Faith Distorted: Confronting Superficiality and Reclaiming Depth

Rev. Richard Brendan • June 16, 2025

Richard Rohr on Jesus, Justice, and the Crisis of Shallow Spirituality

For over twenty years, I had the pleasure of hosting a weekly radio show titled JourneysFire with Richard Brendan, which featured leading visionaries and social change artists. Among the most profound conversations featured on the show was an interview with bestselling author and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, Fr. Richard Rohr. The following is an excerpt from our conversation, in which Rohr confronts the distortion of faith, the too-often-ignored radical nature of Jesus, and the urgent need for deeper reflection in our world today. 


RB (Richard Brendan): Richard, what do you see? As a religious leader yourself, what do you see as the top issues that we need to be addressing in our country? For so long, what we call the religious right has dominated the discussion around "family values," around the abortion issue, same-sex marriage, but there are so many more issues that need to come to the forefront that has everything to do with values.


RR (Richard Rohr): Yes. It's amazing that we've been able to create, like the two you mentioned, litmus tests that have not been litmus tests for the first 1,900 years of Christianity. It's like, where did these come from as a prooftext of whether you're really a Christian or not? And as a Catholic who tries to honor the whole tradition, I want to say where did that come from? You know it's dealing with cultural issues and purity codes and the need to feel superior and right much more than any reliance upon the teachings of Jesus, who never talks about either of those issues, for example, whereas almost every other story of Jesus is talking about love and concern for the poor. So it's really amazing that people who consider themselves followers of Jesus have been able to ignore many of the major things that Jesus talked about.


RB: Talk more about what I would consider the radical nature of Jesus that we often don't hear about, but I think we are now. but just how radical was he?


RR: We have churchified Jesus and we took him out of his historical Jewish reformist context, and we pretty much made him a white, middle-class American, concerned about the same issues that we are obsessed with or preoccupied with. And once you do that, once you pull him out of his Jewish context as a reformer of his own religion, and therefore a reformer of all religion, I think you pretty much have domesticated Jesus. And the things that we are concerned about are very different from the much more radical concerns of his, which have to do with justice, with mercy, and the poor.


RB: Richard, do you see any issues overriding any others that are taking place in the world today, that you deem most important?


RR: This is what comes to my mind right now. I think our biggest problem is superficiality. We have an amazing preoccupation with silliness, with issues of no account, with the lives of movie stars. I think this superficiality is leading us to miss the heart of most issues because we just don't go deep. We settle for cliches', for one-liners, for very quick explanations for everything, and that's what allows us to not to see the evil of war, not to see the global warming issue as a moral issue, not to see the oppression of the poor as a moral issue. It's just that - we're not bad people. We;re just not very deep people.


Fr. Richard Rohr’s insights remind us that honest spirituality calls us to transcend superficiality and engage with the deeper, frequently uncomfortable realities of justice, mercy, and the human condition. His reflections urge us to reclaim a faith rooted in love and concern for the marginalized instead of one reduced to cultural litmus tests. As we navigate the complexities of modern life, can we choose depth over distraction? Will we choose transformation over mere tradition?


Rev. Richard Brendan

World Wide Communion

By Rev. Dr, Carolyn Scanlan-Holmes • September 29, 2026
Although we define our world with borders, walls, and ideologies, World Communion Sunday brings us a simple reality: we belong to each other. This Sunday, we gather around a table that expands across the globe, a table of radical hospitality where all are fed, all are valued, and all are loved. Together, we commit to the collective work of peace, justice, and healing for our planet. Join us as we break bread and build bridges.

The Art of Living: The Art of Prayer

By Rev. Dr. Carolyn Scanlan-Holmes • September 22, 2026
Be honest: When you pray, does it feel like a genuine conversation—or just another item on your to-do list? Sometimes, the most familiar things are the hardest to truly see. This Sunday, we continue week two of our series, The Art of Living, by stripping away the routine and taking a radical new look at the most famous prayer in history. Diving into the Gospel of Matthew, we're looking past the familiar recitations of the Lord's Prayer to discover what it actually takes to build a thriving spiritual life. Whether your prayer life feels vibrant, completely stuck, or non-existent right now, Jesus' words offer the reset you need. This week, we're digging into the setup, motive, and heart of prayer—moving past empty repetitions and performance checklists to find a space where true connection and forgiveness can transform our daily lives. Mastering the art of living doesn't start with striving; it starts with humility and silence in the presence of God. Join us this weekend as we discover how a simple shift in our prayer life can change everything. See you Sunday!

