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Named A Best Spiritual Book of the Year by Spirituality & Practice
The last twenty years have seen a dramatic increase in "nones": people who do not claim any religious affiliation. These "nones" now outnumber even the largest Protestant denominations in America. They are not to be confused with secularists, however, for many of them identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious" (SBNR). The response to this dramatic change in American religion has been amazingly mixed. While social scientists have been busy counting and categorizing them, the public has swung between derision and adulation. Some complain "nones" are simply shallow dilettantes, narcissistically concerned with their own inner world. Others hail them as spiritual giants, and ground-breaking pioneers. Rarely, however, have these "nones" been asked to explain their own views, beliefs, and experiences. In Belief without Borders, theologian and one-time SBNR Linda Mercadante finally gives these individuals a chance to speak for themselves.
This volume is the result of extensive observation and nearly 100 in-depth interviews with SBNRs across the United States. Mercadante presents SBNRs' stories, shows how they analyze their spiritual journeys, and explains why they reject the claims of organized religion. Surprisingly, however, Mercadante finds these SBNRs within as well as outside the church. She reveals the unexpected, emerging latent theology within this group, including the interviewees' creative concepts of divine transcendence, life after death, human nature, and community. The conclusions she draws are startling: despite the fact that SBNRs routinely discount the creeds and doctrines of organized religion, many have devised a structured set of beliefs, often purposefully in opposition to doctrines associated with Christianity.
Belief without Borders is a captivating exploration of a growing belief system certain to transform the spiritual character of America.
- Sales Rank: #407584 in Books
- Published on: 2014-03-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.50" h x 1.30" w x 9.30" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
Review
"Linda Mercadante has clearly touched a cultural nerve Belief without Borders is rich with detail and nuance. It is full of voices-Mercadante lets her interviewees speak for themselves, in their own terms-and is held together by her own voice, which is clear, concrete, and candid. And respectful: she takes her conversation partners seriously enough to challenge them. "--Nova Religio
"For those who think that being 'spiritual but not religious' is intellectually vague, it is time to think again. In Belief without Borders, Linda Mercadante explores the beliefs of the religiously unaffiliated regarding God, sin, community, the afterlife, and ethics and finds people living 'between' the worlds of secularism and traditional faith. By taking the new spiritual impulse seriously as theology, she affirms the power of spiritual experience as a force remaking the patterns of contemporary faith." --Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening
"In the tradition of Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart, Mercadante here offers us a brilliant narrative introduction to the theology and belief systems of the 'Spiritual but not Religious' among us. Highly accessible and rife with insightful commentary, Belief without Borders is far and away the richest study I have seen to date of the SBNR and is destined to become a classic in the field." --Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why
"Belief without Borders breaks new ground by describing the growing 'spiritual but not religious' population in the United States. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Mercadante finds that the 'spiritual but not religious' are critical of both organized religion and the secular world. The book offers an analysis of the role of belief in contemporary America. It is a welcome and much needed contribution." --John C. Green, Professor, Political Science, University of Akron
"This informative, engaging, and important book shatters the myth that those who describe themselves as 'spiritual but not religious' (SBNR) are self-absorbed theological illiterates self-indulgently 'pic 'n mixing' their way to objectively superficial spiritual self-satisfaction." --Journal of Contemporary Religion
About the Author
Linda Mercadante is the B. Robert Straker Professor of Historical Theology at The Methodist Theological School in Ohio and is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Diligently researched & clearly presented analysis!
By peacepastor
Belief Without Borders is a thoroughly researched and clearly presented description of that segment of the population that identifies with the term “spiritual but not religious”. Linda’s presentation is both balanced and insightful. While this volume may be immensely helpful to the mainline church, its careful analysis and reflection may certainly shed light on our current cultural chaos beyond theological discussions.
Her conclusions were fair and well reasoned. This could lay the groundwork for successive works that also consider the legal and moral consequences of these cultural trends. I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in, or is trying to make sense of, the increasingly ambiguous religious climate in our culture.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Insights that can lead to worthwhile dialogue and better understanding
By Loco-Moco
As a member of a progressive Christian congregation that's drawing most of our new "immigrants" (see below) from disaffected and marginalized groups, including SBNRs -- and as the facilitator of our Adult Education group currently headed into our 7th week of discussing this book and its subject -- I recommend "Belief without Borders" without reservation.
For those already members of traditional denominations, looking perhaps for a way to engage with SBNRs, this is likely to be an unsettling read. Mercadante's in-depth interviews with over 200 self-described SBNRs reveal -- surprisingly, given recent years' headlines -- that most of those who've fallen away from the church did so not because of any personally horrible experience but because of theological differences; a rejection of traditional orthodoxies, if you will.
