Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World:
What replaces church when people leave religion? In this video, we break down seven “new religions” in America—from wellness culture and conspiracy communities to Silicon Valley transhumanism, witchcraft, social justice, fandoms, and sexual spirituality. Using a clear definition of religion as “how we orient ourselves in the cosmos,” you’ll see how each movement offers story, ritual, identity, and community—without pews.
You’ll get an evidence-aware tour of where Gen Z is finding meaning; the psychological hooks behind detox culture, influencers, and algorithmic pipelines; why tech can look messianic; how witchtok blends empowerment and pseudoscience; when social justice becomes purity culture; why fandoms feel like pilgrimage; and the promises and pitfalls of polyamory and kink as spiritual practice. Perfect for seekers, skeptics, and scholars alike.
Resources:
No Nonsense Spirituality: All the Tools No Belief Required:
What Is The Void:
Religious Deconstruction:
All My Available Courses:
00:00 Intro
01:00 What Is Religion
02:31 Wellness Rise
06:37 Detox Myth
08:20 Goop Critique
11:25 Conspirituality
17:06 Political Dogma
17:53 Tech Is God
22:44 The Occult
31:55 Soft Spots
31:56 Social Justice
38:47 Purity Problem
39:43 Fandom Faith
46:44 Jediism
49:37 Desire Religion
56:09 Doubts & Data
59:46 DIY Spirituality
01:03:01 What Now
#StrangeRites #GenZ #MeaningCrisis #NewReligions
About Me:
Britt Hartley is a certified atheist spiritual director with a Master’s in Theology focusing on the future of American religion. She wrote the bestselling book *No Nonsense Spirituality: All the Tools, No Faith Required*. If you’re struggling with existential crises, nihilism, or feeling lost in meaninglessness. On this channel you’ll find weekly videos where Britt provides practical, science-based tools to help you navigate the void. Instead of relying on old gods or New Age trends, she offers clear, actionable advice for finding your way through the deep, challenging questions of life.
source
I’m not here to sell anyone anything or promote/discourage anyone reading this. Just adding some nuance and vocab words to help with someone’s learning about research
Growing old and truly having a partner who is your LIFE partner, and having each other is a beautiful thing!
It is however, riddled with something, mononormativity (the deeply ingrained and conditioned beliefs that monogamy is the “right” “pure” “ethical/moral” “ideal” or “successful” form of a relationship. Using your example, simplified version, when contemplating the beauty and fulfillment that comes along with monogamy, vs. a more “self-directed and independent/indiviualistic journey, is by its very nature an expression of mononormativity that we’ve been conditioned with growing up. Abundance mindset (not money, but emotional security and intelligence) promotes, “hell, why not have both? If everyone’s aware of everything, have given ongoing and enthusiastic consent, with the ability to revoke consent at any point, why not both?”
*also, while the patriarchy is riddled in everything we exist and operate in, ENM and poly, are highly riddled with social hierarchy, hierarchical polyamory/couples privilege (relationship structure and system of oppression, mononormativity conditioning), which feeds into “the relationship escalator”
Always watching to the end and always grateful! At this point in my life, I find myself craving female companionship and connection. I would have a hard time buying in to the magical beliefs of witchcraft, but what I wouldn't give for a coven right now!
Ice rubdowns & baths have actually been proven scientifically to influence your vagus nerve/autonomic nervous system positively. And the vagus nerve seems to play a big role in our health & wellbeing. – People seem forever to be asking others for guidance & approval – and for a label to put on themselves. I wonder if this is an effect of thousands of years of patriarchy that we have internalized
I wish we could all participate in such groups without having to expect predatory motives.
People who fall into them are usually nice enough at first, just a bit confused and looking for deeper connections.
It’s when they devolve into churches that preach absolutist, holier than though delusions of morality through hate, and actively use binaural beats to enduce a trance-like state, that you have to watch out. They can gradually get sicker, eventually overtly predatory and manipulative. Lots of people aren’t self-aware enough to recognize how they devolve into cults when leaders get greedy.
It can be fun to attend events like comic-con, fantasy, or renaissance faires. Even alien / goddess / witch / occult / pagan / crystal / subgenius / quantum harmonics / wholism groups can have a fun aesthetic, absurdist party vibe. Now I find all ideologistic -isms, especially nihilism, absurd, so I can appreciate these groups and events as art, with genuine curiosity. We just have to watch out for predators and not let them take themselves too seriously.
45:47 Earth: Mostly harmless.
