Kneeling at the Altar of Wellness

when cultural movements replace religion, shit goes south

You see it everywhere you look. So pervasive that it blends into the haze of everyday life. If you’re not specifically looking for it, you’d miss it entirely:

New religions, popping up everywhere.

Social Justice, climate activism, political figures, your favorite influencer.

It’s no revelation that participation in organized religion has been falling—as it has been since the early 1900s—as those identifying as atheist or agnostic have been steadily increasing.

It’s not really new or surprising. However, the effects of this decline are becoming more apparent as we’ve recently reached an important inflection point— in 2020, US Church membership fell below the majority for the first time ever.

And in its wake, humans are unwittingly clamoring for something to take its place.

And I’m one of them.

I grew up on a steady diet of Veggie Tales, DC Talk, and Adventures in Odyssey (iykyk). I had a purity ring, an unhealthy amount of rapture anxiety from watching Left Behind, and I remember my mom having a serious discussion with my aunt over the phone over whether or not she should let us read Harry Potter (she didn’t, and we were given The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe instead). In 5th grade, instead of learning about my changing body in any practical or useful way, I was taught that God would be sorely disappointed in me if I had sex before marriage, and I went to a private Christian school for most of Elementary school.

I identified as a Christian for my entire life.

And then, I went to college.

Girl goes to college and rebels against everything she’s ever been taught

My life is unoriginal. I’m not even going to pretend it’s not the cliche of all cliches. Sue me.

But at the time, it felt like a revelation.

The more anthropology, psychology, and social science classes I took, the more I mingled with people with drastically different life experiences than my own, the less religion made sense to me.

Every group of people that had ever existed, in different times and in different places around the world, all had their version of a religion, all with their own symbols and rituals. And there are even striking similarities between them. AND everyone thinks theirs is right and everyone else’s is wrong.

Who was I to say that my version of religion was the correct one when everyone else felt the same way? How many people had died throughout history because someone vehemently disagreed with what they believed?

It seemed fucking ridiculous. This doesn’t make any sense, I thought.

So, I became an atheist.

It felt like a very educated, intelligent stance to take.

I still believe it, in certain ways. I told a friend just last week that I think we’re grossly misinterpreting the Bible, what with all the time and translations and such.

However, with the gift of hindsight, I can now see that this period, driven by logic and reason, was also the most depressed and anxious I’d ever been.

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As I logic-and-reasoned my way out of religion, I came to identify what the root utility of religion was, which I still believe to this day. Except now, instead of using it to explain why religion is for idiots with the hubris of a 21-year-old, I use the same explanation to understand why religion would be appealing:

Humans are nothing if not meaning-making machines—we’re a story-telling species, and we use narrative to make sense of the world. But there are some things that are simply unexplainable, so we've come up with stories to help us explain:

-What came before?

-What comes after?

-How did we get here?

-What’s it all about?

Religions grant answers to these unknowable questions, granting solace to those who follow.

In its absence, people turn to other ways of making sense of the world, creating little micro-religions everywhere, as if religion is an inescapable part of the human experience.

One of my favorite explanations of the role of religion is from British Author Alain de Botton in his TedTalk titled, Atheism 2.0. In it, he explains,

“In the early 19th century, church attendance in Western Europe started sliding down very, very sharply, and people panicked. They asked themselves the following question. They said, where are people going to find morality, where are they going to find guidance, and where are they going to find sources of consolation? And influential voices came up with one answer. They said ‘culture’.

When people don’t have religion, they still need somewhere to turn. Something to tell them how to behave, to offer a sense of purpose and moral guidance. A community where people believe in the same things. Without it, we move through the world in an anxiety-induced stupor—untethered, drowning in the ambiguous nature of the mysteries of the universe.

In the collapse of religion, many cultural movements rise up to fill the void. But to me, none have risen to the task quite like wellness culture.

