146 Wade Clark Roof
self-identities relate quite differently to levels of religious individualism. Using a scale
measuring religious individualism, we find this latter to be negatively related to defin-
ing oneself as religious butpositivelyto defining oneself as spiritual. That is, given a
high level of personal autonomy in the modern context, the religious consequences
appear to be mixed: Religious identity as culturally defined appears to be undermined,
but at the same time there is an enhanced self-reflection associated with greater clar-
ity of conviction and ethical and spiritual sensitivities. In this respect we might say
that personal autonomy has a double face, one that reflects the dislocations of insti-
tutional religious identities in the contemporary world, and a second that mirrors a
deeply personal search for meaningful faith and spirituality. This poses an interesting,
and potentially very significant problem for the analysis of personal religion.
III
For analytic purposes, it is helpful to cross-classify people’s identities as either religious
or spiritual. Simple though this may be, such a typology makes problematic the inter-
section of inner-experiential and outer-institutional identities, and thereby sensitizes
us to a wide range of religious, spiritual, and secular constituencies within contempo-
rary society. A brief description of the major constituencies follows from the typology
found in mySpiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion
(Roof 1999a: 178).
Statistically, the largest sector of Americans from our survey fall into the quadrant
with overlapping religious and spiritual identities – roughly 59 percent of the total popu-
lation. This includes the 33 percent who are “Born-again” Christians and the 26 percent
who we describe as Mainstream Believers, differing in religious style but not necessarily
in spiritual vitality. Here the spiritual is contained, so to speak, in and through existing
institutional religious forms. William James’s “firsthand” and “secondhand” religion
fuse together in a balanced whole. These are Wuthnow’s dwellers. The religious world
is maintained through shared symbols, beliefs, and practices, and especially through
regular interaction and communally based reinforcement. Shared practices presuppose
language, symbols, and myth, vehicles all necessary for sustaining a religious thought
world and guiding emotional and intentional responses to that world. In this respect,
religious dwelling is emblematic of settled times, or settings where prescribed “strategies
of action” not only express, but recreate experiences that fit what is generally defined
as religious. Religious experience under these conditions is largely derivative; it arises
out of practice, or the rehearsing of myth and narrative. In this way the unity of the
“religious” and the “spiritual,” or of form and spirit, is more or less held together.
But there are serious threats to narrative unity or the “felt-whole” experiences as
Herbert Richardson (1967) once called them. Some people are drawn into revering tra-
dition for its own sake, in which case ritual turns into ritualism, doctrine into dogma,
and the inherited practices of tradition become encrusted and lifeless. Rapid social and
cultural change provoke antimodernist reactions of this sort as evident in fundamental-
ist and neotraditionalist movements across many faith communities. Being “religious”
comes to mean holding on to the outward forms of doctrine, morality, and institution
to the point of not having, or feeling, any serious engagement with faith as a living re-
ality. The strategies of action are rigid and literally mandated. People who are religious