Awareness of the contribution that spirituality can make to health has come a long way.

Spiritual care

Aotearoa's healthcare system adopts a holistic approach, often encapsulated in the Maori model of health, te whare tapa wha, and its four interwoven dimensions: physical, mental, family/social and spiritual. The spiritual aspect (taha wairua) is not just an optional extra. It is woven into everything else.

Having a model is one thing. Having policies and delivery plans is another.

A 2022 study by Jacqui Tuffnell revealed that the New Zealand healthcare system's spiritual care delivery was fragmented.

She noted a huge variation in the provision of spiritual care across the country.

Of the 20 former district health boards, eight had no spiritual care policy in place.

For over 50 years, the Interchurch Council for Hospital Chaplaincy (ICHC) has been doing a great job providing hospital chaplains, but they operate in a policy vacuum and a rapidly changing context.

A major bicultural research project led by Associate Profs Richard Egan and Waikaremoana Waitoki has just been launched to examine how spiritual care can be improved across the healthcare sector.

The importance of their mahi is confirmed by a Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) position statement on the relevance of religion and spirituality to psychiatric practice.

It says that religion/spirituality is crucial to achieving a more holistic understanding of a person's needs and supports.

Link between spirituality and religion

A notable feature of the RANZCP statement is the link that is assumed between spirituality and religion.

It defines religion as an institutional form of spirituality, consisting of the systems and practices of a community in relation to a divine or eternal guiding presence.

This begs a question: if spirituality is regarded as a contributor to health, might the same be said of religion? Or to put it more bluntly, is religion good for one's health?

The link between religious observance and mental health benefits has been demonstrated in numerous academic studies.

These include a sense of meaning and purpose, enhanced social support, effective coping mechanisms and stress reduction. In times of suffering, belief in a higher power can provide comfort and hope.

But care needs to be taken not to overstate the benefits. Religion can also be harmful.

Belief in faith-based healing can lead to a distrust of science, a rejection of conventional medicine, delays in seeking medical care and a refusal of life-saving treatments.

It can also trigger a crisis in faith when divine intervention does not materialise.

Moreover, doctrinal beliefs about divinely ordained conduct may induce feelings of shame in regard to one's sexuality and lifestyle choices, potentially leading to secrecy, risky behaviour and mental health struggles.

Other beliefs about heaven and hell may generate anxiety about being judged and found wanting.

Religious in different ways

In a paper on religion and spirituality in healthcare, a British mental health chaplain, Ruth Bierbaum, says it is important to understand that there are different ways of being religious.

Bierbaum uses the term "quest religiosity" to describe a healthy form of religion that integrates the whole of life, accommodates questions and doubt and allows re-evaluation in the light of experience.

It is faith seeking understanding, not faith locked in a rigid system of belief; faith that engages with evidence-based research in all fields of inquiry, not faith stuck inside an echo chamber; faith driven by curiosity, not blind obedience.

Quest religiosity may involve a revision of beliefs and searching questions, such as, "if God is good and all-powerful, why does God allow suffering? Am I being punished for my sins? Is my suffering a test of faith?"

A role of healthcare chaplains is to help people navigate existential questions and guide them to what Bierbaum calls "transitional spaces", where questioning and reflection are encouraged and images of God and self may be reimagined, opening up the possibility for spiritual growth and strengthening of mental health.

Charting the journey

Renowned New Zealand author Joy Cowley likens spirituality to a journey and religion to a map for the journey.

We receive maps that those who have gone before us have drawn, and as we journey, we make the maps our own.

Some markings are as helpful to us as they were to our forebears, but other markings have become obsolete, and some new and unmarked trails lead to exciting new vistas. We put down new markings.

This is a useful metaphor for quest religiosity. Religion is not static. It is an ever-changing map.

For those who experience it as such, it plays a positive role in their health. Their experience is worthy of respect.

• First published in the ODT
• Graham Redding is the lecturer in chaplaincy studies at Otago University and minister at Knox Church, Dunedin.

Sins against peace

Cardinal Oswald Gracias sought forgiveness "for the lack of courage, the necessary courage in the pursuit of peace between peoples and nations.

"Our sin is even graver if, to justify war and discrimination, we invoke the name of God" he said.

Sins against creation, indigenous peoples, migrants

Cardinal Michael Czerny spoke of "shame for what we, the faithful, have done to transform creation from a garden into a desert, manipulating it at will".

Exploitation damages "human dignity" he said.

He sought forgiveness for systems fostering slavery and colonialism, and for "the globalisation of indifference toward the tragedies" affecting many migrants today.

Abuse

Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley begged forgiveness for all forms of abuse.

He specifically sought forgiveness for the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people ... and "for all the times we used the status of ordained ministry and consecrated life to commit this terrible sin".

Subjugating others

Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell spoke "on behalf of all members of the Church, especially us men", acknowledging a certain contempt for the dignity of women, making them "silent and submissive".

He also said the Church sometimes neglects families' needs, judging and condemning rather than caring for them.

Hope and love have sometimes been "stolen from the youth" when "we failed to understand the value of love and hope" he said.

He also prayed for "those who are mistaken" and abandoned in prison or on death row.

Misusing doctrine

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández sought forgiveness for the misuse of Church doctrine.

"We, the pastors, tasked with confirming our brothers and sisters in the faith, failed to safeguard and present the Gospel as a living source of eternal newness."

He especially begged forgiveness for times when doctrine was used to justify "inhumane treatment" or "hindered legitimate inculturations of the truth of Jesus Christ", making it difficult to achieve "authentic fraternity for all humanity".

Sins against poverty

Cardinal Cristóbal Lopez Romero denounced the "culpable indulgences that take bread from the hungry".

He spoke of "feeling ashamed of the inaction that holds us back from accepting the call to be a poor Church of the poor", acknowledging through this "trying" the difficulty of admitting guilt.

The "seduction of power", the "enticements of first places and vainglorious titles" and the "ecclesial spaces sick with self-referentiality" stifle the mission to the "peripheries" dear to Pope Francis, he said.

Sins against synodality

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn highlighted the mindset necessary for a true synodal process.

He then asked forgiveness for the "obstacles we have placed in the way of building a truly synodal, symphonic church, aware of being the holy people of God journeying together, recognising its common baptismal dignity".

He also expressed shame "for all the times we didn't listen to the Holy Spirit, preferring to listen to ourselves... for all the times we turned authority into power, stifling plurality".

Source

• La Croix

Invitations were sent out to local organisations, and sportsmen and women would attend these services en masse.

Churches would be decorated with club paraphernalia and cups won by local teams. Sporting celebrities - perhaps a Test cricketer or First Division footballer - would read the lessons, and the vicar or priest would preach on the value of sport and the need to play it in the right spirit.

Occasionally, the preacher would himself be a sporting star such as Billy Liddell, the legendary Liverpool and Scotland footballer.

Since 1960, however, the trajectories of religion and sport have diverged dramatically.

Throughout the UK, attendances for all the largest Christian denominations - Anglican, Church of Scotland, Catholic and Methodist - have fallen by more than half.

At the same time, the commercialisation and televisation of sport has turned it into a multi-billion dollar global business.

Invitations were sent out to local organisations, and sportsmen and women would attend these services en masse. Churches would be decorated with club paraphernalia and cups won by local teams.

Sporting celebrities - perhaps a Test cricketer or First Division footballer - would read the lessons, and the vicar or priest would preach on the value of sport and the need to play it in the right spirit.

Occasionally, the preacher would himself be a sporting star such as Billy Liddell, the legendary Liverpool and Scotland footballer.

Since 1960, however, the trajectories of religion and sport have diverged dramatically.

Throughout the UK, attendances for all the largest Christian denominations - Anglican, Church of Scotland, Catholic and Methodist - have fallen by more than half. At the same time, the commercialisation and televisation of sport has turned it into a multi-billion dollar global business.

Numerous high-profile sporting stars talk openly about the importance of religion to their careers, including England footballers Marcus Rashford, Raheem Sterling and Bukayo Saka.

World heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury credits his Catholic faith with bringing him back from obesity, alcoholism and cocaine dependency.

Yet it is sport, and its "gods" like Fury, that attracts far greater devotion among much of the public. Parents are as anxious today to ensure their children spend Sunday mornings on the pitch or track as they might once have been to see them in Sunday school.

But to what extent is the worship of sport, and our regular pilgrimages to pitches and stadiums up and down the country, responsible for the emptying of churches and other religious establishments?

This is the story of their parallel, and often conflicting, journeys - and how this "great conversion" changed modern society.

When religion gave sport a helping hand

Two hundred years ago, Christianity was a dominant force in British society.

In the early 19th century, as the modern sporting world was just beginning to emerge, the relationship between church and sport was mainly antagonistic. Churches, especially the dominant evangelical Protestants, condemned the violence and brutality of many sports, as well as their association with gambling.

Many sports were on the defensive in the face of religious attack.

In my book Religion and the Rise of Sport in England, I chart how sport's advocates - players and commentators alike - responded with verbal and even physical attacks on religious zealots.

In 1880, for example, boxing historian Henry Downes Miles celebrated novelist William Thackeray's stirring descriptions of the "noble art" while also bemoaning religion's attempts to curb it:

[This description of boxing] has lines of power to make the blood of your Englishman stir in days to come - should the preachers of peace at-any-price, parsimonious pusillanimity, puritanic precision and propriety have left our youth any blood to stir.

Yet around this time, there were also the first signs of a rapprochement between religion and sport.

Some churchmen - influenced both by more liberal theologies and the nation's health and societal failings - turned from condemning "bad" sports to promoting "good" ones, notably cricket and football.

Meanwhile the new Muscular Christianity movement appealed for recognition of the needs of "the whole man or whole woman - body, mind and spirit".

By the 1850s, sport had become central to the curricula of Britain's leading private schools. These were attended by many future Anglican clergymen, who would go on to bring a passion for sport to their parishes.

No fewer than a third of the Oxford and Cambridge University cricket "blues" (first team players) from the years 1860 to 1900 were later ordained as clergy.

While the UK's Christian sporting movement was pioneered by liberal Anglicans, other denominations (plus the YMCA and, a little later, the YWCA) soon joined in.

In an editorial on The Saving of the Body in 1896, the Sunday School Chronicle asserted that "the attempted divorce of the body and soul has ever been the source of the keenest woes of mankind".

It explained that, unlike medieval saints' instances of extreme bodily mortification, Jesus came to heal the whole man - and therefore:

When the religion of the gymnasium and the cricket-field is duly recognised and inculcated, we may hope for better results.

Religious clubs were formed, mostly strictly for fun and relaxation on a Saturday afternoon.

But a few went on to greater things. Aston Villa football club was founded in 1874 by a group of young men in a Methodist bible class, who already played cricket together and wanted a winter game.

Rugby union's Northampton Saints started six years later as Northampton St James, having been founded by the curate of the town's St James Church.

Meanwhile, Christian missionaries were taking British sports to Africa and Asia.

As J.A. Mangan describes in The Games Ethic and Imperialism: "Missionaries took cricket to the Melanesians, football to the Bantu, rowing to the Hindu [and] athletics to the Iranians".

Missionaries were also the first footballers in Uganda, Nigeria, the French Congo and probably Africa's former Gold Coast too, according to David Goldblatt in The Ball is Round.

But at home, religious denominations and their members responded selectively to the late Victorian sporting boom, adopting some sports while rejecting others.

