Presented to the Sea of Faith ‘Being Human’ Conference on 27th of July 2022

1. An Introduction
In my talk this afternoon, I’m going to look at the role of ethical and spiritual leaders in addressing the global challenges we face, in particular, at the need for ethical and spiritual leadership, which focuses on the universally human experiences that define human spirituality – experiences such as empathy, oneness, loving-kindness, mystery, self-transcendence and wonder – which have the potential to help us to address both our personal and global challenges. I will then explore the models of inclusive spiritual leadership and community, which I believe have the greatest potential to nurture these experiences and therefore to inspire, motivate and empower individuals and communities to create a better world for us all. This will involve confronting some of the major external and internal obstacles we face in building and sustaining inclusive and democratically-led communities.
So, let’s get started…

2. Being Human Is Easier and Harder
Being human is both easier and harder than it has ever been: easier in that most humans today have unprecedented access to effective health care, labour-saving devices and immediate touch-of-a-button information from all around the world, but harder in that things have never been more complicated in terms of our impact on one another and the planet. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have been stark reminders of how trouble and turmoil in one part of the world can quickly spill over to impact the rest, with often disastrous effects. We modern humans, for the first time in our species’ roughly 200,000 – 300,000-year history (depending on which definition of modern human you use) are now collectively responsible for the fate of every living thing on earth.
We are a young species in comparison to many. We have barely had time to adapt to the environments that nurtured us let alone to adapt to the great transformations to that environment which we have brought about ourselves with the agricultural and industrial revolutions. And now, still barely understanding the consequences of the age of internet and information, we are facing the prospect of fundamentally altering what it means to be human in the light of rapidly developing artificial intelligence and bioengineering.
As David Attenborough has said…

We humans, with all the naivety and frailties of our species’ youth, now find ourselves in a position where in order to survive, let alone flourish, we must somehow accelerate the pace of our rational, emotional and ethical maturing to match the pace of change brought about by the ingenuity with which we’ve been able to exploit the earth’s resources, not only to meet our immediate physical needs, but in many cases, to satisfy the excesses of our greed. We are at a pivotal moment in our history where ordinary people can still take part in defining what it means to be human in the light of inevitable technological development and can build consensus on what our purposes, goals and priorities should be as a species going forward. However, this window of opportunity may well be far smaller than we expect. We cannot afford to let our ethical considerations and associated legal and regulatory processes lag too far behind our actions and those of our neighbours. Too much is at stake.

3. Our Global Existential Challenges
The global challenges we face, such as climate change, the toxification of land, sea and air, mass extinction and the possibility of nuclear conflict, urgently require innovative, ethical, rational and evidence-based solutions, as do the potential threats from unregulated artificial intelligence and bio-engineering technologies. We also face the spectre of exploitation by autocratic and corrupt governments and multi-billion-dollar private companies, which have ever-increasing technologies, that will enable them to survey, intimidate, exploit and control vast populations. And as if all this wasn’t enough to contend with, our human world is still blighted by grave social injustices, such as poverty, wealth inequality, gender inequality, modern slavery, corruption, violence against women and children, systemic racism and the persistence of bigotry and intolerance in all its ugly forms.
In the UK and many other nations, we also have a loneliness epidemic, a mental health and obesity crisis, ongoing family and community breakdown, free speech and safe spaces controversies, cultural and spiritual poverty because of rampant consumerism, celebrity-worship and anti-intellectualism, religious and ideological extremism and radicalisation, and a lack of religious and worldview literacy which leaves people vulnerable to extremist groups and ideologies. We also have an epidemic of fake news, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, pseudo-histories and nationalist myths to contend with.
We have never before had so many tools at our disposal, for forming and enhancing our connections, for meeting one another’s needs and solving the world’s problems, but all too often our technologies are set up or used in ways that serve only to pull us further apart and deepen divisions. We need to make sure, now, that we don’t end up slaves to technologies which are created to exploit our information and our emotional and cognitive weaknesses for the financial gain of technocratic or political elites. We need to make sure we don’t become subject to algorithms, which contain the implicit biases, conscious or unconscious, of those same elites who programme them. We need to make sure our technologies evolve in ways that serve humanity as a whole, and also protect non-human life, and which do so in terms of meeting not only basic needs for food, drink, movement, sleep, shelter and security, but also our higher needs for meaning and purpose, emotional connection and intimacy, community and respect, vocation and achievement, privacy and reflection, and freedom, the freedom that’s associated with having sufficient control over our own lives. Of course, anyone who takes an interest in transhumanism and human enhancement technologies will recognise that our basic and higher needs may well themselves change over time, but this too should be a process which we all have a say in directing, and we need to start having that say, now.

