Today's popular spirituality reflects an affinity for experience over dogma, an aversion to denominations as institutions and a healthy suspicion of hypocrisy.

One generation shall laud thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts," declares Psalm 145. The ancient psalmist's words ring true during this holiday season, albeit with some uniquely postmodern complications. Christianity and Judaism, the two ancient bulwarks of Western religion, are attracting increased interest among the 50 million Americans ages 19 to 35. But while this generation's spirit is willing, it remains to be seen whether the flesh is able, as far as religious practice goes.

A spiritually minded slacker's holiday stocking this year would overflow. A number of books dealing with the search of young people for spiritual fulfillment has appeared during the last six months. And Tom Beaudoin, a 29-year-old Catholic theologian, well might argue that a plethora of Christmas and Hanukkah goodies, such as compact discs and videos, are rife with religious messages and imagery created by and aimed at twenty- and thirtysomethings. The spiritual content in pop culture is "so obvious, you don't even have to look for the implicit meaning" Beaudoin tells Insight. "It's right there on the surface." Indeed, the next film of independent filmmaker Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy), whose work has contained Catholic imagery, will be a direct satirical look at Dogma. Grammy-winning rocker Joan Osbourne asks musically, "What if God was one us us, just a slob like one of us?" Binyamin Jolkovsky, a 29-year-old writer in Brooklyn, set up a World Wide Web site (http://www.Jewishworldreview.com) to address young Jews. Within two months, it averaged 15,000 to 20,000 hits a day from 35 countries.

Much of Beaudoin's recent book, Virtual Faith, describes how movies, music videos and popular music feed off of and explore traditional religion. And this tendency in youth culture just may be no accident. Also this year, religious journalists Richard Cimino and Don Lattin produced Shopping for Faith, an account of how American religion is attracting more consumers -- and consumerism, the authors argue, is the approach Americans increasingly take toward religious practice.

And for young people, a pertinent scriptural verse might be Psalms 27:10, which 33-year-old author David Klinghoffer uses as the epigram for his new book, The Lord Will Gather Me In, an account of his journey to Orthodox Judaism. Klinghoffer was referring to his adoption. His journey to religious observance matched his search for his birth mother but it also has deeper resonance for his generation: "For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up." The so-called "generation X" -- the post baby boomers born in the late 1960s and 1970s -- were reared in the transient culture of divorce, absentee parenting, media saturation, frequent changes in residence and laissez-faire ethics. Many are searching for an alternative.

"People are sensing a real absence in their lives," says Beaudoin, whose book's subtitle is The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X. Many in his generation "grew up in a fractured family situation" and still have "very ambivalent" familial relations, he says. Many also either have little, if any, experience with institutional religion "or just a plain old experience of bad religion," he says. And indeed, this would seem to be reflected in last year's Gallup Poll showing only 26 percent of young adults under 25 attend religious services each week--less than any other age group. Still, in a culture that regards personal fulfillment -- some would say hedonism -- as the true pearl of great price, the ancient rite of youthful rebellion may manifest itself in unexpected ways. Jana Novak, the 26-year-old coauthor of Tell Me Why, says of her father and coauthor Michael Novak, "One of the biggest things my father got a kick out of was when I would explain to him that for friends of mine their version of rebellion was to become religious and say, `I'm saving myself for marriage.' Their parents had grown up in the 60s and were pushing, `Oh, go get laid; that will help you.'" Still, while defying one's parents often can be pleasant and edifying, there's more to the story. "I think as people get into their 20s and 30s, what's happened is they've been searching for the language to express what is a deep human impulse -- and that is the religious impulse," says Beaudoin, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a doctoral student in religion and education at Boston College. And the fruits of this desire are popping up throughout the seemingly arid landscape of American culture. In the Boston area, awash with college students enmeshed in secular pursuits, just 11 percent of young Jews polled in 1975 said they attended religious services once a month or more. By 1995, that number had jumped to 19 percent. In Maryland, Rabbi Joseph Katz, who has served the Johns Hopkins University as well as the University of Maryland at Baltimore County and Towson University for 13 years, says the atmosphere is different from the 1950s when he was a college student. "There was no religion on campus then; you left your religion at home." That started to change during the 1980s, he says, with students more willing to assert their spiritual identity. At the University of Maryland, the Rev. Susan Astarita, an Episcopal minister, told the Associated Press that students these day are less cynical and are beginning to realize that there are grand questions for which the secular life can't provide answers. "These students now are people who did not grow up with a strict value system," she said. "And now they are asking these perplexing questions." In 1996, a Duke University professor provoked a campus furor when he called for the closing of the college chapel, deeming religion "outmoded." Angry students of all faiths and traditions denounced the idea and the chapel stayed. Just this year at Washington's Georgetown University, the support of students from varied religious traditions convinced reluctant Jesuits to place crucifixes in the newer classrooms. And at Yale University, Orthodox Jewish students attempted, but failed, to overturn the university's requirement of two years' residence in coeducational dormitories.

