Ukrainian police officer Karina Kostiukevych says she considers herself, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective Sherlock Holmes, married to her work.

As she seeks to bring to justice the perpetrators of the atrocities in Bucha, though, she doesn’t have a Dr. Watson to help her connect the dots. Instead, using a mix of crowdsourcing and technology, she is part of an online army.

Ms. Kostiukevych is the brains behind a channel on messaging service Telegram that is holding up a magnifying glass to Russian brutality in the now infamous forest-framed suburb of Kyiv. Once popular with tech workers and young families, Bucha became a killing field as Russia sought to seize the capital. The failed effort left more than 1,750 people in the Kyiv region dead, among them victims of apparent war crimes that Ukraine is determined to prosecute.

“When the Russians left Bucha and the first bodies started arriving, I saw how massive the scale [of atrocities] was so I created the Telegram channel and started posting pictures,” she says sitting on a wooden bench in a lush park by the multistory brick police station of Boyarka, another Kyiv region settlement. “Absolutely every case that is posted on this Telegram channel is being sent to the prosecutor’s office.”

Ms. Kostiukevych is one small link in a long chain of people setting the stage for justice in Ukraine. Digitally savvy Ukrainians have been assiduous in their fight to hold Russia accountable for atrocities committed since Moscow launched full-scale war. A chatbot called e-Enemy allows Ukrainians to report Russian troop movements, and the government has a dedicated website for citizens to report war crimes.

Dominique Soguel

Karina Kostiukevych, shown here at a park in Boyarka, a residential district near Bucha, Ukraine, launched a Telegram channel to document Russian atrocities and help people find their deceased family members. The Boyarka police station where she works provided shelter to police officers from Bucha while it was under Russian occupation.

With the task of investigating and documenting war crimes too large for local Ukrainian law enforcement, nongovernmental organizations and foreign investigators have joined the effort. The Russian occupation claimed at least 419 lives in Bucha. The United Nations human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine says it has received reports of the unlawful killing of over 300 men, women, and children in Bucha and other settlements to the north of Kyiv, apart from soldiers killed in combat. As of June 8, the mission had recorded 4,266 civilian fatalities across the country.

Documenting the crimes

Russian forces left Bucha on March 31, but the community is still struggling to process the experience – both pragmatically and emotionally. The photo collection on Ms. Kostiukevych’s smartphone includes images too awful to post online, such as the naked corpse of a small girl, adult men showing signs of torture and sexual abuse, and older people who appear to have been choked to death. Some remains are so charred they offer no clues on the identity of the victim.

Russia’s atrocities take time, emotional stamina, and significant personnel to process.

“In the beginning, there were hundreds of people who were brought from the streets, from the flats,” says Ms. Kostiukevych. That dwindled down to a daily average of five to 10 by mid-May as more bodies were discovered in the forest and remote districts, one or two every couple of days thereafter.

The Telegram channel was her own personal initiative. She runs it by tapping professional contacts spread across the region’s police stations and morgues. It now has over 6,000 followers – a sizable number considering the region of Bucha had about 30,000 inhabitants prewar and the harrowing nature of the content. Followers are primarily locals or relatives of locals trying to find loved ones. The channel has posted nearly 3,000 images.

Ms. Kostiukevych says she processed about 300 of those before expanding the effort to other areas and involving about a dozen administrators. Her first priority was the identification of the victims. The work to establish the exact perpetrators behind each of these killings could take years – if it happens at all – but she is confident such digital evidence will be instrumental for justice in the long run.

The long run is the reason Telegram is so important for her project. The platform, unlike Facebook, does not ban or systematically take down graphic content, she says. Human rights activists are concerned that content posted and removed from other platforms due to its violent nature will disappear – as was the case when YouTube took down a massive number of images related to the Syrian conflict overnight in 2017 because they were deemed too gruesome.

“It is very important to have this digital evidence because most people need to be buried,” says Ms. Kostiukevych. “Bodies cannot be kept in morgues for over two months. If the person is identified, we can cremate them. If the person is not identified, we bury them in line with the morgue numbering system [so relatives can identify them later]. This evidence will also be important for the International Criminal Court and the [Ukrainian] justice system.”

Dominique Soguel

Vadym Yevdokymento stands outside his apartment building in Bucha. He has been trying to find his father, who may have been killed by Russian soldiers, but so far he has not had any success.

