Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Hosted by Princeton Theological Seminary President Jonathan Lee Walton, Expanding the Table gathers leading voices in history, theology, and public life to explore questions of faith, leadership, and justice.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 00:06
Welcome to Expanding the Table. A Princeton Theological Seminary series from the Office of the President. I'm Jonathan Lee Walton, the 8th president of the seminary. And at this table, we gather leading voices in history, theology, and public life to explore questions of faith. Leadership, and justice. Today's guest is a clinical researcher. Psychologist and professor in the clinical psychology program at Teachers College at Columbia University. Dr. Lisa Miller is a pioneering voice on the neuroscience of spirituality and its role in adolescent well-being. Her research has shown that spiritual development is strongly associated with resilience, lower rates of depression and substance abuse. And overall mental health. She is the author of The Awakened Brain. The new science of spirituality in our quest for an inspired life. He's the author of The spiritual child. The new science on parenting for health and lifelong thriving. Dr. Miller, it is such a pleasure to have you with us you.
Lisa Miller | 01:24
Today. I'm so honored, President Walton. I've really been looking forward to speaking with.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 01:29
Listen, this is such a joy. And in your research... You talk about spiritual awareness and how it affects resilience in young people. I was just wondering if you could just give us a broad overview introduction of this and how you're thinking about resilience in young.
Lisa Miller | 01:46
People. President Walton, as I'm sure you're very well aware, right now in the United States and really in much of the world, there is a mass mental health crisis. For People of all decades, but primarily youth, high school age, college age, Gen Z. And with the ascension in the diseases of despair, addiction, depression, even suicidality, there has been concomitantly a sharp decline in family faith observance. Personal spiritual life and the two indeed go hand in hand.
So the first thing off the bat I'd want to emphasize is that we don't need simply to add more therapist chairs onto our campuses and into our schools. Yes, that's good, but we need to address the issue which is very much upstream. Namely, we are not having a mental health crisis. We are having a spiritual crisis. There is a lack of formation of the spiritual core in an entire generation of emerging adults. That's a national security issue. It's a civil society issue. It has to do with ethics, and it even has to do with personal mental health.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 02:59
So listen, when I hear you using terms like faith observance. I hear you using terms like, you know, and you write about this, like religious and religious faith communities, and spirituality.- I was wondering if you could define for our listeners how you use the term spirituality and how you even may distinguish it somewhat between, say, religious doctrine.
Lisa Miller | 03:23
Yes. So I come to you as a scientist, so my response is through the lens of science. And quite specifically, if we look at a twin study, we look at twins raised together, twins raised apart, We can determine the extent to which any human capacity is inborn versus environmentally cultivated.
So our temperament, whether we're outgoing or introverted, for instance, is half inborn, if you think of little babies, but half cultivated. And, you know... You're a leading intellectual. You were born very bright. IQ is two-thirds inborn. But the capacity through which we experience spiritual life. Is innate. Every single one of us on earth is born a naturally spiritual being. This is something that until the late 90s was not even known to science. It was extraordinary when this finding came out. And quite specifically, the capacity to be in a transcendent relationship, not just a belief. I turned to God for guidance. In times of difficulty and feel and receive a response or stay open to one. When I have a tough decision to make, I ask what really does my higher power want me to do? Nature is a sacred home to me. Daily spiritual awareness, a form of perception, is indeed our birthright. One-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed. Religion, whether I'm Jewish or Hindu or Catholic or Christian, whatever my tradition may be, religion is a profound gift. It is a gift of my community, maybe a gift of my parents and grandparents.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 05:03
Our tradition connects us across space and.
Lisa Miller | 05:06
Time. Magnificent. And all that comes with religion.
So the beautiful text and ceremonies and all that's there, these are gifts. And through the lens of science, these gifts are bestowed upon us. They are environmentally transmitted. Not inborn, of course.
