 So good morning, we're going to talk for a few minutes this morning about money and finding meaning in life My name is My name is Amy Butler. I'm an American Baptist minister I most recently was the senior minister at the Riverside Church in the city of New York Which is the tallest church in America, which was built by John Rockefeller And there is so much money steeped into the stones of that traditional institution and the people who attend there I started my career 20 years ago running a homeless shelter in the city of New Orleans and What I have noted over these 20 years is this pull to find meaning and purpose in our lives is really Separate from how much money we have we all need it. It's a human it's a human drive and The founding pastor of the Riverside Church was Harry Emerson Fosdick in 1930 and he wrote this We cannot live without faith because the prime requisite in life's adventure is courage and the sustenance of courage is faith So it occurs to me having been here this week and talking to so many of you who are doing Courageous and amazing things that there has to be some kind of well of Faith or whatever word you want to use for it That we pull on to sustain us in in the difficulty of this work So I'm delighted to have two wonderful colleagues with me today Craig and Angie And I'm going to invite them to introduce themselves to you and tell you a little bit about their fascinating work Greg would you like to go first? Hello, good morning everyone So I have spent this year conducting slow and Long conversations with people in the social entrepreneurial space. I'd like to share two stories that I've encountered One I did not encounter in an interview and one I did So the first story is Jordan Casalos story. He founded vision springs, which is the pretty large Social entrepreneurship that affiliates with Warby Parker and helps to distribute glasses reading glasses in the developing world through micro entrepreneurship But Jordan tells this story about why he became a social entrepreneur. He was 23 he was in Alaska with some buddies and They ran into really bad weather and they were in their tents for a couple of days and he just got sick of it finally and Said guys, I'm going out for a hike and if I don't come back in Such in such a time, please come and get me. There are grizzlies and pretty bad weather So he was up in the mountains and the rain was coming sort of horizontal and He had this overwhelming sense that the universe was speaking to him and he didn't like the message The message was you don't matter And he said I knew in my heart that I did matter and Somehow I had to prove that so he went on a on a kind of service trip into Mexico And he in he's an optometrist and he encountered a Boy who was blind and he realized after a few minutes that the boy wasn't blind, but actually Was very far-sighted if I've got this right. It might have been near-sighted. I always get those two mixed up and He put reading glasses on the eyes of the boy and for the first time in the child's life you could see and Jordan said he looked up at the he looked up at the heavens and said see I do matter And he started vision springs That's my first story. My second story is one I encountered in an interview and it changed the course of my research this kind of story Charlie Branda Lived on Sedgwick Avenue in Chicago for a long time. She was a banker. She's a white woman and She one day a young black man got shot outside of her house She I think she had been in the in on this street for a decade or so and She said I didn't even know to whom to take a casserole and so she decided to quit her job as a banker and To start an art studio, which is still running today called art on Sedgwick and it's a studio for that specifically seeks to get Black people and white people and people of any color to come together and make stuff This often is sort of geared towards children, but when I visited there were it was a dance night and there were all kinds of people adults there and I have been musing over this year about the difference between those two stories. They're both deeply spiritual stories They're both stories that that have a spiritual dimension to them. Jordan Castle will talk about angels that will guide you and Charlie Is a Christian who has for the moment and for the time left her church And so over the course of this year, I've been asking like what's the difference in The spirit of those two stories or the the role of the spiritual in in those two stories I think there is an important difference But my research has been in an attempt to sort of frame that the difference in spirituality there I think the first story is maybe a bit more common the sort of story of epiphany and awakening and born-againness I think the second story may be a richer and more collective and more complex story a Little harder to pay attention to but just as important. So that's a start Thanks Angie Thank You Craig and Amy So as a little bit of background on my story and how I came to be here since we are Engaging in the question of meaning. I grew up in a home that was religiously unaffiliated But with one parent from a Christian background and one from a Jewish background And I was raised to believe that becoming closer to To the divine or and more useful to other people that this was the orienting point for life But I was not raised in the context of a religious community or container And so that spirituality of living love as it was engendered in me was something that was mine to pursue and To find others who were engaged in that pursuit as well And so that guided me through into my 20s when I was living as a playwright in Brooklyn and Trying to find where other people who are orienting their lives around living love were doing that and I had never been part of a religious Community in the traditional sense. And so it didn't even occur to me to look there so I went looking in other places like arts communities and maker spaces and Fitness communities and justice movements and Started to notice that there