4. The Role of Ethical, Philosophical and Spiritual Leaders
While governments and political movements must take the lead in rising to these challenges, and while we must all support those governments and political movements which do, the work of ethical, philosophical and spiritual leaders should not be underestimated. Community leaders who persevere in the struggle for reason, kindness and social justice without party-political affiliation, and often in the face of considerable adversity, keep society awake to the full extent of the problems and challenges we face. They may at times be the only people left to prevent us from sleepwalking into the next fascist dystopia. They shape public opinion and help us to hold those in political power to account. They invite us to connect with like-minded people, so that budding and potential activists and pioneers from all walks of life receive the support they need to flourish and become the next generation of leaders and reformers. Ethical and spiritual leaders can create communities where all individuals, whatever their abilities and talents, can become part of the solution to the world’s problems. Even where these communities are small, they have the potential to punch well above their weight in terms of influence, and as anthropologist and broadcaster Margaret Mead famously said, “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”
What we need are ethical and spiritual leaders who define spirituality inclusively and provide inclusive spiritual leadership for diverse communities (as well as inclusive spiritual care for individuals) as we navigate both our personal trials and tribulations and the complexities of the modern world. What we need are people who have a passion for grappling with thorny ethical questions and working out as best as they can, what it might mean to live a good life and build a good society in our time; and who are equally passionate about nurturing spiritual and reflective practices that reinforce this vision. I’m not talking about clergy necessarily or people who see themselves as particularly spiritual – and perhaps the less said about those the better – but rather people who are committed to ethical and spiritual growth and who take a keen interest in nurturing the ethical and spiritual potential of others. What we need are people who rise above their labels and affiliations to embrace the skills, talents and insights of a wide range of people, cultures, faiths and philosophical traditions. What we need are people with the humility to accept they may be wrong at times and to own and learn from their mistakes.
One of the things great ethical, philosophical and spiritual leaders of the past (a few of whom are pictured) have in common is their open-mindedness and open-heartedness. They reached across boundaries of gender, class, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation and religion to shake the hand of anyone who shared their commitment to upholding universal human dignity and human rights. They understood the frailties of the human condition and the interdependence of all living things, and so while they stood out as individuals, they nonetheless sought collaborative and democratic models of leadership. Aware of their own weaknesses and failings, they saw the need for us all to hold one other accountable, and they understood that people only grow and develop in character, spirituality and ethical commitment when they reside in community. We cannot grow in isolation, where we are rarely tested and where we all too easily delude ourselves into thinking we are lovelier and more delightful people than we really are.
Many great ethical and spiritual leaders came from faith and belief communities, but unlike most senior clergy and heads of religion, they had the ability to transcend the dogmatism, tribalism and many of the superstitious aspects of their traditions to better appreciate the nuances and mythologies of other faiths, to better appreciate the oneness and interdependence of humanity and to better appreciate the role of reason and science in understanding the world and achieving progress. Therefore, I would argue that today we need a similar approach but taken a step further as befits our time; an approach which nurtures communities that are even more inclusive because they welcome people of all religious and nonreligious worldviews; a humanistic and universalist approach which goes beyond ecumenism and beyond interfaith. For me, this approach means having eyes wide open to the beauties and horrors of the world and facing this reality with honesty and courage. It means having the humility to accept that we cannot make rigid claims to know more than can be proven or demonstrated with reason, science and rigorous scholarship. It means striving to live an ethical life driven by empathy and compassion for all. It means championing human rights, human flourishing and the wellbeing of the earth and all its creatures. Humanism means engaging in a life-time of responsible free-thinking, critical scholarship and the examination of our own assumptions and unconscious bias. It means engaging in the messy reality of human affairs with the determination to build a kinder, more reasonable society.
This humanistic approach has both emerged from and been adopted to varying degrees by the progressive religious reform movements and progressive wings of various religious denominations such as the Unitarians, Universalists, Quakers, Humanistic Jews, Secular Buddhists and many others. We therefore have shared roots, though you wouldn’t think it sometimes given the poor attitudes to cooperation and petty rivalries and prejudices that go on between some of the people in these groups! However, many progressive and humanistic groups have demonstrated how we can create space within a humanistic framework for inclusion and respect for the wide-ranging and changeable beliefs of individuals. For example, most of these groups welcome agnostics, atheists and people with various conceptions of God or divinity, whether it be pantheism, panentheism, mysticism or literary concepts of god as metaphor or personification of some of the spiritual experiences, visions, insights and goals that we have. And while traditional theists with more conservative religious beliefs might feel themselves at odds with these groups, they are usually nonetheless welcomed to events and gatherings and are able to express their beliefs openly. It is only through open dialogue in genuinely caring community that people can truly come to understand the perspectives and values that underpin one another’s beliefs and where we can learn to live with integrity, which is when our lived experiences, values, beliefs and actions are in harmony rather than in contradiction.
Humanist groups such as Humanists UK, often express the importance of thinking for yourself and acting for everyone, but many individual Humanists do not promote the idea of doing this as part of a community because they are understandably wary of communities and all the things that can go wrong with them, such as ‘group think’, conformism, dogmatism, leader-worship, mass hysteria, tribalism and hostility towards outsiders. However, while it may at times be easier for people to think for themselves when they are outside groups and communities, the likelihood that such individuals will consistently act altruistically or in ways that benefit us all is somewhat low. An individualism, however beneficent in intention, cannot successfully instil principles in society, or in the very young, or empower us collectively to reach mutually beneficial goals. It isn’t enough for progressive-minded people just to quietly vote for the most ethical party (which let’s face it, is often the best of a bad bunch); it isn’t enough to meet occasionally to put the world to rights over a drink in the pub or a game of frisbee in the park, or to give themselves the occasional injection of culture at a library, museum or concert hall. It takes rather more to meet the human need for connection, and to educate, motivate, inspire and encourage us to take the actions that are necessary to meet the challenges we face as a species.
Most people with noble intentions who get involved in politics, campaigning and activism – and indeed pioneering roles in many other areas of life – have been nurtured and supported at least to some extent by being part of a non-political belief or faith community, and this includes many Humanists of course. There aren’t that many people who have the confidence, means or opportunities to develop outside of community and to go it alone. “Join a political party!”, some may say, but political parties and organisations often have critical weaknesses associated with their quest for political power. We need ethical and spiritual communities precisely because they are independent from political processes and do not have to make so many compromises. We need ethical and spiritual communities where we can find belonging and the resources we need for self-actualisation and where we can connect to purposes, narratives and goals beyond ourselves, beyond our immediate families, and beyond our political parties, political ideologies and national mythologies (that’s the level of self-transcendence we really need).
The majority of religious communities, of course, have historically combined nobler spiritual goals with ruthless quests for political power, and in doing so became ruling parties themselves, or embedded themselves in secular governance as king-maker priests, and even in some cases, such as the Roman Catholic Church, rivalled native ruling parties across multiple borders. In contrast, one of the fundamental principles and goals of progressive and humanistic communities should always be to remain separate from the state and to refrain from seeking political power, while nonetheless holding political powers to account.
Let’s look just a little more closely at how we should define spirituality in this context…

5. Spirituality Defined Broadly
Humanists and progressives do not use the word ‘spirituality’ to refer only or even primarily to what people perceive to be experiences or encounters with a supernatural being, beings or forces, though these experiences do still form an important part of many people’s understanding of what it means to be spiritual. Instead, they use the term in a much broader sense, which applies to those who have no belief in the supernatural as much as it applies to those who do. Humanistic and progressive communities are those which attend to the universal experiences that define human spirituality, and which are common to all humans whether we are religious or nonreligious.
As some of you may know, I have outlined the various aspects of this kind of spirituality in an article on my blog, so I won’t go into great detail here, but to summarise, your spirituality is your ability to connect with the things that give life meaning, purpose and joy. Growing in spirituality is like learning to play an instrument; the more you practice the better you get. Ultimately, spirituality is the creation and renewal of meaning in life. It is about attending to the inner life; our innermost thoughts and feelings, our personal stories and character, and our collective stories, identities, heritages and cultures. It is about connecting meaningfully with one another using wisdom and empathy. It is about expressing and refining our creativity, ingenuity and art-forms, and taking inspiration from the works of others in turn. It is about appreciating the awe-inspiring beauty and complexity of the universe and understanding our place within it. It is about finding purpose in a vocation, and in causes far greater than ourselves, such as social justice, human rights and environmental repair. It means maintaining fidelity to core beliefs and values while also being willing to question them and allowing them to evolve. Spirituality requires that we maintain a growth mentality, and a life-long commitment to truth-seeking, through open-mindedness, openheartedness, critical scholarship, reflective practice and mindfulness.
These aspects of spirituality, when nurtured and developed, have the potential to help us to address both our personal and global challenges because they inspire compassion and cooperation. They emphasise the importance of critical thinking and truth, the importance of ethical reflection and dialogue, the benefits of character development and a society in which we care for each other. They nurture wonder, curiosity, exploration and creative problem-solving, and they inspire activism, fuelling efforts to save the planet. It is this kind of spiritual leadership that I believe is so essential for societies today.

6. Secularisation and the Irrelevance of Today’s Spiritual Leaders
However, many of our so-called spiritual leaders, and the institutions they represent, are woefully out-of-date in their ethics and approach, and have been for decades, and yes, I am talking about religious leaders, like these (image on slide), who as you see, are relics from a bygone age, and I’m talking about their ideas, not just their clothes (not to mention that an alarming number of them have been implicated in the cover up of child sexual abuse). The vast majority (with one or two exceptions) would not make it onto my earlier slide of social reformers, and it’s the social reformers, not the clerics, who have always been the real ethical and spiritual leaders.
Consequently, many religious leaders, for example in the UK, are heeded and respected by only a very small and rapidly diminishing proportion of the population, in spite of their continued privileged access to the media. This is especially the case in Europe but secularisation is also continuing at breakneck pace in many other parts of the world. Even in the USA, where we hear a great deal about faith in public life and where Evangelical Christians still hold on to disproportionate wealth, power and privilege, the younger generations are rapidly moving towards more liberal beliefs and secular lifestyles, with generational replacement being a key driver of secularisation. According to Pew Research, Gallup polls and other measures, religious affiliation is very much in decline in the US with churchgoing having dropped from 70% to under 50% since the start of the 21st Century, while atheists, agnostics and the nonreligious now represent at least a quarter of the population.
Even in parts of the Islamic world, where it is still socially unacceptable to be nonreligious, where openly nonreligious people such as Humanists are still imprisoned, tortured and killed under oppressive religious laws and regimes, and where people are in consequence, very rarely open about their lack of faith, there are still signs of increasing numbers of people turning their backs on religion, with more ex-Muslims and liberal or non-traditional Muslims gaining higher profiles and followings online and books by atheist and agnostic authors gaining increasing interest in Islamic countries, including works by ex-Muslims and books by eminent scientists such as Richard Dawkins. Indeed, the unofficial Arabic pdf of Dawkins’ book, ‘The God Delusion’, had been downloaded more than 13m times by 2018, prompting the author to respond with a programme to make free downloads of his books available in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Indonesian. These are signs perhaps of private, if not public, doubt and scepticism, or at the very least a curiosity great enough to brave potential punishment or social disapprobation if found or reported to be reading such books.
And so, with the decline of faith and belief affiliations in many parts of the world, with the ever-present threat of fundamentalist, exclusivist and dogmatic forms of religion which still have their strongholds, in addition to the huge burden of global challenges and a worldwide epidemic of loneliness and isolation, our need for dynamic and sustainable models of progressive ethical and spiritual leadership, fit for the 21st Century and beyond, has never been more urgent. While it is true that secular and democratic nations have soared to the top of the pile in terms of equality and happiness measures and have remained there consistently on account of their grounding in human rights and their strong commitment to social welfare – and while they have therefore proven that organised religion is not required for human flourishing – and may even be an obstacle in some respects – they still fall short in terms of being able to avert the existential threats to humanity already outlined here. We can learn a lot from countries like Finland, Denmark and Sweden but we must also aim higher. We need spiritual leaders and communities that actually do lead society on ethical issues rather than outdated religious leaders and communities, which refuse or struggle to keep up!

