Why some Americans mix Christianity, Eastern religions

“It became a gigantic, transforming thing in my life,” says Mr. Goodemote, allowing him the humility to “try to do God’s will over your own.”

Anxiety after his grandmother’s death caused him to start looking outside his religion, Goodemote says. She had been the spiritual rock in his family, but he felt his religion could not explain why a drunken driver could end her life – a death he saw as meaningless.

Reading authors such as mythologist Joseph Campbell, Christian writer Karen Armstrong, and New Age writer Eckhart Tolle helped him connect, he says, to a model of Christ that he sees as more inclusive of people outside Presbyterianism.

“We believe in God’s omnipresence, which means He is everywhere.... So how can you say one person is not in God’s favor?” he asks.

While bestselling authors such as Mr. Tolle and Deepak Chopra are to be commended for speaking to the contemporary hunger to connect different faiths, they have yet to establish the staying power of their teachings, says the University of Chicago’s Rosengarten. Throughout history, that happens when communities are formed – by religious institutions.

“To perpetuate [spiritual teachings], you have to establish a community around it, and that is the complicated thing,” he says. “At the end of the day, to be part of a religious community means you punch the clock on a regular basis.… I don’t think they’ve created the community in the same way that mainline Protestants have.”

Some Roman Catholic leaders say their followers do not need to look outside the church to find what they’re looking for.

“A lot of young adults who are attracted to the beauty of meditation techniques are very unaware of the contemplative and mystical tradition of their own faith,” says the Rev. Donald Senior, president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

Father Senior says the church respects other teachings but gets concerned if followers engage with other religions “from an empty chair.” “You have to be rooted in your own tradition to be able to properly engage with other religions,” he says. “If it’s strong, then sure, someone can practice yoga as a form of exercise and not buy what may be part of another religious system, which may not be evil but is not in line with their own faith tradition.”

If people are straying from the church, he says, it’s the church’s fault for not doing a “better job.”

“There’s a lot to be done to make worship more vibrant and to make the preaching more relevant for people,” he says. “Religion is not just ideas, it’s the bonds of community, and if you get so [insular] that you don’t hold people, you have a problem.”

That’s why Kula interprets the Pew survey as an opportunity for religious leaders to stop being “in the fear mode” and to take a hard look at whether their practices give people the spiritual wisdom they need in their lives.

“My job is not to preserve something,” he says. “My job is to make sure something works and is actually worthy of being preserved.”

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