So spirituality is innate. Religion, our beautiful world faith traditions, are environmentally transmitted. Two-thirds of Americans say, "My religion and my spirituality go hand in hand. "I experience the transcendent relationship with God through my faith tradition, through the prayers taught to me by my parents and with.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 05:43
Grandparents. So the transcendent relationship, that's what we're all born God.
Lisa Miller | 05:48
We are all born to be in a relationship with the deep, loving, guiding force in life, who I call.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 05:55
And then how the shape that transcendent relationship takes and the form, that is then informed by the faith traditions that are passed on to us, that are external.
Lisa Miller | 06:08
Exactly. Exactly.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 06:10
So how does...
Lisa Miller | 06:11
Very succinct.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 06:13
Making sure I'm saying it. Because really, that gets at my next question, Dr. Miller. And it's basically what neuroscience is able to teach us. About spirituality, about faith, that maybe theology does not.
Lisa Miller | 06:29
- So given that we have this inborn capacity, every one of us, for a relationship with God, who I call God, the transcendent relationship, Where, you know, body, mind, and soul in our brain is the home, the neuro-docking station, if you will, for this profound relationship. And it turns out that whether I am, again, Hindu, Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, whatever my tradition may be, whatever my family's faith tradition may be, There is one spiritual brain. The awakened brain, and we all have it. We invited people of all different faith traditions into the functional MRI that tracks blood flow and found the circuits that are engaged when we are in relationship with God. And in every single person, we saw the same three sets of circuits. The bonding network comes up online just as we were held as children in our parents' arms. When we feel and know God's presence, the bonding network engages and we perceive, we know that we are loved and held.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 07:37
Just as if we were engaging or bonding with A parent with a child or with a partner?
Lisa Miller | 07:43
The bonding, but again, the parent's not there. God is there. And the part of us that knows being loved and held comes online. The next circuit that we experience as we feel God's presence is our attention shifts from what am I going to get? What do I want? What did I do wrong? What did I do right to get it? Really sort of a tactical bowling alley view into life. That's the dorsal attention network. And instead, we shift into the ventral attention network. The floodlights come on and we say, hey, what is God revealing to me now? What is life showing me now? The broader view that often leads to a wide open door that we didn't even know existed. And that's something that many people share, that right when I was butting my head against that stuck red door, I finally... Handed it over. I finally turned to my prayer life. And over there, God showed me a wide open yellow door. We see the shift in the attention network. And the third circuit is that we move from really feeling at times isolated and alone, cut off, very much sort of slivered, right, to realizing that we're part of the larger fabric of life, the great oneness. And the shift between being a point in a wave, if you will, from being distinct and unique and actually beautifully diverse, right, but part of one unit of reality is the parietal. The parietal region puts in and out hard boundaries. Altogether, we are loved and held. We are guided. And we are never alone.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 09:21
So this awakened brain, we're loved and held, we're guided, we're never alone. What does this neuroscience, this understanding of the brain, how does that translate or how might we translate this in communities of faith?
Lisa Miller | 09:36
It's so important. Well, first of all, when we looked at people who over eight years were part of a faith community and practiced in a very authentic way in their heart spiritual life, we saw that the regions of the awakened brain actually grew thicker and stronger. Because remember, one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed is our natural spiritual capacity.
So when we pray and when we pray together and when we live and walk together, and talk through this deep spiritual awareness, we literally strengthen the muscle and it becomes the go-to place through which we engage life. Life becomes a sacred adventure. Life becomes one where people show up with profound meaning and we know God sent them. We see the larger symphony. And the second piece as it relates to our mental health crisis is that when we bad things happen and they do, right? Loss, betrayal, pain. We have a spiritual response to suffering. The awakened brain is fit and ready to go.
So we can say, okay, I didn't get what I want, or I just lost someone I love very deeply, but I know. And I can feel that I am loved and held. I didn't get the job and I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills, but you know what? I feel there is guidance and I will look for the guidance. It is a deeper way of being. That is given us when we engage our natural spiritual awareness. We move from being makers of our to being more discoverers of our journey in a dialogue with God. And we're built for that in our brain.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 11:16
- Now, is there a difference in terms of how this impacts, say, the awakened brain in young people versus adults.