Jobs is who I blame re:tech Jesus – he studied philosophy with the intent on creating social systems. As we’re all identity driven, and my fellow autists are like “I’ll just pick one I guess”, Jobs is still the reigning religion of Silicon Valley, but I sense us departing from this. There’s a big “tech person reconstruction” going on rn, lots of millennial mid-life crises which is only going to get more prevalent after Ai has displaced everybody.
I am also ravenclaw 😊
The cancel culture bit about women’s sports seems a bit weird to me. Men’s and women’s sports didn’t used to be segregated by gender. I don’t really see it as a moral purity thing, I just don’t see the point of treating women as lesser. I don’t even watch sports so my stake in it isn’t really that high, but I do believe women’s rights are eroded in some pretty sneaky ways, and one of those ways is sports. It does deserve attention, but not as a purity test. That’s mostly performative. It’s simply a matter of ‘see a wrong, work to fix a wrong’, or at least that’s how I see it.
I've never met anyone else whose favorite movie was Groundhog Day. This is the 14th or so video of yours I've watched. After the second one, based on your thoughts and how you communicate, it seemed that your perspective and approach was almost identical to mine. Still holding true. Glad you made this channel.
Love your content! Thank you for sharing live and experiences. I was saddened when you choose to use hate to deliver your message.
I found this to be a very interesting video! It helped me make sense of what I see going on around me.
Questions:
What about wealth building as a religion? Money is God kind of life.
And
Science? . Peer review provides the community and checks and balances. What is consciousness and free will are being examined. Get some science nerds together and I feel transcendent experiences when my mind is opened to physics or consciousness ideas….
I never thought of wellness as a religion. Now, I can't unsee it.
I feel that reiterating how the left has moral purity issues and that the right is more accepting of nuance is a wild take. The right literally has a loud and proud purity culture that rejects non-believers, and has lost countless lawsuits for excluding/denying people on a variety of obvious and nuanced differences. Not to mention how much effort the right puts in to punish those who they feel have strayed. The left literally fights for the rights of all, where the right fights to take rights from all but themselves.
Love from your leftist bestie 💙
If it does not get tax and oversight breaks, it is not religion …at most it’s just a non-profit.
These are not religions, they are subcultures.
Random languaged primates are just gonna random. In trying to feel some 'arbitrary' order from the chaos, categorizing, grouping, comparing, analyzing, combining and dividing, etc. in our choiceless addiction to evaluate (for some, also arrogant judgementalism) and make meaning or uncover some fun truth, most of what we do is simply for the purpose of either increasing our probability of survival or feeling some temporary entertainment. The entire universe, forces/energy, and our thoughts are just running (causally, BTW); it all cannot do otherwise. Biological molecular self-assembly systems (a.k.a. Life) sure can be interesting. Try to enjoy the ride a/o show, and good luck.
The universal response to the question structure "Are you __ ?" is "I am human. Period". We weren't born for anyone else, and they weren't born for us.
Are we still battling the demon of arrogant perfectionism ? Of course we are; always will be. And it appears to be getting worse. Mount Enlightenment, or even its direction, is not available to humanity.
tech as god,well psychistrist evaluation requieres.I audit llm's🤦🏻
I love astrology
I would add the manosphere & possibly crypto/ investing as another religion. I do think they cross link, but are also separate- but see many men follow this like a religion.
I shared this with my MAGA dad who is always telling me the threat to Christianity is Islam. So many people are so blinded by their conspiracy theories they don't realize there are actual "threats" that are so common and popular that no one even sees them replacing organized religion.
Would fitness fit in too? It s pretty close to wellness in how it works.
I think this was a great video. Stepping out of traditional religion can feel isolating, but with the awareness of these ideas you are bringing to light, there is a lot of place for community. Secularism needs to make the bridge for people. I found it at our local city art museum that has a day of the week the community is invited for meditation, yoga, sound baths and drumming. I have met many amazing people who are troubled with their religion and are testing the waters to find other means to feel connected to their community other than Sunday meetings and church assignments.
[ 01:01:40 ] don’t worry we made it
Ritual failures: you didn’t eat your vegetables, or didn’t chew them properly if you did.
I’ve listened to the end and I find it fascinating. You are a fabulous objective analyst and storyteller. So happy to have discovered your channel.
I would describe my religion as atheistic Buberism.
Polyamory as pseudo religion? First, the number of configurations of non-monogamous relationships are as vast as human connections. But the way you describe it I can see you are curious as if there is something there to explore.
Second, the kinds of men and women who practice non-monogamy are self selecting so you are more likely to meet men and women who are aligned with your feminist or feminist adjacent leanings. Particularly men who are willing to evolve alongside their partners. But there is no panacea. Finding partners who will engage in that journey is the same challenge as monogamy.