Let’s have a closer look for a moment at the British context in terms of the decline of religious affiliation. British Social Attitudes Surveys and YouGov polls show that 52% British population have no religious affiliation, and research by leading academics in this field such as Professor Linda Whitehead in Sociology at the University of Lancaster, have revealed that levels of religious practice are even lower. More than 72% of 17-24-year-olds are also without religious affiliation, and like in the US, generational replacement is a key driver of secularisation, in spite of the best efforts of Roman Catholic and Church of England schools to indoctrinate our children with Christian beliefs and practices.
While only 5% of the UK population are Humanists, the movement is now mainstream with many high-profile members and patrons of Humanists UK and a much wider audience than the membership, on account of the organisation’s cutting-edge public lectures, talks, and publications, its widespread network of wedding, funeral and naming celebrants and its highly skilled network of pastoral carers and chaplains in hospitals, prisons and universities. We know that somewhere between 20 and 30% of the population now share the humanistic worldview, indicating that many people are Humanists without affiliation or without awareness that there is a name for their worldview. Additionally, many people, including people in the Sea of Faith network no doubt, are progressive or humanistic in their religious expressions, and will have much more in common with Humanists than with the more conservative wings of their own faiths or denominations. There are certainly signs of a growing ‘coalition of the reasonable’ across many and diverse faith, belief, cultural and ethnic groups and organisations.
There are of course many nuances and complexities hidden within the statistics on faith and belief, and I see this every day in my role as a chaplain. For example, many people who claim a religious affiliation are actually humanistic or universalist in worldview but identify culturally or ethnically with a religion, and conversely, many who claim no religious affiliation still have a various superstitious beliefs and beliefs in supernatural beings or forces. While only a small number of the latter actually engage in religious or religion-like practices, there are some growing movements, including among the young, such as pagan religiosity of various kinds, as we’ve seen with WitchTok and the growth in Witch, Wiccan and other Pagan social media influencers.
It is also important to note that many people these days have layered and multiple faith and belief identities, partly due to an increase in cultural and ethnic diversity and an increase in interfaith-marriage, and partly, or perhaps primarily, because it is now socially acceptable to choose your own independent spiritual path and because communities of faith and belief and information about these is far more accessible now than it used to be. You can now go online and join a community the other side of the world if you don’t find your perfect fit here! Many people simply come across more than one faith, philosophy or belief system which appeals to them, and they often come up with their own interpretation of these that suits their particular cultural context or core values.
Interestingly, the majority of my patients and the staff and students I meet in my work, are open to aspects of all faith and belief traditions, though they almost always add the caveat that they draw the line at elements of those faiths that are explicitly prejudicial in some way (and also elements that are implicitly prejudicial in the case of the more perceptive among them) when it comes to gender, sexuality, race and so forth. They are very aware of the harm done by organised religion and talk about it at length, but while they are reluctant to affiliate as a result, they are nonetheless open to the spiritual insights of all traditions.
I am particularly aware of people’s sceptical and suspicious attitudes towards organised religion because of how often and easily I am dismissed on introduction because people assume a chaplain is a Christian minister with either an overt or covert agenda to proselytise, or at the very least, a tendency to talk about God in an intrusive manner. Hostility towards religion is understandable given the history of oppression and abuse by religious authorities, and religious institutions have been out of step with public opinion on ethical issues (LGBTQ+, women’s rights etc.) for decades, including I might add the majority opinion of their own congregations. In addition to this, there is now little perceived need of religious leaders, since secular welfare states have largely replaced religious charities, science has provided a more complete and evidence-based explanation of how we came to be, and it is now, unusually in the history of humanity, socially acceptable to be progressive or nonreligious.
We live in an increasingly multi-worldview, multicultural and pluralistic society. Whether we like it or not, the only thing holding us together, and the only thing capable of holding us together, are common values. We are enormously diverse when it comes to culture. This doesn’t mean that with the decline of religion our ethical and spiritual communities have to become blandly uniform or that they will have to take on a sort of global Western liberal culture. On the contrary, we should celebrate and encourage the emergence of multiple progressive and humanistic communities that preserve the distinct cultures, traditions, histories and heritages of their peoples even if in modified, reinterpreted and repurposed forms. The Humanistic Jews I think are a great example of how this can be achieved successfully. While some communities will be very secular in character because they emerge from non-religious populations, others will be very religious in character, and a few, like some Unitarian churches and interfaith centres, will try to incorporate many traditions into their gatherings, calendars and events. We must remember that our common values and universal human rights have been struggled for at different times in almost every culture and part of the world. It is simply not right to claim they are Western values, as some have claimed in order to dismiss or discredit them in the eyes of the West’s political enemies, and in order to promote their own illiberal agendas.
People often don’t realise that secularisation is a change more great and rapid than the Reformation! It has freed millions people from religious oppression, abuse and censorship. However, alongside the move to online communities, which simply aren’t fulfilling human need in the same way as local face-to-face community and which moreover bring out the worst in people rather than supporting them to connect more meaningfully, secularisation may have exacerbated some of the problems we now face, where support that once came from local churches has not yet been fully or adequately replaced by state institutions. Our states are ill equipped, unable and often unwilling to fill this gap. Only inclusive ethical and spiritual communities have the potential to do so.
So let’s start looking at some of the models that these communities might follow and some of the internal and external challenges they face…

7. An Age of Activism
Firstly, I need to emphasise that we are now living in an age of activism. The vast majority of modern Europeans, and increasingly many more of the world’s peoples, just aren’t interested in old ecclesiastical traditions, denominations, outdated theological dogma and social conservatism. However, they are interested in universal and inclusive understandings of human spirituality and spiritual experiences. They are interested in ethical and philosophical questioning and debate. They are interested in social justice, environmental justice, wellbeing, community-building and activism.
So, if in your community, however progressive its philosophy, there is an expectation for people to spend a lot of time and money learning about your tradition, studying theology and so forth before they can become involved – and I mean fully involved in leading, speaking and contributing in all sorts of creative ways – you really have a problem which is only going to get worse. If your organisations are not reaching out to young people and embracing the interests and technologies of the times, your denomination or movement, however progressive its philosophy, will continue to decline out of existence, probably in the space of only a generation or two. It is the unwillingness of progressive groups to work together, learn from each other and listen to what younger people want and need which is bringing about their decline and which in some cases will leave a vacuum where high-control and fundamentalist groups and cults may even appear more appealing to the youthful and naive.
The leadership of Humanistic and progressive groups must place greater trust in younger generations, let go of all the strings they’ve attached to their buildings and practices and instead welcome young people and the change that they bring. They must refrain from gate-keeping by means of nepotism and by creating endless obstacles and hoops for new people to jump through. Simple competency models that take transferrable skills into account would be a far more effective and fair way of recruiting voluntary and paid participants. They must come to terms with the fact that no one is interested in old ecclesiastical traditions and identities anymore. They are only of interest to niche historians, people who have grown up in your denomination or sect or who happen to have been a member of it for 30 years or so. I understand that there is a process of mourning to be undertaken in some denominations around this, and that is absolutely understandable, but it mustn’t hold them back from moving forward. It is time to accept those depressing statistics, to admit that the current models of faith and belief community are not working and are no longer fit for purpose.