were a lot of common threads that seemed to be running through those spaces even though nominally they were doing very different things and so that Question and the discovery that I was what I came to learn Was an unaffiliated millennial this was language that I didn't know about myself But that was I soon learned a label that I carried I remember learning about the phrase spiritual but not religious on match.com in 2009 Because everyone I got matched with seemed to have that and I was like maybe I should go where those people are so I kind of I Grew into a set of identities and then started to discover that these identities were rampant in the United States and that I'm a millennial elder. I'm 34 But that amongst my generation and then increasingly amongst Gen Z and those younger than me that the The pace at which people were disaffiliating from religion or just never had inherited one at all Was rapidly growing and so I became so fascinated by these trends that I ended up going to divinity school to pursue them And this is as someone who I didn't know what divinity school was. I had never read the Bible I didn't know what liturgy was these this whole language and this Context was unfamiliar to me But I knew that there seemed to be threads about meaning and belonging and purpose that were worth pursuing and so I then Had the great good fortune to meet a fellow student named Casper Turkyle and the two of us ended up interviewing community leaders all over the country whether it was CrossFit and SoulCycle and other fitness communities whether it was Artisans asylum the makerspace down the street from us and we would go participate as well You know and try to get an understanding of what was happening there and through that work We ended up writing a report called how we gather in 2015 that drew together some of the themes that felt like DNA of the communities we got to know themes like personal transformation and purpose finding and social change and Accountability was a huge one which fascinates me still that people longed to be in a space where they were called to account and Seen for not only the person that they were but the person that they aspired to be So it was things like that with this river of community runner running under it And I've become protective of this word community As the experience of being deeply known and deeply loved right that you're actually in deep enough Relationship with people that you not only know about the highs and lows of their life But you're in a place to show up for them right it connects to the story you told Craig So Angie what would you say about my theory that this is a fundamental human need? To to find meaning in a deeper way did you find that in your work? I would I would confirm your hypothesis Yes, and the word connection I use a lot as well but that the that meaning and connection are as There is fundamental to humans as the need for water and air and that we die without it That's that's been my sense Wow Craig you're a professor and a researcher and you have in your work identified some Practices of social entrepreneurs spiritual practices Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to that? Curiosity and what you've found So I had a student in a in a rhetoric class about ten years ago. I guess this was 2007 Raise her hand. It was a tiny class. I think four students and so she probably didn't have to raise her hand She just spoke up and said have you heard a product read and I hadn't but Bono and Bobby Shriver's campaign sort of bringing together commerce and do good thing Baffling to me and so I spent like three or four years just studying the rhetoric of red and I came to see that it wasn't the most admirable expression of this intersection of trying to find money in meaning or meaning in money But that it was expressive of a larger phenomenon and sometimes a subtler phenomenon So I started to study social entrepreneurship and that's when I noticed that wow a lot of and I was not You know honest I wasn't looking for it, but a lot of people wanted to talk about spirituality that that I I ran into so I was like okay, I guess I will too and So that's how I came to sort of be interested in spiritual practices the practices that I would ask people about I Sometimes people were reticent to get into a conversation understandably Said deeply personal topic So I would show them this kind of clunky PowerPoint slide just sort of flip my laptop around say hey look at this What do you think of these things? Do you do any of these things and? Often the most reticent people would say oh, yeah, well I do that Yeah, I guess they do that too. I do that too and So I would ask them about mindfulness generosity critique celebration and wisdom-seeking and That's sort of how I would prime the pump. It was an unscientific list It was just sort of my guesses as to what people were doing, but often enough that the guesses came through and what? What is the general response when you identify those practices as spiritual practices? So most people it at least in the socially entrepreneurial sector that I've talked to I guess I've talked to it now something like 40 people on a kind of formal academic interview basis, you know many other people in less formal ways, but Most people were willing to say yeah those those There is a spiritual dimension of my work and those practices helped me pay attention to that some people just a few were pretty unwilling to use that term spiritual and There was just a kind of reticence in them But I think you and I were talking about this the other day Amy Even so at the end of the conversations almost everybody I I'm an academic, so let me be really careful many people would say this felt really good to talk about Felt really good Even those people who weren't willing to use that term spiritual were somehow sort of enthused and I don't know encouraged by just the chance to talk about this dimension of their work We mentioned this yesterday, but of course being a traditional ordained minister pastor of a church I'm