“Unbundled religious and spiritual innovation,” a post by Associate Professor of Sociology Jaime Kucinskas, was recently featured on The Immanent Frame website, published by the Social Science Research Council. The site describes itself as a publisher of “interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, secularism, and the public sphere.”
Kucinskas wrote about the “unbundling” of religious life, drawing from the term’s meanings in business as it applies to “the uncoupling of products and services that were once packaged together.” She said that in this respect, religion is “no longer a ‘one-stop shop,’ where many people living in the United States go for community, moral authority, religious practice and inspiration.”
She discussed the reshaping of religion, saying that “as the authority of organized religion wanes and the locus of responsibility for one’s spiritual and religious life shifts from religious communities onto individuals … those who pursue religious or spiritual life engage with an increasingly ‘unbundled’ religious landscape.”
Kucinskas said that as the powers of individual discretion and choice increase, “people seek the sacred ‘goods’ of salvation, meaning, purpose, community, ritual and spiritual uplift as easily outside of religious congregations as in them,” and may also “create their own syncretic and individualistic piecemeal configurations of meanings, beliefs, and practices.”
Posted June 12, 2026
