In addition to identifying large trends among these generations - marrying later, more religious affiliation accompanies marriage and children, free agency in terms of picking and choosing religious seeking and affiliating - he pushes back against what has become almost an orthodoxy in describing these rising generations, namely that they may be spiritual- but-not-religious. That means they have interest in or practice in spiritual realities without identifying with traditional communities or traditions of faith. Bellah indicates that the actual evidence leads to a rather different conclusion. What is closer to the truth is that they are spiritual-and-religious - not one or the other, but both, depending on the person, how old they are, whether they are married or married with children. It is most often, says Bellah, not a case of either-or.
This really jibes with my own experience not only of those after the baby boomers but with the baby boomers themselves. It is the generation before the baby boomers, the builder generation, that most usually identified spirituality with religious institutional participation.
Let's hear it for both - spirituality as far flung as the big world God fills and actual flesh and blood communities that practice the faith within a tradition. Let's not sell these generations short; once again it is not a case of either-or but of both-and.
