Love, Dignity, and the Changing Church: A Look Back on Five Years of Cultural Shifts

Five years ago, the world changed overnight. In March 2020, the pandemic shuttered churches, halted in-person community, and forced us all into isolation. We reimagined worship over Wi-Fi, replaced hugs with pixelated smiles, and began a long, collective reckoning with what it means to be the church in a fractured world.

Now, as we stand in 2025, we are not the same. We have seen the rise of new movements for justice, confronted our theological blind spots, and begun re-examining old assumptions about faith, relationships, and community. Two of our Prepared to Drown episodes explored these very themes, drawing out the ways our faith and culture have shifted—particularly in how we navigate grief, connection, sexuality, and dignity in a world still coming to terms with its own brokenness.

Our pilot episode reflected - along with many themes - on grief—both personal and collective, in the process of deconstructing faith. The global pandemic gave our entire world a crash course on grief. Many of us lost loved ones in the pandemic; others lost certainty, stability, or faith in institutions that seemed ill-equipped for crisis. We learned that grief does not have a timeline. It lingers, reshapes us, and forces us to reimagine what it means to love in the face of loss.

For many, faith communities became sites of mourning, holding space for the complicated feelings of a world forever altered. But grief, when held in community, becomes a teacher. We learned that lament is sacred, that God does not rush us through pain but meets us in it. And as we grieved, we also discovered something radical: the enduring nature of love. Not just the love we have for those we lost, but the love we extend to one another in the face of suffering.

This speaks to a broader shift happening within the church: a move away from rigid theological formulas toward a more expansive, compassionate way of being together. We are beginning to recognize that the sacred is not found in doctrinal precision, but in our ability to show up for one another—to name sorrow without rushing to fix it, to embrace joy without fear, to cultivate communities where people can bring their full selves, uncertainties and all.

Another cultural shift in the past five years has been the growing willingness within faith spaces to rethink sexuality, consent, and the dignity of all relationships. The Prepared to Drown conversation on purity culture and faith’s role in shaping sexual ethics revealed just how much damage shame-based teachings have done. Many grew up hearing that their worth was tied to their sexual history, that desire was dangerous, and that gender roles were divinely mandated rather than culturally constructed.

But in 2025, these conversations are no longer theoretical. They are urgent. The pandemic forced many into isolation, highlighting the deep human need for connection and intimacy—not just romantic or sexual, but relational in all its forms. We have seen the cultural backlash against movements for bodily autonomy and LGBTQ+ inclusion, and we are now grappling with what it means to resist not only bad theology but bad policy that seeks to control rather than affirm.

At its core, the conversation about sexuality and faith is the same as the conversation about grief: it is about dignity. How do we honor the inherent worth of every person, recognizing that no one is disqualified from love? How do we reshape faith communities so that they are not spaces of judgment and silence, but of truth-telling and grace?

One of the most striking shifts in the past five years has been the increasing clarity among younger generations that consent, respect, and mutuality are not just secular ideas, but deeply sacred ones. Faith communities that recognize this shift and lean into open, honest conversations about healthy relationships will be the ones that thrive. Those who refuse will find themselves increasingly out of step with a world that is no longer willing to pretend shame is a virtue.

Looking back, five years later, one truth emerges: the church is changing, whether we are ready or not. The question is not whether we will return to the way things were, but whether we will embrace the transformation already unfolding around us.

The pandemic shattered our illusions of control, revealing the fragility of the systems we had taken for granted. In its wake, we have the opportunity to rebuild with greater intention—to create communities of belonging that are rooted in love, not fear; in dignity, not shame.

This is not easy work. It requires unlearning. It demands courage. But if we have learned anything in these five years, it is that faith is not about certainty; it is about trust. Trusting that love is stronger than loss. Trusting that bodies and relationships are sacred. Trusting that God’s grace is expansive enough for all of us.

The church that is emerging is not the same as the church that was. And perhaps that is exactly the good news we need.