Ukraine has so far identified more than 13,000 possible war crimes and 600 suspects since the start of the invasion. It has started proceedings against 80 people, and has already finished its first war crimes trial. On May 21, a Ukrainian court found a 21-year-old Russian soldier guilty of killing a 62-year-old civilian in the northeastern region of Sumy. The Hague-based International Criminal Court has sent a team of 42 investigators and forensic experts to support the quest for justice.

“We were thrown back to the Middle Ages”

Vadym Yevdokymento has scanned Ms. Kostiukevych’s Telegram channel and videos taken while Bucha was under the Russian occupation for traces of his father without success. The only possible lead the young man was shown in connection to his father’s apparent death was a photo of a leg. “Just a leg, with pants and sneakers he never had,” he says, just days after doing a DNA test with a visiting French team to see if it corresponded with any of the yet-to-be-identified corpses. No match.

“It’s very important to have these pictures,” he says in reference to both the Telegram channel and a photo exhibit at Bucha’s gold-domed church, viewed by visiting dignitaries ranging from first lady Dr. Jill Biden to U2 singer Bono. “What happened here are war crimes. The Russians said they would not kill civilians and they killed civilians. ... It is hard but the world and the country needs to see what happened here.”

“My hands are still shaking. … My soul is screaming,” says his grandmother, Ludmila Ostrenko, a retired kindergarten teacher. The death of neighbors – one shot on the street by Russian soldiers, another burnt by a Molotov cocktail thrown into the apartment building – and the scent of those horrors still haunt her.

She stayed put under the Russian occupation, praying and clutching her puppy, Luna, for comfort. “I cannot grasp what happened here in 2022. It was civilization. We were thrown back to the Middle Ages.”

Dominique Soguel

Ludmila Ostrenko stands outside her apartment building in Bucha. She says she is still haunted by the murder of several of her neighbors by Russian soldiers.

“There was a group of six people who would go up and down the street just shooting people,” she adds, sitting outside an apartment complex with shattered windows and a burnt section. “From 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., they would shoot. They killed anything that moved. It was a manhunt.”

Tracking the killers, digitally

“From what I have seen, most of the people we found in Bucha were murdered,” says Police Maj. Vitaly Lobas, head of the Bucha police department. “About 75% of the cases. They killed men, women, children, and elderly. What else would you call it if not war crimes?”

The vast majority of images on his phone are similar to the ones by Ms. Kostiukevych – digital testimony to tragic endings. They sit on his phone because the police station’s computers were burnt during the Russian occupation. After Bucha was liberated, he and his team worked out of the local school responding to tips and sending out patrols to document crime scenes and collect bodies. The atrocities proved so many that they created a grid system and combed through Bucha, street by street, forest patch by forest patch.

But among those photos are also ones that offer hope. Images taken from local CCTV cameras that kept running in the early days of the invasion, as well as photos taken from Russian social media accounts and the phones of dead or detained soldiers, are offering leads on suspects.

“Without technology, we would be unable to achieve anything,” he says. “It would be much more complicated and time consuming. It is not only the information on the photos itself. The metadata of each image in each phone is also extremely valuable.”

So far, using facial recognition to compare the CCTV footage against social media photos has allowed investigators to identify 10 of those involved in committing atrocities in Bucha.

“They have to answer for what they did according to international law,” says Mr. Lobas.

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

Chris Pizzello/AP

Netflix headquarters in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, May 4, 2020. A recent internal memo drew public attention to the rift between the views of many left-leaning employees and company efforts to appeal to a broad consumer base. "If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you,” one line said.

As a streaming service, Netflix sits at the nexus of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, two industries that lean left in politics and culture. Chief executive Reed Hastings is a prominent Democratic donor in California and nationally. In 2020, about 98% of political contributions by Netflix employees went to Democrats, similar to outlays at other major tech companies. 

But Netflix’s advice to staff members who want to bring their progressive politics to work: not so fast. 

In a wide-ranging corporate culture memo last month, the company said its viewers expected to be entertained by a diverse range of TV shows and movies. “Not everyone will like – or agree with – everything on our service,” it noted, an apparent reference to comedian Dave Chapelle’s 2021 special that critics called transphobic and that prompted a Netflix employee walkout. 

