Pretend You Believe: How To Find Your Way Into Faith
Many of us are born into the religion we practice. Our names and our sense of morality is built around ancient texts and holy days.
Our ability to see our own faith with any real objectivity takes a deep commitment to understanding different perspectives. Even then, what we are taught as children is notoriously difficult to unlearn. Whoever we were told God is, can be difficult to forget.
And, for those of us who have always believed in the supernatural, it can be difficult to understand the faith struggles of somebody who is just dipping their toes in as adults.
Just as it is hard to unlearn a religion you were raised with, it is difficult to unlearn the belief in its impossibility. Yet, faith offers many things that may be attractive to the non-religious, such as an active community, a moral code or a connection to the past. The National Health Institute reported in 2025 that religious individuals across many different countries consistently report lower levels of loneliness and better health than their non-religious peers.
But how does a non-religious person who desires what faith can supply go about unlearning their disbelief and fully embrace a faith community? How do religious people make their communities ones in which the curious and the seeking feel that they have the space and the resources to consider conversion?
Rabbi Noa Kushner’s new book, “Pretend You Believe,” might just have the answers. Kushner leads a San Francisco synagogue called The Kitchen, which she founded in 2011. Her latest work acts as a sort of guidebook to anyone who is seeking to enter religion, or seeking to help somebody do so.
Listen to this episode of the Religion Unplugged podcast on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.
Matthew Peterson is Religion Unplugged’s podcast editor and audience development coordinator. He took part in the 2025 European Journalism Institute held in Prague, an annual program co-sponsored by The Media Project.