In a recent post, I called myself a New Heretic. That may sound dramatic and hyperbolic, especially for a (not-so-good) Catholic boy like me who tries to follow my faith as much as possible (and fails a lot in the process).
And yet, I am a heretic.
And many of you are probably heretics, too.
In the Catholic tradition, a heretic is someone who denies or doubts a core truth of the faith. The word comes from the Greek hairesis, meaning “choice.” A heretic chooses their own path over the teachings of the Church, often at the cost of unity. History is filled with stories of heretics—some kicked to the curb, some cast out of councils, some burned at the stake—all marked as outsiders. In fact, there’s even a famous heresy that bears my surname: Jansenism, which opposed the idea of free will. (Someone in my lineage has gotta be linked to its founder, Cornelius Jansen. I even joined Ancestry.com to find out. So far, no dice… but I’m not giving up.)
But here’s the irony: in today’s world, it’s people of faith—and even atheists and agnostics who question the “truths” that get peddled as unquestionable—who are the new heretics. We’re the ones pushing against the dominant orthodoxy—not of the Church, but of materialism. By materialism, I mean the belief that only the physical world exists, and that everything—our bodies, our minds, our ideas, our relationships—can be reduced to matter, money, or metrics. Modern culture preaches its own creed: its gospel is productivity and consumption. Its sacraments are efficiency and entertainment. Its saints are influencers and innovators, and its high priests are algorithms and quarterly earnings reports. (And for the record, I love Netflix, Amazon Prime, Instagram, Crypto, and an awesome quarterly earnings report—but these things make terrible gods.)
Against all that, faith insists on mystery—on believing in something we can’t necessarily experience through our five senses. Faith says there is more to life than what can be counted, coded, or commodified. It says something beyond exists—whatever that is—that love is real, presence is real, and grace is not an illusion. That makes believers, and those who challenge the status quo, the heretics of our time.
This truth hit me vividly last year when I was invited by Mike Solana of Founders Fund—who also founded Pirate Wires (now on Substack)—to speak at Hereticon, a “conference for thoughtcrime,” alongside my good friend Mitch Horowitz. (Mitch says he doesn’t have any friends, but he’s still my friend.) Mitch and I go back almost two decades, and when I was asked to join him onstage for a conversation about exorcism, I said yes without knowing much about the event. What I found there was one of the most enlightening experiences of my life.
Hereticon gathered speakers from around the world—writers, researchers, and thinkers who challenge the status quo. I didn’t feel like I belonged at first. I’m just an editor and spirituality writer trying (and often failing) to live out my faith, full of the same hypocrisies as anyone else. I didn’t think of myself as a heretic—I believe in orthodoxy, I love tradition. But during the Q&A session of that exorcism talk, when materialism was mentioned, it struck me: today, people of faith are the true heretics. To believe in God, in Spirit, in the possibility of the miraculous is to challenge the reigning orthodoxy of our contemporary world.
Mitch comes from a different background. He believes in some things I don’t, and I hold fast to some things he doesn’t. But he’s one of the most deeply spiritual people I know, and we meet on common ground as a new generation of heretics because we both believe there’s something beyond this material existence. His current quest in parapsychology—bringing to light scientific evidence of the unseen—pushes me to keep going in my own work. Together, in different ways, we’re trying to remind people to pause, to look up, to see that life is more than numbers and screens.
If searching for, and/or believing in, something beyond the material makes us heretics, then let’s claim the name and live it heretically.
I completely agree with everything you said. I am seeing a great shift in the colletive spiritual mentality, even amongst atheists and the professors inside my college. I believe Gen z, that are extremists and more religious than the others, will spearhead a great revolution, for better or worse.
Remember: consciousness creates matter.
Wow yesss this spoke to me big time. As an evangelical pastors kid I had big faith my whole life, but in the last decade with Instagram church and influencer pastors with such polarizing opinions, “church” became confusing. I no longer knew what I believed as some of my core beliefs were different than what pastors preached from the stage. That’s what drew me to the Catholic Church. Rich history, structure, stillness, quiet, and actual answers on what was true. I’m proud to say last Sunday my four children were baptized, two daughters received Holy Communion, and I was confirmed into the Catholic Church 🙏🏼I feel even more at peace in such a chaotic world. I’m finding peace in the stillness of reading about the saints, church history and teaching my children those are the real influencers to follow. The other day my 6 year old asked what the straight and narrow way meant and it felt profound—it’s the way Jesus intended us to go. Not looking to our left or right, posting for approval, but true surrender following him, even if it’s counter cultural and unpopular. Today our science lesson was a book about Brother Theophane and how he brought color to the dull monastery by pulling colors from items in nature to create colored ink. They are busy at work squeezing the colors out of rose petals, sage, basil, and now dirt!