So... it's World Religion Day

‘There is not one way to live a religion.’

I hate that I am opening this blog post with a line I heard on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (RHOSLC), but here we are—God showing up in pop-culture once again.

In between the chaos and drama, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that belief-talk is a primary point of conversation for families in the middle of Utah—even if their lives seem hyper-performed and ‘unreal’. And with today being World Religion Day, I thought it was a great opportunity to highlight this quote, as it has been sitting in the back of my mind since I heard it.

World Religion Day was initiated by the Baháʼí Faith in 1950, and is now observed globally on the third Sunday of January each year. It’s a day for people to celebrate the commonalities and oneness of religions, and to promote interfaith dialogue. As someone who has worked as a multifaith chaplain, been invited to share at a handful of interfaith events, and who’s passionate about spiritual curiosity, World Religion Day really makes my brain tick.

It is estimated that there are over 4,000 religious groups around the world. However, in light of my RHOSLC obsession, thinking about commonality and oneness of religious communities took me down a different rabbit hole. Because World Religion Day invites us to pause and notice something else that is true, and often forgotten: religion is not one thing.

Across each of these religious groups and traditions, there are countless expressions shaped by culture, language, geography, history, power, and personality. The impulse to reduce religion into a single ‘good’ or ‘bad’ category is a very Western modernist approach, but it is also very understandable. We are products of our own culture. However, this black-and-white approach almost always collapses under the weight of reality. People do not experience belief systems in a neat and uniform way. Some encounter religion as a place of meaning and belonging, while others encounter it as a place of control and harm. To be honest, many experience both.

And this is exactly why that RHOSLC quote has stuck with me.

There is not one way to live a religion, because there isn’t just one way humans build meaning. There isn’t just one way communities organise themselves, and there isn’t just one way authority gets held, shared, or misused. Different expressions of belief exist not only across religions, but within them too.

If you have been following along on my socials, you’ll know that I’m looking forward to starting a YouTube channel in March exploring the theology and meaning behind belief systems. That includes cults, ancient religions, modern spiritual movements, and even some unexpected spaces that function almost ‘religiously’, like consumer groups and identity-based communities. What has become evident while mapping these systems is that the most consistent thread in dangerous, extremist, cult-like groups is never the religion itself.

When harm happens in communities, the most common pattern is power without accountability. It’s control dressed up as spirituality, where obedience is demanded as virtue, fear is presented as holiness, and silence is rewarded as maturity and observance. These dynamics can appear in any tradition, and they also appear outside religious communities too. We see similar patterns show up in workplaces, political movements, social spaces, and wellness communities. We might see shifts in the vocabulary used, but the mechanisms often stay the same.

Why World Religion Day matters is because the day serves as a reminder that we must push against oversimplification. The day invites us to listen rather than assume, and asks us to hold the complexity of religion without turning away from its impact.

World Religion Day is not only an invitation to honour diversity, but also an invitation to practice discernment, as belief systems are never just private opinions. They form communities and shape identities. They influence how people treat one another, because belief systems can offer meaning, and they can also be used to manipulate meaning. The question is not only what a group claims to believe, but how those beliefs are expressed, enforced, and protected.

It is also important that when we posture ourselves from a place of discernment, we don’t dive headfirst into a world of suspicion or cynicism. Within my life, I have had the privilege of journeying with people as they explore faith, spirituality, doubt, hope, and belonging across a wide range of expressions. I still get to do this with OddRev in our Monday night streams on Twitch with Sonderverse. These are places where people can show up with different stories, complexities, and opinions and still be treated with dignity, curiosity, and care.

And even though I find myself a witness to the Christian faith, I am constantly reminded day after day that the person I claim to follow was a Jewish man living under empire, teaching a way of love that centred the vulnerable, challenged oppressive power, and called people into mercy over performance. And while Christianity is distinct in its claims, I’ve always been struck by how often Jesus’ way of life echoes moral and spiritual wisdom found across other traditions too. Not in a way that collapses these differences or borrows what isn’t mine to borrow, but in a way that reminds me that compassion, humility, and self-giving love are recognised as spiritually significant in many places, across many religions, and honoured in many languages.

There isn’t just one way to do religion, and therefore there isn’t one way to talk about it. However, World Religion Day reminds us that when we do talk about meaning, belonging, and belief systems, we should continue to do so with humility, curiosity, and honesty. And I encourage us to do this without flattening difference, without cruelty, and with a commitment to noticing the patterns that lead people toward freedom and abundant love, grace, and generosity.