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Polysymbolism and Modern Religiosity

The present as a time of spiritual change and creativity is widely recognized and has been helpfully analyzed by a number of commentators on religion and contemporary culture.1 For the most part, their soundings have concentrated on the so-called new religions-a bewildering variety of countercultural ideologies, cult religions, and self-realization therapies popular among the alienated and marginal members of society. Some may question the appropriateness of this focus in light of the comparatively small percentage of the population involved and of the recent revival of interest in traditional forms of religion. But, in fact, attention to the new religions is not misplaced because something is happening here that will radically alter traditional religions from within. The revolutionary possibility at work on the fringes of our time's "return to religion" is not the content of the new religions but the form of a new religiosity.2 The new religions are contributing to the formation of a new way of being religious-a spiritual life that is not tied to any monolithic culture, tradition, or self-identity. Indeed, the widened pluralism of religious options in our culture reflects a deepening pluralizing of religious consciousness as such. In William Shepherd's elegant phrase, we are witnessing the emergence of a "polysymbolic religiosity."3