NEW AGE MOVEMENT

The New Age (NA) Movement is a variegated cultural phenomenon. In its broadest sense, the term refers to a configuration of Eastern and Western esoteric psychologies, philosophies, and religious traditions that have been brought into convergence with new paradigms in science and modern psychology. The New Age Movement has links with the Eastern and Western occult and mystical/metaphysical traditions. In the United States, the movement is the inheritor of the Aquarian "new religious consciousness" of the 1960s and 1970s.

New Age cultural referents include health food stores, parapsychology research organizations, psychic

development groups; interest in reincarnation, astrology, witchcraft, tarot cards, the I Ching, out-of-body experience, channeling, and in the "healing powers" of crystals and pyramids; "transformational" techniques ranging from meditation to martial arts; alternative or "holistic" medicine, body therapies, and a melange of other "consciousness raising" techniques.

While there is no hard-line NA gospel per se, nor unanimity of NA beliefs, the conviction that humanity is on the threshold of a radical spiritual transformation is a central motif. New Age thinking also embraces eclectic and syncretistic healing strategies and spiritual disciplines, reasserts various forms of supernaturalism and sacramentalism, and promotes the full realization of human potential. Themes of "transformation," "consciousness raising," "self-realization," "higher self," the "god within," and "global unity" are standard NA parlance. New Age thinking also animates elements of the contemporary environmental movement, notably in relation to eco-feminism and creation theology.

Growth of the Movement. The spread of NA thinking in modern society has been propagated through movement literature and through a multitude of seminars and training programs focused on human potential and self improvement. Various teachers, empowerment practitioners, and assorted shamans have facilitated such programs. These include cultural celebrities as diverse as Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert), a former professor of psychology at Harvard; the actress Shirley MacLaine; and David Spangler, formerly a co-director of a Scottish community at Findhorn and author of Revelation, The Birth of a New Age (1976). New Age perspectives have also been popularized by Marilyn Ferguson's book, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s, an impassioned discussion of the need to create a new society based on a "turnabout in consciousness"

and a vastly enlarged concept of human potential.

Cultural historians have emphasized the continuity between current NA ideas and earlier American interest in metaphysical, occult, and non-Western spiritual traditions (viz., transcendentalism, spiritualism, theosophy, new thought). They have also pointed to NA affinities with the long-standing American utopian tradition and the quintessential American dream of transcending one's background by reinventing one's self.

Social and behavioral science perspectives link the appeal of the NA to the cultural crisis of post-1950s America. From this perspective, the NA is a cultural response to the weakening of structures and institutions that integrate society. The contradictions of late capitalism's commodity culture and the spiritual poverty of the technocratic state, characterized by massive bureaucracy, depersonalization, aesthetic sterility, and the dominance of instrumental rationality compounded this crisis. Other factors facilitating the spread of NA thinking include the decline of mainline religions, the expansion of comparative religion courses, the increase in Asian immigration, and mass marketing techniques by NA spiritual entrepreneurs. The high media visibility of Hollywood celebrities promoting NA concepts and theories also contributed to the cultural visibility of the movement.

During the last four decades, a large part of the recruiting ground for religious and spiritual experiment has been among the relatively privileged and social elites. In this context, the spread of the NA Movement is attributable, in part, to structural characteristics of demographic and generational shifts associated with an emerging cohort of "baby boomers" whose affluence and greater discretionary time have freed them for diverse spiritual and cultural pursuits.

Criticism of the Movement. Criticism of NA therapies and philosophies comes from two main sources: left-leaning cultural critics and academics and conservative Christians. Cultural critics and academics censure the movement for its assault on the heritage of the enlightenment and for sowing doubt about the trustworthiness of rational thought. Accordingly, NA devotees promote alchemist-like spirituality, superstition, pseudoscience, incipient totalitarianism, a dangerous ahistoricism, and, in some cases, outright fraud.

