"and whether the new faithful are performing an act of theater or not" is a striking sentence—surely if they are performing theater they, by definition, cannot be 'the new faithful.' The article seems to have missed the point of, well, Christianity.
It's the New York Times, so I would be shocked if they did get the point on anything pertaining to religion. I have some good friends who are very pious Catholic converts, and I don't imagine they appreciate their faith being treated as a hip youth scene.
