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Media and religion in transition 53

tion, the generation that first came to the reflexive consciousness that
Giddens feels supports the kind of autonomy and suspicion of received
explanations and authorities that is typical of the quest for the ideal self.
As Roof observes,

The same culture that simplifies and rationalizes religion also alters
the very notion of the self. Under contemporary conditions the self
becomes fluid, improvable, adaptable, manipulatable, and above all
else, something to be satisfied – the assumption being, of course, that
the self’s appetite is insatiable. Parallels between the self and religion
are worth observing. With a more fluid, adaptable, and insatiable self,
religious identity becomes less ascribed, and more of a voluntary,
subjective, and achieved phenomenon. America’s religious pluralism
feeds into this “new voluntarism” by demonopolizing any single
version as the religious truth and by making a wide variety of religious
options open to everyone. 32

Roof’s work is significant in that so much of it was rooted in field research
on the evolving ways that this generation looked at religion. Along the
way, he laid out the description of “seeking,” which seems to typify the
rising tide of religiosity and spirituality in American culture. Roof
describes this as rooted in some of the same trends noted by Giddens, but
at the same time linked to particularities of the American context:

Today’s spiritual quests are the working out of the tendencies deeply
rooted in an Emersonian conception of the individual who must find
God in herself or himself, and of an experience with the divine
affirming that she or he is known and loved in a personal way. Now as
in the past, such inclinations have encouraged an assertive self, not
necessarily independent of community but one that insists on
“working out” the individual’s relation to and meaning of such
involvement. Americans not only pick and choose what to believe, by
and large they also set the terms governing involvement in religious
communities. Especially in a time of heightened spiritual activity, we
would expect a more rampant subjectivity, but also the possibility of
new, emerging forms of community giving expression to personal
enhancement. 33

Fellow sociologist Robert Wuthnow agrees that a religiosity of spirituality
of “seeking” is, in fact, a major dimension of the contemporary religious
landscape, but also points out that it stands alongside a more traditional
spirituality of “dwelling” that can be said to be of continuing significance
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as well. Wuthnow and Roof in fact argue that the seeking (or sometimes
called “questing”) sensibility exists in some contexts on its own – that is it