On Monday nights at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, the sanctuary becomes a space for quiet contemplation, with Betty Cole leading seated and walking meditation for an interfaith group. Cole, a longtime Zen practitioner and “card-carrying Episcopalian,” has described the gathering as having evolved into a “quiet fellowship” since she started it in 2001. She said the group is shaped for people who may not be “inspired by the liturgy, pomp and music” of the church, but who still value the chapel’s quiet and the sense of “encouragement and accountability” that comes from sharing silence.
Across the United States, the Associated Press reports, Christian, Jewish and other congregations have either introduced meditation practices associated with Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism or have revived older contemplative practices within their own faith traditions. In these communities, longtime practitioners and religious leaders often frame meditation as spiritual and religious practice, while also acknowledging that mental health and social benefits are part of what attracts people.
Some religious spaces have treated meditation skeptically, including dismissing it as potentially demonic, while secular circles have sometimes questioned it as superstition. In addition, the AP reports that critics raise concerns about cultural appropriation, especially when Eastern meditation practices are marketed as trendy self-improvement rather than engaged in a fuller religious context. Even with those debates, the AP says more houses of worship are encouraging contemplative practices, including those adapted for a fast-paced modern world.
The AP described how the practice can take hybrid or cross-tradition forms. In an Ivy League university chapel, for example, voices chanting “Om” can be heard alongside sounds from singing bowls, piano and other instruments at meditation events. Elsewhere, a rabbi has led virtual meditation and breath work drawing on Jewish scriptures, while a Unitarian Universalist congregation has hosted gatherings that included studying Buddhist dharma and participating in a sound bath.
Lodro Rinzler, a Buddhist teacher and author of “The Buddha Walks into a Bar,” said the “next resurgence” involves people moving from deciding to “practice a religious tradition” into being “willing to do some of the practices that exist within those traditions.” He said for others, that shift can help people rekindle connections to their own religions and their ancient, lesser-known meditative practices, adding that practices “spliced out” and taken on their own are “now coming back under the umbrellas,” drawing people toward the traditions they come from.
The AP also described efforts to bring meditation rooted in Jewish tradition to contemporary audiences. Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels launched Or HaLev — Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation in 2011, saying the group aims to give people access to Hasidic meditations and “integrating” them with Eastern traditions that have come from the West. He said those Jewish mystical practices have been less known partly because modernity and the Holocaust disrupted communities and teachers who preserved the traditions, and he described Kabbalah as having been pushed aside after modernity before experiencing a “resurgence” again.
At Princeton University Chapel, the AP reported, some events combine meditation with chamber music, breathwork and chanting mantras. Hope Littwin, a composer who facilitates musical rituals for the meditations, said the feedback she has heard includes people wanting to return and feeling as if they “need more of it,” alongside describing the experience as “mysterious” and transformative. A.J. Alvarez, a meditation teacher, said meditation attracts people from different religions, and even people with no religion at all, because it “taps us into something universal,” something “deeper than belief systems or doctrines.”
The AP further described how meditation has taken root within Unitarian Universalist communities through Buddhist-linked programming. At All Souls NYC, the Rev. Pamela Patton, a Universalist and Buddhist, began the Mindfulness, Meditation, Buddhism program in 2016, and the AP said it grew over the next decade into a community of about 800 members learning from teachers of different Buddhist lineages. Patton said the program, as she described it, “brought a lot to our community.”
Within Islam, the AP reported, Omid Safi, a professor of religion at Duke University who conducts Sufi meditation tours and retreats, said he has seen young Muslims practicing yoga, mindfulness and breath work while trying to integrate those practices with their religious identity. Safi said this comes from an understanding that Islam has its own tradition reaching back more than 1,000 years and developed in conversation with Hindu and Buddhist traditions. He described a Sufi practice of directing breath into “lataif,” which he said is similar to chakras in yoga but differs in that, in the Sufi model, it uses a “whirling” movement in one’s inner landscape that enters the heart.
The AP also described how Catholic contemplative practices are being revisited by some clergy and spiritual directors. Susan Stabile, a spiritual director who leads meditation retreats nationwide, said Catholic parishes have seen a resurgence in contemplative practices, including meditation, and she tied her own interest to her background that included becoming a Buddhist before returning to Catholicism. Stabile said some in the Catholic tradition are suspicious of contemplative practices such as the centering prayer, which she described as a silent prayer developed in the 1970s by Catholic monastics, and she said that suspicion can reflect that many Christians are unaware that early Christian hermits developed practices like those.
Stabile told the AP that “I didn’t know it was in my own tradition,” and she said she has seen more people seeking a deeper experience and learning about mysticism, adding, “My hope is that more people will allow themselves to be transformed,” and that such transformation would help people “live more fully in creation and the image and likeness of God.”