Insights for Change is our series to pose questions and share short insights (our own and others’) for thinking creatively about faith and social change. They may be full-baked, half-baked, or just a pile of raw ingredients to play with. We hope they start conversation or inspire ideas. We invite you to add your own thoughts, experiences, and ideas to the mix.
Last month, I attended a gathering of “spiritual changemakers.” Participants at this event, Soularize—co-hosted by Ashoka, The Presencing Institute, and Co-Creative—came from around the world and from all layers of spirituality and religiosity. They shared a common commitment to imagining a different world in which all people thrive, and to the role that spirituality plays in creating that world. Various “common cause” communities met to discuss specific issues, including climate, equity, youth, and aging.
I participated in the “Future and Faith” common cause group, where we wrestled with the somewhat amorphous concept of the general “spiritual ecosystem.” We collectively drafted vision statements for the future of that ecosystem in a range of areas we identified as needing change, from mindsets to resources to systems.
On resources, the collective work resulted in this vision statement:
Regenerative Resource Flows: We’re composting capital through the decentralized distribution of centralized resources. Resources are flowing through trust-based, boundary-spanning partnerships of temples, churches, mosques, communities, non-profits, foundations, donors, companies, and more. AND we’re reducing our dependence on money as the sole or primary source of capital, cultivating peer-to-peer communities to exchange assets of all kinds, and measuring what really counts—our time, attention, love, relationships, gifts, and more. In doing so, we’re recentering the human over the monetary.
For systems, we arrived at:
Dynamic, Collaborative, Life-Giving Systems: Faith structures engage spiritual assets to help humanity and creation flourish by allocating the majority of institutional resources to experimental, de-centralized, localized initiatives that cultivate 1) the creative power in every person, and 2) collaborative relationships.
It’s a lot of words that need definition, clarification, simplification. Additionally, when a group of people from many different traditions, cultures, and belief systems seeks to arrive at a common spiritual vision, it can be challenging to get there without obfuscating, to some degree at least, the unique attributes of each of those traditions, cultures, and belief systems. Spirituality as a concept can elude even as it encompasses. That said, the patterns were clear. From the perspectives of all of our spiritual positions, the exclusive, hierarchical world of concentrated power and decision-making is dying too slow a death in the world of faith and failing to advance the values that our faith traditions and belief systems purportedly hold for the flourishing of humanity.
So if we hold resources in the field of faith, how might we nurture regenerative resource flows? If we lead a faith institution, what would recasting ourselves as a dynamic, collaborative, life-giving system look like?
These are questions we ran out of time to start answering at the convening, but they are questions for all of us in the field of faith. The world needs transformative ideas and institutions for the good of all. Transformation is our calling. What are we bringing to the table?