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Religion and Pop Cultures: What Do Seekers Seek? 11 Again, two very different lifestyle segments come to mind. “Urban Edge” are extremely liberal, eclectic singles in their 20s and 30s. They are risk takers who may travel off the beaten path. Spirituality and artis- tic sensibilities flow together, but they are uncomfortable with traditional norms notable for commitments to peace, human rights, and the environ- ment and tremendously skeptical of the church. “Asian Achievers” are affluent, mainly Asian couples and families enjoying dynamic lifestyles in metro areas. Both consider spirituality a part of a healthy lifestyle, but both suspect spiritual truths get buried beneath an avalanche of religious hypocrisy. “Asian Achievers” may not be as philosophically adventurous as “Urban Edge,” but they share altruistic practices, and both gravitate to experiences that are cross-cultural and interfaith—focusing on local and global struggles and commissioning and sending service teams. Just as individuals may be driven by different existential anxieties at different points in their lives, so also people migrate from one lifestyle segment to another. The publics today tend to move among churches and faith communities and transition from one kind of worship to another, driven by existential need. * * * “Incarnation” has become a key word to focus the spiritual yearning of seekers today. Somehow or other—through Christ, the Koran, nature, or some other direct experience of the infinite—people seek to experience the fullness of God in a powerful way. This leads me to a third connection with the intellectual legacy of Paul Tillich. His conception of Jesus the Christ as the “New Being” sets the stage for distinct “experiences” of incarnation that address each of the six exis- tential anxieties in turn. Thus the “real presence” of Christ may be experi- enced in different ways, in different worship experiences, at different times in the phases of life or among different lifestyle segments in various con- texts. Regardless of the unique experience of incarnation, the “New Being is essential being under the conditions of existence, conquering the gap between essence and existence.”16 Tillich may have anticipated the multi- plicity of incarnational experiences in his seemingly offhand comment that “the greater the things we say about the Christ, the greater the salvation we can expect from him.”17 In the context of interpreting atonement, Tillich substitutes the concept of “participation” for the concept of “substitution” in order to capture both essence and existence.18 He goes on to develop a threefold character of salvation: participation in the New Being, accept- ance of the New Being, and transformation by the New Being.19