Different Views of Being "Religious"

In Wade Clark Roof's book, Spiritual Marketplace, he divides people into five catagories of religion:
Dogmatists
Mainstream believers
Born again Christians
Metaphysical believers and seekers
Secularists
He came up with these catagories during a study that he conducted that is very similar to ours. However, he focused on the "baby boomer" generation, while we are focusing on the generation after them (i.e. the kids of the baby boomers). Even though these divisions are in an older generation, it is possible that many of them can still apply to the age group we are studying. Before going into more detail with the groups themselves, we will take a brief look at a few of Roof's ideas of varying religion.

He starts out by giving two sets of statistics that surprised me when I read them. The first says that "Polls indicate that 94% of Americans believe in God and 90% report praying to God on a fairly regular basis" (Roof, 3). This contradicts the apparent decrease in religious people in America. Religion is being taken out of schools and is constantly railed on by the government. So why is it this happening when 94% of Americans report a belief in God?
Roof quickly answers this by providing a statistic showing that, while religion is decresing in public, it is still thriving and even increasing in people's private lives. "...65% of Americans believe that religon is losing its influence in public life... yet 62% claim that the influence of religion was increasing in their personal lives" (Roof, 7). Outwardly religion apears to be declining, but nearly the same percent feel that religion is growing inwardly. Now that we see that personal religion is actually growing, we must examine what that personal religion is.

Here are a few quotes from Roof that we thought well explained the growth and change of religion during the Baby Boomer generation:

"Spirituality is a very difficult word to define. An adequate definition would include reference to a relationship with something beyond myself... that is intangible but also real. It would recognize that spirituality is the source of one's values and meaning, a way of understanding the world, an awareness of my "inner self," and a means of integrating the various aspects of myself into a whole" (35).

"[The United States] is religiously pluralistic and lacks an established church... Organized religion can be experienced as distant and out-of-date; spiritually it can be dry" (36-37).

There is now a greater emphysis on self understanding and self reflexivity, which is a shift from the previous culture (Roof, 9).

"House churches, Catholic Eucharistic groups, Jewish havurot, Bible study, prayer groups, and other such groups are often invisable yet by all accounts are flourishing today" (Roof, 20). He later points out that, "One out of every four Americans are involved in small groups of one sort or another..." (Roof,39).


After seeing these small ways in which religion has changed, Roof showed interviews from a few people who fit into the different categories.


Sara Caughman: born again Christian, or a rediscovery of tradition


I think that Sara's story is similar to that of many people of her generation. She was raised in the church but dropped out when she reached her twenties. Years later (when she was in her 40's) something happened in her life to cause her to rediscover the religion she had once been a part of. Not only did Sara return to church, she became an active member and helped establish many groups in her church to further the knowledge and understanding of Christian values and teachings.


Not everyone who returns to their faith necessarily becomes super involved, but it can be commonly seen that people who have been away from the church tend to return when they have children of their own and want them to be raised in the church, or when some other big and life-changing thing happens to make them reflect back on their life and think about the future.


Vicki Feinstein: Eclectic Seeker


Vicki claimed to be not religious for most of her life, but said that she and some friends started to get involved with the religious movement occuring around her. She says she "cannot imagine herself belonging to any religious organization", so she struck out on her own. She looked into scientology and liked what she saw there about how the mind is shaped and the ways it helped her to know herself better, but wasn't satisfied and kept looking. She read everything she could about Buddhism and followed the religion's advise on self reflection and meditation. In addition to these, she mentioned liking Star Trek and asked if it could be considered a religion as well.


In this day people consider all sorts of things to be religions that never would have been given a second thought a hundred years ago. "New Age" teachings that combine religious ideas with things like yoga and other techniques to connect you to your body are becoming commonplace and Vicki is not alone in her blending of religions and other ideas to form her own "religious values".


Some people just don't want to be told what to do and what to believe, and would rather take the time to discover that themselves. This is echoed in several comments from our interviewees making statements like find quotes "should be your choice, your own personal beliefs, no one should make you believe anything, etc." That is why you find people, like Vicki, who can believe in Star Trek as a religion. That is how they experience spirituality on a personal level.

John McRae: Reawakenings (secular alternative to traditional faith)

John was born into a Presbyterian church but did not know if he was religious or not. He would refer to himself as a Presbyterian, but he had not been to church in about twenty years, claiming that he “got out of the habit of going and never went back”, and could not say that he even knew what Presbyterians believed.

His fiancé, who is Catholic and participates in small group study because they are not comfortable in church, influenced him and he started going to the small group as well. He said that he liked the group because even though they are Catholic, that does not matter, instead it is very open and they talk about their own lives and their own experiences. Through this group, John experienced the ability to address his feelings of doubt and uncertainty and think about his priorities.

Karen Potter: Feminist Journey


Karen was raised Southern Baptist and was very active until she began to desire to feel a spiritual movement through her own experiences, and through the feminist movement. She says, "I have come to find out that [the church] doesn't corner the market on spirituality. Still it's a tool for those that it works for. This church has helped me, but right now it doesn't have much to offer me" (Roof, 21). She became an active member of a women's group that helped her explore her own needs and empower her to reach deeper levels of feeling through activities like meditation. She claimed that she, "found God inside myself" through self help books.



According to Roof, this feminist movement is not uncommon in a society that has been male dominated in the past. Throughout history, women have separated into small groups to "bond" with other women and deepen the feminist unity in "gender-based alienation". In Karen's case, she did this through studying eastern religions, ancient goddesses, meditation, and spa treatments, to name a few.



This ties in with the common theme that Roof keeps reiterating of a gradual feeling of ambivolence toward the traditional faith in which they were raised and a growing spiritual hunger for self discovery.



Sam Wong: Evangelical Seeker



Sam was not raised in a religious household. When he was in college, he was exposed to Christianity and him and his wife became members of an evangelical christian organization. He was not an active member of one church until six years ago. Since then, the change was even aparent on his coffee mugs (Jesus is the reason for the season) and his WWJD bracelets. He described his church as a "seeker church" meaning they attract middle aged people who are "seeking" answers, and who often know very little about Christianity and enjoy a much more contemporary setting. This included being tied into a "Christian network" on the internet so he could talk in chat rooms to other Christians. Through this, his goal is to "win people over to Jesus" and "organize a worldwide evangelical campaign".