Hamilton for Lent: Why Lin-Manuel Miranda's Soundtrack Resonates on Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday has a way of clearing the room.

The sanctuary is dimmer. The music is quieter. The words are heavier: “Remember that you are dust.” We come forward not for inspiration, but for honesty. Not for triumph, but for truth.

That’s one reason I find myself returning to Hamilton at the beginning of Lent.

If you’ve never listened to the musical, here’s the short version: it’s the story of a brilliant, ambitious man who refuses to “throw away his shot.” He is driven, talented, relentless. And for much of the show, that drive feels heroic. We admire it. We recognize it. In a city like Madison, the city I call home—full of energy, ideas, advocacy, and achievement—that kind of ambition feels familiar.

But as the story unfolds, the repetition of that phrase—“not throwing away my shot”—begins to change. What once sounded like courage slowly reveals itself as compulsion. What once felt like purpose begins to cost him relationships, presence, even peace.

That’s a very Ash Wednesday turn.

Lent is not a season for building on our strengths. It is a season for letting the story go far enough to tell the truth about us. The truth that our gifts are real, but so are our limits. The truth that our striving can serve good purposes, and also conceal vanity, ego, or excess. The truth that we are dust, and yet deeply loved.

Late in the musical, after devastating loss, the soundtrack quiets. The bravado fades. The characters walk through grief. And in one understated line, we hear something new: “I take the children to church on Sunday… and I pray. That never used to happen before.”

It’s not flashy. It’s not triumphant. It’s simply a turning.

Ash Wednesday is not about dramatic spiritual breakthroughs. It’s about that quieter turning. It’s about sitting in the stillness long enough to notice what has been driving us—and to let God name us something deeper than our achievements.

For ELCA Lutherans especially, Lent is not a self-improvement project. It is a journey with Christ toward the cross, trusting that the truth told there is not the end of the story.

Listening to Hamilton during these forty days can be a reminder of how ambition, failure, grief, and grace intertwine—and how even in the quiet uptown moments of our lives, God is still at work.

Dust, yes. But dust held in mercy. Ashes, yes. But ashes mixed with stardust. Thanks be to God.

Online Worship: What Is Your Church Doing to Reach the Digital Church Hopper?

Has the "Netflix" era of worship arrived?

In other words, have we entered a new era of church, where Christians choose from multiple different worship experiences, often streaming services from more than one congregation? YouTube seems to think so. Each Sunday, I see a dozen or more churches on my YouTube home feed, each beckoning me to click their live stream. Rather than immediately connecting me to my local church, YouTube freely provides me with a carousel of congregational choice.

The congregational carousel reflects a broader trend of ministry multi-tasking. In a trend that has shown remarkable durability in the post-pandemic church, Americans continue to stream the worship services of more than one congregation. Pew Research Data from 2023 finds that nearly 40% of US adults who attend worship services online report watching services from more than one congregation. Participating in the worshipping life of multiple faith communities would have been unusual before 2020. Among American Christians who regularly worship online, the Netflix experience has now become typical.

Digital church-hopping is here to stay. Evangelicals, Catholics, and Mainline Protestants who worship online are tuning into more than one church service. They're tuning in to local and non-local churches, those in their neighborhood and those who seek a global audience. While the reasons for online church-hopping are varied, the online church-hopper has become a fixture of the church in a tech-shaped culture. Today, just 26% of online viewers watch services only from their home church.

There are two important caveats to this data. First, the number of online viewers is a relatively small slice of the American Christians. As of 2022, just 12% of Americans attended church exclusively online. 22% of Protestants attended services both online and offline. So while the online church-hopper is an important trend, it's impact is confined to those who regularly attend services on the web. The second caveat of this data is that the church-hopper represents a highly-engaged segment of America's Christian population. Religious "Nones," about whom much has been written, likely aren't church hoppers.

With these caveats in mind, we might view church-hopping as more of a challenging trend than an opportunity for growth. As Christians increase the quantity of churches they attend, it will likely decrease the quality of their engagement. This trend reflects a pivot from depth of participation to breadth of consumption.

Church-hopping invites Christians to be more selective, empowering the church-goer to constantly evaluate which churches match their theological convictions, denominational preferences, and increasingly their political leanings. It also invites the church-goer to find a community with preaching, liturgy, and music that is attuned to their personal preferences. This inevitably places competitive pressures on clergy and church leaders.

Given these challenges, today's church leader might experience pressure to constantly recalibrate the direction of their ministry to the needs and preferences of an ever-changing set of worship attendees. It's well documented that clergy and church leaders already resource-constrained and under duress. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research found in Fall of 2023 that 53% of clergy had seriously considered leaving the ministry.

Digital church-hopping may not prove to be the major stressor for all faith leaders, but we can already conclude that this trend won't alleviate the stressors facing today's priests and pastors. Digital ministry has done a great deal of good for the church. The Christian message is more accessible and inclusive than it was before the pandemic. However, any account of the impact of digital ministry must reckon with the lasting reality of "Netflix for Church."