Anglicans, for example, enjoyed a love affair with cricket. One of the first books celebrating it as England's "national game" was The Cricket Field (1851) by Rev. James Pycroft, a Devon clergyman who pronounced: "The game of cricket, philosophically considered, is a standing panegyric to the English character."

Admittedly, Pycroft also noted a "darker side" to the game, arising from the large amount of betting on cricket matches at that time. But, in a claim that would be made for many other sports over the next century and a half, he suggested it was still a "panacea" for the nation's social ills:

Such a national game as cricket will both humanise and harmonise our people. It teaches a love of order, discipline and fair-play for the pure honour and pure glory of victory.

Meanwhile, Jews came to the fore in boxing in Britain - in contrast to the nonconformists who mainly opposed boxing because of its violence, and who were totally against horse racing because it was based on betting.

They approved of all "healthy" sports, though, and were enthusiastic cyclists and footballers. In contrast, many Catholics and Anglicans enjoyed horse racing and also boxed.

But as the 19th century neared its end, the most hotly debated issue was the rise of women's sport. Unlike in other parts of Europe, however, there was little religious opposition to women taking part in Britain.

From the 1870s, upper and upper-middle-class women were playing golf, tennis and croquet, and not long afterwards sport entered the curricula of girls' private schools.

By the 1890s, the country's more affluent churches and chapels were forming tennis clubs, while those with a broader social constituency formed clubs for cycling and hockey, most of which welcomed both women and men.

The involvement of churches in amateur sport would peak in the 1920s and 30s.

In Bolton in the 1920s, for example, church-based clubs accounted for half of all teams playing cricket and football (the sports most widely practised by men) and well over half those playing hockey and rounders (typically practised by women).

At this time, an extensive sporting programme was so taken for granted in most churches that it scarcely needed a justification. However, there was a gradual decline in church-based sport after the second world war - which became much more rapid in the 1970s and '80s.

When sport became ‘bigger than religion'

Even before the dawn of the 20th century, critics of private schools and universities were complaining that cricket had become "a new religion". Similarly, some observers of working-class cultures were concerned that football had become "a passion and not merely a recreation".

The most obvious challenge that the rise of sport presented for religion was competition for time. As well as the general problem that both are lengthy pursuits, there was the more specific problem of the times when sport is practised.

Jews had long faced the question of whether playing or watching sport on a Saturday is compatible with observance of the Sabbath. From the 1890s, Christians began to face similar issues with the slow-but-steady growth of recreational sport and exercise on Sundays.

The bicycle provided the perfect means for those who wanted to spend the day outdoors, far from church, and golf clubs were beginning to open on Sundays too - by 1914, this extended to around half of all English golf clubs.

But unlike in most other parts of Europe, professional sport on Sundays remained rare.

This meant that Eric Liddell, the Scottish athlete and rugby union international immortalised in the film Chariots of Fire, could quite easily combine his brilliant sporting career with a refusal to run on Sundays, so long as he remained in Britain.

When the 1924 Olympics were held in Paris, however, Liddell famously refused to compromise by taking part in the Sunday heats for the 100m sprint.

He went on to win 400m gold instead, before returning to China the following year to serve as a missionary teacher.

The 1960s finally marked the beginning of the end for Britain's "sacred" Sunday.

In 1960, the Football Association lifted its ban on Sunday football, leading to the formation of numerous Sunday leagues for local clubs. The first Sunday matches between professional teams took rather longer, starting with Cambridge United v Oldham Athletic in the third round of the FA Cup on January 6 1974.

Before then, in 1969, cricket had become the first major UK sport to stage elite-level Sunday sport with its new 40-over competition - sponsored by John Player cigarettes and televised by the BBC.

But perhaps the clearest indicator of the growing perception of sporting sites as "sacred spaces" was the practice of scattering supporters' ashes on or close to a pitch.

This gained particular popularity in Liverpool during the reign of the football club's legendary manager Bill Shankly (1959-74), who is quoted in John Keith's biography explaining the reasoning behind it:

My aim was to bring the people close to the club and the team, and for them to be accepted part of it.

The effect was that wives brought their late husbands' ashes to Anfield and scattered them on the pitch after saying a little prayer … So people not only support Liverpool when they're alive. They support them when they are dead.

Shankly's own ashes were scattered at the Kop end of the Anfield pitch following his death in 1981.

By now, sporting enthusiasts were happy to declare - and elaborate on - their "sporting faith".

In 1997, lifelong Liverpool fan Alan Edge drew an extended parallel between his upbringing as a Catholic and his support for the Reds in Faith of Our Fathers: Football as a Religion.

With chapter titles such as "Baptism", "Communion" and "Confession", Edge offers a convincing explanation of why so many fans say that football is their religion, and how this alternative faith is learnt:

I'm attempting to provide an insight into some of the reasons behind all the madness; why people like me turn into knee-jerking, football crazy lunatics … It is a story that could apply equally to fans from any of the other great footballing hotbeds …

All are places where cradle-to-grave indoctrination is part of growing up; where football is a primary - at times, the primary - life-force, supplanting religion in the lives of many.

‘Sport does things religion no longer offers'

Whether as participant or supporter, many people's loyalty to sport now provides a stronger source of identity than the religion (if any) to which they are nominally attached.

When writing about his experiences of long-distance running, author Jamie Doward suggests that, for him and many others, running marathons does some of the things that religion can no longer offer.

He calls running "the secular equivalent of the Sunday service" and "modernity's equivalent of a medieval pilgrimage", adding:

It is perhaps no surprise that the popularity of running is increasing as that of religion declines. The two appear coterminous, with both delivering their own forms of transcendence.

In turn, sport has narrowed down the societal space traditionally occupied by religion.

For example, the belief held by governments and many parents that sport can make you a better person has meant that sport frequently takes over the role formerly performed by churches of seeking to produce mature adults and good citizens.

In 2002, Tessa Jowell, then secretary of state for culture, media and sport, introduced the Labour government's new sport and physical activity strategy, Game Plan, by claiming that increased public participation could reduce crime and enhance social inclusion.

She added that international sporting success could benefit everyone in the UK by producing a "feel-good factor" - and a year later confirmed that London would bid to host the 2012 Olympics.

Amid its growth, however, sport also had to cope with regular controversies that seemingly threatened to reduce its appeal.

In 2017, at a time of widespread public concern about drug-taking in athletics and cycling, betting and ball-tampering in cricket, deliberate injuring of opponents in football and rugby, and physical and mental abuse of young athletes in football and gymnastics, a headline in the Guardian read:

"General public is losing faith in scandal-ridden sports".

Yet even then, the referenced poll found that 71 percent of Britons still believed that "sport is a force for good".

Religious organisations have responded in different ways to the role of sport in contemporary society.

Some, like the current bishop of Derby Libby Lane, see it as presenting opportunities for evangelism - if that is where the people are, the Church should be there too.

In 2019, following her appointment as the Church of England's new bishop for sport, Lane told the Church Times:

Sport may be a way of growing the Kingdom of God for the Church … It shapes our culture, our identity, our cohesion, our wellbeing, our sense of self, and our sense of place in society. If we are concerned about the whole of human life, then for the Church to have a voice in [sport] is vital.

The sports chaplaincy movement has also grown significantly since the 1990s - notably in football and rugby league, where it is now a standard post in most major clubs.

And at the London Olympics in 2012, there were 162 working chaplains belonging to five religions.

A chaplain's role is to provide personal support for people working in a difficult profession, many of whom have come from distant parts of the world.

In the early 2000s, the chaplain of Bolton Wanderers asked the football club's players about their religions. As well as Christians and those with no religion, the squad included Muslims, a Jew and a Rastafarian.

But in addition to reflecting the rapid internationalisation of many professional dressing rooms, chaplains' increased adoption by sports teams may reflect growing recognition of the mental as well as physical toll that elite sport can take.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of Muslim cricket leagues and other Muslim sporting organisations in Britain is in part a response to threats and challenges, including racism and the widespread drinking culture of some sports.

The recent formation of the Muslim Golf Association reflects the fact that, although the explicit exclusion which Jewish golfers faced in earlier times would now be illegal, Muslim golfers still feel unwelcome in some UK golf clubs.

And UK sporting organisations for Muslim women and girls, such as the Muslim Women's Sports Foundation and the Muslimah Sports Association, are a response not only to prejudice and discrimination by non-Muslims but to the discouragement they may encounter from Muslim men.

A Sport England report in 2015 found that, while Muslim male players were more active in sport than those from any other religious or non-religious group, their female counterparts were less active than women from any other group.

Of course, religious differences have long contributed to tensions and, in some cases, violence both on and off the pitch - most famously in Britain through the historic rivalry between Glasgow's two biggest football clubs, Rangers and Celtic.

In 2011, Celtic manager Neil Lennon and two prominent fans of the club were sent parcel bombs intended to kill or maim.

Duncan Morrow, a professor who chaired an independent advisory group on tackling sectarianism in Scotland in response to these heightened tensions, identified a fascinating shift in religion's relationship with sport:

In a time where religion is less important in society, it is almost as if it has become part of the identity of football in Scotland. In a sense, sectarianism now is a way of behaving rather than a way of believing.

Why many elite athletes still rely on religion

In the early 2000s, the Muslim ethos of the Pakistan cricket team was so strong that the only Christian player, Yousuf Youhana, converted to Islam.

The chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Nasim Ashraf, wondered aloud if things had gone too far.

"There is no doubt," he said, "religious faith is a motivating factor for the players - it binds them together." But he also worried that undue pressure was being put on less devout players.

In more pluralistic and secular societies, the use of religion to bond a team together may prove counterproductive. But it is still vitally important for many sportsmen and women.

Faith-driven athletes find in their reading of the Bible or the Qur'an, or in their personal relationship with Jesus, the strength to face the trials and tribulations of elite sport - including not only the disciplines of training and of overcoming physical pain, but also the bitterness of defeat.

One of the best-known examples of how a leading athlete drew on his religion is Britain's world record-holding triple jumper Jonathan Edwards, who spoke frequently about his evangelical Christian belief during his days of competing.

(Edwards would later renounce his faith following his retirement, claiming that it had acted as the most powerful kind of sports psychology.)

As well as strengthening his drive to succeed and helping him bounce back from defeat, Edwards also felt an obligation to speak about his faith. Or as his biographer put it:

Jonathan felt he was answering a call to be an evangelist - a witness to God in running shoes.

Athletes from religious minorities frequently see themselves as symbols and champions of their own communities.

Thus, Jack "Kid" Berg, world light welterweight boxing champion in the 1930s, entered the ring with a prayer shawl round his shoulders and wore a Star of David during each fight.

More recently, the England cricketer Moeen Ali has been a hero for many Muslims, yet provoked the ire of one Daily Telegraph journalist who is said to have told him: "You are playing for England, Moeen Ali, not for your religion."

The stresses arising from failure in elite sport - and the value of faith in dealing with them - have also been highlighted in the career of British athlete Christine Ohuruogu, who won 400m gold at the 2008 Olympics having earlier been banned for a year for allegedly missing a drug test:

Among the athletic victories, Christine has had to cope with numerous injury problems, the indignity of disqualification, and cruel false allegations in the tabloid press. Christine says that it is her strong faith in God which has sustained her.

And England rugby union star Jonny Wilkinson claimed that 24 hours after the last-minute drop goal which won the World Cup for England in 2003, he was overcome with "a powerful feeling of anti-climax".

