On The Third Space of Church
or The “Age of Revivalism”
by Marcello Cortese
One thing about religious dogma is that it is ever present.
The consequences and social effects of it change over time, and they take on new forms or messages, even new evolutions. But whether the current social rhetoric is with regard to the faults of religion, or the shortcomings of cherry-picked teachings, or even the counter-culture sense of hyper-traditionalism, etc etc, the conversation always remains.
Something I’ve recently noticed is that the religious discussion is shifting again. To be specific, I’m using Christianity as the example here.
For essentially all of American history, there has been a countermovement to religious establishments, especially the orthodox and like versions. The mantra in our country has been freedom to practice. Freedom to innovate and modernize. Freedom to be without. And much of the population has had their slew of grievances against the organized establishments; the hypocrisies and weaponized doctrine. What has always been an inescapable monolith now just exists in different capacities. People can be on an outspoken limb with any approach they want, really. Extremes have broken morals apart, and radicalism comes about in our media because it’s the loudest and most inflammatory dialect.
What I’ve grown to appreciate about Gen Z, however, is that they’re very good at making distinctions. Spirituality has come to be favored over being “religious,” which, in a nutshell, is kind of the blueprint of most modern religions as it is. At least before they “became.” There is a greater emphasis now on the separation between strictly religious and spiritual/“open-minded” sensibilities. While Gen Z has been reported to be the most unaffiliated generation, they still impress upon the importance of holistic and spiritual existence. They’re not just saying “no” to all ideas of higher belief.
Tarot and astrology have taken this generation by storm. Eastern, more holistic ideas of meditation and communion with energies and forces of nature or the psyche take the place of “praying” directly to deities or angelic characters of old. In many ways, the current mindset of religious communion can be likened to the Romantics, back when everyone lived in the woods and wrote poems about the leaves while tripping balls on wormwood and poorly baked rye bread. As a direct response to the Enlightenment, the Romantics embraced the less structured and distinct aspects of the divine… they found God in the wind and the trees and the intuitive responses one’s mind has in the middle of nature. There was an emphasis of fear, just perhaps as the Enlightenment had, but one that was more basic, and concerned with natural forces instead of cosmic ones.
I’m rambling…
Essentially what I’m getting to is that despite this understanding that young people are more averse to traditionalism, and therefore ancient entities like the church, our culture is silently developing a backdrop of a religiously influenced society. The other day I read up on Katya Ungerman’s opinion piece, “We Are Sliding Back Into The Middle Ages.” It was a refreshing consideration of this mass exodus back into spirituality and holistic lifestyles in American youth.
I’m sure you’ve heard people compare our current time to that of the Medieval Age, with institutions holding control of the media, literacy rates in the gutter, caste systems, plague, all things that make this parallel glaringly apparent. And there is a great deal of virtue to this assessment; it’s not wrong, per se. Catholicism has come back for an encore, even if only currently as a joke. But, unlike the Middle Ages, there’s something new and oppositional about these revamped sectors of the Christian belief. Amidst the chronic and pathetic rhetoric spewed out in political and hateful capacities about policing or preventing—all that fire and brimstone whatitswhosit—something hopeful has come about.
Just this past week, the Pope released his encyclical on AI, explicating on humanitarian topics and the moral implications of technological integration. He spoke for the people and defended the rights of all human life, the privileges and entitlements that must not be sacrificed for this kind of “progress.”
What a precedent to establish! How radical!
Someone has finally used an entire institution to condemn this cultural threat on an existential and humanitarian level. And he used the church to do it.
Does this mean that everyone is flocking back to Catholicism because of one beautiful thing done in the wake of centuries of hypocrisy? Of course not. But people seem more enthused about it than before, at the very least. There is a willingness on the part of the people to gravitate toward what is deemed “right” or “just,” and people want to find something—anything—that will stand and protect them. Especially when no one feels protected anymore.
So, is this why young people are turning back to traditionalism? Maybe in part. It could also be the economy, as conservatism walks hand in hand with a desolate financial scape. It could even be the teeth-gritting deluge of absolute shit that social media, and the regular media, pumps out without any sense of a break, and that us young’ns are exhausted by it.
I think this latter idea is the more relatable one here. The youth are tired, and their souls are depleted of true, honest stimulation. Communities are digital, which only makes the mind more susceptible to these feedback loops of dependency between user and platform. It breeds anxiety, anger, distrust, and just never gets turned off. This, in addition to the vanishing of third spaces in our time is a recipe for the most devastating kinds of loneliness, and of delusion.
Malls are a thing of the past. Libraries are (slowly) coming back but still, also, a thing of the past. One has to pay eight dollars for a coffee to sit in a cafe on their phone around dozens of people who do the same… what my mother always loves to remind me is considered “parallel play.”
There are virtually no places to go for organic relations anymore, and in more rural settings outside of big cities or populated hubs, there are even less places to choose from. So, when times get as desperate as these might be, it can be no wonder that the broke, lonely, young people might drag themselves to a place they never before imagined entering, if only for the hope to speak to a few new people.
This is probably my personal favorite thing about attending church: the outgoingness of the others there. Some people make jokes about how it feels “cult-ish” and unsettling, to be approached by so many people without really understanding why they seem delighted to see you. I think it’s the impression that’s most common to get, and I understand it. We’ve been conditioned to distrust our neighbors, our friends have become individualistic and forget the idea of helping you out without reward… the rules of connection become conditional, and therefore it’s weird when someone does something without any ulterior motives. The expectation that they might ultimately want something from you too is ever present, and when you don’t directly know what that might be, it’s creepy as hell.
