Spiritual Tourism

I just wish I could get hold of the original article in Cosmo that inspired this piece. If you want to get a bigger and broader view of the issues in this article related specifically to Christian faith then it might be as well to read Pete Ward's "Liquid Church" [link ] -which draws a lot on Zygmunt Bauman's "Liquid Modernity". But if you'd like to look at some of the issues related to a broader spiritual canvass then Paul Heelas' "New Age Movement" [ link ] could be a good place to start.

The clear issue is that the metanarrative of western life has become shopping [don't believe those people who say post-modernity is about skepticism towards metanarratives -it's skepticism towards all of them except shopping ;-) ] so we have a situation where the way that people frame their spiritual searching is shaped by shopping -so the way to go is to pick out all the bits you like from various religions or philosophies or ... whatever ... and remix it to something congenial.

Of course the downside to this is that money is being made of the back of it as we employ our consumerist strategies of buying stuff as the sacrament of taking into ourselves the 'spiritual' or intangible qualities that are advertised or that we feel are invested in the product. In some ways it probably isn't so different to people buying relics or medallions from medieval shrines ....
... Anyhow, what concerns me is that people who have little true concern for the spiritual welfare of their clients/customers are ripping them off and making their spiritual longings merely into a way of profit [See Susan Howatch's "The high Flyer" or "The Heartbreaker" as a novelistic expose of this].

As with all syncretisms, this syncretism is not really a blending of different faiths or pov's, but rather an covert imperialism by some co-ordinating philosophy which relativises the other faiths to its own metanarrative or fulcrum-idea[s]. If you'd like to read more try Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions by Gavin D'Costa [ link ].

Truly there is nothing new under the sun.