I often feel like a journalistic Gretel.
I’m constantly picking up breadcrumbs of American spirituality and saving them in a note on my computer. Dua Lipa and Stephen Colbert discussing faith, LeBron doing guided meditations, Lil Jon selling chakra T-shirts. And this year, many artists (Justin Bieber, Rosalía, Dijon), movies (“Heretic,” the latest “Knives Out,” “The Testament of Ann Lee” and “Eternity”) and TV shows (“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and “Nobody Wants This”) have wrestled with religion and spirituality.
But crumbs don’t make a meal, to torture the metaphor. I’ve been wondering whether these examples amount to a meaningful cultural shift.
So this past week, I spoke to two people at The Times whose job it is to explain pop culture: Alissa Wilkinson, one of our film critics, and Joe Coscarelli, a reporter and co-host of our podcast “Popcast.” They both said that yes, something was changing. Americans seem to be getting more conversant with religiosity. Movies about the Bible are having a moment in Hollywood. Rappers and singers are earnestly, not ironically, engaging with faith.
“It tells you something about what people are interested in right now,” Alissa told me. “You can see what we’re worried about or what we’re thinking about.”
When did this start?
If Hollywood has had a spiritual reawakening, you could date it to 2018.
That’s when “First Reformed,” a thriller about a despairing minister, came out. Ethan Hawke is the star, and Paul Schrader directs. It got rave reviews, including from our critic A.O. Scott. He described it as an epiphany.
A number of studios had passed on the film. The reviews made them think they might be missing an opportunity, Alissa said, and created a “trickle-down effect.” Over the next few years, studios produced “Soul,” the latest “Knives Out” and the Oscar-winning “Conclave.”
There had been a similar spike in religious-themed movies after Sept. 11, when “The Chronicles of Narnia” and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” topped box offices.
“It comes in waves,” Alissa said.
What has changed?
A few broader world events have fueled the latest embrace of religion in pop culture.
The first was the pandemic, which prompted a collective reckoning with existential questions. “In a time of uncertainty, there were more people looking to whatever God was to them,” Joe said.
This coincided with some major pop stars — including Bieber, Dijon and Rosalía — entering their 30s. They started to wrestle with more mature themes, including questions of family and partnership.
The second was the ascendance of a social conservatism during the Trump era. “Mainstream studios are trying to capture what they perceive of as the right-wing audience,” Alissa said.
How is this shaping us?
This has all been well documented, including in Believing. But what I really wanted to understand was whether this moment felt distinct, and if my colleagues felt that even elite secular culture was changing.
“The difference is the earnestness,” Joe said of the religious sentiment appearing in art now. For decades, artists have played with religious iconography by subverting it. Madonna wore crosses and nodded lyrically to the “Madonna/whore complex.” Rappers have played with upside-down crosses, borrowing from metal and punk. “The current moment is engaging with it in a much more head-on, straightforward, earnest, and irony-free way,” Joe said.
This is shaping how people discuss religiosity in public. “If there’s anything that the Trump years have done, it’s made people more fluent in what used to be a subculture,” Alissa said. “Your average person who may not have grown up in church now has some familiarity with that world again because it has become mainstream.”
This doesn’t mean that it’s common at many Brooklyn or Los Angeles dinner parties, where America’s artists congregate, to talk about church. “You’d still get a sideways look,” Joe said.
But the stigma does seem to be relaxing, he added. Liberal Jews are openly wrestling with their faith and identity in a particularly fraught political moment. People seem to be obsessed with watching Mormon women onscreen. Wellness culture is blending with spirituality: The girlies are manifesting unironically, and they’re posting about meditating in saunas.
All of it points to more social openness and a greater cultural fluency with belief.
This article originally appeared on the New York Times.