Lisa Miller | 11:25
So children, unless socialized out of it, come quite awakened. And parents will often tell you jaw-dropping beautiful things that their children say.
So for instance, a child, unless socialized out of it, will naturally perceive continuity of spirit or consciousness after death. Unless we say, no, that doesn't exist. Children start there. A child will naturally perceive that we can receive inspired knowing, direct information, without being told, until we say, no, point on the page. It's only real if you can tell me where on the page you saw that. Scientists have called this implicit spiritual cognition. We could say, yes, there are certainly neural correlates for this in the awakened brain. But I like to think of the child as the naturally spiritual child.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 12:12
So Jesus knew something about the implicit spiritual cognition. Yes, indeed. A child shall lead us, or to inherit the kingdom of God, one shall be like a little child.
I mean, I think that's what I hear you.
Lisa Miller | 12:25
Saying, right? It's magnificent, and it's so thrilling when science can finally, after thousands of years, honor and mirror that which has been known all along by faith communities.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 12:35
I... You talked about diseases of despair earlier, you know, and obviously the mental health crisis. I know some of the work that we were talking about that you're working on now in terms of the state of young adults in 2025. I was wondering if you could share some of that.
Lisa Miller | 12:57
Data. Yes. Forty, fifty years ago, our country really put a silencing on free exercise of spiritual life in the public square. You take down the Hanukkah menorah, take down the Christmas tree from City Hall instead of put up one for everybody, which would be pluralism, right? And we had set before us really an ice age on public spiritual life. 40 years is long enough for someone to grow up, have a child who grows up, and is entirely spiritually non-conversant. We have high school and college students who may never have prayed by the side of a parent or grandparent, who might never have read any sacred text, or don't even feel at home in a house of worship, anybody.
So this is the first time in the past 200 years where we have had a rising generation with a... Unformed spiritual core. For many of them, there's a spiritual atrophy at the center of the whole person. And this is primarily responsible for the mental health crisis. When we look at the data published in top peer-reviewed journals...
Jonathan Lee Walton | 14:05
So you're saying this is causal, not to cut you off, but I just want to be clear. This is causal. This is not correlation, this is.
Lisa Miller | 14:12
Causal. No, we don't get depressed and then stop going to houses of worship. We don't get anxious and then stop praying. No, It's the opposite. We have raised a generation of children who've become emerging adults who don't know how to pray, who, spiritually speaking, are not conversant in expressing their spiritual heart, who may have never read a sacred text and when they do for the first time, don't understand how to translate from a symbolic story to a lived spiritual experience. They didn't grow up with that. This is a travesty, but it can be fixed. It absolutely can be fixed.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 14:48
Yes. That's why we're here.
That's why we do the work we do.
Lisa Miller | 14:52
We have the antidote. We have the antidote. You are the antidote, and this is the antidote. We see through top peer review science, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, that when there is a strengthening of the spiritual core, and this can happen at any time in our lives, that we start to cultivate our pray, meditate, serve, join in faith community, reflect. We then literally see the strengthening of the brain. We start to derive neuroprotective benefits against recurrence of depression. Now, how great is this effect?
Well, a high school student who says, "Yes, I turn to God for guidance in times of difficulty," student right there is 80% less likely to become addicted, 75% less likely to have depression, and to the really number one killer of youth right now, suicide. A teen who says, "Yes, I turn to God for guidance in times of difficulty, and this is a spiritual life which I share," often in a faith community, is 82% protected against completed suicide. The magnitude of these protective benefits is three to four times greater than anything else we have. There's nothing that compares. Of course, it's not 100%, but far and away, This is the antidote to the mental health crisis. Why? Because we are built to be foundationally, not just icing on the cake, but in the depth of our being spiritually alive and spiritually aware.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 16:29
If you look at over the last 40 years, I mean, to hear this kind of, to know that this protects our children, our young people from substance abuse, from domestic violence. Depression, anxiety, loneliness. Why? What do you think some of the sources of this 40-year decline are? In religious attendance because there are those who would argue that Toxic theologies and hyper-politicized religious faith communities have actually driven young people and young families away from faith traditions. And that might not be a bad thing.