He later explained in an interview with the Guardian that he found the solution through his conversion to Buddhism:

It's a philosophy and way of life that resonates with me. I agree with so much of the sentiment behind it. I enjoy the liberating effect it's had on me to get back into the game - in a way that's so much more rewarding because you're enjoying the moment of being on the field.

In the past it was basically me getting into the changing room, wiping my brow and thinking: "Thank God that's over."

While sport has assumed a place in society that religion once filled for many, the questions that religions seek to answer have not gone away - not least for elite athletes.

For them, sport is a profession and a very demanding one, and a significant number find strength and inspiration through their faith.

Of course, many of today's UK-based sporting professionals hail from less secularised regions of the world, while others are the children of immigrants and refugees.

The 2021 census found that both the absolute number and proportion of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and those selecting "other religion" had all increased in England and Wales over the previous decade.

So we are left with something of a paradox. While religion has been crowded out by sport in general society, it remains a conspicuous part of elite sport - with a number of studies around the world finding that athletes tend to be more religious than non-athletes.

The Church of England is aware of this contrast, and has responded by launching a National Sport and Wellbeing project, piloted in eight of its dioceses.

Despite launching just before the pandemic, initiatives have included adapting church premises for football, netball and keep-fit sessions, formation of new sports clubs aimed especially at non-churchgoers, and after-school clubs and summer holiday camps that offer a combination of sport and religion.

In fact, the agenda is more explicitly evangelistic than in the Victorian days of Muscular Christianity.

Those engaging in today's "sports ministry" are well aware of the challenges they face. Whereas in later Victorian times and the first half of the 20th century, many people had a loose connection with the church, now the majority have no connection at all.

But today's religious evangelists display a strong faith in sport. They believe it can help build new connections, particularly among younger generations. As the Church of England's outreach project concludes:

This has a huge mission potential … If we are to find the sweet spot [between sport and religion], it could contribute to a growing and outward-facing Church.

• First published in The Conversation
• Hugh McLeod is Emeritus Professor of Church History, University of Birmingham

How has China followed Pope Francis' Asian tour, and what interests has it seen in it?

Michel Chambon: Beijing has closely observed the entirety of this trip, seeking to assess to what extent Pope Francis could contribute to the balance of power, the common good, and the development of the region—and to what extent, therefore, this "universal sovereign" could be an interesting partner for China.

On Chinese social media, Pope Francis' gestures and speeches have been shared in real-time, under the watchful eye of the Communist Party, which allowed this information to circulate.

Like other Asian leaders, China has also seen political interests behind this tour as it expands its influence throughout Southeast Asia and seeks to secure a share of the region's vast natural resources (forestry, minerals, etc.).

Recently, Beijing took a major step by forming a military alliance with the Solomon Islands, east of Papua New Guinea, which has caused significant tensions with Australia and the Western world.

Chinese diasporas have also long been present in various Southeast Asian countries (such as Indonesia), which China seeks to make part of its sphere of influence.

For Beijing, there were therefore several significant geopolitical and economic stakes.

What message has the Pope sought to send to the Chinese authorities?

M.C.: By visiting these Asian countries, the Pope has shown that he is fully committed to the unity of peoples and the integrated development of the region. With his "soft power," he helps all parties return to fundamental issues of stability, dignity, justice, and peace.

The Holy See has demonstrated, through extensive communication, what kind of universal sovereignty Francis wants to exercise in Asia in the service of the common good.

The Pope has also shown great delicacy and adaptability toward his various interlocutors: one can see this as a signal to Beijing, indicating that he can also be its partner.

What impact could this trip have on the renewal of the China-Vatican agreement, which is set to expire at the end of October?

M.C.: In my opinion, it is highly likely that the agreement will not only be renewed but that a new version will be developed in the coming weeks.

The international context—the Pope's trip to Asia, the Synod on Synodality, U.S. elections—seems favorable: the Holy See and Beijing are free to renegotiate this agreement in peace.

This will likely be done quietly. Chinese authorities also seem eager to move forward. At the end of August, the Holy See announced that Beijing had recognised an "underground" bishop (1) in the northeastern part of the country.

Both parties are reminding the world that the agreement exists and is working, even though Beijing still maintains tight control over civil society, including Catholics.

In early August, Pope Francis once again expressed his desire to visit China. Do you think such a trip could really happen for him?

M.C.: I strongly doubt that this will ever concretely happen. Francis is 87 years old, and China is not ready. For me, these somewhat provocative statements are more of a form of "gunboat diplomacy."

By publicly envisioning such a trip, Francis is once again demonstrating his desire to build a relationship of collaboration and trust with Beijing despite all obstacles.

(1) Previously recognised by Rome, but not by Beijing.

• First published in La Croix
• Michel Chambon is a theologian and cultural anthropologist. He is Research fellow at the National University of Singapore.

In a soothing, gentle voice, she informs us that a relative is in town and has been craving bubble gum.

Rather than doing what nine out of 10 people would do, which is to fish out an ossified stick of gum from the bottom of a bag and hope there's no such thing as a purse-borne disease, Nara Smith begins making bubble gum from scratch.

She starts with some "gum base" she just happens to have on hand in her gleaming, spacious kitchen. In the space of a 70-second TikTok video, two innovative bubble gum flavors are ready to try.

I suspect most of Smith's 9.4 million TikTok followers realize that her videos are staged and that she's a professional model.

What purport to be spur-of-the-moment decisions to satisfy the cravings of her gorgeous husband or their three young children have all the spontaneity of a military operation.

And yet we keep watching, fascinated by this woman who also makes her toddlers' morning cereal from scratch and softly gushes that cooking natural foods is her "love language".

Religion and the online persona

Religion isn't discussed, but it informs Smith's online persona as surely as the cucumber and watermelon she uses to infuse her midday mocktail. Smith and her husband are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons.

This identity isn't obvious from her videos — she more often than not sports sleeveless and backless clothing that LDS leaders long designated as off-limits for young women of the faith — but the religion subtly undergirds the lifestyle she is selling.

As a scholar who studies Mormonism in the United States, and a Latter-day Saint myself, I know why I watch Smith's videos:

She is part of my tribe and I'm proud of her success, even as I roll my eyes at the idea that we Mormons routinely make our own ketchup instead of fetching it from Costco.

Why do we watch?

My question is why so many other people keep tuning in to watch Smith and a host of other LDS influencers whose religion flies equally under the radar.

For example, Shea McGee, the interior designer behind Studio McGee, deployed her Instagram and YouTube popularity to help launch the Netflix series "Dream Home Makeover."

McGee and her husband met while she was studying at Brigham Young University, where 99 percent of students are Mormon, so it's a safe bet she is or was a church member.

Other clues: They live in Utah, have a growing young family and seem to share the Mormon obsession with cookies and sweets.

But I haven't seen any overt confirmation of a religious identity in their social media or on Netflix's show.

That omission is a smart decision, because Americans like Latter-day Saints' lifestyle a good deal more than they like the religion itself.

Despite the astonishing popularity of these LDS personalities, the Pew Research Center finds that Mormons rank dead last among religious groups in popular approval.

Just 15 percent of Americans hold a "very" or "somewhat" favourable view of us. Our negative-10 favourability rating places us below atheists and Muslims, the only other groups to achieve negative territory.

So if non-Mormons aren't keen on Latter-day Saints' religion, what are they looking for when they follow LDS influencers?

I think they're craving a blend of the traditional and the modern. Mormon women influencers, for example, are supposed to have it all: fam and glam, trad wife and boss-woman.

Social media backlash

But bend too far in either direction and the social media backlash can be intense. Consider the hostility directed at "Ballerina Farm" personality Hannah Neeleman (pictured).

She's a Juilliard-trained dancer who runs a Utah farm with her affluent husband and their eight children.

The rail-thin and conspicuously blond Neeleman embodies the Barbie beauty stereotype.

Fans love the scrubbed pine tables where she dishes up homemade pies, and the prairie dresses she and her daughters wear, skirts swaying gently in the mountain breeze.

Many of those same fans balked, however, when, less than two weeks after giving birth to her eighth child in January, a svelte Neeleman represented the United States in the Mrs. World pageant.

How was she able to lose her baby weight so quickly and parade in a swimsuit and evening gown? What's more, why did she?

Glamour magazine said many people felt that "by posting videos of her home births, skinny waist, obvious bliss and serene nature, she is actively harming other women.

She's making postpartum look like a breeze … and is giving an unrealistic ideal for what motherhood is actually like."

The criticisms intensified last month after The Times of London did an in-depth profile of Neeleman.

Or an attempted profile: According to interviewer Megan Agnew, Neeleman's husband often spoke for his wife, and he left Agnew alone with her interview subject for only a few minutes.

I can't, it seems, get an answer out of Neeleman without her being corrected, interrupted or answered for by either her husband or a child.

Usually I am doing battle with steely Hollywood publicists; today I am up against an army of toddlers who all want their mum and a husband who thinks he knows better.

Her husband also revealed the alarming tidbit that sometimes Neeleman is so exhausted from her farm and child-care duties that she has to take to bed for an entire week.

This revelation generated a firestorm on social media, with critique far outweighing compassion.

For a 35-year-old woman to require that much bed rest isn't normal, the internet said.

And since Neeleman hinted (when her husband briefly left the room) that she once had an epidural during a childbirth when he was out of town, the internet assumed he had otherwise prevented her from accessing pain relief for all of her other births.

What viewers want

The backlash shows that viewers want the Neelemans to be a traditional family, but not too traditional. Neeleman should be beautiful, but not impossibly so.

They want to believe the fantasy that she runs her family by herself and feel betrayed to learn that the "homeschooled" children are actually tutored by a paid employee.

They also want religion to be muted and the Neelemans mostly succeed at this, keeping their faith out of the foreground.

That approach also characterises the Bucket List Family, who spent years as global wanderers, exploring the planet with three kids in tow, including a baby. (They've since bought a home in Nevada and settled in, at least for the time being.)

Their travels, chronicled in the lovely book "National Geographic Bucket List Family Travel," are filled with gorgeous water adventures, culinary delights and beautiful photos of them in swimsuits, as befits any travel fantasy worth its salt.

Though they don't discuss religion openly, they do talk about "values" and "living authentically," 21st-century buzzwords that, from their mouths, feel fresh and moving.

Those values are ones that many Americans fear we are losing.

Once a month, for instance, the family paused their travels for a service project, in part to teach their kids how privileged they are.

(And they are privileged. In the NatGeo book, Jessica Gee matter-of-factly explains they can afford their life because her husband, Garrett, co-developed a barcode-scanning app as an undergraduate, before selling it to Snapchat in 2014 for $54 million. Oh.)

These families are traditional, with a heterosexual married couple at their core who seem to love and enjoy each other.

Importantly, though, they're not winding the clock back too far. It's Nara Smith, not her husband, who is the bigger star, and Shea McGee, not Syd, who heads the family's design firm.

Both husbands are clearly supportive and proud of their wives, which only adds to the fantasy. So, too, is Garrett Gee, who pens the foreword to Jessica's travel book and credits her with being "the one who makes it all happen."

These egalitarian-seeming gender dynamics appeal more to contemporary Americans than the actual patriarchy that the LDS church has long upheld as divinely ordained.

LDS women cannot hold the priesthood or any of the positions of authority for which the priesthood is the essential calling card.

