While a society can perhaps provide the tools for the attainment of material and intellectual prosperity, religion and spirituality are fundamentally relationships between the human soul and God. Thus, society can only create an environment conducive to spiritual development; it cannot generate spiritual prosperity through the enforcement of religious adherence. Rather, people must seek it in their own way, which they are doing – whether within their own faith tradition, by embracing another tradition, or through creating some sort of personal fusion. Individual Americans have rejected their own faith traditions when they have become stagnant, dogmatic, and fail to powerfully speak the divine truths to them. Many, therefore, have turned to less rigid mystical traditions. But most importantly, the fact that our society has permitted individuals to seek universal truth and their own visceral connection with the Divine is a positive sign!

Of course, millions of Americans do not identify with any sort of formal religious tradition, and I do not doubt that most are content with this decision. Nevertheless, happiness and spirituality remain inextricably linked in the hearts and minds of most Americans, and as a result, they are actively seeking out faith and a connection to God. As the Pew Survey indicates, this has frequently meant switching religious affiliations or discovering new ones. This should not surprise anyone! We live in a hybrid society: uniquely diverse and a singular product of intermixing between cultural, ethnic and faith traditions. Because of the freedom of religion we enjoy, people are merely expressing these freedoms in their quest for spiritual fulfillment.