Interview With Lamorna Ash
Lamorna Ash is a British writer and journalist known for her immersive nonfiction, including Dark, Salt, Clear, a memoir about life in a Cornish fishing town. Her new book, Don't Forget We're Here Forever, explores a rising generation’s search for religion and meaning...What I take from the interview—and what you may find, too—is that this new search for religion isn’t about crafting a completely “new” theology that abandons the past or dismisses earlier theologies as misguided in favor of some final, systematic solution. It’s a search for love, community, openness, and hope—a yearning rooted in the deep wells of tradition, yet open to a future still unfolding. At its heart is love: love as connection, as presence, as a sacred center. And the community being sought isn’t abstract or purely intellectual; it shows up in lived practices—rituals like gathering for worship on Sunday mornings—where meaning, belonging, and spiritual depth can take root.
We Are Leagues Away from
the New Atheist Movement
Not only did I meet a host of people in their 20s and 30s who have converted to some form of Christianity, but I also detected a marked attitudinal shift in how my peers talk about religion compared with the generations that came before us...We are leagues away from the New Atheist movement of the 1990s, which repudiated religion on supposedly intellectual grounds – though the straw-man version of religion Richard Dawkins and his ilk chose to burn down was the most pallid, simplistic form they could devise. Our feelings about faith are distinct, too, from the broad strokes of apathy or indifference towards belief that often characterised the 2000s.
- Lamorna Ash, author of Don't Forget We're Here Forever, the Guardian
A GEN Z Christian Revival
Toward a Humble, Hopeful, and
Tradition-Honoring Process Theology
The renewed search for religion among Gen Z—and their growing interest in Christianity—is not about dogmatic rejections of the past or the construction of absolutely new belief systems. Rather, it is a search for love, community, openness, and hope—and a quiet rejection of the stale secularism that reduces life to material success, personal branding, or endless consumption. This yearning draws deeply from the wells of tradition while remaining open to a future still unfolding. At its heart is love: love as connection, as presence, as a sacred center. And the kind of community being sought is not abstract or purely intellectual—it is embodied in lived practices, such as gathering for worship on Sunday mornings, where meaning, belonging, and spiritual depth can take root.
Advocates of open and relational (process) theologies can play a meaningful role in the spiritual lives of some among Gen Z—but only if they move away from simple-minded rejections of inherited traditions as mere “bad theology.” What many young seekers are drawn to is not just belief systems, but the lived texture of religious life: ritual, community, service, and a sense of the sacred woven into daily existence. Theology matters, but only when it walks humbly, honors the wisdom of the past, and opens space for mystery, beauty, and belonging.
This means that simple-minded rejections of doctrines like omnipotence—as if it were necessarily opposed to amipotence—or of creation out of nothing—as if it inevitably leads to domination—or of supernaturalism—as if it must always conflict with science—will be self-defeating. Such dismissals risk alienating those who are drawn to the richness of tradition and who sense that the sacred cannot be reduced to a single metaphysical formula. They are also often overly dogmatic and insensitive to the metaphorical and multivalent uses of theological language—failing to appreciate that such terms have carried diverse meanings across history and can still speak powerfully when reimagined with care. For many in Gen Z, what matters is not whether a doctrine is old or new, but whether it nurtures love, justice, and wonder.
Rather than presenting itself as a system of novel ideas or a wholesale replacement of inherited belief, Process Theology might better be understood as a way of interpreting and illuminating the richness of religious traditions in light of amipotence—the tender, relational power of love. It does not ask us to discard what came before but invites us to revisit it with fresh eyes and open hearts. In this light, doctrines such as omnipotence, creation, or divine presence need not be discarded but reimagined as expressions of divine care, responsiveness, and creative transformation.
At its best, Process Theology is less a blueprint and more a lens—a way of seeing the sacred woven through life, tradition, and possibility, in ways that nourish the love, community, openness, and hope Gen Z—and all of us—long for. Additionally and importantly, Process Theology carries with it deep commitments to community and ritual, to protecting the Earth and all forms of life, and to developing cultures of kindness, creativity, justice, and joy. In this sense, it is not just a theology—it is a way of life.
Advocates of open and relational (process) theologies can play a meaningful role in the spiritual lives of some among Gen Z—but only if they move away from simple-minded rejections of inherited traditions as mere “bad theology.” What many young seekers are drawn to is not just belief systems, but the lived texture of religious life: ritual, community, service, and a sense of the sacred woven into daily existence. Theology matters, but only when it walks humbly, honors the wisdom of the past, and opens space for mystery, beauty, and belonging.
This means that simple-minded rejections of doctrines like omnipotence—as if it were necessarily opposed to amipotence—or of creation out of nothing—as if it inevitably leads to domination—or of supernaturalism—as if it must always conflict with science—will be self-defeating. Such dismissals risk alienating those who are drawn to the richness of tradition and who sense that the sacred cannot be reduced to a single metaphysical formula. They are also often overly dogmatic and insensitive to the metaphorical and multivalent uses of theological language—failing to appreciate that such terms have carried diverse meanings across history and can still speak powerfully when reimagined with care. For many in Gen Z, what matters is not whether a doctrine is old or new, but whether it nurtures love, justice, and wonder.
Rather than presenting itself as a system of novel ideas or a wholesale replacement of inherited belief, Process Theology might better be understood as a way of interpreting and illuminating the richness of religious traditions in light of amipotence—the tender, relational power of love. It does not ask us to discard what came before but invites us to revisit it with fresh eyes and open hearts. In this light, doctrines such as omnipotence, creation, or divine presence need not be discarded but reimagined as expressions of divine care, responsiveness, and creative transformation.
At its best, Process Theology is less a blueprint and more a lens—a way of seeing the sacred woven through life, tradition, and possibility, in ways that nourish the love, community, openness, and hope Gen Z—and all of us—long for. Additionally and importantly, Process Theology carries with it deep commitments to community and ritual, to protecting the Earth and all forms of life, and to developing cultures of kindness, creativity, justice, and joy. In this sense, it is not just a theology—it is a way of life.
GEN Z Christian Revival
Interviews with Lamorna Ash
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