Lisa Miller | 17:15
So I wouldn't go there. I would say that... In the formation of the spiritual child, what science says is that the most important person in the whole world is the parent or grandparent who walks the walk of unconditional godly love as an ambassador and who understands - Talks the walk, hey, pray by my side. Do you wanna finish our family grace? The child is formed. At home and in the community by the spiritual life of those committed to the child. And I think far off things like outer circles of society mean nothing to the child. The child is shaped by you, the father, you, the mother, the grandparent, or a committed, loving person who really shows up for that child and shares their spiritual life. We looked in a very... It was remarkable, President Walton. We looked at a sample of children whose mothers struggled terribly with opiate addiction, women who'd suffered terribly. And in the general population, about 70% of people still say my personal spiritual life is important to me. But in mothers, moms struggling with opiate addiction, it was a very low rate. It was 94%. 96% of mothers did not feel close to God. In their children. The children of opiate addicts had almost the natural rate, not quite, but almost, When the child grew up. With a loving, committed elder. It could have been the father, a brother, a sister of the parents, grandparent, who shared their religious life The child knew what was real. The child knew what was true. And he or she connected to that elder with the most powerful, pure form of spiritual life and drank from the well. Statistically, they became concordant. They said yes to you. Yes, how you're doing religion. When that happens, when the torch is passed from elder to child of faith life, that child of an opiate addict was 90% protected against the initiation behaviors of smoking and drinking in the lifetime course of addiction. We have the antidote. It's God. God is the antidote. And we are built to feel that deep connection with God through our love of God directly and through our ambassadorship.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 19:42
And our connection, it sounds like, with one another. Yes. And being able to pass on these healthy practices. Yes. And the community.
So even where... We fall short in our personal families and our parenting, which we all do, of course. We Right.
Lisa Miller | 19:55
All do.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 19:56
But we provide a varying backstop to one another in healthy communities of faith. This is what I'm.
Lisa Miller | 20:03
Hearing. Yes. And the child knows what's true and real.
So even if as a mother I'm struggling or I might be strong in some areas but unable to show up in others. The child looks and finds a man or a woman who is loving, consistent, and expresses spiritual life, who says, Read this prayer with me. What do you think this means? It talks in the first person, when I feel God's love, I just know I'm worthy, even no matter what anyone else says. That type of deep spiritual dialogue with the child is essential to the formation of the child's spiritual core. Why? When an adult speaks from the heart. Of their own spiritual life. I felt very trapped and suffocated, but then I felt God's love and I knew that anything was possible. When the adult is open, and uses language, sacred language, the child knows, one, the spiritual reality is indeed real. Two, there's a language and a roadmap here in our faith tradition. Three, there's a way I can get in that if built is there the rest of my life. And four, we can treat each other as souls on earth. We don't see each other as splintered different people. We know that we're emanations like rays from the sun.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 21:17
You're reminding me, and again, this is science corroborating what many of us just kind of were raised in. I think of my childhood in Atlanta, my wife, Cecily, her home church of Israel Baptist Church. I remember the first time I visited there, I was so shocked because she was introducing everybody. This is my uncle such and such. This is my aunt such. And I said, this young lady has the largest family I've ever seen in my life. But then what I came to realize over time that these were all just Members of the community, deacon, head of the motherboard, these were just all people. And over time, they became family. They became a kind of spiritual kin. And that's how they identified with one another.
Lisa Miller | 22:05
That's magnificent. Well, that is an ideal way to raise a child because no matter what, the child can look around and understand deep-lived spiritual values.