Women cannot run a congregation or preside over men in church organisations, but in influencer-land they can run a company, rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (or more) and still have the bandwidth to make breakfast cereal from scratch.

I don't envy these women.

It must be exhausting to curate their lives and children for public consumption — to say nothing of preserving those beautiful bodies that society reviles and reveres in equal measure.

It's not a sustainable lifestyle. But oh, how America loves to keep watching.

• First published by Religion News Service
• Jana Riess is a senior columnist for Religion News Service

The deadlock has pushed Sudan into being a "forgotten" conflict.

Sudan's reality

If this were a film, its script would be criticised for overusing every dramatic device.

Looting, rape, executions, and bombings. The horrors of a dirty war are compounded by families driven into exile, legions of starving children, and a cholera epidemic amidst torrential downpours.

Yet, this is the reality of Sudan after 17 months of war.

The United States estimates that the conflict has killed more than 150,000 civilians.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, 11 million people have been displaced within the country, a figure exacerbated by flooding and famine.

Hunger plagues 25 million Sudanese, more than half the population, while rival armies hinder humanitarian aid.

The United Nations has called it "one of the worst humanitarian crises" of our time.

Humanitarian help needed

In the face of international indifference, humanitarian organisations have called for help and action to "put Sudan back on track."

"The international community must mobilise," UNICEF urged this month, arguing that there was "no excuse."

In France, the topic is rarely discussed.

"Sudan is not within our political geography, and it is more covered in Arab and Anglo-Saxon media," said Thierry Vircoulon, a researcher associated with the French Institute of International Relations.

"Humanitarians and journalists have limited access; Sudan is vast, and the fighting occurs on multiple fronts. It's extremely difficult to report on the situation."

Fratricidal conflict

The genesis of this war is a fratricidal conflict between General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, head of the regular army, and General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemetti, leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The former is supported by the old Islamist regime and Khartoum elites, while the latter comes from the Arab Janjaweed militias involved in the Darfur genocide two decades ago.

Together, the two generals overthrew the democratic transitional government established after the fall of Omar Al-Bashir's Islamist dictatorship in 2021.

However, their ambitions clashed, leading to war on April 15, 2023. Their rivalry has unleashed local militias, igniting local conflicts and ethnic tensions.

Initially, major powers failed to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

"No one imagined that this war would last," said Roland Marchal, a sociologist and researcher at CNRS, France's National Center for Scientific Research.

"For U.S. President Joe Biden, Africa has never been a priority. U.S. diplomatic responses have been inconsistent, while Europeans have remained passive, following suit but divided.

From the outset, the silence of China, Sudan's primary trading partner, and Russia has compounded limited the Western response to Sudan."

Regional influence

This gap has allowed other types of interventions.

The ambitions of the two rival generals are cemented by support from regional actors attracted by the strategic importance of a country located between the Sahel and the Red Sea.

"The situation became particularly complex with the rivalries among nations of the Arabian Peninsula," continues the expert.

By providing additional resources without facing any sanctions, these nations have allowed the war to persist.

Their rhetoric and calls for de-escalation did not reflect the reality on the ground, further complicating efforts to understand this conflict and delaying any resolution."

While Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, and recently Iran supported government forces, General Hemetti has received crucial backing from the United Arab Emirates while also establishing ties with Russia through gold smuggling and the Wagner Group.

"With the involvement of Russians and Iranians alongside the regular army, an alliance is emerging that could reflect international fractures and complicate matters even further," Marchal explained.

Russia, for its part, is eyeing a naval base in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, raising concerns within the Western bloc. For now, the entangled rival coalitions hinder any resolution to the war.

"Both sides will continue fighting as long as they have the means, thanks to their allies," Vircoulon said.

Arms trade

To fuel the fighting, the arms trade is king.

"A constant flow of weapons is sustaining the conflict," warned Amnesty International.

Despite an embargo, arms are being delivered to Sudan, particularly Darfur, from China, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

Amidst growing chaos, mediation attempts are underway. Since August 14, negotiations have been held in Geneva, initiated by the United States.

However, General Al-Burhan, who leads the army, refuses to sit across from his enemy. Nevertheless, he has allowed the opening of the Chadian border post at Adré, and 15 trucks have recently crossed to deliver humanitarian aid to Darfur.

In Sudan's powder keg, the fighting continues, with shockwaves fueling regional instability. According to Thierry Vircoulon,

"It's a fight to the death for power," a fight that is tearing Sudan apart.

• First reported in La Croix International
• Vanessa Dougnac is a journalist for La Croix International

How does it feel to give an interview to a Catholic publication?

John Cleese (pictured): "The question slightly amuses me, but I see why I'm being asked that.

"I do have a very mixed view of the Catholic Church, because I think what happens to most religions is that after the initial spiritual height of the early generations ministering the religion, that spirituality slowly diminishes and the churches begin to take on an ordinary human egotistical aspect.

"For example, you have Christ's teaching, which is primarily of poverty, humility and tolerance; then 2,000 years later you have a Catholic Church that is very rich and very powerful and quite authoritarian.

"Similarly, I find it hard to believe that Jesus Christ would have regarded burning people alive as a correct interpretation of his Gospel of love.

"There can be a very large gap between the teachings of the founder of the religion and the people centuries later who are administering it.

"This does not mean that there are not some very fine people within the Catholic Church. I have known a couple myself and they work within the Church, trying to do the best job they can even if it is within a framework that they often cannot truly believe in.

"So, I have no worries at all about being interviewed by a Catholic publication because some of the people reading the interview will understand and probably be reasonably sympathetic to my views."

How would you describe your personal relationship to faith and religion, and its development?

Cleese: "I think my lifelong quest, albeit a very dilettante one, has been to try to find meaning. And I think that any such meaning that would satisfy me would have some element of religion about it.

"However, when I'm asked if I believe in God, I simply have to say I don't know what it means.

"I do believe there may be a real purpose in the Universe and I believe that there may be a force out there that people who have a religious experience contact.

"I think some people who have undergone rigorous spiritual training may contact that beneficial force more often than most of the rest of us are lucky enough to do.

"And I believe contact with that benevolent force is very beneficial to the people who manage it and even to the people around those individuals who manage it.

"Also, I don't think there's any question that some degree of stillness sometimes brings a spiritual experience which causes people's behaviour to become increasingly unselfish."

Did you ever think that religious people would one day regard ‘The Life of Brian' in a positive way? Read more

• Sebastian Moll has a PhD in Divinity from Edinburgh University and works at the Theological Faculty of the University of Mainz.

It occupies your home, your car, your workplace, your pocket.

Even your mind.

Every aspect of your daily routine is seamlessly integrated with this sophisticated technology.

It anticipates your needs, completes your thoughts, deciphers your emotions, plays your favorite songs, drafts your emails and even suggests your next meal.

It serves as your personal assistant, confidant, entertainment hub and your lover.

Life becomes smooth, convenient and tailored to your every whim.

Authenticity lacking

But something crucial is missing.

A sense of unease begins to take root.

Interactions feel hollow, conversations lack depth and relationships become superficial and transactional.

The more we rely on AI, the more we find ourselves yearning for something it cannot provide:

Authenticity, meaning and opportunities to connect on a fundamentally human level.

This is where the church re-enters the scene, not as a relic of the past, but as a symbol of the present, a sanctuary of authenticity.

At this tipping point of artificiality and superficiality, people start craving transcendent values that algorithms cannot encode. They seek the warmth of human connection, the comfort of shared beliefs and the solace of timeless rituals.

Spiritual journeying

Imagine a young professional, immersed in the digital hum of a bustling city, surrounded by a sea of screens and synthetic voices. It's not difficult to imagine, of course, that this is the reality for millions of people around the world from New York City to New Delhi.

Despite the convenience of their AI-enhanced lives, they find themselves restless at night, staring at the ceiling (or the phone), pondering the bigger questions:

• Why am I here?
• What is my purpose?
• What does it mean to be truly connected?

These are questions no AI-generated bot can satisfactorily answer. Why? Simply because such questions delve into the depths of the human soul. And AI doesn't have a soul. Not yet, anyway.

Gradually, this professional notices a shift among their peers. A friend mentions attending a Sunday service not for the sermon but for the sense of community, the genuine smiles and the feeling of belonging.

Another friend speaks about the meditative peace they find in the quiet of a church, away from the relentless pace of technology. Intrigued, our professional decides to explore.

Walking into the church, they notice that people are present, genuinely engaged and open-hearted.

There is a tangible sense of something greater than oneself, something that transcends the algorithmic curation they have become accustomed to. The hymns, the prayers, the very atmosphere speak to a part of the human experience that technology cannot touch: the spiritual.

In the dim light of the stained-glass windows, our young professional feels a profound sense of peace. It's not about rejecting technology but about finding balance.They realise that while AI can enhance life, it should not define it.

As more people reach this tipping point, the Church starts to see a resurgence. It becomes a counterbalance to digital dominance, a place where people can reconnect with their humanity.

It's not about nostalgia or clinging to the past; it's about rediscovering the value of the sacred and the communal in a world that increasingly feels like a digital illusion.

A constant need

These scenarios — where AI inadvertently leads people back to religious spaces — are not as far-fetched as they might seem at first glance.

Throughout history, humans have sought meaning, connection, and understanding beyond the immediate physical world.

This quest has been intrinsic to our nature, deeply embedded in our collective psyche since the Middle Paleolithic era. From ancient cave paintings to complex religious systems, this spiritual inclination has been a constant, an ever-present phenomenon throughout our journey.

Religious belief, in its many forms, has always provided answers to the big questions — questions about existence, purpose, morality and the afterlife.

These are not just abstract concepts; they are core to what makes us human.

The rituals, stories and communal gatherings found in religious practice offer a framework for understanding our place in the universe, a sense of belonging, and a connection to something greater than ourselves.

Now, enter the age of AI. Modern technology is rapidly transforming our world. It's infiltrating every aspect of our lives. Algorithms, data analytics and machine learning models dictate what we see, how we interact and even how we think.

While these innovations bring unparalleled levels of convenience and efficiency, they also introduce a sense of literal artificiality. The digital world, no matter how advanced, lacks the nutrients provided by real-life experiences.

In such a context, it is only natural for people to seek balance. When faced with the sterile precision of AI, the messiness of human life — its unpredictability, its emotional depth, its sheer rawness — becomes even more precious.

A God-shaped vacuum

Of course, sports clubs, book clubs and other social gatherings undoubtedly foster community and camaraderie around shared interests. However, they differ significantly from religious institutions like churches, mosques and synagogues in terms of spiritual nourishment.

Religious centers can serve as focal points for believers, nonbelievers and everyone in between — those seeking answers to existential questions and a deeper connection to the divine.

Through rituals, prayers and sacred texts, these institutions provide a framework for understanding life's purpose, morality and the metaphysical, offering a sense of transcendence and spiritual upliftment that secular clubs generally do not replicate.

Moreover, religious communities offer a unique sense of belonging and support that extends well beyond social interaction.

They create sacred spaces conducive to contemplation and meditation, an opportunity for individuals to connect with the divine. Religious institutions also offer a counterbalance to the isolation that can come from over-reliance on technology.

In times of crisis or existential doubt, people have, throughout history, turned to these communities for support, wisdom and solace.

A return to religious spaces should not be considered a step backward. On the contrary, it could help us reclaim a crucial aspect of human life that technology cannot replicate.

In the words of the great philosopher Blaise Pascal, "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man, which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator."