interested always in the role that community plays in these practices and Angie, I know that's been the focus of a lot of your work. Can you talk about? How important community is to finding meaning and purpose? Yeah, one of the amazing Communities, I've gotten to know the last couple years is a group called nuns and nuns and I'll tell I'll respond to your question through a story from there. So, you know the those Sociologically those who are religiously unaffiliated are often referred to as nuns and no any s and then Catholic sisters at least who are cloistered are called nuns and you and s right and so they're emerged over time this Conversation between Really neither of the names are accurate, but it's between sort of spiritually diverse Millennials and then Catholic sisters Who discovered that they had a common interest really in social change? And that these sisters had been kind of at the edge of their institution for a long time and often these Millennials many of Them activists also felt at the edge in some way of their context and so they started coming together for conversation and at one point one of the Millennials just kind of Just had a moment and was like, you know, all I want to do is like Grow who I am as a person in the context of community to serve the world and the sister looks at him and says My brother that is what we call religious life But it was such a sweet moment of connection and kinship and I think you know as I've gotten to know So I've gotten to know these leaders, right? So say it's a soul cycle instructor who is being asked suddenly to perform weddings Or who's getting text messages on a Saturday if someone asking should I put my kid on ADD medication? Right there because people are so at a loss for community We have this crisis of isolation in this country. They are Bereft and so they go looking anywhere. They can find it. So suddenly you have people where the only Community the only experience of close to deep community They have is that their soul cycle and so then they're treating the leader of that space as a pastor And so as we started getting to know these leaders whether it was from the worlds of the arts or fitness or grief and loss or Justice they would they would attest to the fact that they often created They they either founded or stepped into leadership in this community to fill a need they themselves felt which was often for connection and That then they ended up being set apart because they were serving the life needs of people who were bringing their whole lives to the Community that they served and so they started asking how do I deepen my own well so I can go deep with the people in My care so suddenly this divinity school education I was getting became relevant to a whole group of people that a place like Harvard Divinity School isn't even considering as part of its potential population And yet these folks are stepping into these roles And I think it speaks to this question of how deeply we crave community And when we find ourselves in a space of shallow community I think it's part of the portrait of what's happening in this country right now is that we long for the depth But sometimes that gets distorted into basically fear-based community Which is to say rather than uniting around being part of something bigger than ourselves We will unite around a common enemy, which is what a lot of Christian expression in the traditional sense in our country in this moment is you know in my field Inside the institutional church There's a lot of panic right now because every every institution we know is in complete decline as It should be because we are not we are not meeting the needs of this population of you know what what the church should be offering So I want to ask you another question about that But before we move on to that what are the qualities of these communities that you've identified? Yeah, so I think at at best, you know When they're really serving the spiritual well-being of the people in the care of these communities You know over the years we've identified some smaller or some more specific themes But I think it really falls into three big categories and we talk about it as meeting the needs of the soul And the first being the need for belonging or the experience of being deeply known and deeply loved and not only receiving But giving right that you are one who is in you are offering that experience of Witness accompaniment and love to others and you are also receiving it the next being Becoming or growing into the people were called to be so that discovery of our gifts and then the opportunity to give them and to Receive the gifts of others and then beyond which we just talk about as the experience of being part of something more Or sometimes we'll talk about it as the experience of feeling fully big and fully small Right which gets to that story. I think you mentioned with Jordan So I think when those Experiences are operative in a community that is when you start to feel that deep sense of meaning and connection now Those are big abstract concepts, but on the ground. I think You know Paul Bourne wrote a book called deepening community and he talks about the chicken soup test Of whether you could bring chicken soup to a neighbor The reality is that you have to know quite a bit in order to do that not only know a lot But then you have to make the choice to do it But is do you have to know you have to know your neighbor you have to know them well enough to know if they're sick? You have to know if they're vegetarian You have to know if they're home and then on top of that You have to be invested enough in their life that you would actually take that leap of bringing them chicken soup So I think you know it while it resides in these big Concepts it plays out on the ground What happens to us when we don't have a community like that I Mean this is One of the primary things that I attribute to the deaths of the despair in this country right now I mean I think that our rampant anxiety and depression and Suicide and the fact that