8. A Declining Congregational Model
When I came to the realisation that religious communities were not modernising enough, or at all in some cases, I became curious about nonreligious and humanistic communities led by agnostic and atheist ministers. I went along to a few of their gatherings and found their creative and thoughtfully choreographed services incredibly refreshing, often deeply moving and more inclusive than anywhere I had been previously. They were a step forward, having managed to free themselves from outdated traditions and even from some of the red tape of their parent denominations. Best of all, there were none of those painful and cringe-worthy moments of Christian exclusivism, or where out of mindless habit, passages of scripture would be read, hymns sung or liturgy reeled off containing implicitly sexist or racist stories, messages and language, in the midst of an otherwise enlightened and progressive framework.
However, I still felt somewhat uncomfortable with the congregational model, especially with its one-man-ministry style of leadership, which depends too much on the charisma and public speaking abilities of one person (and yes, while there are some women doing this, it does still tend to be male dominated even in progressive circles). Even with the checks and balances of their associated institutions, such as the unitarians, universalists or ethical union, it still felt a little too close to the age-old charismatic leader model from which cults and most religions have sprung. It wasn’t so much that I suspected these leaders and congregations would rapidly degenerate into cults and high-control groups, but more that this reliance on one person would make that a real risk for these communities in the longer term, and would also result in a series of ‘flash in the pan’ movements that are not sustainable or capable of real growth and development over generations, since these communities tend to last only as long as their charismatic leaders.
I also started hearing increasingly from colleagues, friends, students, staff and people more widely, in conversations about spirituality and community, that while progressive faith and nonreligious congregations were somewhat intriguing and might make an interesting one-off experience, there was very little interest or enthusiasm for joining such a congregation. This is because of concerns like mine about charismatic men preaching and teaching (even if they are teaching progressive and humanist ethics and philosophy). There was also a perceived lack of openness to people with all sorts of different beliefs including superstitious and supernatural beliefs, and a perceived lack of ethnic and class diversity in their leadership among other things. I’m using the word “perceived” here because even though these communities are open to all, there are inevitably cultural factors which are indirectly excluding of people from, for example, working class and ethnic minority backgrounds, many of which the leadership won’t even be conscious of or able to do much about, and this in addition to self-censorship such as certain groups of people thinking “it’s not for the likes of us”. Progressive faith congregations, in spite of various efforts and drives to increase diversity, are still overwhelmingly white, middle class and elderly.
Some of the nonreligious congregations are doing better in attracting young people and greater cultural and ethnic diversity. The Sunday Assemblies, for example, though passed the height of their appeal, continue to be successful in attracting youth in prime urban centres like London and New York. However, they have experienced considerable decline outside those centres. There were 48 Assemblies in 2019 and now there are only 19 active Assemblies, 13 dormant and 2 starter groups (no doubt having been hit hard by the pandemic it remains to be see whether they can gather momentum again). They are only sustainable where populations are large enough that there will be enough people who like that sort of thing to sustain a community and enough high-profile leaders, speakers, musicians and performers to draw upon to keep those people interested. Many people find them too much like secular versions of evangelical churches, accusing them of superficiality and trendiness, and for the central role played by charismatic musicians and speakers. After all, the Sunday Assemblies were started by former evangelicals, Sanderson Jones, and an old classmate of mine, Pippa Evans, who were glad to be free from religious dogma but were missing aspects of Christian worship such as regular exciting gatherings, with passionate communal singing, rousing talks and lots of youthful social interaction. However, in spite of cynicism from some quarters, they are doing better than many of the progressive congregations.
My overriding feeling was that these congregational set-ups were too limiting. Some will thrive for a time under an appealing minister – especially an attractive one – and then decline with the loss of that person. So, while they may still have a place – even if a transient one – something more sustainable is needed. We need more democratic models, which will outlast any one individual but which still maintain the dynamism and excitement that charismatic speakers can bring. None of the progressive religious or nonreligious organisations seem to have carried out an extensive consultation out in the wider society to ask what people would like as an inclusive solution to the lack of community, community breakdown and endemic loneliness and isolation. However, it seems clear from talking to a wide range of people and groups that the current offering is not meeting the need and therefore not viable in the long term. And as for the Humanist local groups associated with the Humanist national movements, while these are not congregations as such, they are still attempts at building community but they vary enormously in terms of how active they are and what they provide, and they tend to come and go with even greater facility as their leaders come and go.
We need a model that not only provides a life-long local community bigger than each person’s individual friends and family, so that it has some permanence and is there whatever happens to us in our lives, therefore providing a sense of security, but which also continues over generations. With congregations, their strength is their independence from public institutions and their ability to act as critical friends to wider society and the powers that be but this strength is only useful if it is sustainable. They also have the benefit of central, uplifting and dedicated spaces for reflection and gathering, and with the decline of the high street and with the Church of England and other denominations having to sell of their properties due to decline, it seems an opportune moment to secure even more space, but they have not the means to expand within, let alone beyond, their current sites. However, even if a congregation only attracts a few local activists and radicals it can have a disproportionate impact on the wider community by helping to support and empower those key people. We can also benefit from a mixture of models that complement each other since there is no one-size-fits-all model, and I certainly don’t want to downplay the advantages of having Humanist and progressive congregations in large urban centres. However, these congregations must find ways of making sure women and minorities are proportionately represented in their leadership or they will have the same issues with abuse, racism and misogyny that blights the conservative communities. This is something they rarely achieve, and in general, I just don’t think the public will ever really trust the congregational model again. The fact it has failed over a long period to succeed in smaller places bears this out. It simply demands too much of one person.
Humanist clergyman, James Frey Croft, soon-to-be-stepping-down leader for eight years of The Ethical Society of St Louis, defines the role of clergy as follows…
“1. We represent a tradition to the world. We are, ideally, living embodiments of our religious or spiritual worldview. We are avatars of a particular perspective on life. This is a heavy burden, because it means we are never not working: everything we do may be seen as a reflection on our community and our tradition.
2. We identify the emotional needs within a community and speak to them. We try to figure out what our community needs to feel, and then seek to engender that feeling through our words and deeds. This is very difficult, because what a community needs is often various and tough to discern.
3. We provide opportunities for our members to deepen their relationships with each other and their relationship with the tradition we represent. We succeed when we help them know each other better, and live more in accord with the values of the tradition.
4. We mobilize our members in service of our tradition’s values. We try to get them to take action, collectively, to move the world closer to our vision of how it should be. This is the activism piece.
5. We help people through life. When things are hard, we try to remind people what’s most important and how they can reorient themselves toward their highest values.”
While I much admire James’s work, and while this vision for clergy is admirable, I believe these points also illustrate the impossibility of the task for any one person. This role is based on the role of religious clergy, and so carries forward all their weaknesses as much as their strengths. It requires what I call the ‘priestly’ and ‘prophetic’ talents, the priestly talents being the ability to care sensitively for individuals and build community around rituals, seasons and gatherings and the prophetic talents being the ability to read the times, issue warnings and ‘speak truth to power’. Many people are simply much better at one aspect of this role than another, and very few people are good at both or have time to develop in all these areas, at least not in the particular ways expected by their congregants. So, for example, one clergy-person might be an excellent writer and pastoral carer, thus covering both priestly and prophetic roles to some degree, but they may be a poor public speaker or poor master of ceremonies. Another may be a really inspiring public speaker but lack the emotional intelligence or interpersonal skills to be a good pastoral and spiritual carer. I have certainly known many clergy like this over the years from denominations spanning all the major faith and belief traditions. It is simply a fact that too much was and is expected of them. And furthermore, it is most definitely true that one person cannot themselves provide, or even independently arrange for others to provide, sufficient care for everyone in a community or raise awareness of all the social and ethical issues that need to be raised.
I understand that many churches and organisations have teams and that many ministers think of themselves as working within teams rather than independently, but the reality is that they are expected by congregations to lead in all these areas, and they are held responsible for not doing so adequately. Occasionally, more than one minister or a group of elders in a community get together on an equal footing to run a church or other religious establishment but these mostly end up splitting, with congregations dividing in all sorts of traumatic and acrimonious ways. Meanwhile, churches with rigid hierarchical structures tend to become corrupt and abusive because of the concentration of power at the top, where leaders are too far removed to understand let alone meet the needs and expectations of their congregants.
I would argue that it is because of the failings of this congregational model that most progressive faith and belief organisations are also in decline. Some congregations claim to have a growing influence through an online following, but again, online communities can lull congregations into a false sense of security. Such communities are often very superficial, fickle and changeable, with many members not being engaged regularly and not contributing enough financially to preserve the very services they are enjoying from a distance. And online communities can barely begin to meet people’s needs in comparison to real-life ones.

