At Mr. Kenyatta’s first Civic Saturday, attended by about 80 people, most of them black, he gave a sermon on urban renewal. He said: “Sure, new buildings and new businesses coming in are great, but that doesn’t translate into revitalization. True revitalization is about people. Detroit does better when the people are doing better.”

Participation in the Civic Seminary, which is funded by the Einhorn Charitable Trust and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is free for applicants who are accepted. Mr. Liu said that the things that make a great civic seminarian are threefold: “They show up for community. They are curious — not just curious in the sense of lifelong learners, but curious about how other people see the world. And they are unafraid to talk about and to practice love, for both neighbors and so-called enemies.”

After being trained, seminarians can apply for grants of $300, to use to pay artists , rent a venue, supply refreshments or pay other small expenses involved in holding events. They also become part of what Mr. Liu calls a “community of practice” — fellow seminarians trying out new things in their hometowns, sharing lessons learned about what works and what falls flat. For now that exchange takes place over a monthly videoconference, but it may become more robust as the number of participants increases.

Why is this happening right now? In part, it’s a reaction to an unpopular president and what many see as particularly divisive times. But it’s also, perhaps, a result of the growing population of Americans who don’t identify with a particular religion (23 percent of the general population and 35 percent of millennials, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study) and yet desire a place where they can experience ritual, consistent community and the space for self-examination.

Casper ter Kuile, a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, has co-authored a series of reports on the new ways in which spirituality is showing up in gatherings like these. “There’s a great hunger for meaningful community,” he told me in an interview . “The drastic decline of religious communities is happening at the same time that we see growing rates of social isolation, mental illness, and polarization in our politics. Civic Saturdays gives local leaders a way to invite others into a relationship that is oriented around meaning and purpose — something that more and more of us are craving.”

Civic Saturdays are meant, however, not just to scratch an existential itch for the individuals who show up but to change the nation. Mr. Liu explained that citizenship is “not about papers and passports.” Instead, he said, he has a favorite equation: “Power + character = citizenship.”

“A lot of Civic Saturday is about cultivating civic character,” he said. “But that has to be coupled with a growing literacy on power. That’s cooking with gas — activating civic capacity that can make our community regenerate from the bottom up.”