The memo, which Netflix said had been under discussion for several months with employee feedback, warns that staff “may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

In an era of polarized politics and social media outrage, American corporations face increasing pressure to take stances on hot-button social and cultural issues. That pressure is coming not just from consumers but also from younger employees, particularly in industries like tech and finance, who expect companies to reflect their progressive values and to speak out in defense of voting rights, LGBTQ equality, and abortion access in states like Texas and Georgia. 

But the attempt by Netflix to tamp down internal revolts speaks to a parallel pressure: growing unease in corporate America that what critics call “woke capitalism” upsets some customers, and is increasingly fomenting a backlash from the right. As a result, corporations now face tough choices – at an intersection of both profits and ethics – about whether to be socially activist or attempt to stay neutral on social issues and focus on making money. 

“We’re starting to see a reaction,” says Stephen Bainbridge, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles who studies corporate governance. “Companies are having to decide whether they’re going to take sides or to market to everybody.” 

Manu Fernandez/AP/File

Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings listens to a question during an interview with The Associated Press in Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 28, 2017. Netflix isn’t the first tech company to ask workers to check their politics at the door. In 2020 Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange in San Francisco, said it would become an apolitical workplace.

After Florida Republicans passed a bill in March limiting discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary schools, Disney, the state’s largest employer, initially sought to avoid public attention for fear of becoming a “political football,” according to CEO Bob Chapek. But that passivity rattled many employees.

Then, when Disney did speak out against the bill, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis pounced. He lambasted Disney for its “woke” politics and signed a bill to revoke the special tax district around its theme parks. 

Looming contests from abortion to guns

Many Republicans had already been fuming at tech companies for censoring conservative voices on their platforms. Now, as the Florida governor’s action shows, GOP leaders are broadening their critique to corporations that they accuse of advancing a liberal political agenda.  

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri singled out “woke corporations like Disney” as he proposed a federal bill designed to limit the entertainment giant’s copyright protections, adding that the age of “Republican handouts to Big Business is over.”

The next flashpoint could be abortion, if an anticipated Supreme Court decision frees states to sharply limit or outright ban the practice. Citigroup, Amazon, and other large employers have already offered to help staff and families in Texas travel for abortion services after Republicans enacted a near-total ban. That raised the hackles of Republicans, who threatened retaliation: In May, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio introduced a bill that would prevent companies from reimbursing travel expenses for such purposes.  

Gun control also pits GOP-run states against corporations that shun the gun industry. A Texas law – the first of its kind – bars state agencies from doing business with companies that discriminate against the gun industry, a barb aimed at Wall Street banks that previously vowed to cut credit to gun-makers. Texas requires banks to show compliance with its law, which predates last month’s school shooting in Uvalde in which 19 children and two teachers were killed.

On Friday, chief executives of 228 private and public companies wrote to the U.S. Senate to urge “bold urgent action” on gun violence, without specifying any policies to enact. (No Wall Street banks signed the letter.) The House of Representatives passed a Democrat-written gun control bill on Wednesday that is highly unlikely to pass the Senate in its current form. 

And the Republican backlash extends beyond culture-war issues. The finance industry’s pivot to sustainability as one of its benchmarks for investments has caused waves in GOP-run states with fossil fuel industries. Arkansas and West Virginia recently divested pension funds from asset-management giant Blackrock in protest of its adoption of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) goals that some Republicans call another sign of corporate overreach. 

West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore, a Republican, told The Associated Press: “I don’t think we’re the party of big business anymore. We’re the party of people – more specifically, we’re the party of working people. And the problem that we have is with big banks and corporations right now trying to dictate how we’re going to live our lives.” 

Eroding middle ground in politics?

To the extent that Republicans wash their hands of left-leaning corporations, the result could be a political opportunity for Democrats.

Greater backing from business could help frustrated liberals offset what they see as structural barriers to political power, given the strong conservative influence within institutions like the Senate and Supreme Court and the near death of major legislative reform. 

That companies are being asked to play this role of Democratic ally on social issues speaks to the political deadlock in Washington and the polarization that has fueled it, says Kurt Ebenhoch, a longtime communications executive and consultant.

In the past, companies worked with politicians who wanted to appeal to a broad electorate. Today, that option has increasingly been disappearing. Most lawmakers represent safe seats, and their focus is on primary voters and building a national brand among partisans, which for Republicans means getting onto outlets like Fox News.

Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times/AP

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs the Parental Rights in Education bill at Classical Preparatory School in Shady Hills, Florida, March 28, 2022. The Republican governor chastised Disney for opposing the bill, which bars public schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade.

This is what makes Disney’s high-profile clash with Governor DeSantis so jarring, says Mr. Ebenhoch. “We didn’t see those kinds of actions 20 or 30 years ago. Leaders were more pragmatic and more concerned about the middle,” he says.  

Today, factions within both parties exhibit strong antipathy toward big business. Consider the left’s ambitions to tax more corporate profits to pay for social programs, as well as to break up industry cartels, cap drug prices, and enact other regulatory reforms. 

That views of big business have also soured on the right, for different reasons, should concern company boardrooms, says Professor Bainbridge. 

“There’s a resurgence of right-wing populism that has very little in common with left-wing populism other than a deep distrust of big business. That’s the political dynamic of the moment. For the first time in a long time, you have strong populist wings in both parties that are skeptical of big business,” he says.

“The professional class is the real driver”

In February, more than 150 corporations signed a letter to oppose Florida’s education bill, dubbed by critics as “Don’t Say Gay.” Disney was a notable exception. Pressure began to build on Mr. Chapek to join this opposition, which he eventually did on March 9. He also signed the letter and promised that Disney would produce more LBGTQ content, but that failed to assuage staff who organized walkouts at Disney theme parks and studios.

Among the demands of these employees was that Disney stop all investments in Florida until the education law is repealed. American capitalists historically used comparable get-tough strategies, such as factory lockouts and closures, to defeat local workplace organizers, says Darel Paul, a politics professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. Now the workers, not the shareholders, are urging action against a state and its elected officials.

That shift in power dynamics, and Mr. Chapek’s fitful efforts to find a compromise, are a microcosm of how “woke capitalism” operates, says Professor Paul, author of “Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage.” Companies like Disney must compete to hire and retain young professionals. In turn, those professionals bring progressive values, often from elite colleges, and demand that management steps up on social issues.

“The professional class is the real driver here. Their values begin to spread to the wider managerial class,” he says.

In Disney’s case, empowered workers forced Mr. Chapek to go toe-to-toe with Governor DeSantis. Disney now faces the dissolution of Reedy Creek Improvement District, a semi-autonomous area it has run in Florida since 1967. And far from Disney’s image being burnished, the row and the company’s response led to a sharp drop in its consumer reputation in an annual survey of America’s 100 top brands.

“They’re realizing that letting their employees dictate their position is not a free lunch,” says Professor Paul of Disney’s management.

Staying out of the culture wars

To be sure, many companies don’t feel compelled to join culture wars. Most CEOs who speak publicly on such issues are concentrated in industries like tech, media, finance, and entertainment; not coincidentally, the majority are based in blue states like New York and California.

The views of these companies shouldn’t carry more weight than others, says Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.” He reckons firms should focus on making profits and providing “excellence,” not using corporate power “to advance political or social agendas that ought to be settled through free speech in the public square where every citizen’s voice counts equally.”

Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times/AP

Marchers wave flags during a rally and march to protest what critics call the "Don't Say Gay" bill on March 12, 2022, in St. Petersburg, Florida. Disney joined efforts to stop the bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

Mr. Ramaswamy recently founded an asset management company, backed by billionaire tech investor and Republican donor Peter Thiel, that eschews ESG goals. To Mr. Ramaswamy, CEOs who genuflect at employee demands to take social stances are only listening to an activist minority. “There is no such thing as ‘The Employees.’ They’re a diverse base of people with a diverse range of views, just like the citizens of this country,” he says.

Netflix isn’t the first tech company to ask workers to check their politics at the door. In 2020, Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange in San Francisco, said it would become an apolitical workplace and offered severance pay to anyone who wanted to leave; at least 60 reportedly took the offer.

But that policy is an exception. Most companies recognize that younger employees expect to bring their values to work and want companies to stand for something more than making profits for shareholders, says Michal Barzuza, a professor of law at the University of Virginia who studies ESG investing. “Millennials’ reputation is that they bring their values to their economic activities,” she says.

Research she co-authored found that the investment industry has adopted ESG goals in response to actual and perceived millennial behaviors, including a propensity to bring politics to the workplace and to shun companies and investments that breach their values. That these values lean left, and are shaping how CEOs respond publicly to social issues, reflects an asymmetry. “The right is less inclined to bring these values to the market,” she says.

