142 Wade Clark Roof
Over against an alleged growing polarization between liberals and conservatives pulling
Americans into one or another camp, or “cultural wars,” the story of far greater con-
sequence for religion in these years, it would seem, is what Philip Cushman (1995)
describes as “the rise of a new sovereign self.” An individualistic ethos, a therapeutic
mentality, and a growing consumerism all conspired to bring about a cultural redefini-
tion of the self. Any such redefinition holds enormous implications for spirituality both
in inward realities and outward expressions – and in ways that cannot be contained
institutionally or even within ideological camps. Cushman captures the far reaches of
the psychological transformation now underway when he writes: “The new cultural
terrain was now oriented to purchasing and consuming rather than to moral striving,
to individual transcendence rather than to community salvation; to isolated relation-
ships rather than to community activism; to an individual mysticism rather than to
political change” (1999: 130).
Admittedly, Cushman captures the more extreme of current cultural trends, and
minimizes the continuing, and often remarkably strong bonds within religious com-
munities – be they Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, liberal, or conservative Protestant. Reli-
gious communities continue to exercise some degree of constraint on an excessive self-
preoccupation, a point we ought not overlook. Amid all the cultural changes, for many
Americans religious communities serve as centers of moral and theological interpreta-
tion, and thereby provide guidance for the everyday lives of their members. Churches,
synagogues, temples, mosques, and other religious gatherings serve as subcultures that
filter and shape spiritual expressions. Religious dwelling is of course possible within a
dynamic psychological culture that privileges movement over stability, and journeys
over destinations; it simply requires a degree of boundary maintenance that would not
be as necessary in an environment defined more by tradition.
Furthermore, public responsibility and altruism have not disappeared as moral
ideals, but instead have become reoriented within a highly subjective cultural con-
text. While it might seem that in a self-absorbed culture acts of charity would readily
diminish, or take on less significance to those committing them, research shows that
a positive, albeit slight, relationship actually exists between the two (Wuthnow 1991:
22). Reaching out to help others need not be at odds with one’s wanting to receive a
sense of self-satisfaction for such action; indeed, the act and the motive easily co-vary.
A self-focused culture might well inflate one’s wish for internal rewards when helping
others, and give rise to a distinctive rhetoric expressing those wishes, but it need not
necessarily erode good deeds or the spiritual meaning people may obtain from engag-
ing in them. Instrumentalism, or the tendency to view religion from the standpoint
of its manifest personal benefits, is very much a driving force in our culture as many
commentators would agree, but to dismiss religion as having become little more than
psychology is to throw the baby out with the bath water. We grasp the situation better if
we recognize that in contemporary America we have an expanding and richly textured
set of religious discourses that draw heavily upon psychological and self-referential
terms for describing the motives behind an individual’s religious beliefs, practices, and
charitable acts.
II
How might we reconceptualize spirituality in keeping with such trends? How are we to
understand the transformations in religious dwelling and the increased significance of