As secularism increases, people want facts and data to affirm their beliefs, and the wellness world has it in spades. No longer do we have to wonder about the mysteries of the universe—psychologists can help to explain our meaning and purpose through brain imaging, therapists can help us make sense of love, loss, and hurt, and biologists can give us proof of where we came from and where we might be going. And woven in between the doctrine are the rituals:

Prayer becomes Meditation apps, confessionals become therapist’s offices, and sermons are replaced by podcasts. Pilates class is the new church, Gwenth Paltrow is Jesus, and what about God?

Some might say we’ve replaced “God” with “Universe”. And in the lexicon that’s probably true—instead of putting faith in a God we trust the universe.

But I think it’s more accurate to say that we’ve become God—the “higher self” reigns supreme, the ultimate goal of this new religion. The thing that all rituals revolve around. Self-care, protecting our peace, personal boundaries—everything in the wellness world is set up to serve us; every app, every overpriced gym membership, every red light device, every supplement, every practitioner.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these things. I love my red light panel and the meditation app I use. I’m as guilty as anyone. And really, what’s the harm in people replacing religion with culture? They’re getting the same things out of it—community, connection, rituals…

It reminds me a lot of the religion I grew up with—religion without spirituality. We did the things you were “supposed” to do, but in the end it was empty, lacked purpose, and left me open to people who would wield it as a weapon against me to get me to bend to their will.

And when you don’t practice the religion to utter perfection, you’re no longer one of us.

Truthfully, I’ve been struggling with where to take this piece. I keep talking myself into dead ends with admittedly half-baked thoughts: ”Well, jeez, it really does sound like wellness is a perfectly fine substitute for religion. It has all the major components. If it looks like a religion, walks like a religion, quacks like a religion, then what am I even writing about”.

But there’s something intangible about religion I can’t quite put my finger on. I want to say that it’s the fact it’s roots run so deep in humanity that is transcends space and time (and branding for that matter). But truthfully, I don’t really know.

But what I do know is this: as a society, we’re getting worse, not better. We’re lonelier, more suicidal, more hopeless about the future, and more physically unwell than ever. The human spirit seems to degrade in tandem with religion. And despite our best efforts, things continue to decline—”wellness” is the top category Gen Z is willing to splurge on, yet they are three times more likely than other generations to experience mental health conditions.

And maybe that’s part of the issue—it’s just another thing people want to throw money at to get to go away. If I just buy this supplement, pay for this therapist, buy these self-help books, I’ll be fine.

It lacks the deeper connection that religions tend to offer. It lacks the deep roots to both the future and the past. It puts you at the center, further driving this “my needs first” individualistic culture that we know isn’t working for anyone. Sure, you might get community out of going to a Pilates class or yoga in the park, but it’s only kept at arm's length because, at the end of the day, you’re there for you, and there just happen to be other people there. It’s missing that sense of being a part of something bigger—a common goal, being of service.

There is also a severe lack of stability—when guidance and doctrine are substituted by information, the goalpost can (and often does) change. As things move at the speed of science and marketing, you’re likely to get left behind.

It begs the question: do you even know what you believe, or just what’s being sold to you?

I’m not saying we need to abandon our therapists and start going to church—I certainly won’t be doing that any time soon—but as we download our meditation apps, fitness trackers, and repeating affirmations, it’s worth asking the question:

What do I actually need?

What am I really in search of?

Because, while it’s great to think for yourself and feel empowered to make your own decisions? Are we? Or have we been mocking religion, only to make a piss poor attempt at mimicking it? Are we free? Or in our “freedom” do we lack the constraints that bring moral guidance, leaving as adrift in a world with too many possibilities, drowning in a sea of options with no tether to let us know which way is up, no one to grab on to when we start to flail?

Is it really freedom? Or did we just run into another cage?
In our quest for information and answers, our reason and logic, did we cut out a critical piece of the human condition that we’re finding out is like cutting off your right arm?

I don’t know. But I think it’s plain to see that our new religions aren’t working. And to be fair, a lot of things about the old one didn’t work, either. But as the pendulum swings, maybe we can take these lessons we’ve picked up along the way and transform them into something more befitting of the human spirit.