Will companies move to new states?

That doesn’t mean CEOs need to opine on every controversy, says Paul Argenti, a professor of management and corporate communications at Dartmouth and author of a widely cited 2020 Harvard Business Review article, “When Should Your Company Speak Up About a Social Issue?” The article offers a playbook for corporate choices on both words and actions, and how to prepare for when controversies hit.  

“The main thing is to have a way of justifying your actions before things happen,” he says. But in today’s polarized marketplace, “there are some things where you just can’t win.”

Professor Argenti predicts that multinationals based in red states will eventually relocate if legislators continue to attack the values these companies want to be seen championing, such as voting rights in states like Georgia. “Delta doesn’t just operate in Georgia, and the same goes for Coca-Cola. These are global companies that are trying to appeal to a wide variety of people, not just in that state,” he says.

Still, any rupture with Republicans is likely to be temporary since companies need allies on both sides of the aisle, says Abhinav Gupta, a business professor at the University of Washington who studies how political donations and ideology influence corporate social responsibility. He’s skeptical that liberal-leaning corporations will swing hard to Democrats, despite their alignment on social and cultural issues, given the left’s regulatory economic agenda. But that also creates an opening for companies to shape those policy choices.

In the end, political influence is far from the only yardstick of results after companies engage publicly, says Mr. Ebenhoch, the communications consultant. “They sent an important message to an audience to show that they’re taking a stand ... and spending some political capital.”

It’s a familiar, even tired, story: Young people have turned away from religion, probably for good. They’re skeptical, jaded, plain uninterested. As congregations shrink, spiritual leaders wring their hands, wondering how to attract the next generation into the pews. Meanwhile, popular culture writes and rewrites religion’s obituary.

But that doesn’t mean young people have stopped asking the big, age-old questions, which, at their heart, are “religious questions,” says the Rev. Benjamin Perry, a minister in his early 30s at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City.

“‘Who am I? Why am I here? How do I know that what I do has value?’ Those kinds of questions young people are absolutely asking,” he says. “They’re just not looking [for answers] in all the same places that people did 30 years ago.”

Mr. Perry’s church describes itself as “a multicultural, multiethnic, intergenerational movement of Spirit and justice, powered by fierce, revolutionary Love, with room for all.” Services weave together traditional hymns and biblical reflection with hip-hop, jazz, and liturgical dance. Roundtables on topics from Black liberation theology to transgender identity are common, proposed by an active contingent of nearly 100 young adult members. 

It’s one of many spaces across the United States where young people are forging spiritual paths that don’t necessarily conform to the religious traditions handed down for generations. Instead, these seekers are reshaping old communities and creating new ones that embody the values they care most about, from radical inclusion to pluralistic exploration. Importantly, they don’t require members to sacrifice pieces of their identity to belong. 

“Meeting people where they are instead of expecting them to conform to your own understanding of what it means to be a church I think is really, really important,” says Mr. Perry.

That begs the question: Where are these young people coming from? It turns out that the assumption they have no interest in spiritual life may not be accurate, according to a study of over 10,000 young people between the ages of 13 and 25 published last year by Springtide Research Institute. The majority surveyed do identify as religious (71%) or spiritual (78%), but the way they approach religious life is new. 

Iza Flores/Courtesy of Common Street Spiritual Center

Participants engage in a Satori Vision event at the Common Street Spiritual Center in Natick, Massachusetts, in December 2021. Ecstatic dance, meditation, breathwork, cacao ceremonies, sharing circles, and open mics are among the activities organized by young seekers.

“They’re not really interested in these prepackaged, institutionalized, complete answers being handed to them,” says Springtide’s executive director, Josh Packard, who characterizes this generation of spiritual seekers as “explorers” and “builders.” 

For previous generations, religion operated as something akin to a prix fixe menu, where the only choice was whether to accept what was offered, he explains. Now, he thinks of these new spaces as more of a potluck. 

“Young people want to show up at a place where everybody else is bringing a piece of themselves to share.” 

“New grooves ... in ancient soil”

Through the double doors that open to a spacious sanctuary in Boston, a sign sets the tone for the intimate gathering: “At the Crossing, we make church together. Help us lead this service by taking one of these roles.” Worshippers can choose from a variety of options, like sharing announcements or reading a scriptural passage, as they make their way to the concentric circles of wooden chairs that line a warm, red rug.

