"Consumerism is perhaps the number-one religion in America today. Our shopping malls have become the new shrines, the public places of devotion where our culture gathers in search of salvation. We identify ourselves through the fashions we wear, the music we listen to, the cars we drive.
"Our primary priesthood is a mixture of corporations, advertisers and political machinations that mediate transcendence for us through the global market. Community [fellowship] has been replaced by affinity as we congregate wit those who share our age range, cultural tastes, and socioeconomic bracket.
"Religious devoition is not dead in the West; if has merely migrated towaward a new center....
"...The cultural decline of institutional religion has simply meant the relocation, not the destruction, of social norms through which we pursue personal justification and social acceptance for our existence."
-- Joshua Ryan Butler, "The Skeletons in God's Closet"
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