NEW RENAISSANCE
VISION
We are in desperate need of a cultural and spiritual reset. Since the Enlightenment, the west has progressively become entranced by a sort of secular god–the god of materialism, technology, consumerism, and “progress.” And as the western project has spread across the globe, humanity’s attention is increasingly becoming absorbed and controlled—witness our slavish devotion to screens, our consumption of mindless entertainments and our craving of creature comforts and cheap consumables served up by the global “machine.”
The world’s most powerful organizations—multi-trillion-dollar technology companies—continue to promise utopia, but seem to exist primarily to capture and monetize our precious attention. We all know this, of course, but we can’t seem to break the trance.
The Scottish scientist and writer Iain McGilchrist has put his finger on the fundamental problem. In his landmark books, The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things, as well as in his many public conversations, McGilchrist details how we have become captured, individually and collectively, by a way of thinking and seeing that is dominated by the left hemisphere of the brain. Essentially, the part of our brain that is supposed to serve a specialized function (to dissect, analyze, grasp and control) has usurped and eclipsed the critical role of the right hemisphere (the more insightful, wise, creative and holistically oriented area of the brain). As a result, we are suffering epidemics of mental illness, loneliness, addiction and polarization.
Consider the classical Greek era that issued from Athens or the Italian Renaissance that issued from Florence. These eras, according to McGilchrist, were times of flourishing precisely because they brought the hemisphere’s into balance. Reason was balanced with intuition; abstraction and mechanism were balanced by embodied experience and wisdom.
We find ourselves very far from this kind of balance today. We live in a left-hemisphere dominated world.
It’s time for a New Renaissance. And there is hope. A new wave of thinkers, artists, religious teachers and scholars is on the rise, offering persuasive and inspiring alternatives to the reductionist-materialist worldview that has prevailed in the modern age.
New Renaissance is a nexus for leaders from various disciplines and faiths to learn from one another, mutually explore big ideas and tackle complex challenges together, in hopes of nurturing a cultural rebirth. We are particularly interested in exploring the foundational questions of existence, including the nature of consciousness, values, and meaning. We believe answers to these questions can transform how we encounter the world and how we encounter each other.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Interdisciplinary Conversations
We deeply value the role of science in our unfolding understanding of the world. We believe bringing the scientific disciplines (physics, neuroscience, biology, etc) into conversation with philosophy, humanities and religion is essential to realizing the potential for human flourishing.
Inter-spiritual Conversations
Christianity, of course, has played a central role in western culture. We believe a New Renaissance could emerge from Christianity. But we also believe there is deep wisdom embedded in all of the world’s sacred traditions. We need to bring religious traditions into conversation with each other, with an earnest willingness to explore, dialogue and partner with others of good faith. We can be motivated by genuine curiosity and by something Bishop Krister Stendahl called “holy envy.”
INITIATIVES
Genesis 2.0: Reanimating our story of the world
The great catholic writer and teacher Fr. Thomas Berry wrote:
It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The Old Story—the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it—is not functioning properly, and we have not learned the New Story.
Berry was lamenting the absence of a story that makes sense of the world–a story of the cosmos, of God, and of our place in it all. In Berry’s view, the story he had inherited from his Judeo-Christian tradition had fallen short. It couldn’t quite integrate what we have learned from the realms of scientific discovery, and it had actually served to disconnect us from our responsibilities as caretakers of the earth.
On the other hand, he knew the reductive, materialist story scientism was telling failed to recognize and integrate humanity’s sense of the sacred. It served to objectify and instrumentalize the world. We are beginning to realize the fruits of this story in the crises of our day—polarization, environmental degradation, mental illness, loneliness., etc. The secular story has run its course. The new atheists are yesterday’s news. But Berry was right: We need a new story.
We see the makings of a new story as new thinkers and more holistic paradigms arise. It will be a story that integrates ancient wisdom with modern frontiers of discovery. It will be a story that animates the world. As Christians, we believe Christ can and should be at the center of this cosmic story.
PUBLIC EVENTS
New Renaissance Festival
A large, multi-day annual gathering in the mountains of Utah in 2027 where leading figures from the fields of science, arts/humanities and spirituality convene to tackle humanity’s biggest questions.
Campus Events
Campus events to communicate the work and results of the institute to university students. These are modest-sized events at distinguished universities.
Publishing
We will soon launch YouTube, podcast, substack and social media channels that will leverage the substantial existing audiences of our partners.
Team
Executive Director: William Turnbull
Director: Zachary Davis