Although I have been on a lifetime religious deconstruction journey I have been poly for only 7 years. It has enriched my life and has enabled me to recover from narcissistic abuse. Perhaps it has made my cheerful nihilism more palatable. But I don't think it is an alternative to the kind of broader spirituality you advocate.
And there are a whole of smaller others like believing in therapy, being ecological, participating in a charity, or even smaller like book clubs, fitness clubs, professional dancing etc etc. All those have rituals and structures and hve gatherings and places for people to meet (even if its virtually like on reddit) and obey the rules with teachers and seniors.
Religious traditions are also behavioural patterns that respond to a key question of the ancient world: "what is the good life?" (or "how should we live?"). This does not specifically invite any metaphysical inquiry.
Most intellectually honest award goes too 🥁🥁🥁 = Britt — truly inspirational
Hmm, 7
Great content but could you try to speak with abusing the word "like?"
❤❤
Buddhist/pagan but I’m too broke and far too minimalist to be a witch. I’ve found all the ‘stuff’ around new age and paganism as a whole to be a bit of a distraction. I’ve found peace and connectedness with neo-Druidry however. Being Buddhist as well, I’ve found veganism to fit as an actionable cause for the animals, environment, my health, and my wallet. However, I love oogling all the pretty witchy altars on social media though. Awesome video. I never viewed wellness as a religion but, you’re right. Health dogma runs deep
Made it to the end. This is a phenomenal and very non biased view of it all and I love your content! We need more atheists like you! ❤
I was forced to go to a witches' celebration of last year's winter solstice. Friends of my wife. At the anointed time the women had us (almost as many men as women there) stand in a circle and pass something around, hand to hand. We then each had to tell some kind of story. At one point a woman started to crank down a very wide solar shade. After a minute of cranking she yelled, "Hey! Some man needs to come over here and do this! It's too hard!" That was pretty much what we men had in participation. Oh, except for the grilling. That was also done by a man.
I wonder if she finds the skyrocketing growth of the world's uber patriarchal religion, Islam, troubling.
Social justice is an oxymoron. Justice is a principle that can only be applied to what exists. Society, groups, cultures are all rhetorical fictions. We use them as shortcuts for explaining behaviors. But only individuals actually exist. Ergo, we can only apply justice to individual people. Not a group, etc. But this is way too much work for many so we have the concept of Social Justice.
I think sports wasn't mentioned as part of fandom.
2:30 Detoxing is something your body does continuously. A doctor told me that forcing yourself to drink juice wheatgrass and kale are not the absolute preventive measure to avoid cancer or the flu; quite the opposite. Too much fibre will cause polyps in your gut.
I learned so much from this video! Everything you said makes so much sense to me. I guess my religion is love and humanism.
I will say… as a pagan (witchy), polyamorous kinkster who cares about social justice and can explain far too much about the cosmology of certain fictional worlds… This was equally interesting and hard to watch. Thank you for taking a comparative approach and pointing out some of the pitfalls of these structures. Really bringing my attention to some of my beliefs that I think are worth me interrogating further and giving me an opportunity to practice what I expect from people coming from religious upbringings. Thank you for this.
Britt, You claim that anti-vax ideology can lead to violence. Can you cite any example of that? Have you noticed how corporations who profit from a certain belief system, but then notice that public opinion is changing in that regard, try to tie thinking outside the box to violence? It sounds like you are repeating that trick, most likely unconsciously. It's a trick used by corporations to keep their customers from straying.
Health and wellness and the distrust/anti-intellectualism around healthcare and modern science literally kills people. My wife's cousin went that route when diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. She went one round of chemo and immediately distrusted doctors and went the health and wellness natural route. It wasn't until it metastasized through her whole body before she turned back to the doctor route, but it was too late and she died.
I made it to the end and found this information interesting. It put some prospective of why I have anger around Fandom being taken from me as an opportunity as a child. I grew up in a Christian home with parents who have believed their soul responsibility is to secure my afterlife in heaven. Which in result took so many things away from me even if I had experienced it already things just became satanic out of the blue because the church said so. While those around me were becoming rooted in Harry Potter and enjoying that experience as a collective I was made to hold myself outside of that while at the same time I wasn't biting at what the church meant or what it had to preach about. I have no system of meaning still and have struggled with my lengthened deconstruction because it really truly was how I always have been. Being nuerodivergant I never bought it yet had to hold myself in this dilutional space of pretending that I believed. I think your story and logic will always help me uncover and heal parts of me still wounded and hidding. Thank you for your pursuit of knowledge and sharing it so freely. It's helpful, truly