For millennials, mysticism shows a path to their home faiths

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

Anthony Graffagnino describes himself spiritually as both frustrated and curious.
A Pentecostal turned Unitarian, the 28-year-old Graffagnino said he’s had his fill with “stale and dead expressions of faith that I saw really doing nothing to better the people around me or the world around me.”
Discovering the Christian mystical tradition through the work of Franciscan friar Richard Rohr helped change that.

“Father Richard’s work allowed an entryway into Christianity when I didn’t think there was any,” said Graffagnino, who is studying to be an interfaith chaplain at Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, Calif....

While many younger Americans today are spiritually unaffiliated, aka “nones” — a quarter of all adults under the age of 30 in the United States say they don’t identify with any religion or spiritual tradition, according to the Pew Center for Religion and Public Life — millennials are increasingly finding contemplative spirituality appealing.

To read more:


https://religionnews.com/2019/04/16/for-millennials-mysticism-shows-a-path-to-their-home-faiths/

The future of faith?

[zipplewrath]

1. Part of a cycle

These things tend to be cyclical. I'd bet in 2 generations or so we'll be back to stories about how a generation is "returning to more traditional churches".

[guillaumeb]

2. Possible.

I am 68, but even in my youth, I knew many Christians who were not satisfied with the generic faith.

Many of us have read and studied many faith traditions.

[Bretton Garcia]

3. I studied dozens. But left them all behind.

Even the best of them still have subtle, hidden, residual ties to dozens of forms of abuse. And in fact, you can't really extricate the "good" from the bad elements inside the religions.

Even "spirituality" links to all kinds of abuse; like sado masochism, and escapism, in the "mortification of the flesh," and "hate" for the whole material "world. "

[Voltaire2]

5. The actual spiritualist movement from the last half of the 19th century

was a bonanza for con artists and psychopaths (if that is a distinction).

It still lingers on in all sorts of ways, e.g. Ouija Boards and Tarot Cards.

[Major Nikon]

7. Which is no different than religion

[Permanut]

9. Kenneth Copeland and his $6 million dollar Gulfstream V..

Perfect example of a consummate con man. Or maybe Jesus wanted him to have it. One or the other.

[Bretton Garcia]

10. I agree. But maybe some here would like a post on this?

It seems some agnostics, atheists, or others here, want to hang on to some kind of "spirituality " Maybe secularized?

Maybe there's a better word for an atheist alternative to spirituality, if any? Maybe tolerance; or philosophicality?

I reject "spirituality" myself.

[MineralMan]

11. Shades of Madame Blavatsky!

[guillaumeb]

6. And if that path works for you,

congratulations on finding it.

[MineralMan]

4. Yes. Many of us have.

Many of us became atheists. Perhaps you will, as well.

[Act_of_Reparation]

8. Oh, absolutely.

I was walking down the street yesterday, wallowing in my atheism, when I was approached by a fat, bald Baby Boomer with a smile so big I could almost see it beneath the gray beard he'd been cultivating since his days protesting the Vietnam war. He said to me, "Hey, you! Did you know you can believe in God without doing that church thing?"

"Can I???" I asked. "How so!"

"Easy," said the old man. "Just sit down and think about Jesus really hard."

"So, like meditation?"

"Kind of," the man admitted. "But this meditation comes with 100% more Jesus."

"Oh," I said. "Well, I'm convinced! I have been waiting my whole life for a quieter, more solitary approach to unempirical belief. PRAISE THE DIVINE SPARK. ALL HAIL THE CREATOR."

And from that day forward, I was no longer a millennial atheist. I was the FUTURE OF RELIGION.