WTF is Spiritual Care for the Non-Religious?

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It feels weird to call yourself a “None,” but according to demographers, that’s what I am: one of millions of Americans who understand themselves as “religiously unaffiliated.” That means atheists, agnostics, and people who answer “nothing in particular” when asked if they practice a religion. Today, Nones make up 28% of the U.S. population — up from 16% in 2007. But just because you’re religiously unaffiliated doesn’t mean you don’t want some of the things that often come with religion: ritual, community, ethics, care. So what does that look like? How do we find it while also avoiding culty wellness s**t?

Fellow None (and atheist Jew) Vanessa Zoltan, who’s currently teaching a class at Harvard on spiritual care for the non-religious, is here to help answer all your questions.

(Also note: this one’s for Nones and Non-Nones, people with a lot of religious experience and people with very little, people repelled by religion and people hungry for it. It might not seem like something in your wheelhouse, but if you’re interested, broadly, in ideas about friends, community, how to have serious conversations, and why people get really really into Crossfit, you’re going to love it)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Culture Study podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.
0:10.0	And I'm Vanessa Zoltan.
0:11.8	I am the co-host of Hot and Bothered, a podcast about rom-coms.
0:17.3	And Let's Ask Taylor Swift, a podcast that looks closely at the lyrics of Taylor Swift.
0:22.1	And Anne, most relevant to today, I'm a non-denominational chaplain, and I teach chaplaincy at Harvard Divinity School.
0:29.0	We came up with this whole idea about spiritual care for the non-religious because you are teaching this class at Harvard Divinity School right now. So can you tell us
0:40.1	a little bit about that class and how it came to be? Yeah, it's really exciting because I started at
0:47.2	divinity school about 15 years ago. And as a non-religious person in divinity school, there just were
0:53.0	no pathways for a career,
0:55.4	even though I was like, this is necessary. People have, people get married. People have grief
1:01.5	and people die who don't believe in God and don't want to be part of a community. So we need atheist
1:07.7	chaplains. In this moment where, you know, Harvard is hiring someone specifically to teach chaplains how to deliver spiritual care for non-religious people feels like a really big step toward acknowledging that, you know, one third of Americans don't believe in traditional religion. People
1:28.8	are going to church less and less. And there's, you know, which you've talked about a lot,
1:33.0	there's the rise of loneliness and isolation. And I think especially in this moment, we need
1:38.0	community more than ever. And so I'm really excited to be the one who's teaching this class,
1:43.1	but I'm more, I'm just excited that's like an institution that goes back to the 17th century and is like very stodgy.
1:51.8	It's like, no, no, this is now a skill that we need chaplains to have of taking care of non-religious people.
1:58.5	Is there anything?
2:00.3	Like I think of the word chaplain and it just has this incredible
2:03.9	connotation of Christianity. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Why is that? Also, even just like div schools,
2:12.5	right, which is how people talk about divinity school. Like they, lots of people go to div school
2:16.9	who do not want to become like religious leaders.
	...

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