As church attendance declines among younger generations, Black people of faith are building spiritual communities through Instagram, Substack, podcasts, and other digital platforms. 

But can you build a thriving spiritual community when most participants never meet in person?

Join us Thursday, May 7, at 6 p.m. for an evening of reflection and discussion with educator, historian, author, and Osun priestess Juju Bae, and Buddhist minister, author, and activist Lama Rod Owens.

Moderated by Commonweal Centennial Fellow Aaron Robertson

RSVP is required. To register, click here. 

Juju Bae is an accomplished educator, historian, author, and Osun priestess. An expert in the spirituality that moves throughout the Black diaspora, she is host of the critically acclaimed podcast A Little Juju, which was nominated for Best Religion and Spirituality Podcast at the 2020 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards. Her first book, Book of Juju, focuses on the importance of ancestral veneration and its uses as a tool for healing, liberation, and self-discovery. She is currently working with the University of California Santa Barbara on The Africana Religions Project examining twenty-first-century conjurers and practitioners.

Lama Rod Owens is a “Black Buddhist Southern Queen” and an authorized lama in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. He earned his Master of Divinity degree at Harvard. He is the author of The New Saints and Love and Rage, as well as a coauthor of Radical Dharma. The cofounder of the Buddhist spiritual community Bhumisparsha, he has a gift for reaching diverse audiences with transformative wisdom. 

Aaron Robertson is Commonweal’s inaugural Centennial Fellow. He is a writer, journalist, translator, and former book editor. His nonfiction debut, The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America, was named a New York Times Notable Book and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, the Hooks National Book Award, and the Zora Award for Nonfiction.