KIM CARSON INTERVIEWED CASPER TER KUILE, AUTHOR OF
The Power
of Ritual
There’s something comforting in rituals. For one you can count on them. When everything else is out of control you can always count on a ritual to center you again. It’s familiar, it’s comforting, it’s a safe spot through life’s daily ups and downs. There was a time in America where church was considered a “sacred” ritual. But over the last two decades Gallop reported that the percentage of Americans attending a church, synagogue or mosque sharply dropped and is at an all time low averaging 50% in 2018. So what happened? I interviewed Casper tur Kuile, a Harvard Divinity School fellow and author of The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices.
KIM: So tell me what your book is really about? CASPER: So we’re in this strange
and interesting moment when more and more of us, are less and less religious. Forty percent of Millennials now describe themselves as having no religious affiliation, and at the same time, it seems more and more people are feeling disconnected. And so what the book is about is figuring out what are the practices that can help us feel deeply connected to ourselves, to one another, the natural world and the transcendent. I’m hoping that people will will pick up some interesting and fun practices to help reconnect with what’s most important.
K: This Millennial disconnect from God, why did it happen? C: Well, in an interesting way, even though people are saying
that they’re less and less religious they’re actually still very
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August 2021
spiritual. So one in five people who say they’re religious still pray everyday and two out of three even believe in God or a higher power. So I think what we’re seeing is a not necessarily a decline in religion but a transformation of it. People are showing up and feeling spiritually connected in all sorts of unlikely places like maybe the gym, maybe their family, nature, people going for a hike or getting on a river or a lake. There are so many ways in which people are still very spiritual even though they are outside a traditional church.
K: Do you think that it was just that their parents didn’t raise them up in church? C: Yeah, it happens in all sorts of ways. There’s people like
me, who grew up never going to church. So there’s not even sort of a rejection of religion because there wasn’t any in the first place. But there’s most definitely a large number of people, I think, who have felt perhaps marginalized by their experience in religion or just feel like it’s not right for them. It isn’t engaging. It doesn’t feel authentic. So they go looking for spirituality elsewhere. Just look at the massive growth of astrology apps, self help books, looking up things like the Enneagram kind of stuff. They’re still very hungry for spirituality.
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