From the Field

While retreat centers are “lights for the world,” they often struggle to keep the lights on. The Retreat Center Collaboration (RCC), funded by the Fetzer Institute, is a three-year project to understand and connect retreat centers and their allies across North America, all in an effort to support their evolving roles in a changing world. Below we share RCC member Oren Slozberg’s thoughts on the state of retreat centers today.

Andy Hanauer, CEO of One America Movement, works within and among religious communities to combat toxic polarization in the US. OAM brings people together across political, racial, and religious divides to work together to address issues in communities across the country. They also train and empower religious leaders to resist a culture of division and hate. Fetzer is proud to support the work of OAM and offers excerpts from our chat with Andy as an introduction—and a welcome—to a new partner.

“Far from the news headlines and in some of the most terror-afflicted places on earth, we can encounter great goodness that is just a part of daily life on the grassroots level,” notes Dr. William F.

What is the present state and future development of spiritual care? From December 11 to 13, 2019, the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab was grateful to partner with the Fetzer Institute on a convening and dialogue focused on just that. We welcomed spiritual care providers from an array of professional contexts and educational backgrounds including healthcare, higher education, social movements, state and federal agencies, and more.

Amidst all the devastation of this remarkable moment, COVID is extremely clarifying. It reveals the pain of loneliness and social isolation. It uncovers how profoundly most people long to focus on what matters most. And it stimulates amazing creativity and resilience.

We see five major COVID-fueled shifts in our religious and spiritual landscape.

In December 2019, the Fetzer Institute hosted a small meeting for the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab to talk about the current and future state of spiritual care in a variety of settings. Together, we wanted to explore how we might move into a future defined by greater access to the best possible spiritual care, recognizing that all have a right to care for their human spirit no matter who or where they are.

To many people, religiosity and spirituality are two ways of saying the same thing. But the recently released "What Does Spirituality Mean to Us? A Study of Spirituality in the United States Since COVID," along with its 2020 predecessor, makes clear that religiosity and spirituality are not the same. At a time when organized religion is on the decline, it is more important than ever to understand the many ways that people connect with the transcendent, for while some do so through conventional forms of religious worship, others seek spirituality through other means. 

As an ongoing inquiry for our democracy initiative, we recently posted a poll on fetzer.org asking about your greatest fears for the United States. We received thoughtful and passionate responses from a variety of perspectives. We received advice, honest self-reflection, prayers, and helpful questions. We didn’t ask, but some of you told us about yourselves: that you’re parents and grandparents, history teachers, immigrants, and Swedish. Someone even sent a poem.

Free expression is a hallmark of our democracy, and at the Fetzer Institute we believe it is foundational to our vision of a more loving world. We believe that we all have the power to shape a democracy that supports the common good. Working together, we can transcend the labels that polarize us and realize what unites us. We can cultivate sacred connections with our neighbors to help build a shared vision for our communities and our country.

Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) has devoted his life to the promise of a pluralistic American society, a potluck of flavors to nourish us all and stimulate taste buds beyond a bland melting pot of assimilation. Community and collaboration are at the heart of this vision, Patel asserted at the close of a recent IFYC training for campus leaders. Their schools will be paired for an 18-month exploration of “courageous pluralism,” supported by the Fetzer Institute and the Charles Koch Foundation.