(Sightings) Martin Marty–Is there a Drift Away from Denominations in America?

Smart-crack responses will not get one very far. Thus, when asked, “Are you a member of the organized church?” I can look at the chaos of polities and answer, “No, I am a Lutheran.” Then: “Do you believe in institutional religion?” I can answer, “maybe I would if I were institutionalized and we had good chaplains.”

Two new books reviewed by Kaya Oakes…one by Linda Mercadante, the other by the Smith-Longest-Hill-Christofferson team, teach the smart-cracker to get not smart but wise, as these authors deal with SCNRs””Mercadante’s acronymic coinage for the “Spiritual But Not Religious.”

Mercadante writes: “No matter how organized religions try to ignore, challenge, adapt, or protest it, our society is being changed by this pervasive ethos.” Her studied types, “dissenters, casuals, explorers, seekers, and immigrants (to new beliefs), are often “millennials” who cannot return to the religion of their youth, “in part because many of them never had one.” – See more at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/drift-away-martin-e-marty#sthash.e9l1DNGC.dpuf

Read it all.

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