The service begins with a soft, melodic chant. When the Rev. Tamra Tucker stands to speak, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was a congregant – save for the rim of a white collar peeking out from her red cardigan. She opens with a promise: “Every single piece of you [is] being welcomed into this space, not to conform to us, but to change us, and to lead with us.” 

The Crossing is a small, unconventional Episcopal community, founded in 2006 by young worshippers hoping for a new type of church. They wanted a space for LGBTQ individuals to feel at home, where everyone could bring their full selves, and “new grooves” could be “dug in ancient soil,” as Ms. Tucker puts it. 

Following her personal sermon, called a “reflection,” a mic is passed around the circle for worshippers to respond. Midway through the service, unstructured time opens for congregants to choose the practice that speaks to them: giving, meditation, conversation, or prayer. And during a period of collective prayer, each member can share a blessing out loud or silently. 

“That freedom gives me a new breath of air in terms of church,” says Jimmy Lim, the Crossing’s 28-year-old music director, who joined the group at the end of 2021. He used to attend a traditional Methodist church but found the hierarchy and cultural expectations stifling. “Here, everyone can add a little bit of their part.” 

“You don’t need to be buttoned up”

Less than a third of 13-to-25-year-olds who are active in a traditional religious organization turn there in difficult or uncertain times, according to the Springtide study. When asked why, over half selected responses that include “I don’t feel like I can be my full self in a religious organization” and “I do not like to be told answers about faith and religion. I’d rather discover my own answers.” 

That was true for Kalilah Jamall, who was raised in a Muslim household, until she stumbled into the Interfaith Center at the University of North Florida. “Not only did they tell me that doubts and questions about religion are OK, but some people even have a strengthened faith, a more passionate faith, because they’re able to critique and analyze it,” she says. Now she works at the center, where she frequently helps other students reconcile their identities and social values with their faith.

Religious communities that are successfully connecting with young people are “really authentic spaces,” says Rabbi Elan Babchuck, founder of the Glean Network, an organization helping spiritual leaders meld tradition and innovation.

“You don’t need to be buttoned up,” says the young rabbi. “There’s a lot more fluidity and mixing and bending of faith practices.” 

Whatever shape worship takes, Rabbi Babchuck says faith leaders are having to ask new questions, like “How can I help this person build the character that they want to build? How can I help this person become formed by these [worship] experiences, as opposed to a spectator sport where we perform for you?”

Connection and community

That way of thinking seems to be attracting young people to more conventional churches, too, like Grace Capital City in downtown Washington. 

On a recent Sunday afternoon, the atrium bustles as worshippers greet familiar faces and welcome new ones. By the time the drums begin to reverberate through the floorboards, ushers have to help latecomers find seats. Most of the 300 or so members are in their 20s, and only a couple of gray heads are visible in the crowd. This is a church where turning 33 makes you feel old, whispers a smiling congregant. 

“We’re always praying for more spiritual mothers and fathers at our church, because we’re a bunch of kids running around,” jokes Jolee Paden, who joined the church in 2018 when she moved to the city from Illinois after college. 

Once the music fades and Pastor Chris Moerman begins to speak, you can hear a pin drop. When he says “take note,” phones and notebooks emerge throughout the atrium (though all his sermons are on Spotify). His message is simple, colored by his own experiences of darkness and growth, and grounded in Hebrews 3:8 – “do not harden your hearts.” Instead, let tenderness build intimacy and genuine connection with others, he tells the crowd, because community is not meant to be easy. “It’s meant to be sanctifying.”

Mary-Claire Stewart/Courtesy of Grace Capital City

Congregants worship at Grace Capital City in Washington. “People are really, really looking for connection,” says Jolee Paden, who joined the church in 2018.

It’s a lesson the congregation has already taken to heart. Members of Grace Capital City actively build a strong sense of community in a variety of ways, most notably through “house churches” – neighborhood-based groups by which congregants gather weekly in members’ homes to share meals, worship, and discuss the Scriptures in as honest and personal a setting as possible. 

“Sometimes we have a tendency to overcomplicate things, to overstrategize,” says Jessica Moerman, who co-founded the church with her husband in 2016. “Instead, we’re trying to strip things back to the basics. ... We want to hone in on the real, core things of our faith.”