This profound insight speaks to the core of our human experience.

The hunger for something transcendent in nature — an itch that cannot be scratched by AI girlfriends, VR headsets, and promises of the Metaverse — remains ever-present. We are, at our core, God-seeking souls, and no algorithm can fulfill that eternal quest.

• First published in Religion Unplugged
• John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist focusing on psychology and social relations.

Religious influences

The study, a joint project of Harvard and Baylor universities, Gallup and the Center for Open Science, aims to uncover what influences "human flourishing,".

It is defined by measures of happiness, character and virtue and social relationships, among other values.

According to the group's research, attending a religious service regularly positively affects flourishing.

"We're not shocked at that because there's a lot of other research that indicates that faith is important to human flourishing.

"But it may come as a surprise to people that religion would be an important thing," said Byron R. Johnson, director of Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion.

Earlier studies have shown that religion could help young people struggling with mental health issues, but also that being involved in a congregation could influence the level of happiness.

About the study

For this study, Gallup interviewed 200,000 individuals in more than 20 countries, including Mexico, Japan, Nigeria, Indonesia and Israel.

Participants were asked questions about the six domains the Center for Open Science has identified as the core indicators of human flourishing.

Physical and mental health, purpose and financial stability were among the topics discussed.

Their responses were collected during short in-person interviews and used to create a "human flourishing index" ranging from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest level of satisfaction.

Religion important

Respondents who said "religion is an important part of daily life" score 0.23 points higher on average than those who didn't.

Those who attend a religious service at least once a week scored 0.41 points higher than those who never do.

Attendance one to three times a month correlated with a 0.22 point higher score, while those who go a few times a year scored 0.18 points higher on average.

The study also revealed that gaps in human flourishing scores are largest among people in Turkey.

There are 0.73 points of difference between Turks who attend religious services weekly and those who never do; in the Philippines (0.67 points of difference); and in Nigeria (0.58 points of difference).

In an article commenting on these results, Gallup noted that context is important to understand the data.

That's because other factors related to financial stability, such as being employed and living comfortably, also play a role.

Now that the first results have been published, the team of 50 researchers deployed by the four institutions to work on the study is conducting separate analyses.

They will study the level of flourishing within each religious group and compare religions together.

These further analyses might give them clues on which religious groups tend to have higher flourishing scores.

"Some people will just be looking at Jewish samples, for example, and some will just be looking at samples of those that follow Islam, and some will be doing all of it," said Johnson.

Further research

The main focus for the next four years is to keep the same sample population so researchers can track the participants' level of flourishing and understand what influences potential changes.

Johnson said the idea of creating a longitudinal study — one that follows people over time — came after a conference on human flourishing at Harvard in November 2018.

Johnson said the study could also help make headway in understanding the global religious landscape, as the study collected data about religious groups in every country.

The next round of interviews has already started, with results likely available by mid-February 2025. In the meantime, all data collected in the first edition of the survey are available in open access for researchers.

• First published in Religion News Service. Reproduced with permission.
• Fiona André is an author at Religion News Service.

More and more people aren't answering surveys, either by phone or online. Reaching a small minority population like Latter-day Saints is notoriously difficult.

So they resurrected an old-school methodology — sending 80,000 physical postcards to randomly selected households in the Mormon Corridor — and supplemented with targeted Facebook ads to a Utah audience.

Both methods led respondents to take an online survey that was then weighted to be representative of the LDS population.

After they removed late and invalid responses, they had a sample of 2,625 current and 1,183 former Latter-day Saints.

Our Zoom interview about their findings has been edited for length and clarity.

1. Former LDS Church members are more likely to be LGBTQ.

In the survey, only four percent of current members identified as LGBTQ, compared with 18 percent of former members.

"There's a million questions to be asked there about why there's a four times difference between current and former," said Coates.

"One theory is that if you're LGBT and you're in the church, it's not 100 percent compatible, and you're going to leave. And so obviously that means there's going to be a lot more former Latter-day Saints.

Undoubtedly there is a component to that. Or it's possible that people that leave the church and then begin to identify as LGBTQ for whatever reason.

We don't know, because the survey did not explore any of that level of detail. That's the next level."

2. Few have a traditional belief in God, without any doubts.

The 2023 Current and Former Latter-day Saint Survey repeated a long-standing question from the General Social Survey about belief in God.

Comparing the current and former members, the differences in belief are stark: Among current members, more than 7 in 10 say they "know God really exists and … have no doubts about it."

That's more than six times the rate of certainty about God among former members.

Cranney pointed out in an article in Times and Seasons that most former members do "still have some kind of belief in something higher," but they're less likely to know without a doubt that God exists.

"Their belief in God is characterized more by ambiguity than a firm belief one way or another," he wrote.

In this, they're similar to the nones in the general population of the U.S., while current members resemble the General Social Survey's "religionists," the most devout Americans.

3. Their moral priorities look very different.

One of the most groundbreaking aspects of the survey Coates and Cranney devised was that they utilized Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory (MFT),

Their aim was to try to understand whether current and former Mormons emphasised different aspects of morality.

MFT measures values such as fairness, loyalty, authority, care and purity. In Haidt's research, liberals tend to stress fairness and care but put less emphasis on obedience to authority or being loyal to a particular tribe.

Former Mormons, it turns out, have much in common with liberals in the general population, with high ratings for care and fairness.

Meanwhile, current members look more like conservatives, but with a particularly high emphasis on purity/sanctity — something former Mormons do not stress much at all.

"That was surprising, how defined that difference was," Coates said.

"Current Latter-day Saints are off the charts on purity and sanctity. And for former members what's interesting is that in in-group loyalty, they're significantly lower even than the liberals."

Cranney said that makes sense. "This is a relatively high-tension faith that, oftentimes to survive, has had to have fairly strict binding norms.

People who have decided that it's not for them are going to score lower because they have rejected those very intense binding norms."

4. They are more likely to have been divorced.

For survey respondents who were still members of the LDS church, the divorce rate for first marriages was 18 percent, while for former members it was 39 percent. The former members' rate is closer to the national average for divorces in the United States.

Coates said the rate of temple divorces is especially low, between 14 percent and 20 percent, while "marriages between members that are not sealed in the temple are closer to the national rate of about half of marriages ending in divorce."

5. They have smaller families.

Coates cautions that the data on this is still provisional because accounting for age will make a major difference in the findings.

But in terms of the raw numbers, he says current Latter-day Saints appear to have almost one child more per family (3.4 children) than those who've left the church (2.5 children).

6. Many say they left the church because of historical issues.

The top three reasons for leaving were:

1) history related to Joseph Smith;

2) Book of Mormon; and

3) race issues.

However, Coates says he is somewhat skeptical, comparing these questions to asking divorced couples why their marriages failed. He says it's difficult to know what potential conscious or unconscious biases are at play.

"We think this portion of the survey is only useful in answering the question ‘What do former members prefer to respond when asked on a survey why they left?'" he said.

7. The vast majority have no interest in returning to church activity.

More than four out of five former members say that returning is "very unlikely," with an additional 10 percent saying it's unlikely.

A majority has very negative feelings about the church. "Three out of 4 said they dislike or strongly dislike the church as an institution," Coates reported.

In brighter news, "they had a neutral to positive disposition toward the people."

Cranney performed a regression analysis to see if he could isolate predictive factors that might shed light on which former Mormons were most likely to return to church.

"The one thing that is associated with being more likely to say that you'll return to the church is if you are married to a member," he said.

That situation describes about a fifth of the former LDS sample: 20% were married to believing members, and 30% were married to fellow former members.

8. Most don't join another religion after leaving.

Seventy percent of the former members selected "none" when asked to describe their religion now.

However, Coates observed that the actual percentage could be even higher, because an additional 19 percent chose "other" and then hand-wrote responses that were sometimes compatible with "none."

"They're not joining another religion," Coates said.

"It's possible that means they're Christians without a congregation, but the question only asks ‘Hey, are you affiliated? Do you identify with a religion?'

And no, they don't. I think that was our intuition about former Latter-day Saints, so that finding didn't surprise us."

• First published in Religion News Service
• Jana Riess is an author of many books. She has a PhD in American religious history from Columbia University.

I received a surprisingly large number of requests to dive deeper into the topic of religion, to discuss the societal role of religion in more detail.

As your humble demographic servant, I couldn't possibly turn down such requests. Let's talk religion!

I showed you the chart below in my previous column that deserves to be featured again.

We can kind of ignore religious affiliation data for people under the age of 18 since parents tend to assign their own belief to their children as they fill out the census form for the whole household.

Click for larger view

• Once young people leave the parental home, a larger share identifies as non-believers.
• Younger people are more likely to be non-believers.
• Only 20 per cent of pre-boomers (born before 1945) and 32 per cent of baby boomers (born 1946-63) are non-believers while a whopping 51 per cent of millennials (born 1982-99) have no faith.
• Gen Z (born 2000-17) are the kids of Gen X (born 1964-81) and are more likely (46 per cent) than their parents (40 per cent) to be non-believers.

We can rearrange the above chart to display information by generation to make a few trends more easily visible.

As millennial parents filled out their census forms, many didn't assign their Gen Alpha (born after 2018) toddlers a religion - probably a result of more believer-atheist couples.

As a statistical oddity, babies are now the most ardent atheists in Australia.

Over the past four censuses, every age group in Australia became less religious.

The general age trend held steady, with older people still more likely to be believers than young people.

This might reflect an increased tendency of people to look inwards, to only ask the big questions in life, as they get older.

According to Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr, we tend to focus on outward markers of success in the first half of life, before looking inward in the second half. These halves are roughly related to age but have mostly to do with stages of development (more about stages of development later).

It remains to be seen if ardent atheists, like the millennials, experience some sort of spiritual awakening in old age. Stay tuned for my column on the topic in 2053.

Each of the major religions still very much has a few geographical strongholds across the country.

The Christian faith is strongest in the coastal town of Yarrabah (near Cairns). It is an Aboriginal community of about 2500 residents. In Lakemba in Sydney, 61 per cent of locals are Muslims. Hindus cluster in Pendle Hill (west of Parramatta) from where a 20-minute drives gets you to the Buddhist hotspot of Cabramatta.

The Jewish community dominates Melbourne's Caulfield.

In the heart of the Darling Range in Western Australia, hides a charming little town, surrounded by beautiful countryside criss-crossed with trails through native flora and fauna.

This is Chidlow, Australia's least religious community.

In the past five years alone we've seen big changes in the number of believers and non-believers.

In 2016 Australia had 14.1 million believers. In 2021 only 13.7 million believers were counted. That's a loss of three per cent.

During the same period the non-believers grew from 7 million to 9.9 million - an uptick of 41 per cent!

Not all faiths changed at the same rate.

The faiths common among Asian migrants (Sikhism, Hinduism, Islam) saw strong growth while the Christian denominations had the strongest declines.

Catholicism saw the smallest relative decline in followers of all the Christians, despite having the most scandals in Australia.

A resilient religion.

The strong position of Catholics might've been helped by the relatively strong increase in Latin American migrants.

Catholic schools also didn't decline - quite the opposite.

That might well be because they are seen as a cheaper alternative to private schools by increasingly cost sensitive parents.

So, what does the future hold for religion in Australia?

Spirited belief and rejection

If 79 per cent of Australians were believers in 2006 and only 58 per cent were believers in 2021, does that mean that religious affiliation will be forever on the way down?

