This week (February 1-7, 2026) marks World Interfaith Harmony Week. As such, I wanted to briefly explore my own interfaith journey and why I think tai chi is an excellent vehicle for such explorations.
My Faith Journey
My faith journey has followed an unusual path. My family of origin is perhaps best described as “cultural Christian” or “secular Christian”-there is no belief in the divinity of Jesus or the existence of God, but there is an acknowledgment of Jesus as a moral teacher and of Christianity’s influence on Canadian culture. For the first 13 years of my life, I considered myself Christian-I sang in the children’s choir at our local church during events like Christmas and Easter (basically the only time we ever went to church!), attended some Christian after-school programs were we did crafts and learned Bible stories (the rewards of chocolate and candy for correct answers were excellent motivators!), attended a Christian day-camp, and had a book of children’s Bible stories. However, my understanding of Christian faith was very childish and as such did not survive the exigencies of adolesence.
From about the age of 14 to 15 or so, I was best described as agnostic. I though it likely there was something more to the universe, as I was unhappy with the idea that crude matter was all there was, but I wasn’t sure what form it took. I was open to the idea of various psychic, supernatural, and paranormal phenomena during this time, but had no committed belief one way or another on the existence of divinity. I found the understandings of Christianity I had during this time unpersuasive though I still found something compelling about the story of Jesus, especially the crucifixion and resurrection.
At the age of 16, I began identifying as, and practicing, solitary Wicca. Given certain internal limitations on belief, and external limitations on resources and privacy, my Wiccan practice ended up being heavily influenced by more typical Christian understandings. I was drawn to the Divine Feminine, but couldn’t wrap my head around the possibility of more than one Deity. My best understanding was that the Goddess of Wicca took many different forms and reached out to people in whatever way worked best to bring them to Her. I remained fundamentally monotheistic, with additional belief in life force and the ability to influence the life force in a variety of ways to achieve certain outcomes and results. I also began to affirm the goodness of the natural world and the body during this time.
At the age of 20, I became Christian. As a Wiccan, I had been introduced through a mutual friend to a Christian group at the university I attended. I had begun hanging out regularly in the “seeker-friendly” programming of a weekly pub night and a weekly dinner. I found many people who I greatly admired as part of this group, but their answers about what exactly Christianity was were diverse and conflicting. As such, I went to what I felt was the source and read the Bible cover to cover over the course of 2 weeks. This resulted in me feeling a call to Christianity-which was somewhat unwelcome at the time, given what I knew about Christianity, but undeniable all the same. That resulted in a journey of figuring out whether Christianity was large and diverse enough to have room for my socially progressive beliefs and values.
In many ways, I haven’t stopped trying to figure out what Christianity looks like for me since-in fact, I’m pretty sure at this point it’ll be a main point of exploration for the rest of my life. These days, I identify as a Christian, I have a Christian theological education at the Master’s level, and I am an active member of a local church. The form my Christianity takes, however, is intentionally syncretic, weaving in elements of Wicca and Taoism as well.
Multi-Faith Contexts
The first Christian community I belonged to, Guelph Campus Ministry, was part of the Multi-Faith Resource Team at the University of Guelph. This was a crucial context that probably helped my acceptance of Christianity progress. Since I had family members ranging from atheists who saw little in religion to commend to evangelical Christians whose theology I found problematic, finding a religious context with room for exploration, diversity, and disagreement was key. I had personally found the exclusionary and eternal punishment claims of Christianity significant barriers to my acceptance of Christian identity and theology. Finding a Christian group that were active partners with other faith groups without trying to convert or proselytize was thus deeply reassuring and provided a vision of the breadth of Christian faith praxes. During my time with GCM and the MFRT, I learned from people representing a diversity of religious traditions and valued the lessons I learned there.
During this time, I especially began to feel drawn to the Holy Spirit aspect of the Trinity in Christian understanding. I learned that, in some Christian traditions, the Holy Spirit is a way in which interfaith relationships are understood. The exact mechanism can differ, but from a Trinitarian understanding the Holy Spirit provides several pathways to explain and celebrate diverse understandings of the Divine.
My Tai Chi Journey Intersects with Faith
I began practicing tai chi at the age of 12. Consequently, while I have changed the style of tai chi I practice, tai chi itself has been a consistent practice through all of my various faith iterations. I have come to deeply appreciate tai chi’s potential as a spiritual technology for interfaith harmony as a result.
Tai chi draw its principles and perspectives from the three traditions which have most influenced Chinese culture over the millennia-Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. Yet while tai chi is influenced by all three, with the heaviest influences probably being Taoist in nature, it does not belong to any one religious tradition.
Long exposure to tai chi leads to explorations of concepts which are oft-misunderstood and can be difficult to define-things like qi, yin and yang, and Dao. These concepts require cultivating greater theological and cultural understanding. For those raised in cultures where qi is not commonplace, it requires moving beyond Western binaries and epistemologies built on deductive logic. In cultures where qi is commonplace, it still requires some work as the exact mechanisms and understandings of qi can differ greatly over space and time, and the concept of qi in taijiquan practice differs in some ways from the concept of qi in Traditional Chinese Medicine and qigong for health systems.
