The business of religion

Come all ye faithful

Some of the devoted choose to meet in the early morning, braving the cold and arriving at their nondescript buildings in the pre-dawn darkness. The name on the sign outside might reference “soul” or “cross,” but there is nothing outwardly grand about these places. The real draw is the service about to start inside.

The congregants’ earlier interactions have acclimated them to social norms like dress codes, so they choose their attire with the fastidiousness of early Puritans. This leads to a generic sameness among the group—deviation would make one stick out, and this experience is not about the individual.1

As the session begins the leader takes a position up front, ready to guide the assembled congregants through a prescribed set of activities, both comfortingly familiar yet novel enough to maintain interest. The program is carefully choreographed, with moments of uplift and intensity interspersed with opportunities for deeper reflection. Upholding it all is a pervasive sense of belonging to a community united for a higher purpose.

Many in the West once gathered regularly with their fellow believers in church pews, but in recent years formal affiliation with a faith community has dropped off drastically. Yet it turns out these activities are still happening, just in new ways that obscure the forms being imitated. The inescapable human search for meaning and relationships has been co-opted by savvy entrepreneurs, particularly in the realm of fitness.

At first glance these businesses present as unremarkable gyms or exercise concepts, different in degree but not kind from the dozens that have risen and flamed out before them. But their modern temples throw off a consumer-friendly spirituality, using the pursuit of physical perfection as a sublimated means of accomplishing what religion once did. Brands like SoulCycle and CrossFit have become market phenomena by sweeping up millions with the promise of holistic self-improvement, even a glimpse of the transcendent, if only customers can keep the faith.

Over the hills and everywhere

This pursuit of salvation through testing the body has spawned unusual variants. In the 2010s, marathons and other road races were popular but commonplace ways to stretch one’s limits, and there was little innovation in the format. A new wave of obstacle and adventure racing companies sprung up to take personal quests to new extremes, including brands with names like Spartan Race and Tough Mudder.2 Modern workers realize the rat race isn’t enough to impart meaning to a life, and these real-world alternatives were designed to capitalize on that.

These companies offer the chance to compete in grueling events involving numerous obstacles, the gnarlier the better, often without any competitive ranking or even timing.3 They invariably leave finishers some combination of muddy, cold, and exhausted.4 If this doesn’t sound like a pleasant way to spend a weekend afternoon, it’s not intended to be. The achievement itself is the point, and woven into the ethos is the idea that participants will support each other. Completing the course means relying on the kindness of strangers to help you up that mud-slicked wall or to encourage you through the electric shocks.5 The idea of camaraderie through shared trials is a major selling point.

Another more cerebral example of religion-as-business is a psychology-inflected development program called The School of Life. Among its numerous initiatives, the company codifies its most important lessons in an online repository of secular scripture known as The Book of Life, a name that is just a little too on-the-nose—previous generations would have instantly recognized the title as a reference to a theological concept woven throughout the Jewish and Christian Bible, here re-labeled for mass consumption without acknowledging the referent.

Such businesses slyly fill a void, repackaging the trappings of religion and adding a millennial-friendly veneer of self-actualization for a generation whose participation in traditional faith communities has plummeted. To varying degrees they combine three core elements, and the most successful seek to weave them all into one integrated promise:

1: Ritual

Much like the liturgical calendars that prescribed seasonal, weekly, or even daily activities for the faithful, the new capitalists of religion embed a rhythm of life into their followers. Obstacle races follow a structured sequence, with local and regional events building up to a major gathering that unites the global communion of believers. In an interview, the founder of Tough Mudder explicitly likened his company’s structure of regular local activities plus special large-scale ones to a church offering regular services as well as grander programs for times like Christmas.

Ritualistic practices have the further advantage of generating their own language and peculiar ways of interacting. These are baffling to outsiders but a mark of commitment and belonging to those who are in the tent. CrossFit workouts are riddled with arcane terms and abbreviations comprehensible only to initiates, to the extent that a glossary is needed to stay on top of them. Obstacle racing companies have developed proprietary labels that mark out varying levels of commitment to their concepts. With the investment of time you acquire a different way of talking about the world, plus unique knowledge that requires specific work to attain.

