Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution

This was written by the guy who played Dwight from The Office. I’ve never seen that show, but I gather he was funny in it.

He’s a practitioner of the Bahá'í faith. He was born into it – his parents were Bahá'í converts. That faith is a lot like universalism – it roughly believes in monotheism, and that Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all worshipping the same God.

This book is an investigation into the concept of a soul or spirituality. It’s not concerned with any single religion. It’s an examination of happiness, fulfillment, empathy, and how to make the world generally better.

Evangelical Christians would mostly abhor the book, because it speaks of fulfillment without Jesus. And it dismisses the idea of Hell. But, again, Wilson is not advocating for any particular religion – if anything, he wants us to be “spiritual, not religious.” He’s really just advocating for us all to look a little deeper into our lives and figure out what really matters to us and the people around us.

He talks at length about “deaths of despair.” Some of the figures he provides are shocking. Suicide among young people is a leading killer now, and is up something like 50% over the last 20 years. He calls this a “pandemic.”

In the second half of the book, he comes up with 10 principles which are universal to all religions. And then he “designs” a new religion, using those principles and 11 more.

But he’s not trivializing religion or poking fun at it. He’s showing how basic and fundamental faith and spirituality are to the human experience.

It’s a very thoughtful book from an unlikely source. It made me think, and it feels like a book I should read again.

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