Recent history in both the Jewish and Christian communities suggests he's wrong: Disaffected young people seldom flock to watered-down versions of religious faith that lack continuity or integrity. The rapidly growing denominations are those that make demands on potential adherents and advance clear standards of right and wrong. That's why Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity has grown while "mainline" Protestant denominations have dwindled, and why traditionalist Catholicism boasts more worldwide vitality than liberal strains of the church. Meanwhile, Mormons uphold multiple restrictions (giving up alcohol, coffee, tobacco, among other things) and yet constitute one of the fastest-growing creeds in the USA.

In Judaism, the same dynamic applies: with tepid, uncertain versions of the faith fighting a losing battle to maintain the affiliation of their young people, while the unaffiliated explore enthusiastic, traditionalist sects. No movement in Judaism has experienced anything like the explosive recent growth of the Hassidic organization, Chabad, with its 3,300 community centers miraculously appearing nearly everywhere and transforming the face of American Judaism. The Conservative movement has been losing influence during the past 40 years not because of its unbending adherence to outmoded rituals but because of its confusion, contradictions and gradual disregard of tradition.

My religious foundation

When I grew up in a Conservative Jewish home in the 1950s, my mother took pride in the dominant position of our denomination — then representing a majority of synagogue-affiliated American Jews. She looked with disdain at our Reform neighbors who ignored customs such as wearing skullcaps at prayer, and viewed the Orthodox with pity as unbending Old World relics whose fanaticism doomed them to disappearance. Despite her confidence, my mother lived to see all four of her sons leave the comfortable compromises of Conservative Judaism — one of them for a Reform Temple, and the other three of us (and my dad) for active involvement with Orthodoxy.

The marriage issue plays a decisive role in exploding moderate equivocations in Christian denominations as well as in Judaism, as evidenced by the increasingly unbridgeable gap among Episcopalians between those who want to endorse homosexuality and those who hold fast to biblical proscriptions. Denominations must choose their ultimate source of authority: looking either to religious texts or to contemporary sensibilities.

The core question remains the nature of religion itself and our relation to it. Should we challenge ourselves, or our faith traditions? Do we measure religion against personal impulses and values, or should we judge our impulses and values against religion? Should we adjust our faith to suit current trends and to enhance our comfort and convenience, or should we evaluate trends in the light of timeless teachings, no matter how unfashionable or inconvenient?

The choice is stark and, on the issue of marriage, inescapable. Talk of "pluralism" only dodges the issue, because if religion fails to provide forceful guidance on the most crucial behavioral issues of life, it offers only meager servings of lukewarm porridge. That might be good enough for Goldilocks, but it won't nourish the spiritual seekers who desire — and deserve — more commitment and clarity.