Sociologist Christian Smith studies American religion, but his research doesn’t take him to many churches these days.
Instead, he’s been to a vampire ball in Chicago and a paranormal convention in Milwaukee. He’s visited esoteric shops near his home in Michigan and spent a weekend at a pagan retreat in southern Indiana.
Smith, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, is on a mission to understand what he calls the culture of re-enchantment, a loosely connected web of conventions, shops, content creators and community groups that promote some form of spirituality, but not religion.
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