Are we slowly approaching a stage of zero believers in Australia?

History has seen ups and downs in religious belief.

In Europe, religious revivals have sparked temporary peaks of religiosity throughout the last few centuries while the general trend moved people slowly away from religion.

When we talk about religion, we can't possibly put all believers on the same level.

Surely there is a difference in depth and moral development between the great poet of Islam, Rumi (1207-73), and the terrorist extremists running ISIS.

Surely comparing an American TV evangelist and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45) is a silly exercise.

If we take research from the field of psychological development into account, we see that there are somewhat predictable stages of religious belief that people tend to live through.

This line of thinking was probably kickstarted at scale by Jean Piaget (1896-1980).

More recent authors who come to mind are Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-87), James Fowler (1940-2015) who wrote Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning, and Jane Loevinger (1918-2008).

There are countless more developmental researchers, with Don Beck's (1937-2022) Spiral Dynamics being the most well-known example, who all suggest that as humans we go through predictable stages of development.

The argument is that religious development also follows predictable stages.

As a society we are currently very much in the modern, scientific stage of development, where research, facts, and figures dominate.

In a society where this scientific intellectual framework dominates it is easy to dismiss all religious belief as being naïve, as being childish.

Believers are stuck in the magical realm of thinking - Santa Claus and God are put on the same level. Obviously, Moses never split the Red Sea.

Clearly, Noah never had an ark full of animals to repopulate the earth.

Beyond the post-modern perspective

Developmental models suggest that as a society, we bit-by-bit inch upwards, reach higher collective stages of development.

According to this logic, we would eventually surpass our current modernist worldview to reach post-modern and eventually integrative stages of development.

Let's not worry about details for now but what that means is that eventually (many decades into the future), a majority of people move away from interpreting religious texts as literal truth to view them as wisdom traditions that contain millennia of collective human knowledge.

These types of believers say things like "Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it's not true".

That's paradoxical, and scientists (apart from physicists) aren't great with paradoxes.

While a potential re-integration of religion into society sounds nice, please don't get too excited.

Such an integrated view of religion, even if we all follow different faiths, could act as social glue again and might potentially diminish the current mental health pandemic.

Unfortunately, the path to a new stage of collective religious awareness tends to be accompanied by ugly, often violent, intra-religious infighting (this can be as bad as the Wars of the Reformation, which consumed Europe with war, truces and more war from 1522-1648).

The current purveyors of truth fight tooth and nail to keep their ranks and keep their literal interpretation of faith alive.

I'd therefore argue that praying for religion to act as social glue in Australia won't be a good bet in my lifetime (statistics give me another 42 years to live).

In the meantime, strengthening the middle class (this includes making housing more affordable) and investing in sports are better bets than religion to provide social stability in Australia.

• Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia.
• First published in The New Daily. Republished with permission of the author.

A new Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey found beliefs on climate change severity haven't changed much among religious groups over the past decade.

The June 2023 "One Home One Future" survey is the latest multifaith effort aiming to engage congregations in caring for the Earth.

The online survey probed the views of 5,192 adults in 50 states, finding that despite growing climate calamities American opinions have not moved dramatically.

Results by the number

Overall, 27 percent of Americans say climate change is a crisis (23 percent in 2014).

Religious groups' attitudes about the severity of climate change haven't changed much since 2014.

In fact, this year's survey results show fewer white evangelicals think the Earth is in crisis. In 2014, 13 percent believed this to be the case. Just eight percent think so today.

Overall, less than a third of religious groups surveyed said they thought climate change is a crisis.

American Jews were the most likely to say so at 32 percent along with 31 percent of Hispanic Catholics, 22 percent of white mainline Protestants, 20 percent of white Catholics, 19 percent of Black Protestants and 16 percent of Hispanic Protestants.

Concerning views

Finding that people's views about the climate crisis haven't changed surprised Melissa Deckman, CEO of PRRI. "It's just really concerning,"

This is despite the US suffering 23 separate weather and climate disasters costing over $1 billion each in damage this year.

In addition to the financial costs, Hurricane Idalia in Florida and the wildfires in Hawaiinare believed to have killed 97 people.

In addition, August 2023 was the planet's hottest month in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 174-year record.

Climate change - causes

The survey also asked religious Americans about what causes climate change.

Most agree change is caused by human activity such as burning fossil fuels.

However, 49 percent of white evangelicals believe it is caused by natural patterns in the environment.

Political influences

To a great extent politics may be shaping people's views, says Deckman.

She says non-believers in the climate crisis - Evangelicals and Latter-Day Saints - are stalwart Republicans.

The Republicans have resisted acknowledging climate change. (Donald Trump called climate change science a "hoax.")

"I'm not at all surprised ... because we know that the Republican Party's official position has often denied climate change and it's certainly not advocating for policies that mitigate climate change effects" Deckman says.

• Less than 28 percent of Republicans believe human activity causes climate change, while half think natural changes in the environment cause it
• 20 percent of Republicans don't see solid evidence for climate change
• 83 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents attribute it to human activity

Religiously unaffiliated views

The PRRI survey found the religiously unaffiliated sector increasingly view sthe Earth as being in crisis.

Among this group, that view went from 33 percent in 2014 to 43 percent in 2023.

At the same time, fewer people believe God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of society.

Fewer than half of white Evangelicals subscribe to this belief and even fewer other religious groups do.

The survey found that religious groups are now more likely to believe God wants all individuals to take care of the Earth.

Source

• Religion News Service

A media release accompanying the report stated that social cohesion is under threat in this country.

"[The] challenge of social cohesion is becoming increasingly critical, and more research and policy development is needed to help sustain it," the statement noted.

Society has changed rapidly, greater ethnic diversity in cities and elsewhere is a reality, and "the resolution of what it means to be a ‘Kiwi' is still evolving".

"Societies only function well when they exhibit a level of cohesiveness that allows them to work for the mutual benefit of all their diverse members, despite differing world views, identities, and values. Societal well-being therefore depends on maintaining social cohesion," the statement added.

A robust media and better democratic processes that encourage informed debate were among the ways suggested for maintaining or enhancing social cohesion.

"We need to understand social cohesion through a very Aotearoa lens, and recognise [that] our social cohesion needs will be different from any other country," the statement added, with particular reference to Te Tiriti O Waitangi.

There will likely be differences with other nations, but there will also be similarities. The report did not touch on faith or religious affiliation overmuch as a factor in social cohesion.

In fact, the report mentioned "faith" once, and "religion" six times, but almost always in the context of looking at the past.

However, while the 2018 census showed an increasing percentage of respondents saying that they had "no religion", it also showed that a significant proportion of the population still states they have a religious affiliation.

Christians made up 37 per cent of a population of 4.7million.

That is not an insignificant statistic, in its own right, and also in terms of consequences for social cohesion.

In 2014, the UK Catholic Weekly The Tablet noted a study by the Social Integration Commission, which showed that churches are the most successful places in Britain to meet a wide variety of people.

"It shows that attending a church gives the best chance of interacting with others across lines of age, income and ethnicity. The research found that while sporting events are the best places to bring people together across the age groups, churches were next best," The Tablet article stated.

Also from Britain, a 2020 paper by the Theos Think Tank pointed to research that showed that "people with a religious affiliation are more active citizens than those without".

Many of the participants in the Theos study had religious motives for civic and community engagement.

"Particularly common themes were the need to follow Christ's example, the call to be ‘salt and light' in the community, bringing the marginalised into the centre, building the ‘Kingdom of God', and love of neighbour," the paper noted.

"First, at their best and in contrast to much of cohesion policy which has been driven forward in crisis, churches are emblematic of an approach that views cohesion as a desirable outcome in its own right," the paper added.

"They (churches) are embedded in their local communities, and [are] often working concertedly under the radar to bolster the strength of our collective relationships.

"Therefore, policymakers should ensure that they are working with churches wherever possible and appropriate, as a practical step towards a less crisis-driven approach to cohesion."

It is to be hoped that, while the work of churches in the community in this country frequently flies under the radar too, those responsible for policy-making and research in this area will work with churches in this country too, for the good of all.

As the Theos paper noted, churches are generally good at listening to what communities need, tailoring responses to local circumstances, and prioritising what the community and congregation will support on a sustainable basis.

• Michael Otto is NZ Catholic's editor.
• First published in NZ Catholic. Republished with permission.
• CathNews

The sick, the poor, and the outcasts were high on his priority list. Thus, churches (being the extension of Jesus' ministry), should focus their efforts on those exact same people.

But the data says that is not happening. Just the opposite in fact.

Religion in 21st century America has become an enclave for people who have done everything "right."

They have college degrees and marriages and children and middle-class incomes.

For those who don't check all those boxes, religion is just not for them.

The conclusions are unmistakable: Religion has become a luxury good, and that's leaving most of society on the fringes yet again.

Let's start with that old chestnut that I roll out from time to time — the basic relationship between education and religious disaffiliation.

This is 15 years of the Cooperative Election Study. These samples visualized here represent over 570,000 total responses, and in many years, the individual sample size is north of 60,000.

It doesn't take a statistical wizard to figure out the general trend line here.

People with higher levels of education are less likely to identify as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular when it comes to religion.

Yes, if you include atheists and agnostics, the trend reverses itself.

But nonreligious people are not just atheists and agnostics.

In fact, most nonreligious people are nothing in particular when it comes to religion.

More educated people are more likely to claim a religious affiliation on surveys.

It's true in every single wave of the Cooperative Election Study. It's also the case in the Nationscape survey, which has 477,000 respondents. They even have 4,000 people with doctoral degrees in their sample.

The most likely to be non-religious? Those who didn't finish high school.

As education increases, so does religious affiliation.

The group with the highest level of religious affiliation is those with a master's degree. I think this is likely due to the fact that the majority of folks with master's degrees are in not purely academic pursuits. Instead, they earn graduate degrees in things like education and business.

Of those with doctorates, 24% are non-religious.

That's the same rate as those with a four-year college degree.

Again, it's hard to look at these numbers and make some big claims about how education chases people away from religion.

Obviously, affiliation is just one piece of the puzzle, though. Religious attendance is another key component to the religiosity story.

So, I did the same general analysis with the CES data, but this time just focused on those who attend religious services weekly. Again, all 15 waves.

Their trend is just as unmistakable: Those who are the most likely to attend services weekly are those with a graduate degree.

Those with a high school diploma or less are the least likely to attend.

And these aren't small differences, either.

The last few years have seen nearly a 10-point gap in attendance from the bottom to the top of the education scale.

Let's take this a step further and inject income into the mix as well.

So, I divided respondents into those with a high school diploma or less and those with a four-year college degree or more and then calculated the share who attend religious services weekly across the income spectrum.

The first to note is that college-educated people attend church at higher rates than those with a high school diploma or less.

That's consistently the case across almost all income brackets.

A few little squirrely things happen at the very top end of the income spectrum, but that's probably due to small sample size.

But notice the overall shape of the orange lines, especially in the last few years of the Cooperative Election Study.

They are curvilinear in shape — meaning low on the edges and high in the middle. That's certainly the case in 2016, 2020 and 2022.

That tells an interesting story about the interaction of income and religious attendance.

The group that is the most likely to attend services are not the poor nor the wealthy. Instead, it's people who smack in the middle of the income distribution.

This analysis points to the following conclusion: The people who are the most likely to attend services this weekend are those with college degrees making $60K-$100K. In other words, middle-class professionals.

