While peering out the window at a procession of Greek Orthodox faithful on Good Friday, Katherine Ozment’s eight-year-old son wanted to know why their family didn’t partake in the ritual. He learned from his mother that the reason was because they weren’t Greek Orthodox. “Then what are we?” he asked. Ozment, a former senior editor at National Geographic, was stumped. She tried answering her son’s question and fumbled royally. “We’re nothing,” Ozment told her child. She immediately sensed his disappointment.
The voyage she embarked on took her from university professors’ cluttered offices in Boston to San Francisco’s countercultural Glide Memorial Church—which famously, or infamously, removed the cross from its sanctuary—and many points in between. Much of what she encountered was an attempt to retain or tweak the values, ceremonies, and rituals of a religion while redefining its dogma—or even dispensing with it entirely. The faith in question needn’t be Christian. For example, at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, Stephen Batchelor, a former Buddhist monk, presents one with a form of Buddhism shorn of all mystical elements, such as karma and reincarnation, which he claims are later accretions to the Buddha’s teachings. Other outfits profiled here range from support groups to atheists’ circles. In Chicago, Ozment met with Jim Lasko, coartistic director of Redmoon, the now-defunct theater company that sought to encourage a sense of community by bringing art to public spaces.
By Katherine Ozment (Harper Wave)
