A few weeks ago I was speaking at blah..., I called the evening Re-enchanted? and explored Sanctus1's journey into the Mind Body Spirit Fair at Manchester Gmex. As part of the evening I asked people whether they believed that western culture was currently in a phase of secularization or going through a process of re-enchantement? I know that the question is rather simplistic, but it was really to get people thinking about the issue.
Anyway, since that time i have done some more thinking and reading on the subject and thought that it may be interesting to explore this further on the blog...I'm going to look at this over a number of days but I'm going to start by exploring some of Steve Bruce's arguments that The New Age Movement is, ‘pseudo-enchantment’. Rather than it being evidence of re-enchantment it is in fact evidence of Secularization, as it has no influence on policy making and no influence in the public realm.
Bruce argues that the New Age is emblematic of religion in our culture and hence mirrors the assumptions and values of the contemporary west. It is fascinating to look at these values and note how closely they correlate with some of Don Carson's criticism of the emerging church. The values that Bruce identifies are summarized below:
1.The Self is divine – The New age is a religion of divine-human continuity presupposing the goodness of humanity, rather than a divine-human discontinuity supported by a doctrine of Sin.
2.This leads to epistemological individualism. Personal experience is the final arbiter of truth. This was one of Don Carson's major criticisms of the emerging church. That epistemologically experience was the dominant force.
3. Epistemological individualism leads to eclecticism. This introduces do it yourself spirituality and spirituality shopping.
4.New age spirituality emphasizes holism, hence themes of connectiveness pervade New Age world-views.
5.Epistemological individualism and eclecticism necessarily lead to relativism.
6.The goal of New Age spirituality is health and happiness rather than it being the by-product of a healthy religious life.
Bruce goes onto hammer the New Age movement and says that quite simply it is further example of secularization because religious life is becoming more personalized and individualistic and has little or no impact on policy making in the UK. He helpfully contrasts it to the evangelical victorians who made huge differences in the society at that time.
So what is going on? There is little doubt in my mind that the New Age movement is an authentic expression of religion in post-modernity and that we are going through a process of re-enchantment and hence i disagree with Bruce that this is 'pseudo-enchantemnt'.
My problem with Bruce is that he is essentially judging religious values by modernist academic standards, his principle concern is not to define what is and what is not religious, but to asses the significance of movements, which he does principally by counting numbers and looking at the influence of religion on governmental policy. I think that he is using methods of collecting information and judging religion based on a methodology that still assumes that we are in Christendom. He also assumes that if people are church goers that they have greater commitment and deeper faith than those of a new age persuasion who he dismisses as shallow and a novelty.
He fails to take account of what is going on in wider culture and wider society, he does not look at the influence of the New Age on TV, Film and music, he ignores the fact that NHS now employ's complementary therapists, he fails to engage with the fact that some of the best selling books over the past decade have been infused with New Age spirituality, Divinci Code, Celestine Prophecy etc.
I disagree with Bruce because he is working with a sociological model that is rooted in modernity, judging people's commitment and spirituality in Christendom terms rather than in a culture of post-modernity and post-christendom.
My next few posts will explore re-enchantment and why I believe that it is happening...
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