Let's throw another factor into the mix now — marital status. The imagined ideal for many for a good American life is a college degree, a good job, and stable marriage.

Does religion have any place for those who are not married? Or are divorced or separated?

The Cooperative Election Study only asks about current marital status, so if someone has been divorced and remarried, that wouldn't really show up in this data.

But, good gracious, this is a crystal-clear result.

Married people are much more likely to be in a religious service than those who are divorced, separated, or never married.

And these are not small gaps, either.

Among 40-year-old married people in the sample, nearly 30% are attending services weekly.

Among those who are separated, divorced or never married — it's half that rate: just 15%.

That gap persists all the way through the life course, too.

Even among 60-year-olds, it's still there.

About 30% of married retired folks are in churches; it's just 20% of those who are not married. Marriage leads to much higher levels of religiosity — at any age.

One last little bit of analysis before I stop; just put a finer point on this.

I divided the sample into four groups based on married or not married and parents of children or not, then calculated the share attending weekly.

The clear outlier here is folks who are married with children.

Among those who fit both criteria and are under 30, 37% attend weekly.

That does begin to decline as the age category moves up. I am guessing that's because folks with children tend to be less religious later in life, but that's just a hunch.

Among those who are married without children, attendance is fairly high in their mid-20s.

But then it drops down to being no different than those who are not married, have no children, or are not married but are parents.

These results are hard to ignore and should sound some major alarms for any person of faith who is concerned about the large state of American society.

Increasingly religion has become the enclave for those who have lived a "proper" life: college degree, middle-class income, married with children.

If you check all those boxes, the likelihood of you regularly attending church is about double the rate of folks who don't.

This is also troublesome for American democracy, as well.

At its best, religion is a place where people from various economic, social, racial and political backgrounds can find common ground around a shared faith.

It's a place to build bridges with folks who are different than you.

Unfortunately, it looks like American religion is not at its best.

Instead, it's become a hospital for the healthy, an echo chamber for folks who did everything "right," which means that it's seeming less and less inviting to those who did life another way.

Do I think that houses of worship have done this on purpose? Generally speaking, no. But they also haven't actively refuted this narrative.

I was always told that the job of a preacher is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Maybe we need a lot more of the latter going forward.

• Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience.
• First published in ReligionUnplugged. Republished with permission.

I have spent three weeks at the South Pole Station with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which is looking to detect tiny particles called neutrinos which come from cosmic events in deep space and help us learn more about our universe!

The South Pole Station is like a larger International Space Station.

There are only about 150 people here in a single, two-story building, which means you can get to know pretty much everyone and form an awesome community.

The downside is that there is less infrastructure, such as organised religious gatherings.

Holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah are celebrated with fancy dinners from the galley staff, but there aren't religious services, unless you organize them yourself.

McMurdo Station, on the other hand, is more like a small town.

Located on the Ross Sea, McMurdo, or "Mactown", is the largest of the U.S. stations and hosts up to 1,000 people during the summer months.

McMurdo Station boasts more "real-world" amenities like a coffee house, recreation department, multiple bars, and even a chapel.

I got to spend about 10 days in McMurdo Station on my way to and from the South Pole and experience the religious offerings of the station.

On my first trip through McMurdo, I was first struck by the beauty of the continent, and the second was how every high point on station was designated with a cross.

Each cross was a memorial to those who had died on the continent.

The crosses were sobering reminders of the extreme conditions people have and still face here and how lucky I am to be here.

But they were also comforting reminders of faith as I adjusted to my new life for the next month, thousands of miles away from home and anything familiar.

Even from town, I can see the silhouette of crosses against the constantly lit sky and know that someone is looking out for me.

My absolute favourite place on Station is the Mary Shrine on the Hut Point Ridge Trail, affectionately nicknamed "Rollcage Mary" due to the roll cage that attempts to protect her from the harsh winds and weather that unexpectedly sweep across the peninsula she sits on.

It was a beautiful place to chat and pray with my heavenly friends.

One night, I felt overwhelmed and needed to escape the bustling McMurdo Station and my cramped isolation quarters.

I walked up to Mary and just sat in her shelter, cocooned in my parka, watching the skuas float on the windy air streams.

The very first place I went after arriving at the station was the Chapel of the Snows.

It sits prominently at the end of the road overlooking the Ross Sea, with the Royal Society Mountain Range peeking behind on a clear day.

You can't miss it.

Anyone going to or from the dorms, galley, or science lab pass by the unique white and blue building.

The current Chapel of the Snows was dedicated in 1989 after the previous building burnt down.

It is a non-denominational building that serves as a gathering and worship space for all residents of McMurdo Station, as well as the nearby New Zealand Scott Base.

My favourite part of the chapel is the stained-glass window, which features the continent's outline, a chalice, bread, and a penguin!

There are also two cute painted penguins saying goodbye as you exit.

There are chairs, cushions, and lots of books for use by all faith groups residing on station.

Each summer season, the religious communities of McMurdo Station are supported by chaplains provided by the U.S. Navy, the U.S. National Air Guard, or the Diocese of Christchurch, New Zealand.

Usually, the chaplains work out of the Chapel of the Snows, but we had a rare visit from Chaplain Donny Chamberlin when I was at the South Pole Station.

It was amazing to connect and talk faith over a meal, who was passionate about connecting with people.

Each week, residents of McMurdo Station will organize religious gatherings.

There's Shabbat on Friday nights, an interfaith worship service on Sunday mornings, followed by a Catholic service afterwards.

I got to spend one Sunday on station and I was thrilled to attend service.

There were about ten of us gathered, including two volunteers who led us in a lay service since there was not currently a priest on station.

We said the prayers, read the readings and even had a communion service with hosts consecrated by a visiting priest from earlier this season.

Mass has always been a tricky part of my Catholic faith.

It was one of the things I was forced to do as a kid growing up, and it's the main thing other Catholics will tell you you have to do to be a "good Catholic."

Mass often feels mundane, boring, and disconnected from my spirituality, and the parish community tends to drive my will to attend each Sunday.

However, this time, it was AMAZING to reconnect with something so familiar in a faraway place and unfamiliar in every way.

Ten strangers became an instant community in our shared bond of faith.

Staring past the stained-glass window to the Royal Society Mountains behind the Ross Sea, I felt full of peace; I felt at home on this distant continent.

It was definitely one of the most meaningful services of my life and I was grateful for the experience.

• Elaine Krebs is a Roman Catholic Christian currently living in Los Angeles. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a Master's Degree in Marine and Environmental Biology, and now works as both a science teacher at a local museum, as well as Confirmation Coordinator at her local parish. Elaine was first introduced to interfaith work as a member of USC's Interfaith Council, and continues to be involved, especially surrounding the intersection of science and religion. She also enjoys studying and experiencing diversity within religions, especially the different rites within Catholicism.
• First published in Interfaith America.

Being able to celebrate Mass isn't the only way people can undertake leadership roles in the Church, she says.

That global mission has led her to Australia to hear what Australian Catholics have to say about the big decisions the Church has to make about its future and seeking a consensus.

"I am here, ready to listen, to learn more about the reality of the Church here," she says.

"What is very important for me is the Catholic Church has to speak the language of the people."

Speaking in Sydney on Friday, Becquart acknowledged women have hit a stained glass ceiling in the Church. Women's ordination into the priesthood is not up for negotiation, she says.

"At this moment, at the Vatican and from the point of view of the official teaching of the church, it is closed."

But the former marketing and advertising consultant also notes she can still follow a fulfilling leadership path.

The Pope's right-hand woman and the undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops believes there are other ways for females to play a bigger role in the Church.

"There is a strong call today for more women in leadership, more women's participation, especially in the decision-making process," Becquart told her Sydney audience.

She also said there is a need to rebuild trust following the child sex abuse crisis, but said it will be a long process.

"We are more and more aware in many countries that the Church has failed because there have been abuses and cover ups," she said.

Becquart accepts the Catholic Church faces a public relations challenge in rebuilding trust. In this respect, she says her background in communications and project management has been useful in her pastoral work and team leadership.

When the Pope asked her to become an undersecretary in 2021, Becquart says saying "yes" was an easy decision. Her appointment is now seen as a watershed moment.

As one of two undersecretaries, she is the first woman to have the right to vote in the synod, making her the most powerful woman in the Vatican.

In December, Becquart was named on the BBC list of the 100 most inspiring and influential women in the world.

Source

• Sydney Morning Herald

If the existence of God was even minutely possible, he claimed, then the potential gain was so huge - an "eternity of life and happiness" - that taking the leap of faith was the mathematically rational choice.

Pascal's wager implicitly assumes that religion has no benefits in the real world but some sacrifices.

But what if there were evidence that faith could also contribute to better well-being?

Scientific studies suggest this is the case. Joining a church, synagogue or temple even appears to extend your lifespan.

These findings might appear to be proof of divine intervention, but few of the scientists examining these effects are making claims for miracles.

Instead, they are interested in understanding the ways that it improves people's capacity to deal with life's stresses.

"Religious and spiritual traditions give you access to different methods of coping that have distinctive benefits," says Doug Oman, a professor in public health at the University of California Berkeley.

"From the psychological perspective, religions offer a package of different ingredients," agrees Prof Patty Van Cappellen at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Studying the life-extending benefits of religious practice can therefore offer useful strategies for anyone - of any faith or none - to live a healthier and happier life.

You may find yourself shaking your head in scepticism, but the evidence base linking faith to better health has been decades in the making and now encompasses thousands of studies.

Much of this research took the form of longitudinal research, which involves tracking the health of a population over years and even decades.

They each found that measures of someone's religious commitment, such as how often they attended church, were consistently associated with a range of outcomes, including a lower risk of depression, anxiety and suicide and reduced cardiovascular disease and death from cancer.

Unlike some other areas of scientific research suffering from the infamous "replication crisis", these studies have examined populations across the globe with remarkably consistent results.

And the effect sizes are large.

Dr Laura Wallace at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, for instance, recently examined obituaries of more than 1,000 people across the US and looked at whether the article recorded the person's religious affiliation - a sign that their faith had been a major element of their identity.

Publishing her results in 2018, she reported that those people marked out for their faith lived for 5.6 years more, on average, than those whose religion had not been recorded; in a second sample, looking specifically at a set of obituaries from Des Moines in Iowa, the difference was even greater - about 10 years in total.

"It's on par with the avoidance of major health risks - like smoking," says Wallace.

To give another comparison: reducing hypertension adds about five years to someone's life expectancy. Continue reading

The new monarch, who immediately acceded to the throne following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8 and will be crowned May 6 in Westminster Abbey, has long had close ties with the Catholic Church.

As heir to the throne, he spent many years supporting Catholic charities, as well as often speaking out on behalf of persecuted Christians, including working with the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.

He welcomed Pope St John Paul II on his historic visit to Canterbury in 1982 and has made many trips to the Vatican, including meeting in a private audience with John Paul II in 1985 and attending his funeral in 2005, meeting Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, and visiting Pope Francis in 2017.

In 2019, he represented the queen at the Rome canonization of St John Henry Newman and penned a commentary for L'Osservatore Romano in which he praised how, through his Catholic faith, Cardinal Newman had contributed so much to the Catholic Church and his homeland.

"I know of nothing which would lead me to think that he isn't strongly supportive of the faith and devotional life of his Catholic subjects and of Pope Francis," said Anglican Archbishop Ian Ernest, director of the Anglican Centre in Rome.