it's going up and up and up among Gen Z There was a devastating article by Varun Sony the chaplain at USC Recently about the crisis of loneliness on college campuses and he said when he started 11 years ago as chaplain People would come in asking things like you know these classic questions of how then shall I live? You know, it's like how do you find meaning and purpose and he said it's now taken a devastating turn where students are asking Why should I live and he said they never used to come in asking a question? He now gets every week, which is how do I make friends? You know this just basic Experience with connection and kinship is rapidly declining So I think that's that's some of the things that happen in a minute we're gonna open the mic and Love to have comments or questions for anybody on the panel, but My bias of course is the institutional church and I think when the institution shows up in its best way to provide this We're providing narrative and community and ritual, right What is there a place for religious institutions as we have understood them in this moment and with this population Will I have a job in the future? This is a freighted question Seems likely Amy seems likely So one of the Sort of thematics that I've noticed through talking to social entrepreneurs is that Their companies their organizations often function in a church-like way and so they Not infrequently they have left at least temporarily organized religion They've left their community in which they grew up in or the community in which they were worshiping for their adulthood and They've started these Organizations and not infrequently I heard people saying that they were finding a kind of spiritual consolation and and Accompaniment I really like that term Angie In within their organizations But I also heard and this might be heartening for you Amy and for me. Oh, I guess for all three of us up here We're we're sort of I Remember Angie you once said like religion do your job. I think that Not infrequently. I also heard social entrepreneurs wishing to affiliate with Communities of faith in their area and just not sure how to do so Sometimes churches were behaving in rather territorial fashion sort of a Kind of requirements for affiliation that were just too difficult for the social entrepreneurs And so it was just easier to Disaffiliate So that I think that there's an impulse to affiliate but not always a clarity on how to do that I was kind of asking that tongue-in-cheek because I was telling you earlier I meant the founder of soul cycle this summer and I said to her I hate you. You're my competition And we ended up hanging out and having a really great time She's a really wonderful person but what we found at Riverside was especially after the election the presidential election our sanctuary was filled with under 40 like filled people looking for meaning looking for purpose and 70 to 75 percent of folks joining our community in the last three years are under the age of 40 So are you seeing trends like that? Particularly to this moment in which we find ourselves in this country in particular, right? Yeah, I mean talk about this moment I I just spent two days at the Institute for the future Forecasting summit talking about what's coming, but you don't even have to go to the future if you just I mean whether it's the social and political Context in the US whether it's the rise of artificial intelligence whether it's questions about ethics and tech You know what the the crises of our time We more acutely than ever need the ancient wisdom that is our inheritance and these questions of what it means to be human and why we matter and Where we're going those could not be more profound and they're getting more and more acute as these as these things happen And so it's really a question. I think of how do you? We talk sometimes about Unbundling and remixing as something that people are already doing in their lives that they may not be as traditionally Affiliated although many people still are But even if they are people you can't help in many cases, but be exposed to Information and perspectives coming from different streams and in beginning to Bring those together right so people are cobbling together a spiritual life where they might be you know It might be a combination of okay I grew up Christian but it was really only on holidays But then I've been going to Shabbat Luxe with my friends and I love the Beyonce mass and I do meditation with this one You know like there's a cobbling that happens and so people are unbundling from the The the sense of having a cohesive story and identity and community and so then it becomes a question of if we are many of us sort of spiritually homeless or Spiritually independent in some way, how do you then come together in a way that allows for depth knowing how important community is to meaning? So I think that's part of the but that the role of our Our traditions in that process is vital Yes So we want to open up the mic to anybody who would like to if you would mind going back to the mic and speaking loudly So everyone can you hi, I'm Reverend Dr. Diane Johnson And I'm so delighted about this panel although I'm bummed that it was at 9 o'clock on Friday I feel like she'd been on the main stage on the first day to like kick off the whole thing but So I have a comment and then I have a question one of the things I think is really fascinating is the conflation of Purpose and spirituality and faith right so I think it's really because when we talk about spirituality That right we know that that's distinct from faith institutional religion and and purpose and in my work both and working with denominations as well as social entrepreneurs and now actually there's a little plug Or conscious capitalism, which is really interesting which has their four Values as purpose Leadership I Can't remember what it can't remember the other two right now, but so I'm fascinated by right the the intrinsic Desire to belong and yet the space is about so where does that happen? So as an ordained