Christianity and New Age Spirituality

'This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius...'

Well, it's been a while since I've put anything weighty on the site, so I thought now would be a good time. I've just had the final result from the undergraduate theology course I've been studying, Advanced Workshop, together with the marks for the last two essays. So, for the next few days I'm going to publish one of those last two essays. Here's the title …

CRITICALLY EVALUATE THE NEW AGE CONCEPT OF THE ‘AGE OF AQUARIUS’ IN THE LIGHT OF CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF ‘THE KINGDOM OF GOD’

One of the really important parts of Advanced Workshop in the second year is dialogues with other faiths, but done in a realitively unique way. Rather than just having an expert on the faith in question (or worse still, a Christian understanding of the faith in question), Lloyd Pietersen, course director for Advanced Workshop, invited scholars of each faith who are also believers and practitioners in their faith.

This was just brilliant! We examined 5 of the most significant faiths in the UK - Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and New Age Spirituality - and had a fabulous whole day with scholars from each.

There was one funny incident, which occured when the Buddhist scholar Lloyd had booked converted to Catholicism shortly before he was due to deliver his lecture, was duly disqualified from delivering it and hastily replaced with someone who was a believer and practitioner!

I personally loved these sessions, and really looked forward to them on each of the course weekends. It was fabulous hearing a scholarly examination of the key tenets of each faith, and an academic analysis of the history of interreligious dialogue between the faith in question and Christianity, whilst also coming from the perspective of a devoted believer.

I would love to have done all of the essays. I certainly discovered through the lectures startling amounts of shared understanding, perspective and ethical application, greater perhaps with the Abrahamic faiths than with the others, but nonetheless still significant. I also (re)discovered the reasons why I call myself a follower of Jesus, through the course generally, but through these dialogues in particular.

However, I had to make a choice of just two out of the five faiths. So, first I decided to do the essay comparing Christianity and Islam ('Compare and Contrast the Approaches of Christianity and Islam to the Relationship Between Religion and State.'), which was fabulous. And also I chose to to do this essay on New Age Spirituality.

I decided to do these two basically because of their significance in modern British society. Living in metropolitan Birmingham, UK, in this post-9/11, post-Iraq invasion world, the studying the interface between and Christianity and Islam seemed to be a really important thing to do. And New Age Spirituality is so significant in the world I live in, and with many of my friends, I felt compelled to work with it.

Anyway, I thought I'd put the New Age essay online, partly 'cause I loved writing it (it seemed quite a fitting way to end the course, thinking about the Kingdom of God), partly because I got a pretty good mark for it (75% - the highest mark available), and partly because several people have since asked to have a read of it.

So, over the next few days I'm going to post the essay in parts, as I've previously done. Here's the title again and an outline …

CRITICALLY EVALUATE THE NEW AGE CONCEPT OF THE ‘AGE OF AQUARIUS’ IN THE LIGHT OF CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF ‘THE KINGDOM OF GOD’

• Introduction
• A New Age
  What is the concept of a 'New Age' and where did it come from?
  • An Aquarian Age
    Why should it be the Age of Aquarius…?
  • Aquarian Eschatology
    What is a New Age perspective on the shape of the future of human history?
• The Aquarian Nature of Reality
  • God
    Aquarian conceptions of the divine
  • Self
    New Age understanding of the self
  • Faith Community
    Ideas of a faith community in the Age of Aquarius
  • Ethics
    Aquarian ethics and the challenges of the problem of evil and ethical relativism
• Conclusion

If you find that somewhat mouthwatering then hang around and see what's going to come in the next few days.

As ever, I'd love to hear your thoughts and reflections, so do please drop a comment in if you're able!