New Media Technologies and the New Religions of the Spiritual But Not Religious

In this proposed roundtable discussion spurred by the New Religious Movements Unit call for a focus on “NRMs and New Media Technologies,” three panelists and one respondent ask what considerations the social media-saturated present to those thinking about new religious formations in the United States. In an era in which the rise in non-affiliation with institutional religion has led the sociologist Christian Smith to declare “religion” obsolete, and the increasing visibility of religious/spiritual combining has the religion journalist Tara Burton dubbing the current era one of “bespoke religious identities” and “remixed spirituality,” what kinds of insights can focus on some contemporary movements often left out of religion definitions tell us about community, belonging, institutions, belief, and notions of what secular and religious mean?