Modern Religions For A Lonely World

In addressing the meaning crisis — the vacuum left by the failures of religion, modernism, postmodernism, and today’s online alternatives — it takes a return to what bona fide religion really captures. The communitas. The ecstasy. The ritual.

What I can do, what I’m trying to do, is put into words how hard it is to be without religion. To feel your way through this world without moral guidance. To exist without any sense that you belong to something bigger. To have nothing to atone for; nobody to feel indebted to. And to show that yes, we might not be shackled to old-fashioned morality ... See more

-As commitment to religion wanes, people are looking for other forms of belief and belonging.

A religion of emotive intuition, of aestheticized and commodified experience, of self-creation and self-improvement and, yes, selfies. A religion for a new generation of Americans raised to think of themselves both as capitalist consumers and as content creators. A religion decoupled from institutions, from creeds, from metaphysical truth-claims ab

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