New Religions?

Charlotte Therese: "The plethora of emerging new spiritualities has its own problems, of course. They are often intellectually incoherent or melt into a self-centered narcissism. They can become vacuous and faddish. (Madonna and other Hollywood celebrities are now “into Kabala,” the ancient Jewish mystical tradition.) They can become highly individualistic, lacking any vision of social justice. Esoteric and snobbish at times, they often fail to reach the poor and dispossessed people for whom Jesus, the Buddha, and the Jewish prophets had such concern."

I don't know about the first two problems but lack of social justice and failure to reach the poor is taken over by other services in society as it develops into the typical North American or European variety, not counting Africa, South America and poorer regions of Asia. It is today a political problem, not a spiritual. An intellectually coherent new spirituality that is productive and explanatory and which does not alienate people from society with various rules of conduct, like many of those of for example Catholicism, would in all probability become more and more popular. It should not be more difficult to live but rather more pleasant. The country's law code is often complicated enough.

However, replacing the current world religions with a more modern variant that is non-dogmatic and that promotes free thinking and where the sermon is based on social psychology which can be continuously upgraded could conceivably replace the tales and parables in the Bible. I would not be surprised if people already have extracted what is relevant from the Bible and the Quran. The large problem is of course to somehow replace the value of the traditional aspect and what rituals to retain. If faith rather than power is important, it should be possible. Based on a non-personal God concept it could become truly ecumenic. A Church serving such a faith would have to be democratic in its construction.