All the same on the inside?

Question: Is there evidence that people worldwide are starting to understand that we are all the same on the inside? Do you see signs of more desire for inner, secret teachings?

I would love to see evidence that people world-wide are starting to understand that we are 'all the same on the inside', not least that the make up of our human nature includes a spiritual dimension as well as the physical, mental/intellectual, and emotional.

One example of an increasing sense of commonality is that, within traditional/exoteric Christianity, there have been positive moves toward ecumenism ever since the 1910 World Missionary Conference. The World Council of Churches first met in 1948. Within Anglicanism, there is now full communion with many other denominations, and there is continuing dialogue between the Episcopal Church, the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, the Presbyterian, and the United Methodist churches. The current Pope, Francis, has had joint discussions with both the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and with Patriarch Kirill. On more local levels, a number of united or uniting churches have formed, including my own denomination, the United Reformed Church. In other situations church buildings are shared: the English-speaking congregation that meets here in Brittany worships in the Chapel of a Roman Catholic lycée.

Inter-faith movements have also increased. Evidence for this includes its early beginnings with the International Association for Religious Freedom (1900) and the 1914 Fellowship of Reconciliation, through the World Congress of Faiths (1936), the International Humanist and Ethical Union (1952), Vatican II (1965), Minhaj-ul-Quran (1981, a Pakistan based organisation), the InterFaith Alliance (1994), the United Religions Initiative (2000), the Coexist Foundation (2006), Project Interfaith (2010), and the Interfaith Association for Service to Humanity and Nature, founded in February last year (2017).

In addition to these, there has been a documented rise in the numbers of people who define themselves as 'spiritual but not religious' (SBNR) – it is reported, for example, that in the U.S.A. 37% of people classify themselves as SBNR, 68% say they believe in God, and 58% say they feel a deep connection to the Earth. Various categories have been distinguished by Linda Mercadante (author of 'Belief without Borders') within SBNR: dissenters (who have fallen out with organised religion), casuals (who may seek 'therapeutic' spiritual help when they feel the need), explorers (who desire journey and change, but fail to commit or settle to a spiritual home), seekers (who probably have some earlier spiritual affiliation but are looking for a new religious identity), and immigrants (who have found themselves involved in a new realm and are trying to adjust).

All of this is perhaps fed by increasing cross-cultural knowledge (westerners particularly being increasingly interested in Eastern and indigenous philosophies), by the search for roots (evident, for example, in the rise of interest in pre-Christian, nature-oriented beliefs) and the influence of feminism and ecology. Some individuals are also said (for example by the late musicologist David Carr) to have sought to develop 'religiously untethered' senses of spirituality through the power of music, while the Revd. June Boyce Tillman (Professor of Applied Music, University of Winchester – where I began my doctoral studies) suggests that music moves us into 'a self-transcending experience'.

But despite all this, which may seem positive and hopeful, the world is still more defined by its divisions than its unities, by its violence than its peace, by its fear than its love – and division, violence and fear are not signs of spirituality. In terms of exoteric religion, there appears to be a rise not in true charity and open-ness, but in fundamentalism and extremism, which liberalism cannot counter-balance. And while I am at the stage of being open to esoteric teachings, I cannot speak for anyone else, and know of no signs of a desire in others for 'inner, secret teachings'.