9. The Solution
While there is, therefore, still a place for some Unitarian, Universalist, Progressive, Ethical Culture and Sunday Assembly congregations in the world’s largest urban centres, where there is always going to be a large enough pool from which to draw the right kind of charismatic leaders and enough adherents to make it sustainable, I am now convinced that the congregational model is no longer fit for purpose more widely than that and is not even ideal for those urban centres. I’m going to argue that our energies would be far better focused on the following three areas:
Firstly, we must build, reform and expand upon a multifaith and belief chaplaincy model of spiritual leadership and care, which is embedded within state and private institutions. Secondly, we must combine this model with independent local social enterprises focused on ethics, spirituality, philosophy, wellbeing, community and activism, which have premises central to every town, and which remain outside state institutions. And thirdly, we must create sites and trails of multifaith and belief retreat and pilgrimage, which link ethical and spiritual growth to place, cultural identities and heritages.
10. Independent and Inclusive Social Enterprises
The social enterprise model would largely replace the congregational model and could also field chaplains to institutions. It would take the form of an elected board of directors, possibly a figurehead, such as a President for ceremonial purposes, and many specialist leaders and teachers giving talks, leading workshops and engaging in activism. These enterprises could be charities with ethical commercial arms, or they could be community interest companies.
The social enterprise model would solve the problem of continuity, since a board of directors can be very diverse and many different types of people can be elected to it. It also means that power would no longer be concentrated in one person or a distant elite, and yet, it still allows space for charismatic and inspiring speakers to lead events on a regular basis. It just does not bestow unnecessary power on any one particular person. This model is also extremely adaptable to the talents, skills and resources available in any particular locality, which is crucial for such communities to thrive beyond the world’s major urban centres and for them to proliferate within them. However, rather than just being like a community centre, there would be a strong focus on inclusive spirituality, ethical engagement and activism. They would, importantly, be independent from state institutions, and therefore more able to make constructive criticism of state and society as a critical friend, and freer to offer social commentary and openly discuss controversial ethical issues. They would also keep the spiritual focus on ethics, activism and social reform, inspiring the kinds of leaders I suggested were the truly spiritual ones, and away from the selfish, individualistic and insular forms of piety that so many congregations fall into.
Some might have titles like ‘The Ethical and Philosophical Society of…(Wherever)’ or ‘The (Wherever) Centre for Ethics, Spirituality and Activism’ or perhaps something inspired by local history, and people would be able to access seasonal events and celebrations, reflective gatherings and wellbeing groups without cost, as well as having access to classes in more specialised subjects, which might be low cost or subsidised by donations and grants. Like congregations, they will vary, reflecting the culture and traditions of the people who establish them.
Further advantages to this model are that many more and diverse minds will be involved in the centres’ direction and strategy. There would also be far more scope to involve experts from multiple fields and therefore to interest and cater for many more people in any given district. For example, while one person might come along every other day to socialise in the hall or café and attend a weekly meditation class, another might choose to attend the occasional public lecture and have a monthly massage. Thus, these centres would take a holistic approach to the person rather than only focusing on a weekly gathering. It would be less likely to become ideological or dogmatic because of its inclusion of a broad, collaborative leadership base, and the reflective experiences available to people would be much more varied, so that no one would have to look elsewhere for ritual or music or for silence and stillness.
These social enterprises can also take full advantage of ideal community sizes to suit different people, since some people might find their need for social connection met in a particular small group or workshop activity and by attending the occasional talk or performance with a friend or two, while the more gregarious among us would be free to form connections across the full range of groups and activities and to attend large reflective gatherings, whole community celebrations and activist demonstrations. Also, international connections and partnerships could be made with overseas communities. There would of course have to be a multifaith and belief approach to the calendar and nature of reflective gatherings and ceremonies, which as I explained requires a humanistic framework of shared values and goals in order for it to work. And in order to lift people’s mood and attention to higher things, founders would need to create beautiful reflective spaces for these centres. Centres like this could also sustain wider communities in more remote or rural areas by offering training and resources for small groups and gatherings.
In terms of weaknesses specific to this model, there is only the issue of a more democratic set up being slower at times to make decisions or change direction when necessary. However, much of this comes down to the rules and regulations people put in place in their particular locality, and in fact, many one-man ministries are hidebound by the rules, regulations and red tape of the organisations they represent. There is also the ever-present challenge of forming connections across the deeply entrenched social divides already existing in wider society. People are always inclined to gravitate to those similar to themselves and since most initiatives like this are started by middle class educated people, they often attract the same sorts which in turn puts off other people from taking part. It’s why equality, diversity and inclusion must be considered right from the start and if possible, it should start with the founding team. It would be a pity for new initiatives to fall into the same trap as the older organisations which have struggled and largely failed to diversify their memberships, but I think the diversity of the offering, and the chance to dip a toe in rather than have to attend a weekly service with the whole community present, could well be exactly the thing to coax the wary and reluctant to take part.
Before I go on to explore the multifaith chaplaincy model, it’s worth considering the continued and expanding role of…

11. Sites of Retreat and Trails of Pilgrimage
There have been significant increases in people going on pilgrimages and attending retreats in recent years, no doubt because of a yearning to connect to the earth in its time of distress and to connect with each other in times when we have felt most disconnected. The interesting thing about this is that it’s not simply because religious people are experiencing a renewal of their faith but that many nonreligious people are taking part in order to reflect for themselves on the meaning and purpose of their lives and on their values, beliefs and priorities. We have seen with the BBC series’ showing groups of celebrities on pilgrimage how pilgrimage can offer people of all faith and belief persuasions the chance to reflect on what’s important to them, to share and discuss this and learn from others who have different perspectives, while enjoying the very bonding experience of traveling, eating and sleeping under the same roof together, and of sharing unusual, often once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
Some of the most profound experiences and vivid memories in my own life were formed in places such as Iona, that have long received pilgrims and been home to spiritual communities, and often spiritual communities that were welcoming in ways that were ahead of their times. The Iona Community, for example, was founded by George MacLeod in ways that were liberal and ecumenical at a time when religious bigotry and sectarian were rife. There is still a place for these ecumenical and interfaith communities with wider followings of associate members and friends, with Iona, Taize and others maintaining their core membership and still attracting large numbers of visitors. They have longevity on account of their association with a place and its history. However, there is also a need for those who have moved beyond ecumenism to a multifaith and belief model to create more up-to-date pilgrimages and retreats. It may well be that the kind of spiritual communities I’m advocating for, might form more easily on retreats and pilgrimages, centred on a particular place or places. It has long been a dream of mine to establish a multifaith and belief pilgrimage in the South West but my earlier plans for one in 2019 were thwarted by the pandemic. The perennial problem of course for endeavours like this, is of course securing funding, and convincing people of the benefits of this kind of work.

