WHERE THE ENERGIES GO

American religious energies neither disappear nor flow through fixed c hannels. What William James called ''the habitual centres of energy'' in an individual have cultural counterparts. In recent decades the cen ters of energy have increasingly sought channels such as these: the pe rsonal, private, and autonomous at the expense of the communal, the pu blic, and the derivative; the accent on meaning at the expense of inhe rited patterns of belonging; concentration on the local and particular more than the cosmopolitan or ecumenical; concern for practical and a ffective life accompanied by less devotion to the devotional and intel lectual expressions; the feminist as opposed to the male dominated; an d attention to separate causes more than to overarching civil commitme nts. These contrasts are themselves neither absolute nor final; the le ss stressed center of energy in each case survives but is not currentl y prevailing or coming to prevail.