You know, there's a study that's very interesting. I had a late colleague, Singha Luthar, who went around to actually highly resourced communities all around the country, the United States, and she found in highly resourced communities – on the coasts outside of New York or outside of San Francisco, higher rates of addiction and depression and even suicidality than in the inner city. And she didn't know why, so she went in and asked the kids directly, "Hey, what matters here in your high school?" She sat at the lunch table. "Who's popular?" And all the kids knew it's him and her in that group. Dr. Luther came back a week later and said to a whole bunch of new students, can you tell me about that group of girls, that boy over there, to determine what really is valued in our society right now?
So number one predictor of popularity in boys. Substance use.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 23:09
Not sports. Substance use.
Lisa Miller | 23:10
Substance use, not sports. Substance use. Number two predictor was not intimacy but conquest. Okay, beautiful souls on earth socialized into this culture. Why is Of conquest and usury.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 23:22
It? Of sexual conquest.
Lisa Miller | 23:26
And why is that? Because a public square minus the spiritual heart is a transactional public square. And in girls, it was just this bad. The number one predictor in girls of popularity was weight. Parts and pieces, commodification. And the number two predictor of popularity in girls was cruelty. Meet girls, like the musical.
So again, Beautiful Souls on Earth, I - - By cruelty, exactly.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 23:49
The meanness being able to create varying levels of distinction. - Exactly. - Hierarchies.
Lisa Miller | 23:58
So I teamed up with Dr. Luther, I said, "Where's spirituality in this story?" And it turned out that the national rate at which a young person says, personal spiritual life is important to me is about 70%.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 24:11
That's nationally. 70% nationally.
Lisa Miller | 24:14
But in Communities that are highly resourced on the coasts of our country.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 24:20
And by highly researched, we're just talking about affluent. We are. Affluent communities and towns. Right.
Lisa Miller | 24:26
Right. *Chuckle* The rate goes all the way down to 15.15, less than a quarter of the national rate. And sure enough, that little 15% of high school students in affluent communities who say, "Yeah, I do turn to God for guidance," are protected. They are free of the otherwise elevated rates of addiction, depression, and suicide. Do bad things happen to spiritual people? Of course. But there is a spiritual response to suffering that prevents the downward spiral to addiction and depression and suicidality.
So how do I get my kid in that 15%? Any parent would want to know, right? Yes. And almost without exception. The one and six. Children from affluent communities who still had a strong connection to God were part of families that were either deeply devoted in a faith community of various traditions or communities of very profound service, like Habitat for Humanity or Doctors Without Borders. In other words, there was somewhere to go, like your wife's childhood church. Where people really were uncles and aunts of the heart, where spiritual values were the norm, where we see each other as a soul on earth, not as a Yes.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 25:47
Commodity. And we give ourselves those transcendent relationships. In other words, thinking beyond ourselves.
Lisa Miller | 25:55
Beautiful. Yes.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 25:57
So it sounds like this is where you find hope. I always like to end our conversations here with the areas where you're finding hope, but particularly as it relates to the flourishing of young adults in our communities.
Lisa Miller | 26:09
President Walton, if there were a pill. That every parent could give their child that was four-fifths protective against the mental health crisis, two, three times more powerful than anything else we have. Who wouldn't give that pill to their child? And we give them vitamin C. We give them melatonin. We worry about exercise. But the mental health is the core of the child's destiny much more than whether they can play the violin or do well on their SATs.
So who wouldn't give their child that pill? And yet we have the antidote. The antidote that is four-fifths protective is not a pill. It is rekindling our children's natural spirituality and walking the walk, talking the walk as a family. We can take back our homes. We can make our homes places of spiritual life. And when we do, we're going to see far more resilient, healthy children as well as children with much bigger lives, spiritual lives.
Jonathan Lee Walton | 27:03
And on that note... Let the church say amen. Thank you for joining us for Expanding the Table. A Princeton Seminary series from the Office of the President. These conversations are one of the ways we live into our mission. Cultivating leaders shaped by faith, scholarship and compassion. As well as opening our community to the world. On behalf of all of us at Princeton Theological Seminary, thank you for being part of this gathering. Until next time. May you continue to find ways to expand the table in your own communities. With faith. Integrity, competence, compassion, And most importantly, JOY! One love.