12. Multifaith and Belief Chaplaincies
So, we have a vision here for spiritual social enterprises and multifaith pilgrimage trails and retreat sites. The final piece of the puzzle are the multifaith chaplaincies. Social enterprises maintain their independence, but chaplains on the other hand, work in hospitals, mental health, prisons, the military, schools, universities, and for the police, ambulance and other emergency services. They are embedded within (and often employed by) institutions and so are bound by their rules, which is both empowering and limiting. It is empowering in that chaplains come alongside people where they work and live and spend most of their waking lives, and because they can get involved in shaping those institutions on boards of governance, staff networks and ethics committees, with the potential to influence large numbers of people as a result. However, it can be limiting in that chaplains may find it difficult in practice to be a critical friend to their institutions when institutional injustices occur. They may find it harder to call out wrongdoing and advocate for the oppressed and marginalised if their own positions may be threatened by doing so.
This is why it is important to combine multifaith chaplaincies with independent social enterprises, so that plenty of ethical and spiritual leaders remain independent of institutions, and chaplains themselves will benefit also from having more than one allegiance, if they remain formerly accredited by external faith/belief organisations in addition to being employed by the institutions they work for. Many chaplains are still paid by their faith/belief traditions of course, which is not ideal, since it perpetuates inequalities where some faiths or denominations have the means to field chaplains and others do not, often for historical and outdated reasons, which do not reflect levels of affiliation in the wider population.
As a chaplain myself, my particular passion is for making the highest standards of inclusive spiritual care available to all, equally, everywhere. Our institutions are often good at meeting our basic physical needs, but they have less time and fewer resources to address our higher needs for meaning and purpose. The latter are often considered a luxury once our basic needs have been met, but the reality is that it’s our higher needs that motivate us to get out of bed each morning and attend to our basic needs in the first place. Pastoral and spiritual care is about helping people, often when they are in difficult and painful circumstances, to connect to the things that give their lives meaning, purpose and joy, and we facilitate this by listening, by being non-judgmental and compassionate company, by creating space for people to speak and to reflect on their own situations, by offering the perspectives of other minds (our own and perhaps the insights of other thinkers), by signposting and advocacy, and by facilitating a wide range of reflective, creative and therapeutic practices, rituals, gatherings and ceremonies.
In many settings, chaplains have an educational and awareness-raising role through publications, public speaking and other media. They are well placed to raise ethical issues with management, to facilitate ethical and interfaith/belief engagement and dialogue more widely in an institution, and to speak out publicly about issues of social justice, environment and sustainability, human rights, wellbeing and social issues, corporate social responsibility and issues of faith/belief discrimination, fundamentalism, extremism and radicalisation. They have a responsibility to advocate for marginalised and oppressed groups among staff or service users and for any individuals experiencing bullying, harassment or discrimination, and to promote equality, diversity and inclusion more generally. Chaplains are also called upon to mediate and engage with the media in times of crisis and controversy. Like clergy, therefore, chaplains are often expected to fulfil both ‘priestly’ and ‘prophetic’ roles, and many of the traditional clergy-chaplains like to think they can do this, but again, the reality is that most of them are better at some aspects of the role than others or good at some and poor at others. The benefit of multifaith chaplaincy set-ups is that there can be teams large and diverse enough to provide not just a wide base of faith and belief knowledge and associated cultural content, but also a broad range of talents, skills and ethical knowledge and interests, and the potential for greater specialisation and development in key aspects of the work.
However, the greatest obstacle to overcome in realising this model is that while much lip service is paid to equality, diversity and inclusion at senior levels and in documentation, the overwhelming majority of UK chaplaincies simply are not multifaith in any real or deep sense, and show very little sign of wanting to open up and include people of other faiths and beliefs. In fact, discrimination is widespread, even where it blatantly contravenes the Equality Act, and teams where lead chaplains or chaplaincy coordinators (the vast majority of whom are Christian and indeed Anglican), are inclusive both in word and deed, are very few and far between. I have heard countless stories of discrimination and even abuse from those who have tried to join chaplaincy teams or had to leave them, many from my own nonreligious network but also from minority faith and belief groups, and as a result I am currently leading a working group looking at what can be done to address these issues.
Another critical issue chaplaincies face is that they need to connect service users with communities outside institutions in order to meet their social and spiritual needs in the longer term. There needs to be fully integrated and continuous pastoral and spiritual care throughout the life course. This is very difficult, given the lack of demonstrably safe and inclusive communities. In many parts of the country, it is impossible to suggest or recommend a faith or belief community without concerns about how inclusive, welcoming and even safe those groups are, especially for vulnerable people. Spiritual leadership needs therefore, more than ever, to be a collaborative project among chaplains and leaders of local groups, which is why the inclusive social enterprise model is so crucial to this vision.
Currently, chaplains tend to offer a service only to the small minority of service users who belong to the chaplains’ particular faith denominations, which means a very small number of people disproportionately benefit from resources put into chaplaincy, and chaplains fail to provide an effective service to the wider community. A multifaith approach promises diversity but can lead to chaplaincy becoming further marginalised where the inclusion of conservative chaplains puts chaplaincies at odds with institutional values. The 2019 Church of England report on ‘Chaplaincies on Campus’ suggests this is worsening at university chaplaincies because there is a history of conflict on campuses between religious groups and LGBTQ+ societies and women’s group and there are sensitivities. Chaplains cannot work together without common principles and goals, which are the same or at least compatible with the stated values, usually humanistic, of the institutions they work in. Therefore, most chaplains will increasingly have to be drawn from the humanistic and progressive movements and traditions and the Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network. Conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist chaplains will always struggle to be included, and where they are included, will result in institutions keeping chaplaincies at arm’s length as happens today, because they are understandably seen as a liability. This is a real problem, since on the one hand it is important to have institutional values that protect equality and human rights, especially for women and the LGBTQ+ communities, but on the other hand, inclusivity in faith and belief can help people to work through their differences and can even educate people who would otherwise be pushed perhaps to further extremes. Can a two-tier system work, where only inclusive chaplains are employed by institutions but conservative religious chaplains can be included as volunteers and only serve their particular groups, or does that intolerance of the intolerant entirely undermine the concept of inclusivity itself? Interestingly, where chaplaincies are already led by inclusive chaplains, this separation tends to happen naturally, since more conservative chaplains opt out of fully inclusive and interfaith work.
We certainly need to develop a pluralistic inter-worldview approach, which goes beyond tolerance to shared values and collaboration. My counterpart at Harvard University, Greg Epstein, founded the Pluralism Project, an interfaith/inter-worldview project which has been highly successful and demonstrates how this might be done. An approach which is non-creedal, socially liberal, inclusive and creative, with Lead Chaplains who are employed at least in part by their hosting institutions rather than their faith or belief group, and who have knowledge and take inspiration from the insights and practices of many faith and philosophical traditions, will much better reflect the values and spirituality of service users in 21st century Britain. It is an integrated and more genuine and meaningful multifaith model than I and many of my counterparts have experienced, and one which requires inclusive chaplains who occupy an ‘in between’ space as a critical friend to both their hosting institutions and their sponsoring faith or belief bodies.
While multifaith chaplaincies need to avoid dogmatism, they must also avoid that bland uniformity I mentioned earlier, making it especially important to achieve cultural and ethnic diversity and to include people from as many different faith and belief backgrounds as possible. This provides checks and balances within the teams because there would be plenty of people with different perspectives and affiliations and a wider range of ideas and potential. It means chaplaincies also wouldn’t suffer so much with the decline of a religious or belief group or denomination, and it means that they would be somewhat insulated from any ‘group think’ or other internal problems that go on in a particular sect or denomination.
Currently, most chaplaincies as I said are dominated by the Church of England, which has the resources to field paid chaplains and on account of this and for historical reasons takes a huge majority of Lead Chaplain positions in spite of their small and ever-dwindling congregations and the fact that less than 15% of the population (and less than 3% of under 24s!) still identify as Anglican. Equality, diversity and inclusion in chaplaincy lags far behind other departments because of outdated assumptions that chaplaincy is a religious service and because of sustained prejudice and discrimination against people of other faiths, beliefs and cultures, and a tendency to give lip service to equality, diversity and inclusion but not to take any real action. Many chaplaincies are still completely closed to people of other faiths and beliefs and comprised entirely of Christian chaplains and volunteers, and serving almost exclusively the minority of Christian service users with a budget that should be used for appropriate spiritual care for all. Some have been pushed into accepting chaplains of other faith/beliefs by HR departments and external pressure but have found ways to get around this by accepting people on an unequal basis, so either not including them in any of the actual work once they have been accepted, giving them very little work, or confining them to work only with service users who belong to their particular tradition, while they as Christian chaplains have the audacity to continue to claim they can provide spiritual care for all! They have found all sorts of ways of staying under the radar of equality, diversity and inclusion teams and contravening the letter and/or spirit of the Equality Act, getting away with unjustifiably all-Christian interview panels, appointing Christians to supposedly neutral chaplaincy co-ordination and administrative roles, creating conditions for application which themselves exclude nonreligious professional chaplaincy networks and minority faith groups (for example stating that applicants must have a local sponsoring congregation), advertising jobs only to Christians or a select few faith groups without any real evidence that the job cannot be carried out equally well by people from other faith and belief groups, using historical hangovers as an excuse for discriminatory job advertisements, for example, suggesting that applicants must be Christian clergy because they must carry out e.g. specifically Christian chapel duties which could very easily be made inclusive and carried out by others… and all this before I’ve even started talking about the exclusion and unpleasantness many nonreligious and minority faith chaplains have experienced once they succeed in getting a voluntary role (and I say voluntary because we just don’t get paid roles unless we happen to come across one of the rare inclusive Lead Chaplains) and so the list goes on…
However, in spite of all this, the numbers of chaplains of other faiths and worldviews is slowly increasing, and there are increasing calls for more equal representation and/or representation which better reflects the faith and belief demographics of service users. As interest in chaplaincy grows in more diverse quarters, as inclusive allies across groups work together with HR and ED&I teams to open up chaplaincy and as increasing numbers of people in our majority nonreligious society join the nonreligious network, this will all change, but it will take time!
There are many and various movements within other faith and belief groups which can or could field chaplains but some simply don’t yet have the structures in place for training or assessment of potential paid and volunteer chaplains; they don’t have the money to pay them either and so would be overly reliant on retired volunteers. This is also one of the problems in the nonreligious network. We have a lot of retired volunteers because there is no funding to pay anyone and younger people mostly cannot take the risk of getting into a career where there are so few paid positions and where most of those positions are effectively closed to them. One of my counterparts is working on a promising apprenticeship scheme with the NHS but we are only in the very early stages of making chaplaincy an accessible and attractive career path. Many of the minority faith groups also have a problem in that they lack awareness of what chaplaincy is and what they could therefore contribute. There needs to be intentional outreach to explain what we do and how their involvement might enrich chaplaincy teams.
Chaplaincy budgets at institutions are very small and low priority, which means they are often among the first to be squeezed in times of hardship, and this is in spite of the fact that addressing the mental ill health epidemic is a government priority and a priority for many institutions. Mental health is perhaps the area chaplaincy can be most impactful in, especially given that we are facing unprecedented mental health crises, among both young and old, but we are not seeing funding being poured into chaplaincy, quite the opposite. Clearly, chaplaincy is not seen to be effectual in meeting this need, and this is primarily because it is still commonly perceived to be primarily a fringe religious, and primarily Christian, service, in a time when religious people are a minority, and it is also because chaplains have not been good at measuring their impact and struggle to do so effectively because of the nature of the work. They therefore find it difficult to convince management of their usefulness. They won’t be funded until they have been able to adequately evidence their effectiveness, and to be frank, they won’t be funded until they are fully inclusive and deserving of funds. Looking to the future, the challenges around potentially funding inclusive chaplains from a variety of faith and belief traditions, and doing this fairly, is perhaps the hardest one to solve.
Yet another issue in chaplaincy is the lack of consistency in quality assurance and safeguarding when it comes to training and assessment across the various institutions and settings. Having a diverse range of training, qualifications, experience and skills is often a strength, especially as many older people enter chaplaincy after other careers and bring with them a wealth of life experience, practical wisdom, knowledge and indeed, patience. Competency models are therefore crucial for finding suitable candidates and remaining open to people from all backgrounds but in practice many people join teams as volunteers without any assessment and sometimes without even an interview. The last thing chaplaincy needs are standardised and expensive qualifications and training that will exclude able candidates, but it remains a problem that some faith and belief groups do not assess their candidates and field potentially unsuitable people. This can have very bad repercussions for the way chaplaincy is viewed by service users, institutions and wider society. I have heard from quite a few people who describe having had a very bad experience with a chaplain who was preachy or judgmental or otherwise inappropriate, which has put them off ever seeing a chaplain again. There is no need for this, when there are many suitable people with relevant qualifications, experience and the right attitudes and people skills, and when a fairly simple system of assessment can filter out people who are not suited to the role. Also, when it comes to supervision and CPD, there should be greater consistency for chaplains working for similar institutions. There is much still under debate when it comes to chaplaincy. Even what we call ourselves is uncertain, with some chaplaincies moving to names that won’t raise so many outdated assumptions and which more explicitly state what we now do, e.g. SPARC (Spiritual, Pastoral and Religious Care) Teams. It remains to be seen whether the word chaplain can be rehabilitated or whether it is even worth the effort of doing so. There is also a lack of awareness among managers of what chaplains provide and therefore a reluctance to promote chaplaincy or involve chaplains in relevant projects and committees. Chaplaincy is undergoing a slow but steady professionalisation and this will hopefully result in more clarity and a more united effort to publicise a progressive approach.
The Church of England has spent considerable time and money on framing chaplaincy from a Christian theological perspective, and trying, with increasingly spurious and insupportable arguments, to persuade themselves and everyone else that they still have a mandate to provide specifically Christian pastoral and spiritual care to all. Their time and resources would have been much better spent on reports evidencing in more detail the measurable difference that chaplaincy support makes in the lives of individuals, groups and communities. There is a strong tendency for Christians chaplains to justify their dominance by claiming that while many people no longer affiliate, they do tend to believe in God. However, this is very misleading because while it is true that many non-religious people do still have beliefs in supernatural forces or agencies, the vast majority don’t believe in the God of Christianity or the bible. Indeed, most of the service users I meet who believe in God actually make the point that their conception of God is different from that of the traditional faiths, siting that it is more universal, inclusive, undefined or mystical.
Many who describe themselves as believing in a god/gods use open and vague expressions like “I believe there’s something out there” or “I believe there’s something more than this” but they do not identify as religious, or Christian or Muslim or Jewish etc., or at least not in anything more than a cultural sense. Even people who both identify as Christian and share some Christian beliefs often have very mixed beliefs and identities, like the service-user I had who had a huge tattoo of a verse from the bible he liked and a large cross around his neck who said he identified as Christian but also didn’t believe in an after-life, believed in the Gods of various other religions, identified as a Buddhist as well, and walked off rolling his eyes when the Christian chaplain started talking about Jesus. People are complex and they need spiritual care from those who fully see, acknowledge and respect this, and from people who understand the complex and changing nature of belief. Diverse teams are far more likely to be objective and sensitive to people’s beliefs in the moment because they don’t have so many common assumptions and biases that become magnified and perpetuated.
Notions of God, therefore, tend to be extremely vague and transient (often only becoming relevant in a person’s life when someone they care about dies or when their own lives are in danger). In other words, when life is so difficult to cope with as it is, that they feel compelled to reach for something beyond their reality. Many of the majority Christian chaplains are therefore simply out of touch and out of step with their service users, and often in denial, because they no doubt fear for their own futures and that of their belief systems. They also get a skewed perspective on people’s views, given that most of their referrals come from the small proportion of people who still have a religious affiliation or other more tenuous religious association. They have too long lived in an isolated bubble of Christian exceptionalism.

