Our New Religion Isn't Enough

Who is God?

Screenshot: TikTok, @the444agency

These days it seems like everything is described as a new religion. Social justice is a new religion. So is climate activism. Trumpism, too. I saw a funny tweet recently about how girlboss feminism has now reinvented the Sabbath, with the shocking news that we might benefit from “one lazy day” a week. Even AI seems to be replacing religion, from giving spiritual guidance to reinventing arranged marriages.

I think this point can be a bit laboured sometimes—but religious faith has collapsed, and many trends and movements have moved in to fill the void. The one that most resembles a religion to me, though, is the rise of therapy culture. I think it’s an exaggeration to say all of Gen Z are following the cult of social justice or climate activism—but I really don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that a significant majority of young people now interpret their lives and emotions and relationships through a therapeutic lens.

Of course this isn’t a new idea. As Christopher Lasch put it in 1979: “The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation…but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.”

But since then this way of thinking has only become more entrenched. I don’t even think young people see this therapeutic worldview as a worldview anymore. It’s hard to overstate how much it shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world. This is how many of us make sense of loss, of love, of hurt now. We refract our relationships through therapy-speak. We define ourselves by our diagnoses. And we mimic religion, all the time. We don’t pray at night; we repeat positive affirmations. We don’t confess; we trauma dump. We don’t seek salvation; we go on healing journeys. We don’t resist temptation from the devil; we reframe intrusive thoughts. We don’t exorcise evil spirits; we release trauma. And of course we don’t talk to God, c’mon—we give a “specific request to the universe” that “has a greater plan” for us.

@haleyhoffmansmith❤️ 🌙 nighttime affirmation

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Companies capitalise on this too. Meditation and affirmation apps replace prayer (only £399.99 to be “Calm for Life”!). Therapy companies have become confessionals (“Get it off your chest with BetterHelp”!) where we can speak with no judgement, no shame. BetterHelp ads not only ask how we feel now but answer existential questions like “why am I here?”,  while wellness brands sell us inner peace and salvation (“Unleash the Goddess within”!)

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these things. I’m not against therapy (unless it’s an app; unless it’s obsessive texting). Meditation isn’t a problem. And of course there’s nothing wrong with getting help if you’re struggling, and becoming a better partner or parent for it. But my worry is with this tendency to obsess over our mental health, to orient ourselves with wellness and self-actualisation as our highest aim—even at the expense of others. My worry with this new faith is that it wrenches aspects of religion from the inconvenient parts; the parts we need most.

Because where is God, in all this? Who is God? Some say therapy culture has no God. I think, more accurately, it’s us. God is who all this revolves around. All these apps and platforms serve us. AI chatbots are “all about you and your mental health journey”! Our online therapist is here to serve our every need, whenever we have one, any time of day. We are the divine; we are the deity. We have become the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent beings in our lives. There’s a reason, I think, that one of the most popular therapeutic phrases at the moment is is this serving me?

What’s missing then, from this new religion, is moral guidance. Maybe real, rigorous therapy can help you become a better person, but that’s different from the culture girls and young women are growing up in. I’m talking about the TikToks telling us we don’t owe anybody anything. Mental health apps teaching us to track and take seriously our every emotion. Wellness companies pretending we can buy our way to spiritual well-being. The whole lot of it—this nudging to put our own needs first, this message that makes no room for kindness or generosity, that sees obligations to other people as obstacles to our mental health. And that we kid ourselves is self-reflection but really is self-obsession. Honestly look at how many of these positive affirmations and manifestations on TikTok are about us! We aren’t getting on our knees to pray for others—but to MANIFEST MORE for ourselves. COMMAND THE UNIVERSE TO GET WHAT YOU WANT (“UNIVERSE SHOW ME how I get to 100k on TikTok!”) Always I AM I AM I AM, never I SHOULD; I WILL. Put your palms together and manifest 10,000 followers!

It’s hard to put this into words but I think, in some ways, what we actually want is to be humbled. People say Gen Z follow these new faiths because we crave belonging and connection, but what if we also crave commandments? What if we are desperate to be delivered from something? To be at the mercy of something? I think we underestimate how hard it is for young people today to feel their way through life without moral guardrails and guidance, to follow the whims and wishes of our ego and be affirmed by adults every step of the way. I’m not sure that’s actual freedom. And if it is, I’m not sure freedom is what any of us actually wants.

