Wired For Spirituality In Changing World

There’s something ironic about a Roman Catholic nun teaching transformative spirituality to a group of “nones,” or people who profess no affiliation with a religion.

For Miriam Therese (M.T.) Winter, a Medical Mission Sister whom no one calls “sister” any more, it’s a natural part of her calling. So we gather at West Hartford’s Gold Roc Diner, where they serve a veggie burger topped with bacon — another irony. Here, Winter can enjoy a mountain of fries and try to explain what she’s studying these days.

Transformative spirituality, Winter says, is “rooted in the story of the universe. It helps people of faith, with or without a religious affiliation, to link their energies to Creator Spirit in ways that lead to a transformation of themselves and the world around them.”

Winter is something of a legend. A native of New Jersey, she embraced the spirit of Vatican II and set out to infuse the church with a new brand of music, which was her original college degree. She has written a shelf-load of books on feminism, and the importance of dissenting while remaining in the pew. She’s written books from the perspective of a first-century woman, and feminist lectionaries. She remains a Catholic nun in good standing with the church, locally and internationally.

And then, there is the music. Her 1966 “Joy Is Like the Rain” went gold, and continues to be popular among evangelicals in Great Britain. She came to Hartford Seminary to build a department of liturgy, worship and spirituality and then things exploded. Her Women’s Leadership Institute took off, and over the years, she taught 500 women to explore justice, create their own rituals, and then go out into the world and lead.

Her Christmas toy drive for the children of incarcerated women has annually filled the seminary’s lobby. A few years ago, her autobiography was re-released as an audio book narrated by — wait for it — Janis Ian. Their collaboration, Ian explains, as a “Jewish lesbian singer-songwriter and a world-famous Catholic feminist theologian, throw them in a pot together, and stir. The result proves that we’re all the same under the skin!”

It’s the wiring, Winter says. We’re wired for spirituality. Some of us choose religion as a vehicle by which we express our spirituality, and some of us don’t.

A few years ago, saying you were spiritual but not religious was considered a little lame. But now? That’s more the norm. Research from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, a part of the seminary, shows that weekly attendance is down in mainstream churches, and that fewer congregations (outside of evangelicals and Pentecostals) are growing. Research from the Pew Research Center says that the nones — a category that includes people who identify as atheists and agnostics — now make up nearly a quarter of U.S. adults. By most measures, Pew research says that nones consider religion even less important than in recent years, and they tend to pray and attend religious services less.

Churches — and seminaries — have had to adapt. The roots of the Hartford Seminary go back to 1833, when ministers began a training school for Congregational ministers. But these days, seminaries like Hartford tend to enroll more nontraditional students who often aren’t even affiliated with a faith group. (I earned a seminary degree in 2001, when the student population was just starting to shift to folks like me whose deep interest in theology was matched by our zero interest in ordination.) The seminary’s catalog now emphatically welcomes “both those who affirm the traditional voices in faith communities and those who carry doubts regarding those traditions.” Transformative spirituality is an idea whose time has come.

In May, after 34 years at the seminary, Winter had a kind-of retirement party, but it was really more of a transition. She continues with the women’s leadership institute, and the program for transformative leadership and spirituality, which was started in 2014. Really, there’s no end in sight. The sky — or heaven — is the limit.

Winter delivered a presentation on transformative spirituality in January. She’ll give a second one at 7 p.m. Monday at the seminary. Registration is encouraged.

Susan Campbell teaches at the University of New Haven. She is the author of “Dating Jesus: Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl” and “Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker.” Her email address is isabellabeecherhooker@gmail.com.