Throughout time, spirituality and religion have served various purposes in the lives of those who choose to observe them. For some, their love for, or fear of God acts as a moral compass, drawing boundaries for behavior to strive to remain within. For others, life may totally revolve around a church, a specific site where they’ve found a community that knows and supports them. Whether one possesses merely a vague belief in a higher power or identifies strongly with a specific set of beliefs, it’s safe to say that there are some universally felt aspects of maintaining a relationship with God. One must wonder, though, in our modern era when life can feel so fragmented, when community can be found inside the devices we keep in our pockets, and when temptation is perhaps more easily acted upon than ever before, what continues to draw us to the spiritual?

The church I grew up in was not a church, but a Kingdom Hall; my grandmother and all her children, with the exception of my father, were (and still are) devoted Jehovah’s Witnesses. My parents not being in the church, I was able to “witness” at a slight remove, but I understood the main tenet: do what the bible says and you can live forever on a paradise Earth. That, and don’t celebrate Christmas or your birthday. This rigid way of living didn’t make much sense to me as a child, and still doesn’t, though I understand why my “grammy,” having grown up Black and poor in the Deep South, found solace in the Bible’s teachings. However, it always struck me as odd that she remained so convinced that the beliefs she landed on were the only “truth,” and that other religions were, essentially, a perversion of God’s teachings. There are so many ways to be spiritual, how could she definitely claim one was right and another wrong?

Seeking out a different experience and another point of view, I spoke to my friend Ryan, who grew up attending a Catholic church. Ryan is an only child and grew up in California’s Orange County, went to a private, Catholic High School, and attended church every Sunday. His parents were religious, not to the point of being oppressive, but attending church was required during his youth. Though he always attended, he also always found it quite boring. After his parents eventually stopped making him go, Ryan no longer attended church, and after high school, he moved to New York City where he attended NYU and studied film. After finishing, he moved to Japan for nearly 3 years to teach English to elementary school children. Most recently, after returning to NYC from Japan, he completed his masters degree at Columbia University in the Fiction department. Now Ryan is 32 years old and lives in Washington Heights with his partner of four years. 

I sat down with Ryan in his living room, a large rectangular space with high ceilings,  decorated with a mix of 1970’s post modern and mid century furniture. He looked every bit the D1 football player, standing at six feet three inches with broad shoulders and arms big enough to fill an XL T-shirt sleeve. I began by asking him what positive effects he believed growing up in the church had left him with. Attending church, Ryan learned “at an early age a sense of solidarity and camaraderie with your fellow man, fellow people – to not just be focused on the little silo of your family.”  He stressed the importance of feeling like part of a community that you can lean on for support, and the importance of ritual, which there’s so much of in spirituality. Knowing that Ryan no longer attended church, I wondered where he found his community, and what rituals he observed today. “Um, going out to clubs. To raves, and then like the afterparties, I think those are communal experiences. And there’s rituals involved within that,” he said.  “And I do think most of those people are filling in the void that church and community centers used to fill, with partying, with rave culture, with club culture, drug culture, because those things are very much founded on community and ritual.” Of course, partying, clubbing, and using drugs with your friends are not encouraged at most churches or in the Bible, however they can clearly serve to fulfill some of the same needs that one may get from being active in their faith.

Ryan identifies as a gay man, and has a partner of four years, with whom he plans to someday marry and have kids with. I asked him, when and if he does have children, if he’d want to raise them in a church. “I remember I used to joke that If I had kids, I would drop them off at church and not go in.” We both laughed. “And part of me kind of believes that. But I think I would go to some kind of church. Probably the Catholic church. And go with them, but maybe not as serious as my parents took me. And it’s really not because I want them to be fully indoctrinated into the church. But more to give them a sense of this community, a lens through which to understand the world that’s not just completely secular and a way to instill spirituality and mystery into the world. Rather than just me saying everything is love and beauty…  I think they need some kind of mystical understanding, or… mystical questioning of the world that’s not just completely science or psychological based reasoning…” I understood completely what Ryan meant. The stories of the bible, some contained so much magic and grandeur, at the very least they may serve to ignite the imagination. Ryan picked up, “When I went to the Vatican or when I see religious iconography, I feel something even if I don’t fully believe in it, and I want my kids to feel something when they (see those things), it doesn’t have to be Christianity – if they grew up Muslim they would feel something when they look at a Mosque or something. I want them to have some tangible connection to the Holy, to spirituality, to history.”

Although Ryan doesn’t attend church these days, there are moments when he feels pulled toward the Holy. He explains,“I think on my mom’s death anniversary I have the urge to go to church, because that’s when my Dad does.” Here he pauses, then continues, “but I do, beyond that, have an urge to go there every once in a while when I feel… disconnected from the general world.” Again, spirituality for him presents itself as an opportunity to connect with others, but also as a comfort – a reminder of something familiar to fall back into in a moment of sadness. For Ryan, it helps to know that spirituality is there if he needs it, expecting nothing from him in return and happy to welcome him any time. 

 My conversation with Ryan helped me to understand that perhaps religion serves a more complex and important purpose in our modern era than I thought, and that it may benefit us all to develop some aspect of spirituality. A relationship with any higher power doesn’t have to be just one thing – and it doesn’t have to be rigidly upheld, or tell us how we should or should not live our lives. One can have a spiritual experience, one that makes them feel close to God or to their fellow man, in a nightclub, or simply by looking at a sculpture of the Madonna. These spiritual experiences, inside or outside of church serve both to build community and stir our senses, both of which all of us can benefit from.

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