After Religion, What is "The Next Big Thing"

Slowly, but surely, a bulldozer of change is pushing orthodox Christianity aside. The statistics are too powerful to conclude anything else. There is a theory expressed often on the web something will replace it. Sometimes what is said to replace it is called another "religion" and sometimes it is called something else. It could be there is, or will be eventually, no agreement on what the words "religion", "secular" or "no belief" mean. 

Today two different views appeared, an article and a video, both grappling with new thinking in what we now refer to as "religion" or "spirituality." They both discuss what might come next after Christianity becomes ever smaller.  In the article a wonderful writer tells of becoming so deeply Christian she became a Lutheran minister. After almost two decades of doing this, she left it behind. She simply no longer believed in the tenets of the faith. 

She writes about looking for something bigger to believe in to take the place of her lost Christianity. Writers who promote Christianity claim people have a "longing" and, in their view, this "longing" can only be satisfied by believing the tenets of the faith. Maybe this woman's search for something "bigger" is that "longing." She concludes, however, she has found something to satisfy it, something "big" that is available to all. It is "love." She devotes her life to helping the society's rejects, the down-and-outers. Implied is that devotion to the tenets of Christianity can be replaced with the feeling all humanity is linked in some way and can feel and empathize with all others. Could this replace religion or is it another form of religion?

I'm unable to link the video by a student in or of theology. His view is the movement toward "nones" is a movement away from organized religion but towards kinds of religion. He acknowledges the growth of atheism but notes the growth of Islam and a few other religions is even larger. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Religion is not dying, he insists, but morphing into many things other than orthodox Christianity. 

Readers know there is a dictionary definition of what a "religion" is. This does not prevent others from using their own. Some have argued here that every other god worshipped by humans is actually their God. Other believers argue that if people, like the woman above, feel a kinship and concern for all humans that is really another form of religion. A professor of religion where I used to teach claimed atheism was another form of religion because groups of atheists meet and fellowship just like churches.