New Age
| New Age movement | |
|---|---|
 The governing council of the New World Alliance meets in Phoenicia, New York, September 7, 1980. The Alliance was America's first national "New Age" or "transformational" political organization | |
| Theology | Pantheism, panentheism, monism, syncretism |
| Founder | None (influenced by Theosophy, New Thought, and Spiritualism) |
| New Age beliefs List of New Age topics |
|---|
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs that rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as a unification of mind, body, and spirit, and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist.
As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age drew heavily upon esoteric traditions such as the occultism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy. More immediately, it arose from mid-20th-century influences such as the UFO religions of the 1950s, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the Human Potential Movement. Its exact origins remain contested, but it became a major movement in the 1970s, at which time it was centered largely in the United Kingdom. It expanded widely in the 1980s and 1990s. By the start of the 21st century, the term New Age was increasingly rejected within this milieu, with some scholars arguing that the New Age phenomenon had ended.
Despite its eclectic nature, the New Age has several main currents. Theologically, the New Age typically accepts a holistic form of divinity that pervades the universe, including human beings themselves, leading to a strong emphasis on the spiritual authority of the self. This is accompanied by a common belief in a variety of semi-divine non-human entities such as angels, with whom humans can communicate, particularly by channeling through a human intermediary. Typically viewing history as divided into spiritual ages, a common New Age belief posits a forgotten age of great technological advancement and spiritual wisdom that declined into periods of increasing violence and spiritual degeneracy, which will now be remedied by the emergence of an Age of Aquarius, from which the milieu gets its name. There is also a strong focus on healing, particularly using forms of alternative medicine, and an emphasis on unifying science with spirituality.
The dedication of New Agers varied considerably, from those who adopted a number of New Age ideas and practices to those who fully embraced and dedicated their lives to it. The New Age has generated criticism from Christians as well as modern Pagan and Indigenous communities. From the 1990s onward, the New Age became the subject of research by academic scholars of religious studies.
Definitions
[edit]One of the few things on which all scholars agree concerning New Age is that it is difficult to define. Often, the definition given actually reflects the background of the scholar giving the definition. Thus, the New Ager views New Age as a revolutionary period of history dictated by the stars; the Christian apologist has often defined new age as a cult; the historian of ideas understands it as a manifestation of the perennial tradition; the philosopher sees New Age as a monistic or holistic worldview; the sociologist describes New Age as a new religious movement (NRM); while the psychologist describes it as a form of narcissism.
The New Age phenomenon has proved difficult to define,[2] with much scholarly disagreement as to its scope.[3] The scholars Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus have even suggested that it remains "among the most disputed of categories in the study of religion".[4]
The scholar of religion Paul Heelas characterised the New Age as "an eclectic hotch-potch of beliefs, practices, and ways of life" that can be identified as a singular phenomenon through their use of "the same (or very similar) lingua franca to do with the human (and planetary) condition and how it can be transformed."[5] Similarly, the historian of religion Olav Hammer termed it "a common denominator for a variety of quite divergent contemporary popular practices and beliefs" that have emerged since the late 1970s and are "largely united by historical links, a shared discourse and an air de famille".[6] According to Hammer, this New Age was a "fluid and fuzzy cultic milieu".[7] The sociologist of religion Michael York described the New Age as "an umbrella term that includes a great variety of groups and identities" that are united by their "expectation of a major and universal change being primarily founded on the individual and collective development of human potential."[8]
The scholar of religion Wouter Hanegraaff adopted a different approach by asserting that "New Age" was "a label attached indiscriminately to whatever seems to fit it" and that as a result it "means very different things to different people".[9] He thus argued against the idea that the New Age could be considered "a unified ideology or Weltanschauung",[10] although he believed that it could be considered a "more or less unified 'movement'."[11] Other scholars have suggested that the New Age is too diverse to be a singular movement.[12] The scholar of religion George D. Chryssides called it "a counter-cultural Zeitgeist",[13] while the sociologist of religion Steven Bruce suggested that New Age was a milieu;[14] Heelas and scholar of religion Linda Woodhead called it the "holistic milieu".[15]
There is no central authority within the New Age phenomenon that can determine what counts as New Age and what does not.[16] Many of those groups and individuals who could analytically be categorised as part of the New Age reject the term New Age in reference to themselves.[17] Some even express active hostility to the term.[18] Rather than terming themselves New Agers, those involved in this milieu commonly describe themselves as spiritual "seekers",[19] and some self-identify as a member of a different religious group, such as Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism.[20] In 2003 Sutcliffe observed that the use of the term New Age was "optional, episodic and declining overall", adding that among the very few individuals who did use it, they usually did so with qualification, for instance by placing it in quotation marks.[21] Other academics, such as Sara MacKian, have argued that the sheer diversity of the New Age renders the term too problematic for scholars to use.[22] MacKian proposed "everyday spirituality" as an alternate term.[23]
While acknowledging that New Age was a problematic term, the scholar of religion James R. Lewis stated that it remained a useful etic category for scholars to use because "There exists no comparable term which covers all aspects of the movement."[24] Similarly, Chryssides argued that the fact that "New Age" is a "theoretical concept" does not "undermine its usefulness or employability"; he drew comparisons with "Hinduism", a similar "Western etic piece of vocabulary" that scholars of religion used despite its problems.[25]
Religion, spirituality, and esotericism
[edit]
In discussing the New Age, academics have varyingly referred to "New Age spirituality" and "New Age religion".[1] Those involved in the New Age rarely consider it to be "religion"—negatively associating that term solely with organized religion—and instead describe their practices as "spirituality".[26] Religious studies scholars, however, have repeatedly referred to the New Age milieu as a "religion".[27] York described the New Age as a new religious movement (NRM).[28] Conversely, both Heelas and Sutcliffe rejected this categorisation;[29] Heelas believed that while elements of the New Age represented NRMs, this did not apply to every New Age group.[30] Similarly, Chryssides stated that the New Age could not be seen as "a religion" in itself.[31]
The New Age movement is the cultic milieu having become conscious of itself, in the later 1970s, as constituting a more or less unified "movement". All manifestations of this movement are characterized by a popular western culture criticism expressed in terms of a secularized esotericism.
