The Sins and Virtues of New Religions
VER THE LAST 15 years, two growing groups of people have been drifting away from traditional organized religion. One is the “Nones,” the 25 or so percent of American adults who consider themselves religiously unaffiliated. The other—which overlaps with the first—is the “Remixed,” Tara Isabella Burton’s term for people who blend traditional faiths with “personal, intuitional spirituality.”
Burton, a journalist with a doctorate in theology, discusses both cohorts in Strange Rites, a book about Americans who reject traditional religious dogmas and labels. These people are often churchless and sometimes godless. But that doesn’t mean they’ve rejected religion. Many of them simply worship different things.
What counts as religion is crucial. Are erstwhile presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson’s Oprah-endorsed self-help books religious texts? What about the life-hacking, mushroom-coffee-guzzling, four-hour-everything works of productivity guru Tim Ferriss?
For Burton’s purposes, religion, she means some way of demarcating the line between good and evil, coupled with a sense of what life is fundamentally about. By , she means your own role within that meaning. By , she means the people you rely on. And by , she means how you and your group mark the passage of time together, with acts of mourning, celebration, coming of age, penitence, and commitment to the faith.