Intentional Syncretism
The theological works of Grace Ji-Sun Kim on the Holy Spirit and Chi, and her collaboration with Susan M. Shaw on intersectional theology were particularly useful in reaching a theological understanding of my wonderfully weird faith praxis. Following on their theological works I have adopted an intentionally syncretic faith praxis.
I have learned to be wary of claims to a pure, unadulterated Christian faith that is a common desire for us all (including me!). From the works of scholars like Christine Schenk, Ally Katuesz, and Howard-Brooks, I have accepted that despite the theological understandings and debates at the institutional level, the lay level has always been far more diverse and syncretic in practice. This dynamic is also replicated in the Chinese context where Daosim, Confucianism, and Buddhism all had their seasons of favour and condemnation at the institutional level, but the lay level often syncretized the three in practice. Indeed, the development of Chan/Zen Buddhism as a result of the exchange with Daoism is a prime exemplar of this.
In the context of the twenty-first century, syncretism is often seen as a problematic practice. However, I would contend that what is most often objected to is unexamined or unintentional syncretism-and in many ways, I share this concern. I have read several books and articles where the author combines so many different religious and spiritual traditions that they are left without much of a sure foundation. I find such texts frustrating to read as they display a tendency to misrepresent or misunderstand key concepts from many of the traditions and practices that they blend in. In so doing, they become difficult to read in that they have very little substance. That said, the caveat I must add is that even those who would claim not to be syncretic at all have some level of syncretism by the very nature of the interaction between religion and spirituality on the one hand, and the inhabited culture on the other. Christianity is definitely prone to this, and it is this unintentional and often unexamined syncretism that manifests in the differences between denominations and congregations, which are sometimes vast.
By contrast, I appreciate and advocate for intentional syncretism-where a person is rooted within a certain faith/spiritual tradition or epistemological framework, but is able to borrow and integrate aspects from other traditions and frameworks which are compatible, compelling, and complementary with their own. Grace Ji-Sun Kim models this in her explorations of the similarities between chi and the Holy Spirit, and in her work on the highlighting the concept of han.
My Faith Praxis
I am Christian. As such, I am rooted within a Christian theological interpretrative framework and worldview. For me, this includes a monotheistic perspective, the primacy of the teachings of Jesus, and the ongoing revelation and guidance of the Divine through the Spirit. My experience of the world, and my guidance through the Spirit also leads me to believe in the concept of a force or energy which I know as qi that can be manipulated to various levels and extents through spiritual practices such as witchcraft, qigong, and taijiquan. Other concepts like yin and yang, and the Dao also complement my Christian understanding. As such, I am a Christian who is intentionally syncretic with aspects of Wicca and Daoism, especially through the various magical/psychic practices from Wicca, and qigong and taijiquan from Daoism.
I believe that the Divine interacts with each of us in the most suitable way. For some, this means limited or absent interaction; for others, it means various forms of theological/spiritual interaction. Rather than the paradigm of many paths up the same mountain, I find it helpful to conceive of many paths down the same the mountain-ie. the Divine takes many different paths to us, rather than us taking many different paths to the Divine. From my Christian perspective, this work of the Divine reaching out to each of us in uniquely suited ways and forms, is best understood through the aspect of the Divine I know as the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion
Language and systems to understand the Divine are necessarily limited. The attempt must be made to articulate our understandings and experiences even with that knowledge. That said, I find hope and comfort in knowing that, throughout history, most people simply lived and died, using freely what worked and rejecting what didn’t. The result at the level of lived faith praxis is a beautiful mosaic of faith practices representing various faith traditions that defy all institutional attempts to categorize and limit. This can be more apparent in cultures without exclusive truth claims like the three great traditions represented in China; but it is also present in the Irish experience of Christianity. If one looks closely enough, I suspect it’s present in every faith community, even amongst the would-be institutionalists. The reality of blended faiths at the level of lived faith praxis points towards the power of what is common and unifying in both humanity and divinity. It holds the most potential I see towards achieving pervasive and consistent interfaith harmony.
Further Resources
If you want to explore some of the concepts mentioned herein, and interfaith harmony more generally, here are a few resources I’d recommend:
Crispina and Her Sisters: Women and Authority in Early Christianity by Christine Schenk
Empire Baptized: How the Church Embraced What Jesus Rejected, 2nd-5th Centuries by Wes Howard-Brook
Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others by Barbara Brown Taylor
Intersectional Theology: An Introductory Guide by Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M. Shaw
Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership by Ally Kateusz
The Holy Spirit, Chi, and Other: A Model of Global and Intercultural Pneumatology by Grace Ji-Sun Kim
The Dreamers' Corner 