minister, it's kind of weird that like somebody from SoulCycle was being asked to marry people okay, but But but it speaks to again that that longing right and where do we find connection? So I'm curious for the three of you What do you think what individual? Practices or inquiry help people understand the distinction between spirituality and purpose You understand my question Like what or even in your stories what life experiences help people notice the difference between a sense of calling and What might be spirituality? Which is very very distinct from what people's faith is if they have it at all and just a little plug also That let's be clear that there are other Amazing traditions that are not just Christian or Judeo Christian for sure to the max My very brilliant colleagues over here probably have something more scientific to say about this, but I would say What distinguishes it and what I've seen over the course of my 20 plus years in ordained ministry is relationship relationship is how we begin to form identity Values understand our faith in a way that has heft and The work of the pastor in my view is to walk alongside people as they're discovering this and I guess now the soul cycle teacher too Yeah, I would definitely underscore that I think it's it's become one of the kind of anecdotal metrics for Deep communities is when people who become part of them leave their jobs or change jobs because of having discovered a sense of vocational calling that was not being Lived into in the life. They were leading so there but that can only happen in the context of relationship Where your gifts are seen? I know Damon is in the audience here and the story of his congregation is one that we turn to a lot because it is based on Discovering the gifts of those in the congregation and then drawing them out and allowing them to be shared. Yeah So thanks for your question in my so I'm just gonna draw on my data here. It felt like almost every conversation that I Came into people began by saying now we're making a distinction between spirituality and religion, right? So I in in my data at least people are not conflating them. They they keep them pretty distinct so As a person of faith who also seeks to be spiritual or spiritually invested I Guess I see Two kinds of dangers To avoid on the one hand. I don't want to collapse religiosity into spirituality I did meet people who wanted to do that and on the other hand. I don't want to collapse spirituality into religiosity, I guess I see them as having a kind of Uncanny border country that people are navigating all the time and just trying to like make sense of things Some so I have one really quick story where the this border country was really apparent I visited did some field research in Cara in Chicago a job Training organization a pretty significant large one in in Chicago and it is a it describes itself as a secular organization But they have this amazing morning ritual thing that they do so, you know, somebody studying spirituality I had to go to this and it's it's it's enormously Effectively overwhelming But they they have a like concentric circles of people and in the very central circle There is like this group of people whooping it up like giving high fives and cheering and and eventually somebody grabs a mic steps into the circle and it quiets the hubbub quiets down and then they have to answer some kind of prompt for the morning it might be like what do you want in your obituary or Some what's a recent experience where you've you learned that you were wrong and that was a good thing or something like that But here's the kicker like I feel like I could do almost any of that But then you have to conclude by singing something and which that would be very challenging for me So you might like one person that morning saying do what did he dumb did he do? You know like some kind of like a rock song or something or you might sing but this one woman sang from a revivalist chorus of the 19th century Blessed assurance and the the part that she sang she was trying to keep it Religiously neutral so she because she sort of understood the the culture of the place And so it was like this is my story This is my song and then she had affixed a couplet to the end of it that was like Non-religious, but she didn't even get to sing it the crowd which was religiously diverse I think I had seen a Muslim young man stand up And I think there were people who have no faith at all and so forth, but the crowd finished the song for her as It was originally written with explicitly Christian lyrics And so that for me is kind of mysterious. What's going on there? Is that a collapse is that it like a loss of pluralism? Is that a failure of democracy, you know sort of pluralistic democracy or was it a group of people? From many different standpoints helping somebody else sing their own song Thank you So a lot of this conversation Reminds me of the work of Carl Jung the depth psychologist and just kind of two observations One is that I think one of his really brilliant things was to connect psychology with religion and so for for atheists like myself that it's a way to really have a religious attitude about life By being psychological instead of religious The second point is just the title this money and meaning in that field depth psychology They talk about the ego Self-axis where the ego is really kind of your world you're the world out here which might correspond to money and The self is your inner self, right? Which corresponds to meaning and the importance of having a healthy connection on that axis, so Anyway, thank you Kevin I'm curious in your research if you Talk to immigrants whose survival is based on mutual survival as opposed to being atomized and disconnected Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I think one of the Innovators who comes to mind is a woman named Rosa Velazquez who I've worked a fair amount with over the last two years who's she particularly works with with dreamers and We It's interesting this this kind of intersects with the