# The Future of Religion is an API https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdZ0adsAdX0 *Recorded: 2022* Jon Ogden proposes that religion’s future resembles an API—a plug-and-play system where individuals maintain their cultural and religious context while integrating wisdom from other traditions. Citing the Dalai Lama’s advice to learn from Buddhism while remaining Christian or Jewish, Ogden argues this syncretism is not new—from ancient Egyptian-Greco-Roman religious blending to LDS General Conference speakers quoting C.S. Lewis and Shakespeare. In an increasingly connected world where locality no longer limits exposure to ideas, seeking truth wherever it surfaces becomes both natural and necessary. The challenge lies in maintaining community and particularity while developing a global perspective on wisdom traditions. ## Transcript WEBVTT 00:00:08.900 --> 00:00:34.239 John Ogden is a co-founder at Uplift Kids, a lesson library and curriculum that helps families nurture spiritual health. He is also the author of the book When Mormons Doubt: A Way to Strengthen Relationships and Live a Quality Life, and has a bachelor’s degree in English, Literature, and a Master’s in Writing and Rhetoric from Brigham University. He writes at johnogden. com and lives with his spouse and two kids in Provo, Utah. John Ogden. 00:00:40.360 --> 00:00:43.559 Thanks, Carl. And thanks for all you’ve done for the conference. 00:00:44.200 --> 00:00:58.059 So religion i the future of religion is an API. I could start by telling you that an API is a application programming interface, but that is boring and it doesn’t really Really clarify much. So I’ll just give an example. 00:00:58.700 --> 00:01:19.220 You hop into an Uber and you pull up the map, say where you want to go, and the API here is at least as of 2018, Google Maps API. And so Uber’s app ports in data from Google Maps, and then that’s how you get around in an Uber. 00:01:18.939 --> 00:01:34.600 Some people have given the metaphor of a waiter. So you order the food, the waiter then goes to the kitchen and then brings the food back to you. And so you can port whatever information you have. Basically, it’s plug and play. That’s the simple definition. So it’s an API. 00:01:34.760 --> 00:02:01.220 APIs have grown in popularity tremendously since 2005, and there are a few reasons for that. One, they help programmers build on what’s already been created. You can tell in the instance of Uber, they didn’t want to go and map the entire planet before they could build their app. Right. And so they just paid $58 million in that case for the ability to port in Google’s data. 00:02:01.560 --> 00:02:16.900 And they also connect separate technologies in a single interface. You could potentially bring in just dozens of APIs into a single interface and create something completely new based on the integration. and they enable speed and innovation. 00:02:17.060 --> 00:02:27.379 So back to the future of religion is an API. I’m going to tell the same thing. Rather than define what I mean, I’ll just give an example. This is one example, it’s not the only example. 00:02:27.480 --> 00:02:47.500 But there’s a story from the Dalai Lama, and a reporter came to him and he said, What would he say to Americans who want to become Buddhists? And the Dalai Lama in this case said, Don’t bother. He said, learn from Buddhism if that’s good for you, but do it as a Christian, a Jew, or whatever you are. 00:02:48.140 --> 00:03:13.700 So again, that’s not the only way to live. I don’t think his answer is like is the right answer for everybody, but I do think it’s an interesting idea. He’s saying that, as I understand it, you have your own cultural context, and if you’re going to flip your entire cultural context, that might be drastic. There might be downsides to that. And so he said What if you kept your cultural context and you ported in ideas from other cultural contexts into your own? 00:03:14.260 --> 00:03:25.680 So in this case, you know, you have a Christian who’s in the Christian cultural context and then ports in Buddhist principles into their Christian cultural context. That’s the metaphor I’m using. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:51.720 Yeah, it doesn’t have to be only here. You could have like a non-believer And you could say, you know, a non-believer could use Sam Harris’s Waking Up app, and then they could port in. Buddhism and keep their culture as a secular person, but be porting in various religions. This could also be somebody who ports in ideas from Christianity even if they remain secular. 00:03:51.780 --> 00:04:28.480 So, another story from another perspective is this idea of somebody coming to Somebody, a Buddhist named Gassan, and they proposed reading the Christian Bible, and he said, Read it to me. Read me the Christian Bible. And so the person read a passage from Jesus, and he said, you know, this passage, take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow should take thought. For the things of itself, and Gassan said, Whoever uttered those words, I consider it an enlightened man. And so in this case, it’s a Buddhist cultural context pulling from Christianity. 