This winter, the sanctuary of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena has become a recurring site of quiet practice, where Betty Cole says her weekly interfaith group has grown into what she calls a “quiet fellowship.” On most Monday nights, the church’s vaulted ceilings, stone arches and stained-glass windows frame seated and walking meditation sessions led by Cole, a longtime Zen practitioner and an Episcopalian who started the group in 2001. Cole described who comes to the meetings, saying it includes “people who are really not very inspired by the liturgy, pomp and music of the church,” but who do value “the building, the quiet of the chapel and the sense of encouragement and accountability in that shared quiet.”
The broader trend, the AP reported, is that Christian, Jewish and other congregations across the United States are adding meditation practices from Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism—or reviving contemplative practices already rooted in their own traditions—while adapting them to a fast-paced modern world. While longtime practitioners like Cole see contemplative practices as inherently spiritual or religious, the AP said mental health and social benefits are also frequently cited as additional reasons people participate. The AP also highlighted that meditation remains contested: in some deeply religious spaces, meditation has been disparaged as a gateway to the demonic, while in some secular circles it is dismissed as superstition, and skeptics raise concerns about cultural appropriation when Eastern practices are marketed as trend-driven self-improvement.
As part of this shift, teachers and congregations are presenting meditation in ways that blend sounds and settings associated with multiple traditions. The AP described, for example, voices chanting “Om” alongside singing bowls and other instruments at meditation events held in a chapel setting at an Ivy League university. In other settings, a rabbi leads virtual meditation and breath work drawing from Jewish scriptures, while a Unitarian Universalist congregation gathers to study Buddhist dharma and to experience meditation through a sound bath. Across centuries, the AP reported that meditation practices have appeared in Buddhism, where practitioners aim to become enlightened like the Buddha, and in Hinduism, where yoga is rooted. It also pointed to Christian ascetic traditions, including the Desert Fathers and Mothers, as well as Jewish Kabbalistic and Hasidic meditation and Sufi practices within Islam.
Lodro Rinzler, a Buddhist teacher and author of “The Buddha Walks into a Bar,” described what he sees as the next phase of the trend: “The next resurgence that we’re seeing now, is people moving all the way out from saying, ‘I’m going to practice a religious tradition’ into ‘I’m willing to do some of the practices that exist within those traditions,’” he said. For many participants, Rinzler said, the approach can also reconnect them with the religions they identify with, adding that “Some of the practices that have been spliced out and stand alone are now coming back under the umbrellas,” and that people then “are then being attracted to the traditions from which they’ve always been a part of.”
That dynamic appears in Jewish settings as well, the AP said. Or HaLev — Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation, launched in 2011 by Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels, aims to offer access to a meditation practice rooted in Jewish tradition. Jacobson-Maisels said, “We’re bringing Hasidic meditations and understandings to a contemporary audience,” and he added that “We’re also integrating that with Eastern traditions that have come from the West.” He also argued that many Jewish meditative practices remained less known in part because modernity and the Holocaust disrupted communities and teachers who had preserved them, saying as part of the process “many parts of the mystical tradition got rejected or cast aside because they were related to as unacceptable, irrational, not fitting to the modern world.” Jacobson-Maisels also described Kabbalah as “the most dominant theological paradigm in Judaism” and said that after modernity it “really was pushed to the side,” though it is “now experiencing, once again, a resurgence.”
In university settings, musical elements and breath-focused sessions are also part of the emerging meditation landscape. At Princeton University Chapel, the AP reported that meditation events can include chamber music, breathwork and the chanting of mantras. Hope Littwin, a composer who facilitates musical rituals for the meditations, said, “The feedback I’ve mostly gotten is that people say, ‘I want to do that again. I don’t know what happened, but I feel like whatever happened, I need more of it,’” and she added, “People notice the mysterious quality and people feel changed by it.” Littwin, who is pursuing her PhD in music composition at Princeton, said the meetings draw people who report wanting more of what they experience.
The AP also described a perspective from meditation teachers and interfaith settings that emphasizes meditation as a form of connection beyond specific doctrine. A.J. Alvarez, a meditation teacher, said, “People from different religions, and even people with no religion at all … connect to meditation because meditation taps us into something universal, something deeper than belief systems or doctrines,” according to the AP. At All Souls NYC, a Unitarian Universalist congregation, meditation has become part of spiritual life through programs led by the Rev. Pamela Patton, a Universalist and Buddhist. The AP said that when Patton began the Mindfulness, Meditation, Buddhism program in 2016 she was unsure how it would be received, but that it grew over a decade into a community of about 800 members learning from teachers of different Buddhist lineages. Patton said of the program, “It’s brought a lot to our community.”
In Islamic settings, the AP said scholars and teachers describe ways participants are connecting practices such as yoga, mindfulness and breath work to religious identity. Omid Safi, a professor of religion at Duke University who conducts Sufi meditation tours and retreats, said he sees young Muslims practicing yoga, mindfulness and breath work as a way to integrate those methods with their religious identity, pointing to the recognition that Islam has its own tradition going back over 1,000 years developed in conversation with Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Safi also described a Sufi model focused on breathing and internal perception, saying, “In the Sufi model, it’s a whirling model that whirls in your inner landscape and enters your heart,” and that it “isn’t about pure transcendence, but balancing earth and heaven.” He added that meditation is not historically done in mosques but may occur adjacent to them, and described music and poetry as part of how spiritual experience can be conveyed.
For Catholics, the AP reported, a key example involves contemplative practices such as centering prayer, a silent prayer developed in the 1970s by Catholic monastics. Susan Stabile, a spiritual director who leads meditation retreats nationwide, said that Catholic parishes are seeing a resurgence in contemplative practices, including meditation. Stabile said that “Some in the Catholic tradition are suspicious of some of these contemplative practices such as the centering prayer,” and she tied that suspicion to some Christians being unaware of similar early Christian traditions, saying, “She said that’s because many Christians are unaware that early Christian hermits developed these practices.” Stabile added, “I didn’t know it was in my own tradition,” and said, “No one had ever told me about it.” The AP reported that Stabile expects more people to pursue these practices, saying, “My hope is that more people will allow themselves to be transformed,” and that it would help them “To live more fully in creation and the image and likeness of God.”