This is all the more surprising because one tends to think of the "unchurched" as comprised largely of those who reject all theologies. Mercadante shows this isn't so; SBNRs are much more likely to have strong theologies, but they're "hybrid" or "syncretic" in nature. And "syncretism" is a positive term to most SBNRs, setting them apart from the orthodox.
Conservative Roman Catholics make sport of what they term "Cafeteria Catholics". One could similarly mock SBNRs as "Salad Bar (or Side-Order) SBNRs". But that poses the question: If you order only plates of tapas, or choose only from the dim-sum cart, is that any less satisfying a meal? Mercadante's SBNRs argue that what they choose is exactly what's right "for them".
Mercadante does a fine job of parsing her interviewees into logical groups. She begins by noting that the changes in percentage of Americans calling themselves SBNRs track very closely with the four main post-WW2 generational groups. She then redefines the entire group according to five categories based on interviewees' self-described "location" on a continuum. The "dissenters" are near one end of this continuum; they have no interest in organized religion, but nonetheless have an interest in personal spiritual practices. At the other end are the "immigrants", Mercadante's term for those joining or rejoining a religious community.
This allows her to crosstab the interviewees by generation and category, a dual metric which turns out to be a very useful way of characterizing subgroups of SBNRs, somewhere between the extremes of lumping them all together and treating each individual as distinctly unique -- methodologies that obviously don't lend themselves well to a good analysis. After reading this book you'll have a very good feel for what makes SBNRs "tick": what piques their interest and curiosity (and gets them involved) as well as what drives them nuts about organized religion.
The emphasis in this book is a little heavier on the interviewees and their explanations of what led them to their current positions, a little lighter on analysis of the aggregated subgroups and SBNRs as a whole. This apparently bothers some reviewers, but I'm not one. I was happier to have more of the SBNR's own stories in their own words; that gives me -- and, I suggest, other readers -- the opportunity to ponder and analyze for ourselves, in light of our own experiences. I consider myself more of an "SAR" (spiritual and religious), yet I see much of my own journey reflected in those stories, and I suspect this will likely be true of most readers no matter how you categorize yourselves.
One note: these interviewees were self-selected SBNRs, so you shouldn't expect to find professed atheists or rigorous agnostics among them. On the other side of the scale, there are many who incorporate all sorts of spiritual traditions. As you might expect, some of those have integrated those disparate traditions more thoroughly than others. However, few have any reservations about continuing to search, select, and refine their personal spiritual practices and theologies -- what the orthodox would call a path of "intentional spiritual formation" and "discernment". These are folks who would enliven any spiritual community open enough to welcome them.
The sole difficulty I encountered was the book's organization. Mercadante breaks the main section into the interviewees' responses to the four big questions she poses to each and all of them (and, by extension, each of us). The unavoidable result is that we re-encounter many interviewees multiple times as we read through the chapters. And there are so many that Mercadante is almost forced to reintroduce them each time. There's no way I can see that she could've avoided this in the book, and it's a minor quibble considering the wealth of interviewees and quotes in each chapter. It'd be wonderful if somehow, at some future point, we could have access to the re-aggregated main body of each interview. Perhaps this is something that a website could accommodate.
Those who, like me, use this book as a jumping-off place for class or group discussions will unfortunately have a hard time finding neutral study guides. The guides currently out there seem to be based on an assumption that they'll be used by orthodox Christians who mainly want to acquire tools and arguments to proselytize SBNRs more effectively. Study groups for whom a better understanding of SBNRs is its own reward will find these guides more of a hindrance than a help, and will likely have to develop their own curricula and "lesson plans".
To summarize, this is a remarkably successful attempt to come to grips with the noteworthy phenomenon of rapidly increasing numbers of SBNR Americans. It sheds considerable light on the reasons this is happening, giving individual SBNRs who read it considerable insight into others who share this title. It also offers multiple lessons to mainstream denominations, many of whose congregations are dwindling. Openminded American Christians -- as well as American members of other organized religions, of course -- will find this engrossing book has the potential to open new dialogues between existing congregations and individual SBNRs that can lead to worthwhile growth for everyone involved.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Without borders includes all of us
By Amazon Customer
Linda Mercadante offers important data-based insights into changes in our religious views. I especially liked the four interview questions used in her study: Is there anything larger than myself, and sacred or transcendent dimension, any higher power? What does it mean to be human? Is spiritual growth primarily a solitary process or is it done with others? What will happen to me, if anything, after death. As one who has disconnected from religion, I appreciated this book.
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