When, hark, the herald angels sing on Christmas, they may well be singing personally to a generation of young North Americans stamped as religious illiterates but whose spirituality is increasingly being defined by angel-belief.

It is a phenomenon being observed by Canadian and U.S. theologians who study young people's spiritual creeds. It spiked dramatically upward after Sept. 11, 2001, but has been growing steadily over the past decade.

It has little, if anything, to do with winged beings on fluffy white clouds telling shepherds to go find baby Jesus in a Bethlehem manger. But neither, say theologians, is it a superficial New Age fad.

Rather, they say it reflects a profoundly serious effort by teenagers and young adults -- most of whom have grown up with no connection to organized religion -- to find spiritual rules for life and its mysteries in an age when institutional religion is perceived as tarnished and marginalized.

Today there are Internet angel chat-rooms. There are movies such as Angel Eyes, Angels in the Endzone, City of Angels, Dad, the Angel and Me and The Discovery of Heaven. On television, there's been Touched by an Angel, Teen Angel, All Dogs Go to Heaven (with Annabelle, the head dog angel) and the acclaimed Buffy the Vampire-Slayer spin-off, Angel.

Sarah McLachlan's meditative The Arms of an Angel drenched radio airwaves with young audiences after Sept. 11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

California psychologist Doreen Virtue, a former psychotherapist who now gives workshops around the world on angels as pathways to God, said young people are turning out in droves to hear her speak.

Rev. Thomas Rosica, chief executive officer of last summer's Roman Catholic World Youth Day held in Toronto and formerly chaplain of University of Toronto's student Newman Centre, said he's been astonished over the past few years by young people's curiosity about angel history and angel mysticism.

Thomas Beaudoin, a theology professor at Jesuit Boston College and best-selling author of Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X, said in an interview he finds the angel phenomenon wherever he encounters young Christians, Jews or Muslims, whose monotheistic faiths have angels in common.

In reading the journals of his own theology students, he said, "I have been struck by the commonness of trust in angels. I am very struck by this."

He said angels are almost always talked about in personal terms and seldom with reference to church teaching. They are personal spiritual guardians. They reflect dissatisfaction with the materialistic world and young people's need for mentors and role models in an age where heroes and heroines are in short supply.

He said angels also reflect young people's desire to be connected to the dead and to their conviction "that human life is too profound to end at physical death."

Why angel popularity in particular?

"Those who don't go to church may have no sense of being in touch with God," said David Reed, a theology professor at University of Toronto's Anglican Wycliffe College, "but they can get a handle on angels. Angels are very believable as spirit guides. Angels are very accessible."

Throughout Christianity's history, he said, when God and Jesus have appeared as remote, transcendent and judgmental figures, "the heavenly hosts appear with vigour. The further God is removed from human life, the more that intermediaries appear."

Actually, said Leonard Primiano, a teacher of religion and folklore at Pennsylvania's Cabrini College, today's young North Americans "are interested in everything that's supernatural -- UFOs, ghosts, apparitions of the Virgin Mary -- and extremely suspicious of the institutional church." He called their beliefs "vernacular religion."

Because they see institutional religion as having lost authenticity, "that's what they're searching for, spiritual authenticity. If anything, they want a God and church with standards, not necessarily with rules."

Thus Meghan McLaren, 24, an Ottawa civil servant, says: "In my generation, religion isn't important. But people still need a sense of spirituality."

To her, angels are the spirits of "passed-on people. It's comforting to know your soul lives on. It's impossible to comprehend that you're just gone."

Jerry Grzadka, 22, of St. Catharines, Ont., a graduate in computer engineering who has worked with the World Youth Day staff for the past year, conceives of angels as closer to their traditional definition as God's messengers but sees them as personal guardians intervening in his life.

Alone among the group of young Catholics who carried the World Youth Day cross from Montreal to Toronto, Mr. Grzadka did not get blisters on his feet. "An angel carries you through this."

Leanne Brown, 35, a Toronto television program co-ordinator, said angels are spirits who may guide someone to help her with her luggage at an airport, or who spur her to patch up a quarrel with a friend or spontaneously buy a cup of coffee for someone shovelling snow.

Danny Morgan, 29, of Toronto, who works in the travel industry, says angels are forces of wisdom who guide her through life's big and small decisions. Liz Charalambous, 37, who trains racehorses in Toronto, says angels are divine spirits who protect her in her work.

Says Dr. Virtue: "A lot of people can't conceptualize who is God or what is God, [but] you can visualize an angel and it gives you the feeling of love that all religions are always pointing to."