When I started going back to church here in New York, I felt all of these things, even having been raised Christian all throughout my childhood. I decided to try it out again because of loneliness, then kept going because of curiosity, and finally decided to stay because it became an oasis. When I found my current church, it took some getting used to. I had to try to put myself out there, and even if I didn’t, it felt like half the congregation flocked right to me to say hello. I was terrified by all this attention, sure they were going to try to recruit me to donate or become a volunteer, but no. They just wanted to, as my mother later put it, “love on me a bit.”
Don’t get me wrong, not every church is like this. Some denominations are deeply hateful and predatory. Some produce backwards sermons, and no sect of Christianity is “perfect.” But the relief comes from the structure, I think, that it offers people who don’t have much understanding of what the whole thing is about. And I’m sure there are other young people who have experienced what I just talked about…
When I did a deeper dive into this topic I came across another recent piece by Ross Douthat. “Is There a Religious Revival in America?” discusses the rise of “Revivalism” within this past year in America.
He acknowledges these found studies with a great deal of impartiality, noting that the recent uptick in church attendance could just be a resurgence of people who stopped going during the pandemic, or that some of these vetted studies were later retracted due to being embellished or skewed in their findings. The ultimate point that he establishes is that “it’s entirely possible for a faith to experience revival and decline simultaneously.”
Huh?
But this was my favorite aspect of his piece, if only because of how original a thought it was. Most people, like myself, consider the rise of secularization to be the decline of devoutism. But Douthat introduces the other factors that no one really acknowledges: that conversion is a different thing than what he calls “the ordinary transmission of an established faith. He goes on to say that it’s also possible to have a conversion experience within a person’s “inherited religions,” such as the idea of being “born again” and baptized a Christian as an adult.
The similar idea of having a religious “lapse” or reconfirming one’s faith at a later point in life is in his article as well… that it’s not necessarily about our country becoming “more” religious, but that some of the population is coming back to their salvations with a more holistic understanding of the stakes than what they were put into as children. In any community, it’s up to the children to maintain and grow the culture… So depending on how many children are in any given religion, and which ones choose to deepen their inherited faiths and which ones only maintain it for a time out of “default” is a huge factor in the cultural understandings of society at large.
I’ll say that as a Christian who grew up Christian and never stopped believing, not all of us are Bible thumpers. This impression that church is only for the strict or convicted believers is what makes it seem exclusive and judgemental, which, again, is a warranted impression to have. But I’ll admit that I don’t always go to church for the deep catharsis or purging of my guilt.
Sometimes it’s as simple as wanting to be out of the noise for an afternoon and around people who give you coffee and a simple conversation after the service.
It can also just be a nice excuse to sit somewhere.
When I think of going to church as a child, I think of my mother. I think of my grandmother and family holidays, and all the jewelry my older aunts and cousins would put on for these occasions. I hear the songs and see everyone doing the sign of the cross. Then maybe a brunch or coffee hour after.
I think these are some of the classic images one might associate with a religious childhood, that it was more about revering one’s parents than this unseen power who swears it loves us. It’s not that difficult to understand that as children we idolatrized our parents and family members… saw them in similar lights to God and the protective angels.
And yet, now, as I live in a different city that’s always windswept with noise and movement, the very idea of church has become something different. Something entirely more than just the promise of a Sunday mass. It is an insistence on my own part. I’m an adult, without immediate caretakers. No one is going to pull me out of bed and take me to church. If I want to go, then I must make myself go. Must seek it out.
That’s the other difference: attendance becomes a thing of want rather than obligation. If I’m feeling the urge, sure, it might be out of a compulsion, but there’s also the silent contentment that motivates me just the same. When I first started going back, I tried several different churches. I now have friends at the one I regularly attend. I show up to see familiar faces, and while it’s not always an outright party, I feel a little lighter by being around them.
I think it’s also worthwhile to spend time in a church outside of weekly service. The majesty of an empty cathedral cannot be undersold, nor can the simultaneous fear and relief that comes from entering one. Some people get overwhelmed being inside a grand and devout space like that. Some get uncomfortable.
Of course everyone’s response is different, but what I’ve found is that ultimately nothing parallels the sensation of sitting in a random pew of an empty church. Be it four minutes or forty. For those that feel emotional about it, let’s just acknowledge that crying in a church can be a wonderful thing. And for those who don’t subscribe in any way, it’s still just a building, built by men for men. Nevertheless, it’s a space to come to.
I’ve seen it with some of my friends, too. Being one of the only Christians I know, I never tried to drag a friend to church. It’s just not my place. But ever so often, you make a casual comment about it and someone will get that curious look on their face. Maybe even a, “Would you mind if I came along sometime?”
And it shocks me every time. Not because I believe atheists or agnostics are inherently averse to any and all things religious, but maybe just that I’ve made the assumption that they aren’t interested. Despite the preference of personalized spirituality over organized lessons (which I do think is more on the money in many ways), people are inherently curious beings. And having an introduction into a world that you might not want to be a part of, but have questions about regardless, is a helpful thing in spades.
It’s an impossible thing to say with absolute definition that our current time is one of mass religious invigoration in Gen Z, but only really because we’re still in it. And there are so many factors of demographic that play into how religion becomes a kind of luxury, as with other areas of society. As Douthat says later in his piece, “But it may be that we will look back on the later 2020s as a period of elite revival, in which religion becomes more influential on college campuses or in upper-middle-class culture without preventing a continued decline in Catholic, Methodist or Baptist numbers overall.”
I’m not so convinced it’s inherently about the religious thing at the end of the day. I think that the “third space” mentality of church for much of Gen Z has more to do with the familiarity of childhood and ongoing sense of community and opportunity in those spaces. Not everyone needs to “buy back in,” but when it comes down to brass tacks, church is one of the last protected “havens” of authenticity in our current climate.
