Much of the debate about religious change, including declining identification with conventional categories, turns on the impact of the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s and the lasting effects of that period's social and cultural transformations on religious beliefs, practices, and institutions. The Vietnam War and outbreaks of urban unrest radically changed the mood of the country. By the 1960s, deep disaffection with the social order had given rise to a counterculture that embraced Eastern mysticism and the politics of the new left. Some believe that those decades produced a profound rupture in the nation's moral and religious fabric, from which we have not yet recovered—that it caused a turning away from God and all but the most superficial religious involvements, and that it produced, at best, a narcissistic, inward-looking spirituality.

A second position views those changes as temporary and sees most of the large cohort of baby boomers who came of age during the ’60s and ’70s as having generally returned from youthful experimentation and the cultural excesses of that time. Proponents of this position point to the growth in evangelical and charismatic churches and to the more conservative moral and religious mood that now prevails. Just like others before them, according to this view, with passage into middle age and establishment of family, neighborhood, and work-related ties, the boomer generation will reconnect with religious institutions.

A third position, articulated by the noted observer Wade Clark Roof in his 1999 book, The Spiritual Marketplace, acknowledges that a spiritual awakening has taken place, but that it will not lead to a return to conventional religious life. According to Roof, "Even if not always defined in traditional religious language, the spiritual concerns will find widespread expression and are leading to major realignments of people and institutions."

We stand closest to this last view. Spirituality appears to us to be alive and well, yet it is showing up in a proliferation of new forms and variations—some of which are not readily captured by conventional questioning about religion. There is also considerable shifting and sampling taking place within traditional denominations.

So what does this imply for the future of religious identification? Will the observed decline persist, level off, or reverse course? If the question is meant to refer to the traditional, established churches and faith systems that have been with us for some time, the answer is very likely to be yes, it is likely to continue. But if we expand the concept of "religion" to include the increasingly popular forms such as New Age religions, Eastern-Western blends, multistranded hybrids, the "small-group movement," pseudoscientific spiritual formulations, and other types, then maybe not.

We agree with Roof that one thing seems quite certain: American individualism and mobility virtually guarantee that religious identity, like other aspects of our concept of self, will continue to evolve and be transformed.

Sid Groeneman is president of Groeneman Research & Consulting in Bethesda, Maryland, and a regular consultant to the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco. Gary Tobin is founder and president of the Institute.

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