Cultural critics also asserted that exotic NA interests such as crystal gazing and "harmonic convergence" are contrived, artificial phenomena that actually point to the triviality of spiritual matters in modern society. From a psychological perspective, some NA devotees manifest narcissistic and obsessive self-fixation traits that mirror the powerlessness, alienation, and atomistic individualism endemic in society. New Age "higher consciousness" is, therefore, little more than a misguided initiative to rescue the modern American "minimal self." In addition, NA practitioners have been accused of mimicking liberalism's idioms of globalism, cooperation, and tolerance. However, because some currents in the movement reject or minimize reformist political struggle, they implicitly promote apolitical escapism and reinforce the status quo.

The most aggressive assault on NA thinking comes from fundamentalist and conservative Christians who link NA spiritual effervescence with exotic "cults," with secular humanism, and with the emergence of a "false" and "one world" religion. "Bible believing" Christians denounce NA apologists for distorting and/or rejecting the Bible's message of sin and salvation, for promoting the "occult" and "demonic," and for contaminating the Christian tradition with false spiritual ideas. The New Age Movement is construed as the shadow of the anti-Christ and another cultural barometer of the apostate age.

More moderate Christian critics point to the latent gnosticism in much NA thought and to the movement's promotion of magic-like ritualization and its co-option of traditional religious symbolism. These critics have also reproached the NA Movement for failing to address the reality of evil (or for viewing social and structural oppression as merely a state of mind), for failing to link "self-realization" with moral guidance, and for extolling forms of self-exploration that too readily degenerate into self-promotion. In addition, both secular and religious critics criticize certain NA currents for amoralism, for the degradation and blatant commercialization of piety, and for the tendency to reduce religion to psychology.

The spread of New Age thinking has also been interpreted in more positive ways. First, the phenomenon shows that people do not respond to new social and cultural problems by abandoning religion as much as by developing new religious innovations and orientations on the ruins of the old. What is "new" about much NA thinking is not the content, per se, but the unexpected spread of such ideas in the face of assumptions regarding the alleged inexorable triumph of secularization.

Second, the NA Movement points to the continuing problem of the bifurcation of religious and scientific orientations that has long afflicted Western civilization. In response to this situation, people often compartmentalize their meaning systems. The privatization of religion is one aspect of this; the idolatry of technique another. New Age thinking with its call for "holistic" and "integrated" living is both symptomatic of this cultural problem and a creative and contemporary response to it.

Third, while the spread of NA theories and practices can be seen as an indictment of organized religion's failure to respond in creative and dynamic ways to new cultural trends, the movement has also stimulated a renewed interest in mysticism, meditation, and spiritual renewal within the Christian tradition. New Age ideals have also converged with a new stress on eclectic approaches to spirituality in many mainline churches.

The most positive aspects of NA ideals are those that encourage consensus decision making, integrated living, the emphasis on freedom for positive growth, creative action, and the call for human solidarity. Certain NA motifs are also highly relevant to aspects of the emerging ecological ethos and for the need for a new cosmology relevant to environmental concerns.

In its overall composition and visibility, the NA Movement gives expression to the dynamic and ongoing realignment of religion and culture. In reference to the Christian tradition, the NA Movement provides another opportunity for both spiritual revitalization within the tradition and for a new and creative discernment of the vibrant relationship between the Gospel and culture.

Bibliography: j. a. saliba, Christian Responses to the New Age Movement (London 1999). f. m. bordewich, "Colorado's Thriving Cults," The New York Times Magazine (May 1, 1988): 37–44. w. d. dinges, "Aquarian Spirituality: The New Age Movement in America," The Catholic World (May/June 1989): 137–142. m. ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Los Angeles 1980). c. lasch, The Minimal Self; Psychic Survival in Troubled Times (New York 1984). j. r. lewis and j. g. melton, Perspectives on the New Age (Albany 1992). t. peters, The Cosmic Self (San Francisco 1991).

[w. d. dinges]