the money and meaning conversation because Part of where our work has gone in the last year or so has been to work with Explicitly secular organizations who are realizing that they are now bearing a responsibility for some of these questions of meaning and belonging and purpose And that people are coming there expecting to receive these things even at work. And so Rosa was part of a pilot testing a new app that is Dedicated to helping to alleviate suffering in moments when people are feeling a sense of acute emotional crisis And so it's drawing on religious or spiritual practices from across religious traditions but distilling them into something that you can actually look at in a moment of That that the mandate was in an office bathroom And so she really spoke to she was part of the testing group for this app and talked about how She was how it interacted with The experience that she had which to your point was differently from some of the other testers who were experiencing a more atomized lifestyle She was like I don't have that problem in my context But I do have acute moments of emotional crisis where having something that I can turn to in this digital world Made a difference and I came back to it and it reinforced my practice. So it was really that's I mean that is one very discreet anecdote but it spoke to What in I think in her case she affirmed that when she already was embedded in a context of community having something like this was Helpful for many other people who don't already have that precedent of community basis They didn't really know how to sustain practice over time And you know, it hasn't just been in context of immigrants like other people who tested it My friend Sam who works a lot in in trans advocacy and works on a lot of crisis hotlines Also was one who said I needed to find something like this and a spiritual connection in order to sustain me in this work Right, which Rosa also attested to But ultimately it was that combination of personal practice and community basis that allowed her to carry on doing it. Yeah Thank you That's that's not really answering my question You know, did you find in your research people who were connected as immigrants are with and mutual dependency? And and did they have the atomized sense that you had in your research Craig? I guess would be more to you So I have not interviewed any International refugees, but I have talked to people who are somewhat refugees from mainstream institutions So I'm thinking about people in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, which is Frequently sort of cast in the news as a terrifically violent bullet-ridden place And yeah, you know, that's a an unfortunate Narrative to put it mildly because it's a place that's vibrant and full of abundance and and sort of Wealth building honestly, but I talked with a man who more or less founded he would deny this but he more or less founded a cafe in in on a 69th Street, and I met him in this cafe and I think that the story that He would tell is that he didn't found this place In fact, if you walk in there and say could I speak with a manager who owns this place? The people behind the counter will say you do it's a it's a community owned place But I think that the story of this cafe the Cusania cafe is a story not of like some brilliant innovation But instead like a recognition of what was already going on and instantiation of what was already going on in The in the community it was an expression of the community and when the community saw it they There are no bars over the windows in this institution The community said yeah, that's us and so in that sense They're not refugees maybe but they're people who are recognizing spiritual connectedness Hi, my name is Karen and I'm a millennial and I run an organization called consult your community And we're serious volunteer organizations on over 22 college campuses My question live a very silly question. Just what is Beyonce mass? I have a more serious question Which is you know, I find it really fascinating The intersection that you're talking about about spirituality and religion and I think there's like several trends That people have talked about for example Rise of social media and creating loneliness the desire for idols. I think Beyonce is a good example like people still Seek an idol in some way even if it's kind of agnostic to a religious affiliation What are what are the ways in which you've seen? people grouping and You know kind of outside of religion in clusters maybe outside of volunteer service and then to why do you think? They have such an aversion towards religion apart from you know what you see in the media if there's something more Corn intrinsic. Yeah, so I know there was a lot of questions. I'll take the Beyonce mass one There is a minister in California who has written a liturgy using Beyonce's music and Marvin white Marvin white No, no, no, it's it's it's Yolanda Yeah, it's Yolanda. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so she goes around and produces this mass and it's like huge I mean there's like lighting and sound and And it just draws all kinds of people in Which says something about what Beyonce is doing in her work, which is deeply spiritual and justice-making But yeah, check it out. You can check it out online Okay, I think I got the last part, but I I mean just to the question of The Aversion I guess I mean I think that one thing that's important to know is just from a purely statistical standpoint There's sometimes a perception that Millennials or members of Gen Z are sort of Regularly rejecting Religion so in like a Jewish context that every weekend they might be deciding not to go to synagogue, right, but usually it's not there's a majority of Millennials who either were not raised in a singular religious tradition or in any tradition at all is a growing It is a growing population So it's not just that they're that they've actively experienced something and rejected it But that they never had it to begin with or that they had Multiplicity right like