted her as a Black woman with her womb in the crosshairs of a gun with a child Christ in the centre.

Kehinde Wiley's "Mary Comforter of the Afflicted," one of the artist's stained glass window images, casts the Pietà as a Black man holding a dead child.

Within the past year, Kelly Latimore's icon memorialized George Floyd by depicting Mary holding a broken Jesus.

Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones, an assistant professor in the theology department of Boston College whose scholarship focuses on Mariology, said these artists are pulling from a long tradition of Black Madonnas.

Though Adkins-Jones was raised Southern Baptist in a setting where Mary got little attention, her experiences with the Black Madonna helped convince her that the mother of Jesus is an underutilized resource for grappling with Black womanist concerns in Christian theology.

"This imagery captures the legacy of grief that comes from injustice," said Adkins-Jones.

"Perhaps Mary is a ready figure to call to memory because Jesus is a person who dies unjustly at the hands of the state. … Questions of justice are always in conversation with artistic representations."

Adkins-Jones also sees Mary inviting theological questions about gender.

As a young, poor woman giving birth in an occupied land, the historical Mary experienced a kind of precarious existence that can't be disconnected from her womanhood, Adkins-Jones said.

Looking to Mary invites both a new kind of intellectual curiosity and spiritual reflection on the role of women in the world.

For all the seemingly renewed interest in Mary, Adkins-Jones notes that some of it aren't so much new as a continuing tradition now aided by platforms such as Instagram that allow for fresh ways to "visually discuss."

Still, according to associate professor of art history at Wheaton College Matthew Milliner, there is a kind of change afoot. When he started teaching classes on Mary at Wheaton shortly after his arrival in 2011, Milliner was surprised to see such consistent interest in the course from the largely Protestant student body.

"Protestant interest in Mary is increasing steadily," he said.

"But thankfully it has been growing in Catholic circles as well." It is easy to forget, Milliner said, that in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, attention to Mary declined dramatically even in Catholic circles, a topic explored in Charlene Spretnak's 2004 book "Missing Mary."

The culture may soon move on from Mary, but Milliner believes Christians should keep her close, without fearing that love for the mother of God could threaten their love of Jesus.

"Love for Mary is a natural outgrowth of love for Christ," he said.

"They are not in competition, any more than love for my in-laws is in competition with love for my wife," he said. "In short, meet the parents!"

• Whitney Bauck is an author at RNS.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.