This is a great book for anyone who enjoys the history and social divisions of religious groups. Students, scholars and seekers will all find this book a great reference. After reading, you finally understand how religion, religious groups, and religious ideology play a role in the lives of Americans today. It can be dry and long for persons who just wanted some information but not the nitty gritty details. I highly recommend for social scientists.

I've read several books in the past couple of years about bridging the gap between the different generations, and I have to say that this one is the most useful. It's written from an objective point of view, and so gives powerful "snapshots" of different types of congregations and how they are dealing with the generation gaps---some successfully, some not.

Instead of reading about someone else's cookie-cutter "fix-it program," I got a lot of ideas and insights that might work in my own congregation. I highly recommend this book.

Baby Boomers have hit the empty nest stage of their lives with a bang! For decades marketers and ministers have tried to understand how to reach out to Baby Boomers. With the advent of the empty nest stage of the lives of Boomers where often they function as a sandwich generation between aging parents and their children who are struggling to be adults, another great opportunity has presented itself. Therefore, as one who feels that congregations and parachurch ministries need to include intentional ministry to persons in the empty nest stage of their adult lives, I find this book to be valuable.

This book charts the emergence of five subcultures of Boomers: dogmatists, Born-again Christians, mainstream believers, metaphysical believers and seekers, and secularists. The value of this book is in its ability to provide you with an understanding of these five subcultures that is not based on shallow, pop research, but on in-depth suveys and interviews over a ten-year period.

One of the changes going on in Baby Boomers connections with congregations is that long-term loyal adults are dropping out when they become empty nesters, and those who left during their twenties and have not yet come back to a congregational community are now coming back as empty nesters. However, those who are coming back often find that congregations are not looking for them. They are looking for young adults, single adults, and senior adults.

The only kind of people who write books like this are shimmering, yet unconscious social incidiae who attempt to control others by painting themselves, their mentations, and their 'research' as some-sort-of-sacred by pursuing the 'sociology' of something like religion.

The sociology of religion should be regarded a bit more often with the same sort of sidelong glance as was given to 'political economy' in past centuries. A healthy mistrust is often a useful weapon in such cases.

This is the kind of fashionably spoken drivel, laced with selected 'facts,' sanctioned by much of academia, espoused by those who ultimately regard others as gullible lesser versions of themselves. The perceptive will look beneath the surface. Roof's liberalism doesn't run as far and deep as he imagines it does. It also doesn't cover the fact that people aren't just automotons of measurable 'religiosity.' They can have deep and sincere human feelings that affect all areas of life, not just the superficial 'religiosity' by which Roof seems to entirely assess others, and whereby he tries to measure and negotiate his pain. ( A sociologist is prone to ask 'what's wrong with those people?' rather than looking to see what might be wrong with himself.)

Roof takes his imagined self-importance, plays his games of influence, and ventures to control the thinking of the weak-minded, both inside and outside academic circles, via his writings and occasional public appearances. Such people know how to buddy up to power of all kinds, and walk all over those people who may be more legitimate, at least for a time. (There may be those who have more to offer to the world via deep, thoughtful sincerity, rather than than the type of 'sincerity' which Roof pretends that he has.)

Such individuals will turn those close to them, even friends and family, into sorts of subservient terrors to protect themselves from the world, after a fashion. They may not really admire or love him, but they are in awe of his influence, publications, tv and magazine appearances, etc. They do not do his 'bidding' directly, but they become his automatic and robotic bulwark against a dimension of the world he so neurotically mistrusts.

I will not harp on what those who know, have to say about the generalites of the hegemony or ethos of Santa Barbra, where he now teaches. Readers can unearth that for themselves, and blend it into their understanding of Roof and his ilk.

In truth, Roof's liberalism and his appreciation of people's religiosity is a disguised version of the negative types of Republicanism which he imagines he despises ( see also his other writings.) There is, ultimately, nothing to distinguish Roof's transparent rhetoric from that of some variety of masked, 'well-fed right-wingism.' This is so, in spite of any feigned 'love me, I'm a liberal' presentation to the contrary.

