In areas of the country where religion appears to be on the decline, Americans are looking for alternative ways to connect with a "higher power."
Secular Sabbath, a members-only club in West Hollywood, attracts a "couple hundred" members, including influencers, models and celebrities looking for meaning in an increasingly secular society. While many Americans no longer attend a formal church service, they're still looking to God for purpose and comfort, according to a report by the Free Press.
"Secular Sabbath is a new kind of meditation practice in which you incorporate multiple sensory experiences and awareness practices to achieve the ultimate state of relaxation and restoration to bring into your daily life," according to its website.
In the 1950s, close to zero Americans identified as having no religious preference, but that number has risen to over one-fifth of the country's population who currently describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or "nothing in particular." Under this current trajectory, Pew modeling predicts that around two-thirds of Americans won't identify as religious by 2070.
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Secular Sabbath's founder, 32-year-old Genevieve Medow-Jenkins, said the community is an offshoot of her youth spent at The Esalen Institute, a wellness retreat in Big Sur, California, where her parents worked as "bodyworkers." She was raised Jewish, and while she doesn't regularly go to temple, she still finds God in her life and aims to reverse the idea many young people have that God is uncool.
"I knew that I had to share my upbringing with the world," Medow-Jenkins told the Free Press. "And Secular Sabbath is this chrysalis of what Esalen was in the ’90s, when I was growing up."
"I hope that they connect with a sense of purpose, through God or something greater than just themselves in this world," she added. Medow-Jenkins said she still comes back to God in moments of vulnerability.
"The other day, I was upset about something," she said. "And in that moment, I asked God for help."
While some members see the events, which are hosted primarily in California, but have also been held in Iceland and Mexico City, as a place to go where they can be themselves without any rules, other attendees see it as a way to experience God in a new way.
"It [religion] was so negative for me because it was so rule-bound," Medow-Jenkins said. "And I knew when I created Secular Sabbath, I didn’t want it to have many rules. I wanted it to feel like you could be any version of something and still be included."
In direct response, Secular Sabbath doesn't have any rules listed on its website and while drugs and alcohol aren’t provided or encouraged at her its events, Medow-Jenkins said she doesn't take those vices away from her guests if they do decide to bring them to her Sabbath, the Free Press reported.
DJ and songwriter Diplo, an attendee of the club and its events, told the Free Press that "anything that makes you feel like you’re celebrating life is a church."
Both Diplo's mom and sister recently passed away, which has brought him back to church, but he told the Free Press there are other places to connect with God.
"Everyday is church for me," he said. "I’m always like, at the club … That is the church because people go there to deal with their problems."
Despite its religious undertones, Medow-Jenkins said she focuses more on Eastern rituals that attendees are more open to, instead of Western, Christian traditions.
"In American culture, we are so disconnected from feeling passionately about things—because it’s terrifying to care," she said. "People are afraid to feel into spirituality."
A National Opinion Research Center (NORC) poll, in partnership with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), concluded that religion in the U.S. has declined in importance over the past 25 years with 39% of people labeling religion as "very important" in 2023 as compared to 62% in 1998.
Many Christian faith leaders have indicated that a variety of factors have contributed to the decline in religion, including the COVID-19 pandemic and anxiety, specifically among young people. Father Mike Schmitz, the host of the Bible in a Year podcast, previously told Fox News that "at some point," spirituality without religion "is not enough" because people "hunger" to have a spiritual life.
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