The Religion of the Good

Two in three Americans today say they are “spiritual” while one in four identifies as “spiritual but not religious” and most churchgoers profess to be “both spiritual and religious” in their faith. Openness to spiritual experience and insight spreading in and out of the pews goes hand in hand with a hunger for moral commitment and mistrust of moral good reduced to rules and betrayed by politics. At this cultural moment of quicksilver selfhood in search of true fulfillment, the practical wisdom of Ivan Richmond’s epiphanic guide to ethical insight rooted in ritual is right on time and right on target. Let’s join in and try it out.

_{Steven Tipton, Candler Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Religion, Emory University; author of In and Out of Church and Public Pulpits, coauthor of Habits of the Heart and The Good Society.}