being raised I had a friend in Div school who has raised Catholic and Lutheran and she's like I'm both you know or someone who was raised in something discovered something else So there's that context and then there's and then beyond that there's things that you might be able to Point to and all of us could point to right as far as you know, whether it's a Perceived or otherwise, but whether it's that you yourself have been Rejected by the community for some aspect of your identity Whether it's that you perceive there to be hypocrisy or that the use of money is something you can't tolerate Or the creed is not something you can consent to you know things like that So yeah, it really helps when in Goldsboro Baptist Church shows up at prominent events with their horrible and hateful signs And everybody sees that and thinks that's organized religion right and shame on us for letting that happen Hi friends, I'm Mary Jane Fox, and I'm a professor of economics and finance at a Jesuit University and I'm also a spiritual seeking unaffiliated millennial and In my classes when I teach conventional economic classes, I really watch my language I try and use words words like nourish and nurture and You know the idea that the economy is what can can be seen as one of the mechanisms that connects us and that it's relational and This is really different if you take my econ class the same class like basic macroeconomics compared to some of my colleagues so my first question is about language and Money and spirituality is broad, but please take it wherever you wish and then my second quick question is around the concept of Sabbath and work and money, so I'm reading a book titled Sabbath, and I'm thinking a lot about what I'm teaching my students around working hard and and students wanting to make money and wanting to do good in the world, but also wanting to honor Rest and what Sabbath might mean So I'm curious if you've heard about that in any of your research or commentary that people make when they've earned a lot of Money and they've they're working hard in their business What Sabbath looks like for them? Thank you Well, those are big big questions Just on the on the issue of money. I think The the institutional church where I'm speaking from my perspective has done a terrible job of modeling the use and of Of our resources to change and invest in the world and what we've created is what you were saying like this fear-based like model of scarcity and It's it's really important that in whatever way we come to find meaning we begin to talk about a new economy We begin to talk about any economy of abundance about like looking into the communities where we are and seeing the things that are growing and Celebrating those things because that's where the church to me has become Has gotten in bed with empire and capitalism and it does not reflect the economy of God Which is you know, don't worry about what you wear like look at all the abundance around you open your heart and share with everybody So I don't know if that means anything. I only took one economics class in college. I got in a though Well, first of all, I'm just so happy for your students that you in your role are exploring these questions and bringing them to bear So thank you for doing that. I think if you haven't you should read the soul of money by Lynn Twist right over there And is it Sabbath? Because there are a couple great ones, but Wayne Muller's book is good. Is that the one you're reading? Okay, that's awesome Yeah, I mean one thing just as a premise and I think this speaks to what you're saying Amy is So much and I've experienced this personally as I think a lot of us have and part of this is also just I mean It's when you talk about empire part of this is coming definitely from white culture is the Like the notion that your value is what you produce And so a lot of bad theology has come about that basically says the same thing And so we always start with belonging of you are unconditionally beloved period and then from that place, you know it comes an invitation to To to give what is yours to give and to to grow into who you are and can be in the in the sense of Our togetherness, but I think that's part of where even an orientation that would allow for Sabbath Comes from right because there is no Sabbath if your value is based on your production mechanism as a Entity right so the fact that we would be treated as consumers rather than as you know Beloveds Beautiful beautiful one last question. Sure first of all, thank you for this panel. This is Very sorry. Thank you for this panel is very refreshing and I get your point on why is it on Friday morning? I couldn't agree more. I'd like the panel's in ideas on Where in this world of hyper accelerated individual choice that everybody has where they get to choose the exact expression of spirituality religion that works for them It's like a cafe tray where they say I want the yoga, but I don't want the Sunday service I you know where in that world is There a role for accountability and things that are external to you that hold you accountable and challenge you Because the value that I get from my faith community is I meet people that I normally wouldn't meet right? I'm challenged with ideas that I don't immediately agree with or even understand But it forces me to grapple with it and it deepens my understanding of what it is to be a religious or a spiritual person Where in the world that most of us are inhabiting where we're all just choosing easy things that fit with us What replaces or what what gives us that external accountability that makes us truly spiritual religious? I'm gonna let you talk about this Per your research, but one of the most before then really quickly one of the most interesting Relationships I've formed this year is with two young entrepreneurs Who are developing an app called venly v enny and it's like a curation of spiritual guidance So spiritual leaders from all over every tradition and no tradition Talking for a short amount of time about grief about