The Art of Living

By Rev. Dr. Carolyn Scanlan-Holmes • September 14, 2026
A new two-week series exploring how faith connects to daily rhythms and habits — with a visual artist and writer bringing "The Art of Living" to life.

Hunger is Rising and God Calls Us to Respond

By Michael Ransom • September 13, 2026
You can make a difference with the power of the pen

Kissing the Leper

By Rev. Richard Brendan • September 7, 2026
St. Francis's embrace of the leper reveals a truth about love: it grows not by avoiding what frightens us, but by moving toward it.

Where Were You?

By Rev. Dr. Carolyn Scanlan-Holmes • September 1, 2026
Remembering 9/11

It's the Journey.

By Rev. Dr. Carolyn Scanlan-Holmes • August 25, 2026
Life comes with no map. We try to make our own and we set out, sometimes with excitement, sometimes with fear or grief, or just because standing still isn't an option. Sometimes we go not entirely sure where we're headed or what we'll find when we get there. In one of the most quietly beautiful stories in the Gospel of Luke, two travelers, heavy with loss and confusion, walk a road from Jerusalem. They meet a stranger, who falls in step beside them. They don't know who he is. They don't know what's coming next. But they keep walking. Somewhere in the walking, something shifts. The Road to Emmaus isn't really a story about a destination. It's a story about what happens on the way there: the conversations, the companions, the moments of unexpected recognition that change everything. Join us Sunday as we explore what it means to be on a journey full of unknowns. Do we fear that which we cannot know, or can we embrace the uncertainty as part of the adventure?

Learning from the Mystics: A Pure Heart

By Rev. Dr. Brenda Freije • August 18, 2026
What if Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” are not about who gets to see God someday, but an invitation to learn how to see God now? The great Christian mystics believed that the heart is more than the center of our emotions. It is an “organ of spiritual perception,” a way of seeing beneath the surface of things into the deeper reality of God’s presence. Richard Rohr says this is what mysticism is really about. Mystics are not spiritual elites who have strange or extraordinary experiences. They are people who have learned to go beneath the surface and discover the “connected core of reality.” The result is not simply a different experience of God; it is a different way of seeing everything. They begin to see grace in all things and the deep connections between all things—seeing a neighbor instead of a stranger, a human being instead of an enemy, sacred creation instead of commodities, connection instead of separation, and Divine Presence where we previously assumed God was absent. And that gives us perhaps the most important test of genuine mystical spirituality: Are we becoming more loving? The goal of contemplative practice is not extraordinary spiritual experiences. Its fruit is a growing capacity for compassion, generosity, freedom, and love—a different way of being in the world. Let's explore what Jesus might mean by a “pure heart,” what keeps us from seeing clearly, how learning from the mystics and their practices can help us awaken to a God who may be much closer than we realize, and how all of this might enable us to act in the world with greater peace, hope, and clarity.

Mother Love, Mother Loss

By Joy Dyer, MSW, LCSW • August 10, 2026
The relationship we have with our mothers is one of the most meaningful in our lives. Sometimes sweet, sometimes difficult…or worse…but always full of complexity. And researchers have determined that this most significant of relationships actually begins in the womb. It’s the template where we first learn about love, whether we were fortunate to have loving mothers, or mothers who sadly were unable to love us as we needed and deserved. This primal, intense relationship continues throughout our lives, influencing and shaping who we become and how we relate to others as we journey through on our own paths. Is it any wonder then that the death of our mothers is one of the most impactful losses that we will experience? And yet, even after her death, it’s possible to have a continuing conversation and relationship with her…with her gifts and her flaws…that allows for connection and the possibility of repair and forgiveness. This Sunday, please join us as we explore the joys, sorrows, and possibilities of the eternal bond between mother and child. Joy Dyer, MSW, LCSW, brings 37 years of clinical social work experience, including work in end-of-life care and advanced bereavement training. She specializes in grief in all its forms. Joy returns to The Garden on Thursday, September 3 for Debunking the Myths of Grief.

It's All Fun & Games

By Rev. Dr. Carolyn Scanlan-Holmes • August 4, 2026
On the Importance of Play