So, to gauge how many chaplains may actually support a truly inclusive and multifaith vision, I have started an Inclusive Chaplains Network (currently on LinkedIn and Facebook) for professional and voluntary chaplains and chaplaincy partners* who are committed to opening up and transforming chaplaincy into a fully inclusive multi-faith/belief service supported by similarly inclusive chaplaincy partners in the wider community. This vision includes proactively reaching out to and welcoming chaplains and chaplaincy partners from all faith and belief traditions, ethnicities, genders, cultures, sexual orientations and social backgrounds, and making it possible for those with relevant knowledge, talents and skills from all philosophical/nonreligious and religious traditions to join the profession on an equal standing. This group is committed to more appropriately and more richly serving the needs of an increasingly diverse population, and in doing so, to realise a vision for inclusive, creative, evidence-based, openminded and openhearted pastoral, spiritual and religious care across all the settings in which chaplains work and in the wider community beyond.
*I should just clarify that Chaplaincy partners are belief/faith representatives and professionals in the wider community who support chaplaincy in various ways, especially with regard to meeting the pastoral and spiritual needs of people once they are discharged from (or otherwise leave) chaplaincy care into the wider community.
I’m hoping we will discuss in this group…
- How can we promote inclusive pastoral, spiritual and religious care more effectively and creatively in our institutional settings?
2. How can we promote inclusive pastoral, spiritual and religious care more effectively within our faith/belief organisations and networks?
3. How can we convince chaplains (especially Chaplaincy Team Leads/Co-ordinators) who are reluctant to be inclusive or who actively discriminate against nonreligious and minority faith chaplains, of the benefits of opening up?
4. How can chaplains form more effective connections with chaplaincy partners so we can achieve continuity of pastoral, spiritual and religious care throughout the life-course?
5. How can we reach out to and support faith/belief communities which do not have structures in place for fielding chaplains and who perhaps do not yet know how they can contribute?
6. How can we address issues of unequal funding for chaplains from different traditions (where chaplains are funded or part-funded by their faith/belief organisations rather than the institutions they work or volunteer in), due to some traditions having more resources and privileges than others for historical and outdated reasons?
7. How can we address funding issues in general in chaplaincy brought about by the lack of a fully inclusive, evidence-based and progressive vision, and the consequently increasing irrelevance and marginalisation of many chaplaincies within secular institutions?
8. How can we help with the professionalisation of chaplaincy so that young people from all faith/belief backgrounds can see this as a viable and rewarding career option?
9. How can we foster open and respectful inter-faith/worldview dialogue within our own teams and community partnerships so that we can build relationships of trust and work more effectively together?
10. How can we rise above our faith/belief labels to unite in common values and goals, while nonetheless celebrating our diverse stories, cultures and traditions?
So, I clearly – perhaps naively – still see enormous potential for chaplaincy, but unless we overcome the challenges I have described regarding inclusivity and building a robust evidence base for its effectiveness, chaplaincy will be further marginalised and may eventually even be phased out in many institutions for failing to remain relevant and for failing to prove its worth. This would be a terrible shame, given that ethical and spiritual leadership and care is much more effective when it takes place both outside and within our institutions.

