WHY SO POPULAR?

The new spirituality we’ve been considering does have popular appeal today. That was brought home to me this past week in an e-mail received from a contact in Savannah, USA.

My correspondent – a manufacturing engineer that I met during a visit to Savannah in December last year – had written earlier telling me about Oprah Winfrey’s support of New Age spirituality. Apparently on January 1^st she began a year-long course on her daily radio programme focusing on “The New Age Christ.” The 365 lessons in the course are based on the Course in Miracles Workbook, sometimes referred to as the New Age Bible. This Workbook uses biblical language but totally distorts and denies the biblical message. It contains such statements as “There is no sin…” “A slain Christ has no meaning…” “The name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol… It is a symbol that is safely used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods to which you pray.”

Anyway, two days ago my friend wrote again with an update. While on a business trip he happened look at a copy of USA Today and read that over 700,000 people have signed up for this new course in “spiritual enlightenment.” “To use one of my southern sayings” he added, “Satan ain't playing, boys. Keep your guard up!”

What is it that makes the new spirituality (of which the New Age Christ is but one expression) so popular? Is it the sponsorship of stellar TV and radio personalities like Oprah Winfrey? Or are there other factors as well?

Robert Webber suggests that there are. He notes that there are a number of features about this new spirituality that make it particularly adapted to our postmodern generation. The first is its appeal to the narcissism – the “me-centredness” – of postmodern culture. The thought that we ourselves are god, and that spirituality entails the “actualization of the self,” all fits very well the “psyche formed by the spirit of the narcissistic culture,” Webber writes (The Divine Embrace, 115).

Secondly the new spirituality also fits well with the relativistic nature of postmodern culture. “In popular spirituality,” says Webber, “there are no beliefs to which you must adhere because there are no absolutes. Anyone can create their own set of beliefs on their own conjecture, their own dreams, or even their claim to personal illumination” (Ibid.).

Thirdly, the new spirituality has no particular community to which you have to belong, no rules, no standards of discipline. “Getting in touch with the life force of nature is a very individual thing, and there is no need to do that in community with other people, where there may be accountability or the expectation of belonging” (Ibid.).

Finally, Webber notes that its appeal also arises out of the fact that the new spirituality makes no demands on moral behaviour. “In popular spirituality,” he writes, “one only needs to be consistent with self and accountable to the self…” (Ibid.). There are no cramping moral codes or externally imposed standards to conform to. Life is about self-expression. Just so long as you are in tune with the self you can be very spiritual.

All of this is completely opposite to Christian spirituality with its clear set of beliefs, accountability and moral instructions. “Why, in this culture,” Webber asks, “would someone submit to belief, belonging, and behaving when popular spirituality offers freedom from all systems of belief, all communities of accountability, and all strictures of sexual behaviour?” (Ibid., 115-6). That, at least in part, is what makes the new spirituality so attractive to so many today.