Novak, a speechwriter for House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Klinghoffer both have lived on the right side of the political spectrum. (Novak, so to speak, was born into conservatism, while Klinghoffer's first "conversion" was from liberalism to the right.) Klinghoffer thinks that it was no accident that he became politically conservative before becoming religiously observant. "With every year, I sort of perceive the working of Providence in my life more and more" he says. "I don't believe there are accidents." While he doesn't see a direct connection between his politics and religion, he believes political conservatism is, in some ways, "Torah for non-Jews." Novak, though, says that if politics played a role, it was "in the sense that the cynicism that I was finding and that I was experiencing by being part of politics made me start looking for something deeper and more moral. It's not that people in politics are necessarily immoral, but just that it made me look for a deeper meaning. I think specifically in politics, I wasn't necessarily finding a deeper meaning in my job." And, it is startling to observe how the spiritual quests of gen-Xers mesh well with their politics. Skeptical of institutions such as denominations or parties, quick to pounce on evidence of hypocrisy and much more concerned with their own experience rather than ideology or dogma, gen-Xers are a tempting but difficult market both for candidates and evangelists. Beaudoin says gen-X spirituality includes four common characteristics: suspicion of institutions, primacy of personal experience, attention to suffering and exploration of ambiguity. This is reflected in the religious symbolism employed in movies and music videos, he argues. Symbols of institutions, particularly Catholicism, the biggest kid on the block, so to speak, are mocked or ironically twisted in music and video. Personal experience has primacy over any dogma; this can lead to commitment but it also can lead to atomized rejection of faith communities. Images of a suffering Jesus have more resonance for many young people than the words of their elders, and ambiguity and doubt are embraced as part of a spiritual search. Ambiguity, of course, can lead to rationalization. And young people may be as wary of religious commitment as they are of family ties. But for those who take religion seriously, modes of behavior take on new importance. "It's very difficult to expect, although one hopes and expects, someone who's lived their life a certain way as an unmarried person to suddenly, as a married person, live in a different manner" acknowledges Klinghoffer. "That obviously is the ideal, and to fall short of the ideal is to sin. I think you have to accept that." Those who do not may stumble onto what Beaudoin calls "the path of indifference and the path of narcissism." And, in fact, the lack of confidence in institutions, the highly personalized faith in one's own experience and the ironic mode favored by youthful discourse pose obvious problems for churches, but they also offer opportunity.

At a time when political and cultural institutions and leaders seem to lack credibility, young people in search of security may discover "God" to be more than a casual epithet. Even in the nation's capital, where power and prestige are dominant, Novak found many of her friends curious about matters of God: "They started realizing that no matter what they did, they seemed to bump up against religion." While perhaps not always free of their own contradictions, generation X is quick to recoil from hypocrisy in others, particularly those in power. This is one reason, notes theologian Tom Beaudoin, for the extraordinary popularity of Pope John Paul II among young people, even non-Catholics and those who disagree with him on many issues. "The pope is an extraordinarily popular figure, kind of like a spiritual celebrity," says Beaudoin. "It's very compelling to see him lean on his crozier, intensely praying." Many young Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, admire the pontiff even though they "obviously cannot follow his own reasoning on moral issues," Beaudoin says. Indeed, last year when John Paul addressed the 12th Catholic "Youth Summit" in highly secular Paris, it was considered a bit of a disappointment when his mass in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower drew "only 500,000 young people." Literally millions of youthful admirers have flocked to the pope's gatherings, including one three years ago in Colorado. This can cause some problems for those who believe that dogma stands in the way of attracting young people. "The present strong authoritarian papacy," with its opposition to birth control and women's ordination, leads to Catholics being "a little bit ashamed that our church keeps promoting them," Robert Ludwig, author of Reconstructing Catholicism for a New Generation, said recently. However, even some sympathetic with Ludwig's views admit that the pope and his worldview remain a powerful draw for youth. Indeed, Beaudoin, who also disagrees with the pope on many matters, admits that the "ultraconservative answer" of evangelical Protestantism and conservative Catholicism may win over gen-X spiritual seekers during the next decade. "Those kind of movements try to give you all the answers and they remove all the ambiguity, but some people are so desperate to deal with the ambiguity that's what they go for." At last year's Paris gathering, the pope said that the younger generation is "involved in a difficult search not only for a minimum of material necessities but also for reasons for living and goals that will motivate their generosity." Then there is sanctity. Indeed, Beaudoin says it is the genuineness of the pope and his message that draws the young: "Part of his popularity among young adults is that people see he has some kind of extraordinarily compelling spiritual relationship with God. He's very close with God."

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COPYRIGHT 1998 News World Communications, Inc. in association with The Gale Group and LookSmart. COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group Terms of usuage and article cited from ~ Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine. Gale Group, 2001

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