Page 62 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Media and religion in transition 51

what their religion is had doubled in the previous ten years, to 29 million.
But, rather than portending the long-awaited secularization of America,
this seemed more likely to suggest a further stage in the restructuring of
American religion. Just answering “none” does not mean one has no reli-
gion. As religion writer Don Lattin noted in his report on these findings,

Some “nones” identify themselves as atheists or agnostics, but the vast
majority believe in God, pray and often describe themselves as “spiri-
tual but not religious.” “My sense of God transcends all the different
religions,” said . . . a clinical supervisor in San Francisco.... “It’s an
energy.” 24

Such religion or spirituality, to the extent it is becoming more common,
brings the US into closer alignment with longer-standing traditions in
Europe. A letter to the European edition of Time responded to the debate
over whether to include a reference to God in the new European constitu-
tion in this way:

You asked, where did God go? God does not live in churches alone.
He is omnipresent and is the silent witness to all usual and unusual
happenings in the universe. Christianity is deeply rooted in Europe.
Attendance in churches is not the sole criterion for assessing people’s
devotion to Christianity. 25

But change is evident not only outside existing religious structures, but
also in their reimagining. A reporter covering the founding of a new
church called “All Seasons Chalice” observed,

The church is one of thousands of “mix and match” or “designer
God” communities springing up around the nation as people yearning
for a spiritual context seek to build new traditions that incorporate
aspects of many belief systems.
All Seasons Chalice founder David Tresemer and Cannon, his wife,
who is now president of the small but growing community, say their
new tradition emphasizes a connection to the earth and the wisdom of
the stars through dance, meditation and music. They offer respect for
more traditional belief systems such as Christianity and Buddhism,
without the dogma, they say. 26

Sociologists of religion have been observing for quite some time now that
the nature of contemporary religion is undergoing significant change.
From the period of relative unity and solidity typified by Will Herberg in
the 1950s, religion has gone through a transformation in both its struc-
tures and its practices. 27 On the most fundamental level, these changes