“At the root of it, people are really, really looking for connection,” says Ms. Paden, whose first house church experience convinced her she had found her spiritual home.

“We’re not just here to consume,” she says. “You don’t just go into your pew and say, ‘OK, I want to come and I want to go.’ No, I want to connect. I want to be a blessing – and hopefully be blessed in the process.” 

Intergenerational bridges

The Rev. Dr. Ian Mevorach is continually surprised by the dedication of the 20-somethings who are part of the Common Street Spiritual Center in Natick, Massachusetts. The center occupies a classic church building with tall ceilings and stained-glass windows, but it’s a place where spirituality doesn’t fit inside any boxes. 

Ecstatic dance, meditation, breathwork, cacao ceremonies, sharing circles, spiritual open mics ... the list of activities organized by young participants goes on.

“I’m a classically trained clergyperson trying to transition into this new environment of spirituality,” says Dr. Mevorach, who helped the church shift to what he calls a pluralistic spiritual center in 2014. But the reverend, who is in his 30s, says he’s more like a facilitator than a leader. “As more young people show up, we’re giving them the freedom to create, and supporting them to do what they want to do.” 

The spiritual center still holds regular church services on Sundays, which generally attract an older crowd. But a few old-timers have been attending some of the youth-led events, says Dr. Mevorach, building valuable intergenerational bridges. 

Ms. Paden, from Grace Capital City, agrees that no matter how much youthful energy is driving a faith community forward, relationships with older mentors still matter. 

“I think most people in our church would just love it if someone older than 50 was like, ‘Hey, could I take you to lunch?’” she says with a laugh. “Oh, they would probably start crying.”

The “Star Wars” franchise’s sometimes problematic history with race has always been unfortunate and ironic.

The most recognizable voice from the stories is that of a Black man, a legacy that proudly continues. And yet, when the face of that villain was revealed decades ago, we saw the face of a white man. Looking back on it today, James Earl Jones’ voice matched with Sebastian Shaw’s face felt like a twisted prequel of “Get Out,” the satirical horror film where Black people’s minds and bodies are suppressed and subverted by white people.

Walt Disney Studios had a chance to rectify this sordid space history in 2015 with “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens.” John Boyega, an up-and-coming actor, starred as Finn and wowed casual fans with his fresh face and wit. We saw a glimpse of his potential and his joy as he viewed himself in the trailer for “The Force Awakens.” We saw the look in his eye as the preview progressed, and then he saw himself with a lightsaber. His reaction was palpable, the type of reaction a child might have when he sees the flash from a toy sword for the first time. It was a sign that things might change in the “Star Wars” universe.

And then, just as quickly, the “dark side” appeared – specifically, the ugliness of fan backlash. Some were angry with the Jedi-to-be’s chemistry with Rey, played by Daisy Ridley, who is white; some were angry with his presence overall. 

That was seven years ago, and as the new “Star Wars” series, “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” premiered on Disney+ at the end of May, it looked like some things might never change when a racist faction of fans attacked Moses Ingram and her role as the villainous Reva.

This time, the universe spoke, via the official Instagram and Twitter accounts for “Star Wars”: “We are proud to welcome Moses Ingram to the Star Wars family and excited for Reva’s story to unfold. If anyone intends to make her feel in any way unwelcome, we have only one thing to say: we resist.”

Adding in a subsequent tweet, “There are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy, don’t choose to be a racist.”

It was a deliberate and different commentary, even in an age where protest is perpetual. It goes without saying that Mr. Boyega’s circumstances, which he outlined in Britain’s incarnation of GQ, likely factored into Disney’s rebuke of fan hatred. (The recent online bullying of Kelly Marie Tran, an Asian actor, may also have played a role.)

“I’m the only cast member who had their own unique experience of that franchise based on their race,” Mr. Boyega told the publication. “It makes you angry with a process like that. It makes you much more militant; it changes you. Because you realise, ‘I got given this opportunity but I’m in an industry that wasn’t even ready for me.’ Nobody else in the cast had people saying they were going to boycott the movie because [they were in it]. Nobody else had the uproar and death threats sent to their Instagram DMs and social media, saying, ‘Black this and black that and you shouldn’t be a Stormtrooper.’ Nobody else had that experience.”