...yes: see his other writings, also. I give this book five stars for what it has to reveal to the perceptive. It has much to say about pseudo-intellectual broo-ha-ha to those who refuse to accept such rhetoric at face value.

Don't take my word for it. Read him with both eyes open, for yourself. Some of the articles he writes for beliefnet.com can be very enlightening to those who know how to see through such gossamer pyrotechnics. Roof is, ultimately, an uncomfortable and paranoid man who cannot somehow bring himself to understand the world and its humanity in any deeper sense. He is baffled. His rhetoric is like the kind of petty-influence monger who resorts to 'power elite' ploys of one type and another. He attempts to buffer and cushion himself socially, professionally, and politically. He reacts by spending much of his time offering a kind of 'documented' pseudo-information which masks human, not necessarily overtly religious, factors. This fully amounts to leading many of the gullible and unperceptive down a flowery path.

And then he may have to start the cycle all over again, by reaching upwards into the conservative establishment he pretends largely not to be a part of, to protect himself.

A thoughtless, frightened, and negative form of liberalism informs and contaminates his writings - and is likely to poison his readers.

Go ahead - read between the lines ... Roof is not a cult: he is more part of a sanctioned 'liberal academic' sub-cult. The enemy isn't Roof, necessarily. It is the warped social perspective that he is a part of. He earns a dubious place in this movement, by helping to perpetuate it.

It must have been a great effort for his editors to excise the more paranoid rhetoric from his writngs. It would be no use to have one of their dollar-makers to be regarded as more fit for psychiatric observation.

For Roof, as other reviewers have here indicated, coming to know spirituality as well as he affects to understand organized religion and its individualized 'religiosities,'would be great medicine for this sociologist. Otherwise, he and his readers will tend to remained mired. The necessary technicalities of research often overpower judgment. Added to the resulting confusion is a tentative/fearful conformance to prevailing political and social hegemonies of 'every breeze that blows,' by which we often destroy the soul.

It is too bad that people like Roof leave the rest of us the difficult job of growing up, and going beyond actual surfaces. There are those who must 'take up the slack,' so to speak, as Roof winds his merry, if dubious, path. It would be nice if the misunderstood, yet deeply sincere, could gather a little help.

A smiling appearance of being socially obliged and well-meaning, doesn't always reverse this effect. The pseudo-democratic gathering and corralling of a long list of 'religiosities' does not restore needed faith and respect for human souls who are truly spiritual, considerate, and feign little or nothing in their attempt to be an element of sincerity in this world. External, tabulatable rosters derived from 'research' do not measure true human spirits. People can have hearts, not just categories. People can have deep meaning, not just fashion.

Roof would do well to open up to such souls, if only for his own sake.

This book both informed and affirmed something inside me. By calling the book the spiritual marketplace instead of the religious marketplace, the author immediately reveals the issues for a generation raised on modernity, but which nonetheless knows when it is spiritually hungry. It is almosts too simplistic to equate spirituality with inner experience and religion to outward beliefs, but it's good for a starter. The search culture seems to opt for community based on common inner experience rather than on "truth once revealed". A case in point is a cohort of "born again" boomers whose inner experience draws them into fellowship, but whose modern views shock the old guard who still equate spiritual fullfillment with a proper set of beliefs. Roof's findings make me cheer for the human spirit, the compass of which will always point north when distractions are out of the way. By listening to the stories and the data in Roof's book, I feel more hope that we really CAN find our way home.

Making up to a third of our population, Baby Boomers have a major influence on our culture. But what, if anything, do they believe spiritually? Starting with a close-up look at the lives of seven specific individuals, the author goes on to examine the various religious and other institutions which appeal to the Boomer generation. The author makes the case that there is a genuine "boomer culture", giving details and examples to prove his point.He also illustrates the trends in religion and the subcultures that are emerging, including "loyalists" (those who never truly dropped out of a religious tradition), "returnees" (those who dropped out but later returned) and "dropouts" as well as privatized religions and alternative groups. The final section of the book discusses implications for the future of our society. Overall, a thoughtful, well-researched book with fascinating details.

