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A Pew Research Center study from 2018 indicates that more than half of those who do not affiliate with a religion believe in a higher power
or spiritual force other than that described in the Bible. New Age beliefs are slightly more common. Around 60 percent of the unaffiliated
believe in at least one of the following: astrology, reincarnation, psychics, or spiritual energy in physical objects.
age of people are moving away from spirituality
altogether.”
Wither our institutions?
Much could be said about the rise of
“bespoke” or Remixed religion in the
US, but here I’ll focus what I find most
worrying. Any healthy society needs
healthy institutions. Americans are
increasingly skeptical of institutions
– not just American institutions, for
which there are often good reasons
to be skeptical, but institutions as
such. In a time of cultural fragmentation
and political polarization, what
is needed are stronger institutions,
especially those mediating between
the individual and the state.
Unfortunately, because of the cultural
forces and narratives shaping
Remixed religion – such as the internet,
social media, and consumer
capitalism – the practitioners are
unlikely to be the most willing participants,
let alone builders, of institutions.
As Burton says, “the refractory
nature of these new intuitional religions
– each one, at its core, a religion of the
self – risks creating an increasingly balkanized
American culture: one in which
our desire for personal authenticity and
experiential fulfillment takes precedent
over our willingness to build coherent
ideological systems and functional, sustainable
institutions.”
Religious institutions and traditions,
for all their many failures
and problems, have been important
sources of solidarity and community.
They have turned people outward,
orienting them toward the needs of
their family, their neighborhoods,
their church and synagogues and
fellow citizens. A bespoke religion
instead prioritizes the self and its
desires and decouples it from more
communal responsibilities.
This turn from institutional to bespoke
religion is in some ways entirely
understandable. Religious institutions
have often been marred by sexual
abuse, perpetuated racism (just ask
Martin Luther King, Jr.), and sought
to protect their own hierarchies at
the expense of the vulnerable and
their own integrity. Why not avoid all
that baggage and simply cherry pick
according to your preferences?
So rather than undergo the long
and arduous process of reforming
and renewing broken religious institutions,
many are choosing to leave
them altogether and forge their own
spiritual path. Yet the vacuum left by
the decline of institutional religion
will be filled. In places like Finland,
the state may occupy some of that
space. In the US, it may be Remixed
religion. It might be politics itself,
as the rise of woke ideology and the
alt-right movement may suggest. We
may hope for more humane options
for building solidarity, but they won’t
emerge without concerted effort. And
it’s difficult to see how a “religion of
the self” could give us the resources
for such a project.
Joel Gillin is a PhD student at the University
of Helsinki’s Faculty of Theology
researching post-secular political thought
and pluralism. He grew up in the United
States and has lived in Finland since 2015.
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