Support the initiative
Spirituality is often seen as a deeply personal matter, and as a result, it has been overlooked as a resource when thinking through our world's most pressing challenges. Your support for this fund helps to create transformative and innovative ways to share knowledge related to spirituality and its place in public life among our communities.
Upcoming events
Work, Pray, Code: Silicon Valley Spirituality
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
4 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. (MST)
Free and open to all. Registration requested.
Silicon Valley Tech companies are bringing religion into the workplace in ways that replace traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and reshaping spirituality to serve their religion of peak productivity. But, are our religious traditions, communities and public sphere paying the price? Chen will discuss her more than five years of in-depth engagement with Silicon Valley and her exploration of spirituality among the best and brightest of the tech world.
Carolyn Chen is a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley; co-director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion; and executive director of the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI). Her publications include Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience, Sustaining Faith Traditions: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation, and Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley. In addition to her scholarly work, she has published in outlets such as the New York Times, Atlantic and CNN.
Moderators
Tracy Fessenden
Professor of Religious Studies
Director of Strategic Initiatives, Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict
Craig Calhoun
University Professor of Social Sciences
Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict
The Missing Middle: Cosmopolitics of Spirituality in Arizona
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
3 – 4:30 p.m. (MST)
Free and open to all. Registration requested.
Join us for an intriguing exploration of spirituality in Arizona, based on 13 years of in-depth research. This discussion with Susannah Crockford will challenge common ideas about spirituality—often seen as either apolitical or left-leaning—by exploring how spiritual beliefs and political views are deeply connected. Discover how different perspectives shape people's understanding of the world and their place in it.
Susannah Crockford, an anthropologist at the University of Exeter, researches cultural views on medicine, the environment and religion. Since 2012, she has studied metaphysical spirituality in northern Arizona and its connections to health, ecology and politics. She is the author of Ripples of the Universe: Spirituality in Sedona, Arizona, and the forthcoming A Perturbed System. She co-edits Fieldwork in Religion and has published in American Religion and Religion Dispatches.
Course information
Spirituality in America
Instructor: Terry Shoemaker
Examine the emergence of spirituality in North America:
- What is spirituality?
- Is spirituality a new phenomenon?
- Why is spritiaulity appealing now?
- What is "spiritual but not religious?"
The Spiritual Quest
Instructor: Tracy Fessenden
General Studies: HU, C
Americans who identify as “spiritual but not religious”— the fastest-growing religious demographic in the nation today, and one of the largest—stand in long, rich traditions of like-minded seekers throughout the world. This course considers the literature and practices of spiritual seeking over centuries, from ancient mystery religions to movements for justice and flourishing in the present.
Spirituality in America class: immersive, field observation trip to experience the spiritual offerings of Sedona, Arizona - Spring 2023
Previous events
Conspirituality in the Time of Plague: Dispatches from the Front
Sam Kestenbaum, journalist covering religion in America
Thursday, November 2, 2023 | 4:30 p.m. – 5:45 p.m. (MST) | West Hall, room 135
Free and open to all. Registration requested.
Scores of churches closed during COVID-19, but contrary to predictions that religion would diminish, the pandemic led to a peculiar efflorescence of religious life. A faith-healing TikToker gained a fandom by performing miracles on screen; a religion-and-politics roadshow toured the country, bringing doomsday prophets, January 6 rioters and anti-vaxxers together in harmony; and at New Age fairs and conventions, the yoga and wellness crowd absorbed QAnon gospel while shopping for sage and crystals. Drawing from reporting done for outlets like The New York Times and the Washington Post, this talk offers a picture of a multi-faceted spiritual convergence born in the time of plague.
*Conspirituality is the merger of conspiracy theories with religion or spiritual belief.