There are no rules listed on the Secular Sabbath website. Though drugs or alcohol aren’t provided or encouraged at her sabbaths, Medow-Jenkins also says she won’t “take it away from them.” (And judging from the pure ecstasy of today’s crowd, it wouldn’t surprise me if the vibe is pharmaceutically enhanced). Her events don’t even have to occur on the Sabbath—this event, for example, is happening on a Tuesday night.

But she does try to steer clear from any connections to Western religions like Christianity, and instead borrows from Eastern traditions, because people are “more open to it.”

More than anything, she wants to dispel the idea that God is uncool.

“In American culture, we are so disconnected from feeling passionately about things—because it’s terrifying to care,” she says. “People are afraid to feel into spirituality.”

[If you’re looking for God, then you’re not ‘secular.’ If you want a Sabbath, then you don’t want ‘secular’ either. People aren’t afraid to “feel into spirituality,” they’re just in denial about it. They aren’t looking for God so much as they’re looking to confirm that they themselves are God, which is why all of these cultish practices focus on their own bodies. If any of them were truly serious about ‘finding God,’ they wouldn’t eschew the theological works and revelations of those who preceded them. But even with all of that, this piece shows that we were made for recognition of God, and that secularism leaves us empty, yearning — and vulnerable to those who want to charge lots of money to give us a poor substitute. — Ed]