Altar set with framed black-and-white photos of people, orange marigolds, white candles and skull figurines, and other objects.

Twelve people sit around a rectangular dinner table set with glasses, wine bottles, and pamphlets. The men wear white yamulkes.

Parked semi truck cabs at dusk. The one in front has a painting of the Virgin Mary, adorned with red and yellow flowers, on the hood.

Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S.

June 29–July 4 and July 6–9, 2023

What do Americans create from their religious, spiritual, and ethical traditions? How do religion and spirituality help communities establish and sustain a sense of place and belonging? In a diverse and changing religious landscape, how does creativity enrich understanding and nurture mutual respect?

This country has been shaped by religion in multifaceted ways. While many people find a sense of belonging in congregations, religious institutions have also caused harm. The spiritual landscape of the United States is diverse and, at times, messy and contradictory. Yet people continue to seek community, inspiration, and healing in old and new ways.

Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S. explored the abundant creativity that emerges from spiritual and religious experiences. The program centered stories and lived experiences of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders, Sikhs, practitioners of African-descended religions, Humanists, and other ethical and spiritual traditions. Through case studies, we offered a snapshot of the breadth and significance of cultural expressions of faith and belonging.

The program explored rituals and values that shape American cultural traditions and help us to organize our lives. They connect us to the past and shape our visions for the future. By engaging with rituals and secular stories, Americans build community, agitate for social change, and transmit our heritage and worldviews to others.

At the heart of Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S. was the encounter. We invited visitors to ask questions and share stories, to dance and sing, to smell and taste. Moments of encounter sometimes generate friction, but they also open paths toward deeper relationships and possibilities to create something new.

Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S. received generous support from Lilly Endowment's Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative. The national initiative aims to help museums and other cultural institutions foster greater public understanding about religion and present the contributions of people of all faiths and diverse religious communities.

See other Smithsonian projects funded by Lilly Endowment

Also at the 2023 Festival

Key Themes

Singers participate in a Sacred Harp singing convention in Great Falls, Virginia.
Photo by Mary Ann Daly CC-BY-NC
Sound Religion
What are the spiritual dimensions of sound?
From polyrhythmic drumming in African rituals and melodic recitations of the Qur’an to the measured staccato of Buddhist chants and the harmonies of Christian choirs, religious and spiritual experiences generate distinctive soundscapes. Through song and sound, group members connect with one another and experience spiritual transcendence.
Sound evokes joy and sorrow and conjures ancestral voices. It is a tool to communicate between the material world and the sacred and to find balance between body, mind, and spirit.
Sound Religion explores the religious soundscape of the United States. Through song and story, recitation and chants, poetry and rhythm, we examined sound as a sensory experience that invokes spirit, breath, and voice and conveys the distinctive ways that communities make and transmit meaning.

Members of the Seabrook Buddhist Temple in New Jersey lead community dances for the Obon festival, which honors ancestors.
Photo courtesy of Seabrook Buddhist Temple
Body and Spirit
What role does the body play in feeling and expressing the sacred?
Religion and spirituality are embodied practices that involve all the senses, and the body is the anchor of experience.
In movement and in stillness, the body is where belief systems are both nurtured and revealed. Through ritual, dance, gesture, and a range of other movements and actions, believers and artists express multidimensional meaning. In some belief systems, prayers manifest in and through the body, and in others the body is a conduit for communication between deities and their adherents.
When moving to music, dancers can engage with profound memory and experience sublime joy. In processions, marchers add their steps to a collective purpose. Body and Spirit was an exploration of bodily practices that reflect and express the divine.

Maestra Ofelia Esparza constructs an ofrenda or commemorative altar in her studio in Los Angeles, California.
Photo courtesy of Ofelia Esparza
Makers of Faith
How do artisans and visual artists express their faith?
Religious and spiritual experiences provide a deep reservoir of inspiration and, in many cases, the setting for devotional art and memorial offerings. Whether in public places of worship or intimate spaces in homes artworks and objects can enhance emotional encounters with the divine. The creative spark is often thought of as a gift or a calling, and artistic works can be sacred offerings themselves.
Makers of Faith brought together diverse artisans and artists whose work gives a physical form to their beliefs and cultural knowledge. While some were new to their craft, others came from families whose work spans generations. Through hands-on demonstrations, stories about their callings and the ritual significance of their work, makers reflected on the nature and substance of belief.

Christopher Battle fills farm stands and distributes free vegetables grown at Battlefield Farm in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Photo courtesy of Christopher Battle
Kitchen Theology
How does the cultivation and preparation of food reflect spiritual practice?
Food has transformative power—it can nurture and heal the body and the spirit. Many food traditions in the United States are sustained by religious communities, and they play a vital role in expressing identity. Foodways link our cultural rituals with ecological consciousness, so that meals are acts that can form our values.
Across the country, farmers and gardeners cultivate connection with the earth, with ancestors, and with current and future generations through seed-keeping, farming, and feeding others.
Kitchen Theology centered the kitchen and garden as spaces for reflection, sanctuary, and healing. The practitioners celebrated food as fellowship and sustenance, honored sacred seeds, and foregrounded how the foods we eat act as bridges between communities and between diverse worldviews.

Felicia Montes uses a pushcart to bring ancestral herbal remedies and healing knowledge to community settings through her project Botanica del Barrio.
Photo courtesy of Felicia Montes
Futurisms
How will we live together and care for each other?
Communities and individuals are rethinking and reimagining their relationship to religion and spirituality in creative ways, constructing new visions for a shared future. Some are drawing from ancestral knowledge systems, while others are building interreligious connections to repair ruptures between communities. These changes reflect the vitality of spiritual practice and grapple with technological, environmental, and social change. One constant is the human need to connect with something beyond oneself.
Futurisms was an invitation to reframe faith-based futures by considering the changing landscape of religious, spiritual, and ethical practice in the United States. Members of faith communities face questions of identity, inclusion, and access for those who have been marginalized by religious institutions. They encompass younger generations who are cultivating identities that challenge established norms. Across the ideological spectrum, grassroots leaders are developing new ministries and liturgies grounded in social justice and “good works.” And across the United States, members of many communities seek to bear witness to the sacred in the natural world.

Support the Folklife Festival, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, sustainability projects, educational outreach, and more.

Support Folklife. Donate Now.