A New Age

Though New Age spirituality frequently claims kinship with and even descent from ancient beliefs and primal spiritualities, the genesis of the contemporary New Age is more recent.¹ Hanegraaff argues that New Age thinking arose in reaction to the perceived dominant ideas and values of the last two millennia.² As such, New Age spirituality is a ‘manifestation of popular culture criticism’ set in contradistinction to the values and beliefs of the ‘old’ culture.³ New Age’s primordial soup is the debate about religion and modernity and ensuing theories of secularisation arising in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.⁴ The secularisation thesis postulates that with the cleavage of institutional religion and state comes alterations within the religious organisation, succumbing to ‘secularisation from within’ and leading to a personal ‘secularisation of the consciousness.’⁵ Paradoxically, it may be just this that has precipitated the return of the sacred and the rapid rise of New Age spirituality in the last half century: the iron bars of bureaucratic rationalism inspire attempts to escape them.⁶

It is important to note that ideas of a new age are framed by visions of the past. The old order is characterised by values, ideals and ethos that have damaged humanity, the cosmos and spiritual sensitivity and therefore must be rejected.⁷ It is interesting to observe that, despite strong tendencies to draw on spiritualities of the near and far east for inspiration, New Age visions of the past are almost exclusively concentrated on the developments of western history.⁸ There is a pervasive belief that modernity is in crisis and a profound dissatisfaction with dominant social trends. ‘Work is seen as alienating; politicians are seen as corrupt; consumer culture is taken to be undermining the future of the planet.’⁹ Ultimately, a break with modernity is required.

It is clear that there are important parallels with Christian notions of the Kingdom of God. Christian ideas built on the Jewish prophets’ proclamations of the Day of the Lord, the societal and philosophical traits of which pictured enemies eating at the same table, with people of every nation experiencing justice, mercy, peace and harmony. In contrast to New Age’s popular culture criticism, Jewish belief in a coming kingdom of God was formed under the shadow of political and military oppression by invading empires and the subsequent exile. Whilst both New Age and exilic Judaism begin with the same question – what’s wrong? – the differing social locations in history and geography gave rise to very different answers.¹⁰ For Jews of the intertestimental period, the answer was violent revolt in the name of God, or stricter religious observance.¹¹ Jesus, however, stood in the line of the prophets and challenged Jewish preconceptions of the nature of God’s kingdom.

As with the New Age answer to the question, Jesus argued that they, the Jews, had been deceived, in this case about the personality and will of God.¹² Jesus’ answer to the question was far more challenging, though.¹³ His announcement of the Kingdom was political to the hilt, turning Israel’s nationalistic ambitions on its head, welcoming instead those marginalised, downtrodden, dominated and diminished, those branded ‘sinners’ in his society, those in any kind of need and, if needs be, suffering to bring it about.¹⁴ The solution in New Age is self-actualisation.¹⁵ The solution for Jesus is self-sacrifice.¹⁶

Footnotes