Certainly, there have been Black characters in the “Star Wars” canon – Mace Windu and Lando Calrissian come to mind. The concern for Black fans of the series is the second-fiddle roles that those characters have played. Windu, who was played by Samuel L. Jackson, was poised to thwart the Dark Side in “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” until Anakin Skywalker made his shocking heel turn. Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams in the earlier “Star Wars” films, and by Donald Glover in “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” had a reputation as a trickster, and even with his hero turn, still was a largely misinterpreted character.

The challenge for “Star Wars” moving forward is to continue in this path of character development and critical rebuke of racism. The conscientious words of key figures in the latest series are important. And yet, we understand that wide-scale change happens when corporations change. It is fitting that Ms. Ingram would speak about the racism she has endured with defiance, yet lament, “There’s nothing anybody can do about this. There’s nothing anybody can do to stop this hate. ... But I think the thing that bothers me is ... this feeling that I’ve had inside of myself – which no one has told me – but this feeling that I’ve just got to shut up and take it. That I’ve just got to grin and bear it. And I’m not built like that.”

It shouldn’t be her problem to bear at all, much less alone. It’s the universe’s problem. Silence is consent, and in the vacuum of space, that silence has been deafening. There is something we can do about this. The quick and supportive official response to the hate, and more importantly, Mr. Boyega’s commentary, are good starting points.

In the face of this all-too-familiar scourge of the galaxy, it’s time to build something different. Not just characters, but character.

Ken Makin is the host of the “Makin’ A Difference” podcast.

AP

Symbols of unity or division? The Gyanvapi mosque, left, and Kashiviswanath temple on the banks of the river Ganges in Varanasi, India.

In the run-up to India’s 75th anniversary of independence in August, and at a time when its founding premise of secular democracy is increasingly frayed, a quiet act of restraint offers a powerful lesson in how the norms and values of a society rest on the decisions of individual citizens.

Early on the morning of April 27, Muslims in the northeastern town of Ayodhya arose to find three mosques and a shrine desecrated by torn pages of sacred Islamic text, raw meat, and threats scribbled on hand-written notes. Triggering insults like those are not uncommon in India, and in Ayodhya they were potentially combustible. Thirty years ago Hindus razed a 16th-century mosque built there on a site they claimed was the birthplace of their deity Rama. The ensuing riots killed more than 2,000 people.

Yet this time Muslims calmly entrusted the matter to the police. That earned the support of an influential Hindu priest and the local member of Parliament from the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. “I strongly condemn this act,” said Lallu Singh, the MP. “No such activity should be carried out as it can disturb communal harmony.” Seven suspects were arrested, and district leaders started a dialogue with Muslim clerics.

It did not take long to illustrate why the unity forged in Ayodhya matters. A week later, fresh tensions erupted over another historic mosque in Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city set on the Ganges River. Hindus say the 17th-century Gyanvapi mosque was built on the site of a demolished temple and demand the right to pray there. Muslim worship has since been limited on the site while a district court investigates the claims. Meanwhile the city remains on edge.

Across India, the targeting of mosques and destruction of Muslim neighborhoods coincide with policies of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that are redefining the nation and its concept of citizenship on the basis of religion. Hindus make up roughly 80% of the population. Since 2014 the BJP has championed the Hindu nationalist view – forged in part in the Ayodhya mosque riots three decades ago – that Muslims are second-class citizens who rightfully should live in Pakistan. India’s northern neighbor was established as an Islamic republic when the subcontinent was partitioned at independence from British rule in 1947.

In recent years the rights of Muslims have been increasingly eroded. Since 2015, the year after Mr. Modi was first elected, a handful of states have outlawed beef – a staple of the Muslim diet in a country where cows are held as sacred by the Hindu majority. The laws impose lengthy jail sentences for slaughtering the animals. In 2018, states began enacting laws effectively banning interfaith marriage. And in 2019, the government passed the Citizen Amendment Act, which specifically excluded Muslims from special rights granted to immigrants of other religious backgrounds.

The cumulative effect of these laws, writes Niraja Gopal Jayal, a professor at King’s College London, in a newly published paper in the journal Studies in Indian Politics, “is an attempt to construe Indian citizenship as faith-based.”

In the increasingly fractured and openly tense atmosphere that this has created, Muslims and Hindus in Ayodhya showed that rejecting violence can have a unifying effect. When that is motivated by common spiritual principles, it can ennoble societies to renew their highest defining ideals.