Because look: our mental health is collapsing. Self-harm and suicide rates are on the rise. We feel lonelier than ever; we feel hopeless about the future. Despite the wellness industry being worth trillions now, despite the constant mental health campaigns, despite the relentless raising of awareness, none of it makes a dent. If anything we feel worse. And what’s telling is that the decline in mental health is worse for the least religious, which now happen to be girls and young women. Plenty of research shows that religious people are happier, more connected, and better protected from the pressures of modern life.

So maybe we can replace some aspects of religion. We can find community without church. We can be absolved from guilt and shame in therapy. We can find peace and calm by putting our faith in the universe. But what seems very difficult to replicate are the demands on the self. Not just a sense of continuity with the past, but a sense of obligation to the past—to honour our ancestors, to do right by our future offspring. Religion is not just reckoning with God and with the world, but reckoning with yourself. Not your needs and feelings but all the ways you fall short and fail to put others first. It’s a life devoted not to feeling better but being better; not to better thoughts but better actions. Instead we fear nobody. We need ask no forgiveness. But what if that’s what we need most? Less of a reckoning with childhood trauma, less with social injustice, and more with ourselves?

What’s also missing from this new religion, I think, is a sense of stability, of being part of something bigger, something more enduring. I think young people today are desperate for that deeper connection. I sense it everywhere—this feeling that everything is so empty and evanescent now. A feeling that we are all clawing for something, anything, that is permanent, that isn’t commodified and cheap and ephemeral. Something that lasts! Our entire lives are just a collection of things that can crumble at any moment. We keep our options open. We play it cool. Our long-term relationships fall apart the second someone loses feelings. Even if we do get deeper commitment it’s all a big joke now: marriage vows are funny; the ceremony is a perfect moment for a prank; divorce is a celebration. Meanwhile we estrange ourselves from our families. We try out different places and try on different identities. And if we take the message of therapeutic culture seriously enough, we are in danger of ending up a “well-adjusted person”: not dependent on anyone, nobody reliant on us, with nothing to lose.

And so I think when young people talk about what’s plaguing them—situationships, not getting on the housing ladder, even the climate crisis—what they are often getting at is the transience of everything. Everything uprooted. Everything unstable. They don’t feel attached to anything, anyone, anywhere. They don’t even feel like the Earth will stick around. Nothing in our lives does! Our parents couldn’t even hold it together. And for some reason I can’t fathom we think the answer is to keep encouraging young people to be more detached? Be more free! Travel more; hook up more; enjoy those situationships; careful not to invest too much in any one person because that’s how you get hurt. But isn’t that the problem? We say our problem is patriarchy and climate change and election results and the cost-of-living crisis but I think there’s something deeper here; a deeper loss and longing that no material changes would solve. We are looking for something we can place our feet on that won’t fall away. We are looking for something more than this life where people have so few loyalties to each other, where everything is subject to constant change, where we can’t even feel rooted in our culture. I mean it feels as if relationships are even losing the basic requirement to be faithful now, the absolute bare minimum. No I don’t want to treat marriage like an employment contract. I want to be bound more! Bound to people; bound to places; bound to right and wrong!

Because when young people don’t think they can get anything real and lasting, they give up. Obviously. Gen Z say they are rebelling against old-fashioned responsibilities and restraints; we are empowered! I’m not so sure. We call it a revolt; feels more like resignation. No point having kids. No point committing. No point building any sort of foundation with anyone. Life is hopeless. No wonder we are drawn to the gospel of self-love and obsessively managing our own mental health. When everything is transient, might as well live for yourself. The only one left to rely on.

Of course we’re all free to follow our own faith, and I’m grateful for that. But still. Worth thinking about all this. Worth wondering—when we’re downloading these mental health apps in our millions, repeating our positive affirmations, speaking in the language of salvation and higher powers—what we’re really drawn to here. Worth asking ourselves, at least, why we mocked religion only to mimic it. And why what we’re doing isn’t working. My guess is that what we need most in this chaotic world is moral direction. What we need most in a rapidly changing world is rootedness. Could just be me but when I listen to the misery and confusion of my generation beneath it I hear a heartbreaking need—a need to be bound to others, to a community, to a moral code, to something more. This is not enough.

I’m not saying we should all be religious. But I do believe we all worship something. We all serve somebody. And the bitter irony is, the best way to protect your mental health is to be damn sure it isn’t yourself.