Metamodern Spirituality

Elizabeth Debold in Dialogue with Brendan Graham Dempsey

Metamodernity is a new cultural trend, worldview or quality that aims to bring together the values and learning from modernity and postmodernity. Brendan Graham Dempsey is one of the vivid explorers, thinkers, and critics of this new movement. His special interest lies in the relevance of these ideas for our understanding and practice of spirituality.

Brendan Dempsey has a rich background in theology and applies this to find a way to reimagine religion in a time of global crisis. But he is not only theoretically reflecting about this, at his Sky Meadow Retreat Center he is engaging practically in an experiment of metamodern practice and community.

Metamodern spirituality is taking seriously the criticism of postmodernity but tries to find a new meaning and relevance of the sacred for our lives and culture. In an interview with evolve Brendan says:

“Metamodern spirituality is a reconstructive endeavor. It is a sort of spiritual practice that invites us to reconceive of grand narratives and holistic meaning-making from a self-aware stance. We are earnest and sincere by trying to creatively generate new symbolic forms and mythic images that we can use in genuine reverence of the beauty and profundity of reality. At the same time, we’re maintaining a certain reflective distance from them because they are constructed artifacts of our own creative imagination.”

In Radio evolve evolve editor Elizabeth Debold explores together with Brendan Dempsey the qualities of metamodern spiritual thinking and practice and why they are relevant for our culture and a possible religion of the future.