HTLA Presents: How Not To Be Lonely: Part 7 - Looking For Community? Go Find Your 'Church'

California Love

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🗓️ 26 May 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Part 7: Looking For Community? Go Find Your 'Church'

How To LA is back with our series on How NOT To Be Lonely in LA.

Today we explore the connection between religion…or lack thereof…and loneliness.

For decades, Americans relied on their church, temple or mosque, or other religious institutions, for a sense of built in community. But with more and more people disaffiliating from organized religion in recent decades — particularly since the 90s — we, as a society, haven't really found a replacement for those spaces, and the community and sanctity that comes with them.

Today, producer Megan Botel speaks to USC professor of religion Diane Winston about what has been lost on a personal and community level in the decline of religiosity. She also explores the Pico Union Project, a non-denominational church in L.A. that might offer a solution to some who are looking to find a place to gather with people and share in some sense of spirituality.

Guests: Diane Winston, professor of media and religion at USC; Craig Taubman, founder and artistic director of the Pico Union Project; Ross Chait, talent booker at the Pico Union Project.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On inheriting, Carol Park worked at her family's gas station in Compton, California.
0:04.9	Korean Americans, we call it Saia I Gu. The 1992 LA Uprising changed Carol's life.
0:11.1	Listen to inheriting, from LAAS Studios and the NPR Network wherever
0:15.2	you get your podcast. Start your Saturday with something that will grow your
0:19.5	kiddles brains and get their creative juices flowing. Join us at LAS in Pasadena for a morning of multilingual readings,
0:26.3	interactive performances, and lots of kid fun.
0:29.0	It's super fun Saturday on June 1st.
0:31.4	Get your tickets at LAS.com
0:33.4	slash events.
0:34.4	Hey y'all, this is How to LA. I'm Brian Los Santos.
0:38.2	Today we're back with another episode of How Not to be Lonely in LA. This time we're focusing on the role of
0:45.7	religion or rather the lack of it within this loneliness epidemic.
0:50.8	Producer Megan Botel explores the role of religious groups in creating community and how folks today
0:56.8	are finding new, non-traditional ways to tap into some of the benefits of organized religion
1:02.2	outside of organized religion. of organized religion.
1:04.5	Take a listen.
1:05.1	One of the wonderful things that religious practice can do for you is to help you take a step back and to appreciate your life and all the amazing things around you.
1:22.0	With the death of these kinds of institutional supports, people need to make their own and they need to do it outside of traditional institutions.
1:32.0	Whether or not people verbalize it, they are looking for that
1:36.0	something more, that step back, that recognition, that there is more to life than, you know, our work and our money-making.
1:47.0	All you need to do is look at a flower or contemplate a tree or go to the beach and you remember that we are living in a
1:58.2	ecosystem that is I would say, sacred.
	...

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