My parents ate health food in my youth, in the days before Whole Foods was everywhere, when seeking out even a veggie burger could require entering a subculture as exotic as any obscure religious sect. So it made sense that the vegetarian restaurant we frequented had an attached bookstore that mostly sold religious books and spiritual objects, with a New Age vibe but no doctrinal consistency. You could find crucifixes as well as crystals, Christian mysticism alongside astrological charts, Buddhist self-help and Judaica sharing shelf space with Wiccan texts, Bibles cheek by jowl with copies of “Women Who Run With the Wolves.”
My youthful experience wandering in that bookstore of all religions has increasing relevance to where many Americans find themselves today. The long rise of the Nones, Americans with no religious affiliation, has seemingly reached its limit, and a fascination with the numinous shadows our culture once again. Within the intelligentsia there is a wave of notable conversions and a striking nostalgia for belief.
But secularization has created a cohort with little acquaintance with organized religion, for whom the religious quest can feel a bit like entering a store where every faith has its wares on display.
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