How does King Charles understand the Catholic faith?

Does Charles recognize the differences between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, and how might he influence relations in the future?

"He will certainly be aware that the Roman Catholic Church teaches transubstantiation and that the Church of England does not," said Gavin Ashenden, a former Anglican bishop and chaplain to the queen who was received into the Catholic Church in 2019.

"He is probably aware that the Church of England only recognizes two sacraments against historic Christianity's seven."

Adrian Hilton, the editor of the popular Anglican website ArchbishopCranmer.com, also believes Charles is aware of the denominational differences and recalled how, during his visit to John Paul II in 1985 with his then-wife Princess Diana, he had wished to attend Mass with the Pope, upon which the queen intervened.

But to Hilton, this suggests "that he sees the Church as one and rather laments divisions within."

"He is clearly aware of sacramental differences and interecclesiastical tensions but doesn't view them as primary issues of salvation," he said.

"That he gifted the Pope [in 1985] a copy of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People also suggests that he views the Church of England as an expression of Catholic continuity."

Does he relate to Jesus as Lord?

But asked if Charles sees the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion as equals in the service of the same Lord, Ashenden said he sees "no evidence in Charles' public language that he relates to Jesus as Lord" and noted that he "has chafed at the exclusiveness of Christianity and only recently committed himself to Anglicanism."

Ashenden could not testify to Charles having any special interest in the Catholic Church per se; rather, he believes Charles has gravitated toward "spirituality, both Islamic and that of Greek Orthodoxy," but added that this appears to be no more "than observer status" and that Charles' affection for Orthodoxy is more diplomatic than personal.

Asked if Charles was perhaps closer to the Greek Orthodox Church, similar to his father, the late Duke of Edinburgh, who was a member of the Greek royal family, Hilton said: "This is difficult, not least because he has manifestly changed his mind on some theological issues over the years — as I guess we all do — so his thinking on Eastern Orthodox Christianity 20 years ago may not be what it is today."

Still, Hilton said he senses Charles has inherited a "deep respect for Orthodoxy and also the cosmology of Universalism," and Mount Athos, which Charles has visited several times, "represents to him a cultural history, spiritual unity and interfaith harmony which supersedes the divisions within and between Jerusalem, Rome and Canterbury."

The new king is reportedly a more high-church Anglican than his mother and predecessor, Queen Elizabeth II. Might that perhaps make him closer to the Catholic Church? Continue reading

Since the official opening of the Archibald Baxter Peace Garden on October 29, 2021, the site has quickly established itself as an important national and local landmark.

The central feature in the garden is a powerful statue titled "We Shall Bend but Not Be Broken," created by Arrowtown sculptor Shane Woolridge.

The statue commemorates the mistreatment of Baxter for his refusal to go against his convictions and take up arms in World War 1.

An information plaque explains the context and the form of field punishment (known as Field Punishment No 1), which Baxter experienced in Flanders in 1918.

Baxter describes the experience in his book We Will Not Cease (1939):

"My hands were taken from round the pole, tied together and pulled well up it, straining and cramping the muscles and forcing them into an unnatural position ... I was strained so tightly against the post that I was unable to move body or limbs a fraction of an inch."

For Woolridge to craft such an evocative representation of field punishment that is appropriate to display in a public place is a remarkable achievement.

The design invites the onlooker to reflect on what it would be like for someone to be stretched and bent in this way for hours.

Baxter's son, the poet James K. Baxter, describes field punishment as a "torture post" and it was known colloquially as "crucifixion". However, the visual image of the memorial — and the inscription which accompanies it — are expressions of human dignity, not just pain and suffering.

Baxter is not depicted directly and but his experience is suggested in two different ways.

First, the upright pole is constructed from 70 stacked stone discs. These are suggestive of the compressed vertebra disks of a person constrained on the field punishment pole for hours.

The message is understated but clear for those who wish to reflect on it.

Second, a bronze sphere hanging from the top of the structure recalls the well-known images of Baxter during field punishment, especially the painting Field Punishment no 1 by Bob Kerr, depicting both field punishment and Baxter himself in this indirect and understated way manages to convey the suffering he experienced without being too overwhelming for a public memorial in a prominent location.

At the opening ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson spoke on the tragic irony that because Baxter was determined to stand up for his principles, he was forced to bend in pain for many hours.

Archibald Baxter

Baxter's son, the poet James K. Baxter, describes field punishment as a "torture post" and it was known colloquially as "crucifixion". However, the visual image of the memorial — and the inscription which accompanies it — are expressions of human dignity, not just pain and suffering.

Baxter is not depicted directly and but his experience is suggested in two different ways.

First, the upright pole is constructed from 70 stacked stone discs. These are suggestive of the compressed vertebra disks of a person constrained on the field punishment pole for hours.

The message is understated but clear for those who wish to reflect on it.

Second, a bronze sphere hanging from the top of the structure recalls the well-known images of Baxter during field punishment, especially the painting Field Punishment no 1 by Bob Kerr, depicting both field punishment and Baxter himself in this indirect and understated way manages to convey the suffering he experienced without being too overwhelming for a public memorial in a prominent location.

At the opening ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson spoke on the tragic irony that because Baxter was determined to stand up for his principles, he was forced to bend in pain for many hours.

Robertson recognised this as an inspiration for all who call New Zealand their home.

Baxter and the other conscientious objectors exemplify what Robertson described as "standing upright as a New Zealander".

Emeritus Prof Kevin Clements has noted the appropriateness of the memorial's elevated position just above George St. One can look across the harbour to the Fallen Soldier's memorial (1923) at the crest of the peninsula horizon.

The two memorials, nearly 100 years apart in age, both speak to the courage and the cost paid by those they remember in different ways.

Clements is chairman of the Archibald Baxter Trust, and it is the trust which had the vision for this public gift. It undertook the fundraising, commissioned the work and liaised with the Dunedin City Council to make it possible.

I first encountered Baxter's story when I was invited to offer the Archibald Baxter Memorial Trust lecture in 2015.

This annual lecture is held each year on or close to International Peace Day, September 21.

After the lecture, my Otago colleague Associate Prof John Stenhouse encouraged and guided my research into Baxter's religious views.

It was a fascinating journey.

In his later years, Baxter became Catholic, but he is usually described as an atheist because for much of his life he was not a member of a church and did not identify as religious.

It is clear that he was not religious in a conventional way, but there is also evidence that, in some ways, he always had a strong personal faith.

When he was categorised as an agnostic in Wellington jail, he declared this was wrong.

His wife, Millicent, said that he would insist that he was not a member of a church but said, "I am a believer".

During the lowest point of suffering during field punishment, Baxter appears to have derived personal support from religion, but he said he did not act for religious reasons.

Because Baxter was so reticent about his beliefs, it is hard to know for sure what he made of religion.

In the biography of Millicent Baxter, Out of the Shadows, Penny Griffiths details a revealing story.

Archie and Millicent converted to Catholicism in 1965, and Archibald took the baptismal name Francis, after Francis of Assisi.

However, his niece insists that her father (Archie's brother Donald) never knew about his conversion until his funeral in 1970.

Religion was seen as a very private matter.

While the national memorial is not about Baxter's religious faith— or his presumed lack of religious faith — the sense of restraint it shows with regard to field punishment is very fitting for how Baxter himself viewed public expressions of faith.

Under the surface, there is much more than is first apparent.

• David Tombs is the Howard Paterson Professor of theology and public issues at the University of Otago.
• First published in the ODT. Republished with permission.
• David Tombs, ‘Under the Surface: Archibald Baxter's Religious Faith' in Geoff Troughton (ed.),Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacebuilding in New Zealand, 1814-1945. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017, pp. 122-43. Available at http://hdl.handle.net/10523/12755

These people are setting out on an open-ended quest, on their own or with trusted friends, to find meaning.

More than a third have changed their religion of record in search of what they could not find in their faith of origin.

Others are finding their way to humanist communities where they study, reflect and find fellowship in modes not dissimilar to those of churches, synagogues, mosques and temples.

The failure in organised religion is not a failure of faith, however, but of institutions.

It results from a growing mismatch between the needs of modern people and the religious organizations intended to serve them.

Now, even as those institutions falter, new centres of spirituality and community are attracting those who have fallen away from their houses of worship.

These movements are based not on established doctrines, clergy hierarchies or grandiose buildings but on new formulations of belief, identity, belonging and leadership.

They are often organized by marginalized people who have been left out of old structures of faith and who dare to ask big questions and demand more from their spiritual communities.

Having long been underserved, they choose not to hide in the shadows but instead create brilliant new forms of religious community.

A century ago, clergy like us — two rabbis serving Reform Jewish communities in the heart of a major urban centre — were in many ways indispensable.

The leaders of the American Jewish community led an effort to build synagogues, community centres and day schools.

We convened major organizations, centralizing information and power to help waves of mostly Eastern European immigrants acculturate to life.

Today, as we document in our forthcoming book, "Awakenings: American Jewish Transformations in Identity, Leadership, and Belonging," the roles we inhabit belong to that bygone era.

Jews no longer need such spaces to mediate between the American and Jewish parts of their identities.

Rather than finding new purposes to unite American Jews, organizations like ours have become purposes unto themselves, draining resources and enthusiasm from individuals who remain remarkably proud of their identities.

Our communities may buck the trends of decline because of our remarkable lay leaders, because of an enduring sense of purpose and because of the very spiritual and social infrastructure our forebears built.

But our synagogues will not emerge from this awakening unchanged.

The decline of these legacy institutions doesn't portend a death spiral of assimilation for American Judaism, so much as an overdue reckoning with our community's changing needs.

No longer a marginalized community of immigrants, we have not only acculturated ourselves but are slowly coming to embrace a surprising number of converts, as well as people inspired by Jewish ideas and rituals who have no intention to become permanent members of the community.

After grieving the pain of change, we will come to see the bounty of a Jewish awakening that reshapes our people's largest diaspora community.

As we shared our book's hypothesis with colleagues from other traditions, we came to realize that the awakening is not confined to the Jewish community.

White evangelical Christian communities are (in the words of one pastor) "in free fall," while many mainline Protestant churches are emptying.

Catholics, whose growth can be attributed in many areas to immigration, are hoping to sustain homegrown flocks by seeking new leadership roles for women.

Black churches continue to thrive but search for avenues to share their wisdom and inspiration with people of other faiths and skin colours.

Many American Muslims feel deeply connected to faith, meanwhile, but are "unmosqued" for lack of access to communities that empower women as equals or embrace LGBTQ people.

Hindus search for American expressions of a faith that grew out of South Asia.

Seekers who dabble in multiple traditions befuddle many clergy but are coalescing in increasingly holistic communities of practice.

The future resides with lay leaders and houses of worship that support innovation, focus on empowerment rather than power, and seed (or become) their own successor organizations.

It resides with people absent from our biggest pulpits because of gender, country of origin, mother tongue or skin colour. The future resides in clarity of purpose that can unite people and bring them together in hope, not in fear of damnation, judgment or social ostracism. It resides in organizations that bring people together for a reason but keeps them thereby fostering a sense of communal belonging.

As we have witnessed before in history, out of the remnants of religion a bright awakening rises.

• Joshua Stanton is rabbi of East End Temple in Manhattan and a senior fellow at CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
• Benjamin Spratt is senior rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan.
• First published by RNS. Republished with permission.