Steve Waldman:
Consider this: 39% attend church weekly yet 75% pray at least weekly, according to the Pew Religion Forum.
In fact, 58% of Americans, and 66% of American women pray daily.
And maybe most remarkably: 35% of those who don’t identify with any religion
at all — the “unaffiliated”– pray weekly or daily.
…But these statistics, as well as the popularity over the years of books like
the Prayer of Jabez and The Secret and many other devotional books, show
that prayer has become sometimes detached from the tradition of church. Call
it Prayerism.
Read it all.
Call it what you will, Prayerism or Roll-your-ownism. It’s growing. Is it a failure of organized religion? Or is what people are looking for is an individual religion — which organized religion can not be by definition?