relationships about whatever So you can get a meditation app or this is more like a content app, right? But that's my critique of what they're doing like Because ultimately I think we have to have community and accountability in that community, but Thoughts yeah amen to this question This is this is the call to creativity of this time. I think Um to the point that you know a lot of my work has been like writing reports on changes in the spiritual and community Landscape and we had written five of them and then we were going to write one on Formation talking about a word that Beyonce has popularized in the culture But that is a religious word talking about you know how we grow spiritually basically And we were going to write a report on it and then instead we ended up doing a pilot Because it wasn't enough just to write about it the feeling that we needed spaces to grow in community and be held to account Um was too great. So we just actually finished it last week It was a year-long pilot of spiritual formation in community for people across and outside of religious traditions and across geographies In the attempt to find some way in a context where so many people are cobbling it together To actually grow and to be faced with the things that are uncomfortable Which by the way will happen anyway and are happen You know, I had a a friend who came into divinity school as a self-professed new age sparklepony And within a month of starting school her mother passed away And she was like I don't where where do I land here like I have nothing what am I draw from In this time where I am feeling such acute an existential need. Um, so it's There this is another area where you know to the thing of like religion do your job I so deeply desire for that I was at fourth presbyterian church in boston and there were two women sitting next to each other One who was like leading the charge on the housing bill And so she stood up and said her piece about why everyone should vote for it And then the woman sitting next to her stood up She was the one leading the organizing against it And then they sat back down and one put her arm around the other They're friends. They're part of this congregation together and they disagree on this issue That's religion at its best. Yes Dm on So am you uh to paraphrase something we've been screwed in scarcity And every since 1929 the stock market that whole era we built things that are manufacturing If that's the case and there are abundant people that live in the communities most of them not here um, how do we cultivate a fabric Or a structure for the lack of a better term That sees and practice abundance in institutions That's a question for you. Dm on. That's what you do But but no I meant for the bigger church our bishops. They think so scarce Our judicaries rich white mostly men Think that the thing is inside the church and I mean I am Methodist and I'm Wesleyan I would say the world is our parish And how do what is it that we have to do To to think about all the people that worship Also have a vocation in secular life And they live out their faith in ways or they think about it How do we cultivate a structure that we celebrate that on all the domination in annual conferences That we don't celebrate the work of the poor Coming back full circle to having just pastored this huge church found by John Rockefeller and the $150 million endowment. I will say like those structures do not change easily They don't change and so I'm so excited about this moment in organized institutional religion because we're so desperate We'll try anything Thanks be to God, you know, so we're gonna we need to be begin to articulate a different theology of economy And to go where God's work is happening in the world whether it belongs to us or not And so I'm hoping that desperation is going to be the kickoff for this Oh one thing I I think when you said articulating this better. Amy I think the thing we need to do is tell better stories Um, which is I mean not this is coming out of my research, but People who are telling stories that are grounded in their own agency And in their own innovativeness and in their own inspiration. That's a good story It's an important story, but I don't think it's it's a sufficient story And so I think telling stories that pay attention to not just our inward lives But our amongness lives the the lives in between us all Those are the best stories I've been hearing the most encouraging and the ones that most change my attention If I've had any conversion in doing this research, it is a complication of my attention I I began honestly by sort of looking at people's inward lives are trying to And I've I've ended up, uh, at least where I am right now in paying attention. What's going on among us Yeah, I was, um Working in the parliament of the world's religions and there was a young woman who was talking to a A mentor of mine who is dearly beloved and older white man Uh, and it was back when they were trying to decide whether Mormons would be allowed in the parliament of the world's religions and this young woman just like, you know Kind of whispered in his ear. She's like, are you going to move on this? Or we do we need to just wait for you all to die? um You know and that's A kind of a blunt way to put it But I think part of what has made it so powerful to me to get to know a few of these Catholic sisters that I've been working with is there's an Some of it seems to come from the experience of loss and then moving through loss And developing the spiritual maturity that can happen on the other side of that to actually see That another way is possible and sister carol's in has said You know ours was a radical response to the gospel in our time and place And now that time and place is changing and the spirit is moving and how beautiful would it be if we were there to meet it? Oh, I wish there were more people who were doing that and that was beautifully said Thank you so much my friends. Thank you for your inspiring work. Thanks for being in this conversation with us today