Reverend Galen Guengerich wrote “God Revised – How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age.” I will quote a section inspired by a workshop led by Gessner Geyser on “The Neurobiology of Religion” explained and interpreted by Reverend Galen Guengerich.

"Our brains are pattern-seeking mechanisms. Whenever possible, our brains revert to established patterns of thought, feeling, and action. To a brain, old ways are the best. It’s fiendishly difficult to change entrenched habits and behaviors because we literally have to change our brains to do so – rewire the synapses, create new neural nodes, and establish different pathways. And our brains resist such change, even though we know that continuing use of ingrained neural patterns allows our brains to atrophy and eventually causes them to shrink. What causes our brains to thrive? It turns out that change and challenge are the main catalysts for neurological development. Ironically, our brains cannot be changed merely by adding new information or knowledge. What is required is new behavior: a different way of living.

This is where religious disciplines enter the picture. Over the past decade, researchers have been studying people who practice mindfulness, the deep form of awareness developed through disciplines such as meditation and prayer. The researchers have found that mindfulness literally changes the human brain. It is especially effective in developing the brain’s capacity for experiencing happiness and fulfillment. In other words, the ancient sages who counseled us to practice the disciplines of attentiveness and gratitude knew what they were talking about after all. Enlightenment isn’t the process of learning new ideas; it’s the discipline of following a daily spiritual practice.

In order to be effective, however, the discipline must have an objective. Simply put, faith directs our attention toward that purpose, and religion keeps us focused on it. Faith is a bridge between what is past and what is possible. Religion, in turn, is a way of life that enables our faith to become real. It also carries our faith along from day to day and generation to generation.

Once our moral imagination gives us a glimpse of a different future, we need the endurance to persist until transformation actually happens. Our faith needs an external means of support: stories to restore our courage, symbols to remind us of commitments we have made, and daily rituals to renew our resolve. We need a place to go when we are feeling discouraged and songs to sing when we are full of spirit. We need companions to help bear the load. These supports not only help sustain our faith, but they also help re-create it at other times and places, and for other people.

In my view, the theological term for the supports that sustain and renew our faith is religion. It is the collection of external forms we use – songs, symbols, stories, rituals, obligations, sacred spaces – to carry our faith along from day to day and generation to generation. We call it the practice of religion."