God with a Million Faces

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Each faith may also come into its moment of prominence as one matures. 'In my opinion, when a person is growing up she should probably practice more Confucianism,' Li writes. 'It will give her the motivation and driving force to learn and develop her potential fully.' Later, 'Taoist strategies will enhance her career.' Finally, the Buddhist 'mind of emptiness' leads to peace and self-acceptance in old age.

Not everyone thinks that smorgasbord spirituality is a desirable feature of life in the global village, and not all the naysayers are theological conservatives. Many critics take aim at New Age practitioners, who, according to George Barna, share the following characteristics: 'faith as a private matter, religious principles from a variety of sources, no centralized religious authority, deity intermingled with self, and more focused upon religious consciousness than religious practice.' Barna estimates that roughly 20 percent of American adults are New Agers, at least as he loosely defines them. Many critics dismiss New Agers as spiritual dilettantes who aren't so much seeking the sacred as indulging a hunger for new sensations. Others see traditional religions as works of beauty whose holy texts have been polished over the centuries by many minds; to take an idea from here and there, they argue, is like stealing bricks from ancient temples to build a rickety shrine of one's own.

These reservations are summed up by one of the foremost scholars of comparative religion, Huston Smith, in an interview in Mother Jones last December: 'What you describe as New Age, and what I call the cafeteria approach to spirituality, is not the way organisms are put together, nor great works of art. And a vital faith is more like an organism or a work of art than it is like a cafeteria tray.' Though Smith praises New Agers for their optimism, he also notes their failure to confront the question of 'radical evil' or to produce true heroes of compassion like Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama. At worst, he says, New Age beliefs 'can be a kind of private escapism to titillate oneself.'

After a lifetime spent studying the world's religions and teaching others to see their underlying unity, Smith, in his late 70s, remains what he has been since birth: a Methodist, despite his gripes about Methodist theology. 'I certainly would not choose that messenger if I were starting from scratch,' he says, but switching from the faith that formed him is not an acceptable option.

Many younger Americans have fewer qualms about reinventing their religious lives. That's one of the findings reported by Wade Clark Roof, a professor of religion and society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation, published in 1994. Roof is now working on a sequel, a second look at baby boomers and their beliefs on the verge of the 21st century.

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