One in every four of them say they can imagine God as a Mother. One in three are born-again Christians. Two in three support the ordination of women. Who are they? Whether you think of them as the Love Generation, the Now Generation, the Pepsi Generation, the Rock Generation, or the Me Generation, they are the "boomers," the baby boom generation of 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964.

Many people have speculated about the boomers' beliefs and higher values (or lack of same). Now the details of their spiritual worldview has received substantial factual representation in the new book A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation (Harper San Francisco). It's a massive study that tells us all we ever wanted to know about the spiritual lives of baby boomers but didn't have the means to find out. The research, involving surveys as well as in depth interviewing, was funded by the Lilly Foundation. The director of the research and author of the book reporting the results, is Wade Clark Roof, who is J. F. Rowny Professor of Religion and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Roof compiled 80 questions to ask of a stratified sample of 1600 boomers, plus some comparative groups of older Americans. Among the questions: Do you feel God is personally involved in your life? Do you believe God is "within us"? How much do you think about why there is suffering in the world? What happens after death? Is it good to explore many different religious teachings and learn from them, or should one stick to a particular faith? The researchers followed up this survey with an in-depth telephone interview conducted with one third of the respondents. Then they conducted face-to-face interviews with 64 of these people. There followed several group meetings with respondents to discuss in still more depth some of the spiritual or religious issues that emerged in the earlier interviews. Clearly, the study was thorough.

The book contains so many interesting charts and statistics, it is easy to graze among the facts. When asked, for example, "For you, which is more important: to be alone and to meditate, or to worship with others?" 53 per cent preferred to be alone, and 29 per cent preferred to worship with others. 28 per cent indicated a belief in reincarnation and 26 a belief in astrology. These two figures were constant, regardless of level of education. In the older generation, belief in these two controversial areas existed mainly in the less educated. Sixty per cent prefer to explore a variety of religious teachings, while 28 per cent feel it is important to stick to one faith. The greater the amount of education, the greater is the desire for variety in religious exploration. There may be a pattern here.

Roof puts the facts together to present a picture with many complex patterns, and offers some startling conclusions. For starters, the boomers are spiritual seekers. Almost without exception they believe in God. Although they picture God in different ways (and many are struggling to find an image they can accept), they all seem to have an instinct for spiritual commitment, something that will take them beyond themselves. They have, however, an apparent deep division in their ranks.

Roof describes as a "spiritual divide" the split between those boomers who are of a fundamentalist Christian orientation and those who pursue less conventional spiritual paths, from Native American spirituality to Zen Buddhism. He finds several points of divergence in these two groups: the self orientation of the less conventional vs. the Jesus orientation of the fundamentalists, inner authority vs. outer authority, individualism vs. uniformity, mystical vs. theistic, letting go vs. mastery and control, spiritual vs. religious, and being influenced by the "sixties" vs. "sheltered" from that influence. Billy Graham, of an older generation, and speaking from one side of the issue, summed up the essence of the difference when he said, "The locus of the conflict in the world today rises from the battle between the absolute and the relative." The boomers are split over whether the spirit is sought within oneself, where in might appear in many guises, or in outside authority, where it would appear in a more uniform fashion.

The tension between unity and diversity is archetypal. The One and the Many: one God, the Creator, yet many Creatures, all of whom experience a certain autonomy. This tension is at the heart of our country: E Pluribus Unum, out of the many, one. It's dangerous to allow either faction to gain the upper hand. If individualism were to win the day, there's the danger of chaos. If the forces of uniformity and control were to become dominant, there's the danger of a dictatorial, soul-murdering society. It's hopefully possible and definitely fruitful to hold the two factions in creative tension.

Roof himself suggests a possible tension bridge over the spiritual divide within the boomers. For one thing, he found ample evidence that the fundamentalism of the boomers is quite to the left of earlier generations. There are many concessions to individualism, most notably the premise that having a better life is the prime motive for being a good Christian. He concludes that the self-improvement ethic, regardless of the images or vocabulary used, unites all boomers. Self-realization, whether focused through an external ideal, or inwardly through the prompting of one's own heart, would seem to be the boomer's common search. Roof also found that as that search matures toward self-fulfillment, boomers are uniformly committed to sharing the fruits with others. As self-fulfilled becomes self-transcended, boomers become