Atla Annual 2019

"Disruption and Depth: Pacific Northwest Religiousness, Faith Traditions, and the Quest for Wisdom in Our Time"

When it comes to religion, the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington and British Columbia) has been something of a “canary in the mine.” Since earliest Euro-American settlement, institutional religion has never gained the traction it once had in other parts of the U.S. and Canada. Personal choice has driven religious identity and practice. The region has been malleable in the imaginations of immigrants: a place of preservation through isolation, escape from religiously inflected social control, innovation in historic traditions’ religious thought and practice, or rebirth in nature. As the rest of the U.S. and Canada come more and more to resemble the Pacific Northwest religiously, the region’s religion and spirituality offer clues to the possibilities and pitfalls confronting historic faiths, emergent religious forms, and individual spiritual quests in this time of unprecedented globalization, social and cultural disruption, and environmental crisis.