Religious Currents on America's Pacific Shore

IF YOU like to deal in broad generalisations about American religion, you probably see the north-east as a heartland of liberal or mainline Protestantism, and the South as the home of old-time evangelicals. Certain cities like Chicago and Pittsburgh abound with blue-collar Catholics, and the West coast is...what exactly? In the minds of many people (especially those who don’t live there) it is a region where all the cultural and religious straitjacket of places further east have been discarded, and spiritual seekers can dabble in whatever mixture they choose of new-age practices, Buddhism-lite, or no faith at all.