Actor Rainn Wilson shared his thoughts on society’s dismissal of religion and its embrace of “superficial” spirituality.
Recently, Wilson, 57, who has been open about his Bahai faith, “for a good 12 years” appeared on the “No Small Endeavor” podcast, hosted by theologian and professor Lee C. Camp and spoke about how society has responded to both ideologies.
He shared:
“We’ve thrown the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater, collectively rejecting religion and getting our spirituality sometimes in quite superficial ways, like from a yoga class or just a meditation app or an Instagram that has Rumi quotes on it. And I don’t mean to, I don’t mean to denigrate, New Age folk or people that are looking outside of a religious system for spiritual inspiration, but there are universals in art and there are universals in spirituality that humanity desperately needs right now.”
Wilson, who is the author of the book “Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution,” released in April, further explained why people need elements of religion and spirituality now more than ever.
“We’re in the midst of a number of crippling pandemics that I outline in the book. We have a pandemic of climate change — that’s a pandemic, besides COVID,” he said.
“The Office” star continued to name other pandemics like racism and inequality.
“I believe that there are spiritual tools that can heal us both on an individual level and on a collective level,” he claimed.
Wilson also spoke about what it is like to be so open about his faith in Hollywood.
“Frankly, I think it freaks people out. I think that most of Hollywood, especially comedians in Hollywood, talking about God is the uncoolest thing you can ever possibly do,” he noted.
Wilson also compared Hollywood to high school.
“Now comedians will call themselves nerds and say, ‘Oh, I’m so uncool, I’m so uncool.’ But it’s this weird thing. It’s like, Hollywood is about who’s sitting at the cool kids’ lunch table,” he said.
He continued, “So do I, do I have any smoking guns? Do I have any kind of like, emails…? No, not really.”
Wilson added he can “sense a collective eye roll” about the openness of his faith.
“It certainly doesn’t help my career. I’m not doing any, any of this for any self-promotion or, or career,” he shared.
In March, Rainn spoke out on Twitter about what he perceived as an “anti-Christian bias in Hollywood” regarding an episode of the HBO Max television series “The Last of Us” where Ellie, the main character, “encounters a group of survivors led by a cult-leading cannibal who keeps quoting the Bible.”
“As soon as the David character in “The Last of Us” started reading from the Bible I knew that he was going to be a horrific villain. Could there be a Bible-reading preacher on a show who is actually loving and kind?” he added.