00:04:28.640 --> 00:04:44.360 And so, whatever the cultural context, you know, you can pour it in lots of different cultural contexts into your own, and that this can become a religious experience in and of itself, where it’s personalized and decentralized. In many cases. 00:04:44.680 --> 00:04:55.800 But in some cases, this is the way religion has always been. And so I’ll talk a little bit about what’s distinct and what I’m referring to here. But first, I’ll talk about what’s the same. 00:04:55.840 --> 00:05:29.620 So here’s an example, Egyptian god that has been cast in Greco-Roman cultural context. Right? And so this is very ancient. There’s so many examples of this. You look at any archaeology, and it’s like every single piece of archaeology that’s right next to another religion, they start blending their architectural What do you say? They start blending their architecture. And so you can see it’s called in academic circles called syncretism. And it’s all over the place. 00:05:29.560 --> 00:05:59.400 And it’s even uh very common in contemporary tim in contemporary circles. So here’s an example of um L D uh L D S or Christian theology being syncretized with Secular American identity where the founding fathers are almost like it is a role of the apostles, right behind Jesus, Jesus holding the Constitution. It’s just these two cultures that are kind of. weaving together in this instance. 00:06:00.040 --> 00:06:18.960 In Mormon specific contexts, LDS General Conference They will cite Shakespeare, they’ll cite C. S. Lewis, these are pulling from outside, they’re porting in Christian and literary examples into Mormonism. 00:06:19.139 --> 00:06:47.180 So it’s very common, and one final one I’ll give is EFY music. Some subset of Mormons heard Christian rock and thought, oh, we need some of that. And so they ported that in to Mormonism. At which Christian Rock is already porting in rock music and you know rock music is already porting in, you know, you can’t trace back the lineage. Nevertheless, 00:06:46.160 --> 00:07:10.840 It’s common, and I think it’s only going to become more common throughout the future of religion, because we live in an increasingly connected world. So, 500 years ago, you know, if you’re a farmer. You have a local church. You might not really encounter other religious views your whole life. And so you just have: this is the church I go to, and this is kind of all I know, is my locality. But we’re completely connected today. 00:07:11.160 --> 00:07:53.280 And so the future of religion is the process of integrating whatever’s of good report or anything that’s praiseworthy, right? Wherever it might surface in this local community. We we still have a bit of an aversion to Eastern philosophies, but I see that uh decreasing rapidly, that that aversion. I think that people are becoming more and more interested in meditation, mindfulness, Buddhism, Stoicism. And so it’s only a matter of time, in my opinion, before in LDS General Conference people are pulling from these traditions more overtly. 00:07:56.540 --> 00:08:14.680 There’s so much wisdom throughout the world. The Bhagavad Gita, there’s a few of my favorites: the Bhagavad Gita from Hinduism. Mary Oliver’s poetry, Marcus Aurelius’s uh meditations, the Tao Te Ching is another one. And the future of religion then is a matter of porting these in. 00:08:14.760 --> 00:08:49.160 And this is what I’m I’m doing professionally, is like figuring out how to port in These various wisdom traditions so that they’re digestible and so families can use them in their home. And they can take Whatever wisdom traditions that they want to explore, let’s explore Buddhism together, let’s explore Hinduism together, and let’s bring that in, whether they happen to be Mormon, whether they happen to be Ch It’s a matter of using the various world wisdom traditions to have a richer religious life. 00:08:49.480 --> 00:09:25.519 In conclusion, The reason for this is that, again, we live in a connected world. And just to say, like, I’m going to only interact with ideas that are here in my locality, you know, I happen to be from Provo. Is very limiting in the 21st century, where we really have to be able to be part of a culture. This is what the Dalai Lama was getting at: you know, be part of a culture, be part of your local community. But bring in a global perspective. That’s really what I’m talking about when I say the future of religion is an API. Thanks. 00:09:29.640 --> 00:09:31.960 We’ve got time for a few questions. 00:09:35.480 --> 00:09:36.120 Sure, Brian. 