2: Community

SoulCycle is an exercise class but also a therapeutic community, where the instructors who are rigorously selected for their personalities serve as de facto pastors and rabbis. CrossFit is about the journey taken with others, who are living testaments to the progress you’ve made. Tough Mudder has apparently inspired thousands to have its corporate logo tattooed on their bodies, a risky move given the lifespan of companies in the space.6

The best marketing for such programs comes from those who have seen the light and are now eager to evangelize others, on their own time.7 Spreading the news with the zeal of the converted, fitness philosophies like CrossFit and SoulCycle have expanded to hundreds or even thousands of locations around the world.8

Even at-home exercise equipment, by definition designed for solo use, has been infused with the idea of community.9 The most high-profile recent attempt is by a firm named Peloton, whose primary innovation is the addition of live group classes that can be streamed directly to owners’ homes, giving them a sense that they are part of something bigger and creating accountability.

The broader marketplace is not immune to this trend. Work has rarely been a solitary enterprise, but today it’s especially about building your tribe, or at least having a group of colleagues with similar social values who also wear Allbirds to share the reclaimed wood tables in your open-plan office.

3: Purpose

SoulCycle isn’t fundamentally about riding stationary bicycles in a studio next to a Starbucks in an upscale shopping district, nor is CrossFit’s grip on its members rooted primarily in its focus on functional fitness. Customer testimonials about these programs speak in frankly religious terms about their ability to transform lives and create new connections among fellow believers. The highest marketing promise of adventure racing is its ability to reveal new reserves of personal will and strength, empowering participants to achieve things they previously only dreamed of, forging bonds along the way.

Where purpose was once found in scriptures and traditions, it’s now sought in work and leisure. Both are freighted with new moral expectations, and corporations are contorting themselves to meaningfully articulate their role in advancing them. People who once found purpose in their non-work lives now look to employers to provide it. The corporate sector is expected to lead the way on fundamental issues of justice and worldview, and employees make it known when they like what they see, or don’t.

Heaven and nature

There’s one hitch in these business models, but it’s a killer: sooner or later their promises are doomed to fail. The most enduring concepts, both in business and religion, must appeal to something more than optimizing the self, which ends up being pretty fallible.10

This elevation of purpose and religious modes of thinking now permeates the world of work, but the process of replacing transcendental values can create venture capital fever dreams, as the chastened supporters of Adam Neumann of WeWork fame recently learned. Obstacle racing companies are finding that the initial burst of enthusiasm marking their arrival is ebbing, as participants age and communities built around their events evaporate.

After several false starts SoulCycle abandoned its plans for an initial public offering, which appear to be shelved indefinitely. Peloton has managed to go public, though the company is still unprofitable and expects to remain so for several years. Its most likely trajectory is one of eventual fatigue and decline, as anything built on the promise of a better physical self inevitably loses the battle against time.

Author David Foster Wallace memorably captured this problem in a viral commencement speech, in which he articulated how the impulse to worship, core to religion, never goes away:

“In the day-to day trenches of adult life there is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else will eat you alive. If you worship money and things then you will never have enough. Worship your body and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.”

The religious impulse is ineradicable, and whether expressed in traditional modes or adapted for capitalist enterprises one sure thing is it will persist. Ritual, community, and purpose have been and will be core to the human experience. Existing organizations or entrepreneurs eyeing their next opportunity can recognize this power but tap into it at their peril. The savvy investor should consider what it means for the next SoulCycle or Peloton, knowing that while they may burn brightly for a moment their loftiest promises will not—cannot—be kept.

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References

David Foster Wallace quote edited for clarity and excerpted from his 2005 Kenyon College commencement speech. It was later expanded into a book titled This Is Water.

The Atlantic wrote on the religious nature of CrossFit in 2017, referencing original research from a student at Harvard Divinity School, whose source paper is available here.

Tough Mudder founder Will Dean discussed his company’s parallels to the church in a 2017 Fast Company profile.