The Remake: American Religion in Transition

 As leaders are set to gather in a few days to launch the third iteration of “Recharging Reform Judaism,” what are some of the core trends and models impacting modern liberal religion in America?

As America prepares to celebrate its 250^th anniversary, one of the core elements that defines and shapes this nation’s story is undergoing a major transition. Religious innovation in the 21st century is less about inventing new theologies than about redesigning the forms, networks, and practices through which religious life is experienced. Religion is becoming individualized, voluntary, experimental, and networked.

This essay is but one of several that I have introduced over the past decade focusing on differing aspects of new religious organizing models. In both liberal Christianity and liberal Judaism, innovation increasingly centers on four shifts:

1. From institution-centered to relationship-centered community
2. From membership to participation
3. From centralized authority to collaborative leadership
4. From inherited formats to adaptive, contextual practice

In earlier essays, we had occasion to examine some of the primary demographic and social trends. The question is no longer simply “What do we believe?” but “how do communities create meaning, belonging, moral purpose, and spiritual depth under conditions of pluralism, mobility, digital culture, and declining institutional trust?”

One of the clearest examples in Christianity is the Fresh Expressions movement, which emerged in the Anglican and Methodist worlds. This global movement, founded in 2004, aims at establishing new, innovative Christian communities to engage people who do not attend traditional churches, operating alongside existing congregations.

Rather than assuming people will attend Sunday worship in church buildings, Fresh Expressions creates small Christian communities in places where people already gather: cafés, parks, homes, gyms, online gaming communities, pubs, and dinner tables.

Among the examples that I identified are“Dinner Church” communities centered on shared meals rather than formal liturgy and Digital Congregations formed through TikTok, WhatsApp, or podcasts. The emphasis on authenticity and hospitality shifts the church from a sacred space to a flexible, social-spiritual ecosystem.

The assumption that religious engagement requires a physical presence seems no longer a given. The model that appears to be in play is one of mixed ecology involving traditional congregations coexisting with informal, digital faith communities.

As noted elsewhere, COVID accelerated experimentation with online liturgy, livestream worship, Zoom pastoral care, and digital discipleship. Many communities discovered that “belonging” could occur virtually.

Moving to the Jewish Religious Space:

Inside the Jewish ecosystem, perhaps the most significant innovation has been the rise of independent minyanim, lay-led, often post-denominational prayer communities. These communities often combine egalitarianism, serious learning, participatory worship, and grassroots leadership. These “co-created” structures often feature low institutional bureaucracy, rejecting the model of a “religious provider” and the burdens of institutional affiliation.

Many younger Jews are seeking “post-denominational communities”, featuring spiritual authenticity, intellectual rigor, less hierarchy, and meaningful relationships. This reflects broader sociological trends toward DIY(Do-It-Yourself) culture and networked identity. Independent minyanim represent one of the most important structural innovations in liberal Judaism. They typically feature lay leadership. egalitarian worship, intensive text study, participatory liturgy, and low-bureaucracy grassroots governance.

Communities such as Ikar, Mishkan Chicago, 6^th & I, Lab/Shul, and The Kitchen create immersive, artistic, experimental forms of Jewish gathering. Religious identity is increasingly fluid, multi-affiliated and episodic. Institutions like Hadar exemplify this shift toward intensive participatory Jewish learning outside classic denominational boundaries.

Reframing Religious Practice:

Religious communities now function more like flexible networks than stable pyramid institutions. People increasingly reject passive institutional participation. Innovation succeeds when communities invite members into leadership, learning and ritual creation. Authority becomes distributed rather than purely clerical.

Younger generations often distrust institutions perceived as performative, bureaucratic, or disconnected from lived experience. Successful communities emphasize vulnerability, honesty, emotional resonance ethical consistency, and relational depth.

This does not necessarily mean abandoning tradition. Often, the opposite occurs as ancient ritual is reappropriated in more participatory and accessible ways. Communities succeed when they balance continuity with experimentation, and they tend to flourish when leadership is relational and facilitative rather than managerial or authoritarian. In an age of loneliness and fragmentation, successful communities create intimacy, intergenerational connections, and mutual aid, leading to dense relationships.

Theoretical Principles Shaping the Religious Future:

Sociologists emphasize “lived religion” involving everyday practices, informal ritual, personal narratives. Religion is studied less through doctrine alone and now more through how people construct meaning in daily life. In a fragmented culture, ritual may become more valuable, not less.

As we have explored in earlier work, a substantial body of scholarship argues that American religion is not simply “declining,” but being reorganized. The central shift is from stable, inherited, institution-centered religion toward fluid, networked, experiential, and entrepreneurial forms of spiritual life.

A group of writers offer us some helpful insights into these trends:

Robert Wuthnow, an emeritus professor of sociology, has written extensively about the fragmentation of American religious identity, especially in books like After Heaven and The Restructuring of American Religion. He argues that Americans increasingly “seek” rather than simply “dwell” within inherited traditions. Religion becomes mobile, individualized, and experience driven.

Historian Diana Butler Bass examines the decline of institutional Christianity alongside the rise of what she calls “belonging without conventional affiliation.” She emphasizes experimentation, spirituality, justice, and post-denominational Christianity.

Mark Chaves, Professor of Religious Sociology, is among the most important empirical scholars documenting religious decline and institutional transformation in America. His work shows long-term declines in participation, institutional trust, and liberal Protestant denominational strength.

Wade Clark Roof helped pioneer analysis of “spiritual seekers,” religious mobility, and post-denominational identity. His work anticipated many current trends toward individualized spirituality and weakened denominational loyalty.

Dr. Christian Smith of Notre Dame studies the decline of organized religion among younger Americans while also arguing that secularization does not eliminate spiritual hunger. His recent work explores institutional obsolescence and “re-enchantment” outside traditional churches.

Although not primarily a religion scholar, Professor Manuel Castells’s “network society” theory profoundly shapes current thinking about religion. Published in 1996, his book argues that this “network society” is characterized by the instantaneous flow of information, creating a new “space of flows” and “timeless time” that transcends traditional geography and national boundaries, giving immense power to those who control these networks.  Institutions, he has argued, increasingly operate through decentralized relational networks rather than hierarchical structures.

The Emerging Future:

The future of liberal Jewish and Christian practice in America will likely not center on large denominational systems alone but also on the continued formation of post-denominational structures, smaller relational networks, and justice-orientated spirituality.

Paradoxically, innovation often involves retrieving older religious forms—shared meals, chanting, house gatherings, communal study, pilgrimage, and mutual care—and adapting them for contemporary social realities.

Clergy increasingly function as facilitators conveners, interpreters, and organizational entrepreneurs rather than solely as institutional gatekeepers. The role becomes less managerial and more relational.

Seminaries are likewise reinventing themselves around entrepreneurship, on-line education, interfaith engagement, and public leadership.  Increasingly such training centers focus on social innovation and community organizing and lay leadership education.

Closing:

The current moment resembles earlier periods of American religious restructuring, including the “First Great Awakening” (1730-1740), post-war suburban religion, and the era of Social Gospel (1870-1920).

Today, many people engage religion post-denominationally. The future of denominations may function more as credentialing bodies, resource hubs, and training centers. Liberal Jewish and Christian life will likely be less bureaucratic, more networked, more participatory, more spiritually experimental, more justice oriented. Religious communities may become smaller, more ideologically coherent, more spiritually intense, and more relational in orientation.