00:09:36.360 --> 00:09:47.380 Thanks, John. Quick question. So what kind of APIs or services can the Latter-day Saint Church provide or Mormonism provide to others? 00:09:48.339 --> 00:10:23.800 It’s a good question. I think that they have like their apps that they’ve already developed. And so being able to port out I’ll just say I think that a lot of the strengths in Mormonism are around community innovations, like how to gather together as communities. And so I don’t know how that would look to port out those ideas of community exactly. I’ll have to think about that more. I find it compelling, but I don’t know exactly what it would look like. Yeah, thanks. 00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:42.040 So do you have like a rule of recognition in terms of what is safe to port? And what you want to firewall the Quran, you know, what would a Muslim not want from Christianity? What would a Christian not want from Islam? Do you have a like a rule of recognition? 00:10:42.360 --> 00:11:35.800 I do. there are several principles that I I personally follow. One is like wisdom is paradoxical. Uh God is human, human is God. Um the Tao Te Ching says that um There’s darkness upon darkness, is the answer to all mystery. And so there are these paradoxes that define wisdom. And so that’s one thing. Another thing is timelessness. There are several criteria. That I personally use and use through uplift to determine, well, what is wisdom? Because that can become very murky. But really, it would come down to a person could say, I disagree with. You know, they might disagree with me, but we would have transparency on what we consider wisdom and what is not wisdom. And then, yeah, follow that. 00:11:40.940 --> 00:12:25.280 How do you respond to my friend’s criticism when I told I he told me he’d slept with so many women he couldn’t remember it? He was European when I was in graduate school. And I said, Well, wow, I’m a monitor. I only had one wife. And he said, Oh. Well, you’ve experienced something that I’ll never experience. In other words, the problem of syncretism is that you lose in the syncretic moment. the actual particularity that is pure. And so how do you you seem to be promoting syncretism. But you don’t seem to be saying there’s a loss in any syncretism. 00:12:25.600 --> 00:13:34.520 Yeah. There is a loss in any syncretism. Absolutely, there’s a loss. Community gets diluted. And there’s a big loss in it, a big trade-off. And so I Am not saying that I believe that this is that my interpretation of religion is the right way. And I’ve experienced that loss personally, and it really hurts. So I do acknowledge the trade-off. I just don’t see how the current state of things is sustainable if we just double down on locality and parochialism. And so that’s where the tension is. We have to grow to have a global perspective while figuring out how to enact it at a local level. is very, very difficult transition, but I think it is the way that the world is headed. And so I think we have to figure out how to navigate those waters. Yeah. 00:13:35.480 --> 00:14:11.580 So game theoretically, marginal intolerances can come to dominate entire markets. We think about halal or kosher food becomes a preference that most people don’t have, but you can always find it available. And I think there’s a good argument that the reason that Christianity historically dominated where it did was because it was mutually intolerant of other religions. But clearly, syncretism has flourished. So, what is the difference between a period in which syncretism is an adaptive behavior versus when it is going to be a failing behavior and something else is going to take over the market, as it were? 00:14:13.200 --> 00:14:14.240 Hmm. 00:14:18.640 --> 00:14:25.440 Could you restate that? Why does syncretism win today out over other propositions? 00:14:26.620 --> 00:15:21.320 Hmm. I really like this question. I’m trying to figure out how to best answer it. I want to say that it’s because we’re in a time of peace that we have like the flexibility and freedom to explore. Christianity went out In large part because of Constantine, like just dominating and became the Holy Roman Emperor. If that wouldn’t have happened, would Christianity still be around? I don’t know. So, in a time of peace like this, we have the freedom to be able to explore things. But yeah, I don’t know if that answers your question at all. Food for thought. Yeah, food for thought, yeah. Any others? Final one? 00:15:21.640 --> 00:15:33.480 Just wanted to hear your thoughts on the kind of syncretism that you’re talking about and that tradition in Mormonism with, like, say for instance, Joseph Smith mentioning accept all truth, let it come from whence it may. 00:15:33.800 --> 00:15:44.660 Yes. Yeah. That’s exactly it. I think it possibly is precisely Mormon. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Thank you. 00:15:45.060 --> 00:15:45.860 Thank you, John.