The New Age is also a form of Western esotericism.[32] Hanegraaff regarded the New Age as a form of "popular culture criticism", in that it represented a reaction against the dominant Western values of Judeo-Christian religion and rationalism,[33] adding that "New Age religion formulates such criticism not at random, but falls back on" the ideas of earlier Western esoteric groups.[10]
The New Age has also been identified by various scholars of religion as part of the cultic milieu.[34] This concept, developed by the sociologist Colin Campbell, refers to a social network of marginalized ideas. Through their shared marginalization within a given society, these disparate ideas interact and create new syntheses.[35]
Hammer identified much of the New Age as corresponding to the concept of "folk religions" in that it seeks to deal with existential questions regarding subjects like death and disease in "an unsystematic fashion, often through a process of bricolage from already available narratives and rituals".[6] York also heuristically divides the New Age into three broad trends. The first, the social camp, represents groups that primarily seek to bring about social change, while the second, the occult camp, instead focuses on contact with spirit entities and channeling. York's third group, the spiritual camp, represents a middle ground between these two camps that focuses largely on individual development.[36]
Terminology
[edit]The term new age, along with related terms like new era and new world, long predate the emergence of the New Age movement, and have widely been used to assert that a better way of life for humanity is dawning.[37] It occurs commonly, for instance, in political contexts; the Great Seal of the United States, designed in 1782, proclaims a "new order of ages", while in the 1980s the Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed that "all mankind is entering a new age".[37][need quotation to verify][38] The term has also appeared within Western esoteric schools of thought, having a scattered use from the mid-nineteenth century onward.[39] In 1864 the American Swedenborgian Warren Felt Evans published The New Age and its Message about the teachings of the unity/correspondence of natural and spiritual worlds of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg,[40] while in 1907 Alfred Orage and Holbrook Jackson began editing a weekly journal of Christian liberalism and socialism titled The New Age.[41] The concept of a coming "new age" that would be inaugurated by the return to Earth of Jesus Christ was a theme in the poetry of Wellesley Tudor Pole (1884–1968) and of Johanna Brandt (1876–1964),[42] and then also appeared in the work of the British-born American Theosophist Alice Bailey (1880–1949), featuring in titles such as Discipleship in the New Age (1944) and Education in the New Age (1954).[42]
Between the 1930s and 1960s, a small number of groups and individuals became preoccupied with the concept of a coming "New Age" and used the term accordingly.[43] The term had thus become a recurring motif in the esoteric spirituality milieu.[44] Sutcliffe, therefore, expressed the view that while the term New Age had originally been an "apocalyptic emblem", it would only be later that it became "a tag or codeword for a 'spiritual' idiom".[45]
History
[edit]Antecedents in occult and theosophy
[edit]
According to scholar Nevill Drury, the New Age has a "tangible history",[46] although Hanegraaff expressed the view that most New Agers were "surprisingly ignorant about the actual historical roots of their beliefs".[47] Similarly, Hammer thought that "source amnesia" was a "building block of a New Age worldview", with New Agers typically adopting ideas with no awareness of where those ideas originated.[48]
As a form of Western esotericism,[49] the New Age has antecedents that stretch back to southern Europe in Late Antiquity.[50] Following the Age of Enlightenment in 18th-century Europe, new esoteric ideas developed in response to the development of scientific rationality. Scholars call this new esoteric trend occultism, and this occultism was a key factor in the development of the worldview from which the New Age emerged.[51]
One of the earliest influences on the New Age was the Swedish 18th-century Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who professed the ability to communicate with angels, demons, and spirits. Swedenborg's attempt to unite science and religion and his prediction of a coming era in particular have been cited as ways that he prefigured the New Age.[52] Another early influence was the late 18th and early 19th century German physician and hypnotist Franz Mesmer, who wrote about the existence of a force known as "animal magnetism" running through the human body.[53] The establishment of Spiritualism, an occult religion influenced by both Swedenborgianism and Mesmerism, in the U.S. during the 1840s has also been identified as a precursor to the New Age, in particular through its rejection of established Christianity, representing itself as a scientific approach to religion, and its emphasis on channeling spirit entities.[54]
Most of the beliefs which characterise the New Age were already present by the end of the 19th century, even to such an extent that one may legitimately wonder whether the New Age brings anything new at all.
A further major influence on the New Age was the Theosophical Society, an occult group co-founded by the Russian Helena Blavatsky in the late 19th century. In her books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), Blavatsky wrote that her Society was conveying the essence of all world religions, and it thus emphasized a focus on comparative religion.[56] Serving as a partial bridge between Theosophical ideas and those of the New Age was the American esotericist Edgar Cayce, who founded the Association for Research and Enlightenment.[57] Another partial bridge was the Danish mystic Martinus who is popular in Scandinavia.[58]
Another influence was New Thought, which developed in late nineteenth-century New England as a Christian-oriented healing movement before spreading throughout the United States.[59] Another influence was the psychologist Carl Jung.[60] Drury also identified as an important influence upon the New Age the Indian Swami Vivekananda, an adherent of the philosophy of Vedanta who first brought Hinduism to the West in the late 19th century.[61]
According to Catholic scholars, anthroposophy belongs to the New Age.[62]