13. Conclusions and How You Can Help
I’m aware that there’s a huge elephant in the room which I’ve been so far avoiding, and that comes in the form of a question. Do people really want all the things I’m envisioning here? Apart from the obvious issue of whether people want to be inclusive, do they even really want reasonableness, kindness, peace and sustainability? When they measure the cost to themselves of this struggle, are they really committed? Are you? Are people motivated by ethics and compassion or are money, possessions, power and sexual gratification ultimately more appealing? Is goodness, kindness and peace boring? The truth is that I don’t know the answer to these questions.
However, I do know that even people who would say they were completely committed to the vision I describe very often, in practice, chose not to behave or prioritise things in the ways necessary to achieve these ends. They may tweak their life-style here and there, enough to keep their consciences quiet, but they aren’t willing to go far enough. Most people won’t risk their reputation, their job, their popularity, their financial nest egg, their possessions, their holidays or other aspects of lifestyle to do what the research says in necessary to meet our global challenges. And it’s not just about abstaining and going without, it’s also about positive action. Many people just don’t take part in community activism or the political process in the numbers and ways needed to force regulation change.
To some extent we are all hypocrites because none of us behave consistently in ways that live out the values, intentions and goals we express verbally, and this isn’t always because humans are selfish and dishonest. It’s also because all humans struggle to some extent with putting long term goals over short term gains, simply because of the way our brains are wired; because many of us have seen so much suffering around the world in the media that we have empathy fatigue, we can no longer allow ourselves to feel the pain of others when it’s so deep and so extensive that to do so would destroy us; because the number, complexity and gravity of the global challenges we face seems overwhelming and quickly exhausts our limited mental capacity, causing us to retreat into a bubble of familiar pleasures and to employ a level of self-deception as a protective mechanism; and also, because many people genuinely find it hard to actually work out how best we should live and act within the restrictions of our family and societal structures, and even if we do work it out we cannot force others to act in the same ways, we can only lead by example. Thus, we often feel powerless – it often feels like the mountain is too high for us to climb – and current political circumstances have made some of us feel particularly disempowered, as almost everywhere in the world, wealthy state and private elites seem unstoppable in their manipulation of political processes and the media, and their ability to indoctrinate and exploit the masses and control the mob. A huge question mark then looms ominously over both our commitment and our ability to live good lives and build kind and fair societies.
So, the first thing we should do is ask ourselves honestly whether we really are committed to the ideals I have described. Do you really want a just and peaceful world, do your neighbours really want this? If you do, then there are some things we can all do to help us get there…
We can keep talking about this vision and how we might get there, because out of those conversations, if genuine, will come action. We can keep imagining it, holding onto it, even when it’s not well received because people are prejudiced or simply weary and disillusioned. We can tell friends and colleagues in our own groups to stop looking down their noses at other progressive groups, but to instead learn from them and work with them. These groups all have a laughably tiny slice of the population pie. Arrogance and superiority complexes are, therefore, frankly absurd, and I have met a good number of people who have left and are no longer affiliated with any of the progressive faith and humanist groups because they have simply got fed up of arrogance, in-fighting, petty theological or philosophical disputes and small-mindedness.
However, if you are on the outside looking down your nose at all progressive faith and humanistic communities, I would challenge you to reconsider and join or re-join one, however imperfect and frustrating at times. Your hands are dirtier with what might be called ‘sins of omission’ by not engaging than they would be sullied by engaging with the occasional impossible person or making the occasional mistake! Join and support one of the faith, belief or ethical organisations, which field (or have the potential to field) inclusive chaplains, and from which might emerge the very people who will found those vital social enterprises and other initiatives. If you cannot find a creative community of inclusive and progressive thinkers in your area, who seek to enrich culture, promote wellness, live sustainably and form deeper connections, then perhaps you should start one.
Thank you!

