Beyond the Spiritual “Basement”

Stepping into the light-filled rooms above

“As our world becomes smaller, through a growing common culture, the true test of community will be our tolerance for our most profound differences and love for the most challenging among us.”

Wayne Teasdale

Artist unknown

As we’ve moved through the last several posts in An Uncharted Path, you’ve been encouraged to explore your spiritual paradigm and come to some thoughts around what you presently believe, hope, imagine, or theorize to be true. As a result, you may have found that your current religious affiliations (or non-affiliations) remain a good fit for you, reflecting an authentic image of who you are as a spiritual being. Conversely, you may have found otherwise.

A Useful Metaphor

There is a metaphor that may help to understand the points of origin for each of us, religiously speaking, and where we are now. This metaphor comes from Tim Whitaker, the founder of an organization called The New Evangelicals (TNE).

Whitaker, a Christian, broke away in recent years from the fundamentalist evangelical tradition in which he was raised and that he had practiced all of his life to that point. During the COVID pandemic, he began to hear values and teachings from the pulpit that conflicted with what he had always known and cherished within his faith.

In April 2024, a Good Faith Media interview said this about his situation: “Between that and other things that were going on within evangelicalism, Whitaker thought to himself, ‘I’m tired of this. We need something new. We need a new evangelical movement, and that’s where I got the name. It was birthed out of the idea of pushing what existed into a better direction.’”

The New Evangelicals is now Whitaker’s effort to create a community whose members have, according to the organization’s web site, “been run over by the bus of the evangelical church”.  Many in the TNE community, like Whitaker, spent much of their lives in what he refers to as “the basement of Christianity” (i.e., evangelical fundamentalism).”

It is a metaphor he uses often to describe this experience, and it goes something like this:

There is a big house that has always existed. Those who live in the basement of this house believe that the basement is all there is. That is what they have always been told. The Christians who reside there have also been taught that “Catholics aren’t real Christians. Progressives aren’t real Christians. And who are these ‘Orthodox’ people anyway? It’s just this.”

Using this metaphor, Whitaker views members in the TNE online community as people who are venturing from the “basement” to discover other “rooms” within the Christian tradition. Sometimes they discover that the new-to-them rooms (like inclusive and justice-oriented Christianity) aren’t really new at all. Members just haven’t been aware of their presence until now.

Whitaker adds that there is potential risk in emerging from the basement. For certain persons, it simply amounts to moving from one fundamentalist line of thinking to another. Whatever new room they’ve discovered is now deemed to be “all there is”, much like they considered their former tradition to be.

To minimize this risk, Whitaker educates the community about other strands of Christianity by inviting representatives to introduce their traditions and theology to his podcast audience. TNE’s main aims are: 1) to hold space for individuals who find themselves marginalized by their religious communities, 2) advocate for accountability in evangelical spaces, and 3) help people explore the Christian tradition beyond fundamentalism.

Relationships with Other Faiths

When I heard Whitaker’s basement metaphor, it seemed to be an effective way to convey the experience that someone might have as they move through the deconstruction of their former beliefs. I wondered whether the metaphor could be expanded for those who may be further along in this process, who might find themselves beyond any restrictive boundaries of their tradition of origin.

My pondering brought to mind an instructional graphic that a friend had shared with me recently and wondered whether its content could help me in the expansion of the metaphor. The graphic (produced by the All Souls Interfaith School of Spiritual Direction) describes four types of religiosity/spirituality and how each relates to the world’s wider faith community.

Your individual spiritual paradigm likely fits into one of the four categories. I’ll address three of the categories in this post and save the last for next time.  

1. Exclusivist

This religious type includes groups that Whitaker says we would find in the figurative religious basement, as they draw firm lines of separation between themselves and other faiths. They hold strong attachments to sets of complex beliefs and an exacting literalism applied to scripture, dogmas, and ideologies. Rules for sexuality and gender roles are often sharply defined. The maintenance of distinct ingroups and outgroups is regarded as important, and a diversity of opinion is rejected.

It should be noted that fundamentalism can be found within specific strands of many traditions including Protestant Christians, Catholic Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Pagans. It can surface in certain segments of non-religious communities as well, such as atheism, science, environmentalism, and politics. This type of worldview is what fuels much of the polarization that we now see in the U.S.

2.     Ecumenical

Using Whitaker’s metaphor, I imagine the ecumenical category to comprise those that venture out of the basement to explore and perhaps reside in the upper floors and rooms of “the house”. This seems to characterize most members of Whitaker’s social media platforms.

Ecumenism gathers together traditions that fall within a larger umbrella of common faith, such as many found in Christianity. It is technically a Christian term, but other faiths have similar efforts. Historically, Ecumenical Councils were once called by the Roman Emperor to clarify Christian theology and doctrine. More modern efforts focus on overcoming differences. In 1948, the World Council of Churches was founded to promote unification around assisting others in need.

There are three primary approaches to ecumenism today:

·      Uniting in a focus on Christ and the command to “be one” in him.

·      Seeking reconciliation among various denominations.

·      Developing shared sacramental expressions, such as baptism and Eucharist.

3.    Interfaith

When we talk about an interfaith stance, we can again think metaphorically. These are folks who have definitely left the basement (if they were ever there in the first place) to fully inhabit the upper floors and rooms of the house. Interfaith individuals go a step further as evidenced by their willingness to extend beyond their “homes” to work side-by-side on behalf of the collective “neighborhood”, whenever it is desirable or becomes necessary.

An interfaith focus creates ties among distinct traditions with the aim of fostering mutual understanding and perhaps direct action of some sort. For example, focus may be directed to collaborative efforts related to civil rights, criminal justice, or war and peace issues. These collective actions are typically based on shared values among the participating religious groups.

A commitment to interfaith efforts, creates relationships that are cooperative and constructive in nature. They promote acceptance and positive interactions, all the while maintaining distinct organizational belief systems. There are some who embrace this view who use the more inclusive term “interpath” which then allows for atheists, agnostics, and humanists to be added to this web of connection and acceptance.

Reflect

·      Consider your spiritual paradigm as it exists presently.

·      Has it changed over time?

·      Where does it fit relative to the world’s faith traditions – is it exclusivist, ecumenical, interfaith, or something else perhaps?

If you answered “something else” to the last question, stay tuned.