Utne Reader.

The current "robust spiritual marketplace perfectly suits the consumer mentality," notes Jeremiah Creedon in the Utne Reader (July-August 1998). "In an age when we trust ourselves to assemble our own investment portfolios and cancer therapies, why not our religious beliefs?"

But not everybody is enthused about the baby boomer trend of designing mix-and-match gods. "The cafeteria approach to spirituality," says comparative-religion scholar Huston Smith, "is not the way organisms are put together, nor great works of art. And a vital faith is more like an organism or a work of art than it is like a cafeteria tray." At its worst, he notes, this pastiche spirituality "can be a kind of private escapism to titillate oneself."

Adds Trappist Father Thomas Keating: "When you make a collage of various traditions, you run the risk of digging too many wells in a desert, which might take a lot of time, whereas if you work one well that has a good reputation where water is to be found, it might be more rewarding in the long run.

"Information about other traditions can complement and enrich your particular path, but you need to be well-rooted before you can derive any true benefit .... A tree without deep roots can be blown over by a fairly mild wind."