Quest Magazine

Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion

By Wade Clark Roof
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Paperback. x + 367 pages.

What is really going on in American religion? Indicators today seem to be pointing in all directions at once as one tries to assess the spiritual environment with which Theosophy, and each of us as an individual, must live and work. Look at it one way, and (as certain alarmists insist) rampant secularism is taking over. Look at it another way, and religion- -conservative religion at that--appears to be gaining almost unprecedented political and social power. All that is sure is that American religion is getting more pluralistic all the time, and styles of religious life are changing nearly everywhere.

Now here comes an authoritative guidebook to this incredibly complex picture by one of the nation's most eminent sociologists of religion. Wade Clark Roof first divides the current religious world into four segments: Born-again Christians, Mainstream Believers, Metaphysical Believers and Seekers (a sector Theosophy is given due credit for helping construct), and Dogmatists and Secularists. The last, dogmatism and secularism, are interestingly put together as representing a comparable kind of mentality, though at opposites ends of the continuum. But most religionists today, deep down, do not have whatever it takes either to believe completely or doubt fully, and that's why the scene is so fluid and at the same time so vigorous.

For what is overall most- characteristic of American religion today, according to Roof is not the variety it has long possessed so much as the flexible spirit, the sense of being on a never-ending quest, that seems to shape all but its most extreme ends. Whatever faith one has landed in is likely to be viewed only as the vessel within which one is continuing the journey for now, and its charter always open to revision. Even traditionally rigid churches may be held in a light, searching, and open kind of way that is comfortable with doubt or unconventionality in some areas. In such a situation, boundaries are inevitably fluid; more and more people are not in the religion in which they were raised, and may hold unexpected beliefs. Remarkably, in Roof's poll-data no less that 27 percent of those who said they were Born-again Christians also believed in reincarnation.

Indeed, combining faith with doubt and ongoing search was a common response in place of the old hard attitude toward religion, "Take it [belief] or leave it: [religion]," there was a third option, put memorably by Jack Miles in a passage quoted by Roof: "If I may doubt the practice of medicine from the operating table, if I may doubt the political system from the voting booth, if I may doubt the institution of marriage from the conjugal bed, why may I not doubt religion from the pew?"

Is this just the yuppie "I want to have it all" mentality, or something radically new and different" emerging from the spiritual marketplace? Only time will tell. But Theosophists, who also like to see their worldview as a third option alongside dogmatic science and religion, should pay close attention to what is going on over there behind the scenes as well as in the foreground, so they can speak effectively to those born-again believers, seekers, and doubters. Spiritual Marketplace is a serious work of sociology and not light reading, but it is very well written and unfailingly interesting and illuminating. In a scene so fluid, it can hardly be called the last word, bur readers will not: lay it down without a much richer sense of the religious world in which we live, a world that, as Roof makes clear, is seldom what it seems.

--ROBERT ELLWOOD

March/April 2002

Ethics for the New Millennium

by the Dalai Lama
New York: Riverhead Books, 2001. Paperback, xiv + 237 pages.

On July 21,1981, the fourteenth Dalai Lama came to Olcott, headquarters of the Theosophical Society in America, in Wheaton, Illinois. This was a very large and significant event for the Society. The audience was approximately four hundred people, and we began with the mayor of Wheaton presenting to the Dalai Lama an honorary Citizenship to the city. Considering the very large fundamentalist Christian community in Wheaton at the time, this was indeed a momentous event. I was in the crowd that day, and I still remember this humble man walking through the many trees of Olcott to the small outdoor stage, with the people standing and paying silent respect.

At: that time, the Dalai Lama was not as well known in the United States as he is now, and his travels were not nearly as extensive. He is still a humble and simple man, but in 1989 he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Since that time the whole world has heard his profound message that the cultivation of compassion is the path to world peace.

In 1981, few books by the Dalai Lama were readily available, and those that were seemed written for a college-level introductory course on Tibetan Buddhism. Most of what I had read were scripts from his talks. Before I went to Olcott for his talk, I had read as many of his articles as I could find. His title that day was "The Buddha Nature," but I quickly noticed that what he said sounded very much like what I had read in the articles. In other words, the message was simple: compassion, happiness (inner peace), and world peace are what we should be thinking about.