So what can a congregation do to reach the online church-hopper? For starters, continue to acknowledge the presence of online attendees through language and liturgy. A simple word of welcome at the start of the service, or during the announcements, affirms the presence of the digital attendee.

Then, consider what makes your congregation's online experience unique. What might inspire someone to tune-in? A stellar sermon? An impressive organist or rock band vocalist? An inclusive expression of liturgy? Whatever it is, highlight this uniqueness in your digital messaging. Clarify why a church-hopper might want to select your congregation from the carousel of options available to them.

Finally, remember the importance of online worship in your congregation's pathway to involvement. 50-60% of in-person church visitors first connect online, through digital worship, a website, or social media. While digital ministry requires considerable effort to sustain, it is an essential first step in connecting with visitors and potential new members - even those who are actively church-hopping.

The Great Aw(AI)kening: Could the Drive Towards Digital Efficiency Generate a Rekindling of Religiosity?

America’s thoroughly documented decline in religiosity appears to have hit a plateau. What does this mean for churches?

After nearly two decades of continuous decline, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christian appears to have stabilized. According to the 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study, 63% of American adults now identify as Christian. While this is down from 78% in 2008, it’s actually a tick more than the 62% who identified as Christian in 2022. After a long period of growth, the percentage of Americans identifying as “nones” also appears to have stabilized. And while people aren’t going to church more than they were in years past, they at least aren’t going less. 33% of Americans say they go to church at least once a month. 

This trend has been thoroughly analyzed across religious and secular media, including both right-leaning and left-leaning outlets. The New York Times, for example, is running a new series of editorials exploring belief in America. Among pundits and commentators, some have pointed to this stabilization as evidence that Americans are moving away from secularism. A few evangelical commentators have celebrated that the New Atheist movement of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens seems to be losing momentum. Other commentators have suggested that the stabilization has less to do with stalled secularism and more to do with the limitations of authenticity. Not finding durable fulfillment and through Soul Cycle, Instagram, or the workplace, it seems that some are turning to more conventional forms of religion as a source of spiritual identity. It’s also entirely possible that slowing rates of secularization don’t have a grand cause, and are simply the natural floor of the downward trend. 

We won’t be able to definitely explain the root causes and top contributors behind these results from the Religious Landscape Study until further research is completed. But in this time of permissible speculation, allow me to posit another potential contributor to slowing rates of secularization. 

The post-pandemic economy has pivoted towards efficiency as an intrinsic good. When rising interest rates rattled markets, notable business leaders (Mark Zuckerberg included) trumpeted a “year of efficiency,” a prolonged period of cutting costs and cranking up outputs. Elon Musk instilled a similar ethos in his “more hardcore” version of Twitter. Investors bought into companies that loudly leaned into efficiency through layoffs, hyper-growth forecasts, and commitments to use generative artificial intelligence across their business. 

As efficiency became virtuous, artificial intelligence equipped us with tools for completing mundane tasks at greater speed. Google Gemini can now summarize the contents of my entire inbox. Microsoft Co-Pilot can build my presentation for next week’s team meeting. ChatGPT can plan my family’s weekly meals and shopping lists, and Anthropic’s Claude can write this blog post. Taken together, we are witnessing the elevation of efficiency as a value, as we are gaining access to tools that (at least in theory) can make us meaningfully more productive. 

But where does that leave us spiritually? 

Some of us may come to recognize that efficiency is a rather unfulfilling objective.I have suggested that working alongside AI in some ways dims the creative spark. When working alongside a chatbot, I can be more efficient, completing more tasks per hour, but I don’t feel as strong a sense of satisfaction when I outsource considerable amounts of work to ChatGPT. 

In a spiritual sense, we may come to recognize that productivity lacks power. Individual efficiency doesn’t leave us feeling more curious, connected, or creative. It doesn’t show us how we are part of a story larger than ourselves, or why our work has meaning. Efficiency doesn’t leave us comforted in times of crisis, nor does it console us in our grief. So while some have looked to social media, technology, and work to provide a sense of rootedness, it’s unsurprising that we might look elsewhere when these domains become over-indexed on getting stuff done. 

We might call this pivot the Great Aw(AI)kening - not because AI awakens some dormant religious impulse, but because our preference for production proves to be somewhat hollow and unfulfilling. If I am efficient, I might rate higher on a performance review or receive a higher grade. But in adeptly wielding these digital tools, I’ll miss out on a connection to a larger whole. I’ll miss out on where I fit within a bigger story. And I’ll lack the connections and community that carry me through times of crisis. 

I believe there is merit to using AI and digital tools for the sake of productivity and efficiency, particularly if these tools offload the monotony and drudgery that are part of digital age work. But I’m also cognizant that these tools cannot be fulfilling ends in and of themselves. In that sense, I’m not surprised that America has slowed in its rate of secularization. Efficiency can be important, but not all that fulfilling. To find fulfillment, perhaps I ought to look to more ancient sources. To find connection, perhaps I ought to seek more traditional forms of community. As the digital age pushes us towards individual productivity, the church, its teachings, sacred texts and sacraments, offer me a necessary counter-weight.