In this book, Ethics for the New Millennium, the Dalai Lama continues that: same theme. He gives us a moral system based, not on religious principles, but on universal principles irrespective of religious belief. It is written more as if he and I were having a serious talk over lunch, and he is giving me all of these important points. If I were taking notes, they might look like the following:

"Unfortunately, many have unrealistic expectations, supposing that I have healing powers or that I can give some sort of blessing. But I am only an ordinary human being. The best I can do is try to help them by sharing in their suffering."

"Despite the fact that millions live in close proximity to one another, it seems that many people, especially among the old, have no one to talk to but their pets."

"In replacing religion as the final source of knowledge in popular estimation, science begins to look a bit like another religion itself."

And then we have some real eye-openers: "My own experience of life as a refugee has helped me realize that the endless protocol, which was such an important part of my life in Tibet, was quite unnecessary."

Toward the end of the book, the Dalai Lama concludes, "I cannot, therefore, say that Buddhism is best for everyone," because from the perspective of human society at large, we must accept the concept of "many truths, many religions." Then he says, "In my own case, for example, my meetings with the late Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk of the Cistercian order, were deeply inspiring."

The Dalai Lama now has a large number of books in print. He says very little in this book that is new or original. But what he says still sounds fresh and worth rereading.

-RALPH H. HANNON

March/April 2002

The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age of Distraction

By Rebecca Z. Shafir
Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, Quest Books, 2000. Hardback, viii + 255 pages.

Drawing on its author's experience as a speech and language pathologist and a student of the martial arts and Zen meditation, The Zen of Listening is an illuminating workshop on the art of listening well. Rebecca Shafir writes that the foundation of good listening goes deeper than techniques such as maintaining eye contact and nodding often. To listen truly well, she says, we must" dismantle the barriers to communication rooted in our prejudices and self-absorption.

Shafir says we often judge who is worth listening to (and who isn't) by their status, age, physical appearance, sex, race, our past experiences with them, and how well what they say fits with our own beliefs. Furthermore, communication with those who get by our elaborate screening process is impeded by our personal agendas, the jangle of our often negative self-talk and poor concentration skills.

Shafir offers a number of ways to counter these barriers, such as meditation, pointedly opening our minds to people and ideas that don't fit into our belief systems, and attempting to "set aside your evaluative self" and simply" be a witness" to the ideas of others.

Creating a memorable analogy, Shafir invites readers to listen to others "with the same self-abandonment as we do at the movies." "You go to the movies," she tells us, "to satisfy your curiosity, to be informed, to be entertained, to get another point of view, to experience something outside yourself." To listen in this way is to receive "the gift of another's vision of life."

Shafir offers many helpful suggestions for shaping our listening styles: being silent to encourage communication (whereas advice-giving usually shuts it down), listening under stress, and improving memory. She also gives readers a short but lucid introduction to Zen philosophy.

This is a practical book with tools for handling everyday transactions in work, school, and relationships. It is also a spiritual book, promising that: "any verbal encounter could contain a golden nugget of experience, information, or insight," and thus a portal to spiritual growth.

-PAUL WINE

March/April 2002

The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

By Richard G. Geldard
Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne, 2001. Paperback, x + 196 pages.

Susan Roberson examines Emerson's career and intellectual development as a Unitarian preacher between 1826 and 1832, including Emerson's concept, of self-reliance, his introduction of a new hero suited for a new age, and his merging of his identity with this ideal.

Wesley Mort and Robert Burkholder present fourteen new essays on Emerson, his philosophy, and his colleagues, connecting Transcendentalism to persistent currents in American thought. Among the contributors, Robert D. Richardson, Jr., describes Emerson as an editor; Ronald A. Bosco probes Emerson's teaching of the "Somewhat Spheral and Infinite" existing in every person; and Albert J. von Frank analyzes Emerson's construction of the" Intimate Sphere." This academic anthology enriches our understanding of Emerson and his closest colleagues.

Published in 1993 as The Esoteric Emerson, the new edition of Richard Geldard's book describes the Concord sage as a poet and essayist who inspired a spiritual literature and inaugurated an enduring philosophical movement outside Unitarianism. Geldard describes Emerson as a New England Socrates. Previous generations, Emerson emphasized, "beheld God and nature face to face." His contemporaries seemed content to comprehend spirituality through historic writing bequeathed from earlier generations. However Emerson observed that poetry and philosophy issue from "an original relation to the universe" rather than from history, tradition, or "religion of revelation."

-DANIEL ROSS CHANDLER

March/April 2002