Yesterday I was in Wolverhampton [the well known new age centre, ahem!] at the ASANAS conference. Very interesting nice to meet Neil Elliot again [researching the spirituality of skateboarding] -he's the Anglican Chaplain at UCE. The keynote talks were interesting though Marion Bowman couldn't be there in the end. Graham HArvey talked engagingly about how studying neoPaganism raised interesting methodological issues for the academy [actually the issues are the same for most religious groups but Paganism is his area] -mostly about the meanings of objectivity and the issues surrounding reflexivity [ie the observer's paradox and feedback from observer into the process and from the change process to the observer and so on]. Gordon Melton gave a very interesting overview of how New Age has developed and proposing that we actually need to see it more broadly as a revival of western esotericism which has a much bigger history and following in such a way as in terms of the West it needs to be considered a bigger deal than Islam or Buddhism. It was a kind of ASANAS needs to get out of the ghetto of a peculiar fringe interest of some academics and be taken seriously as a field of study.
So what's my interest? Well I'm an ex-newager, I lecture on postmodern spirituality with particular reference to NAMs. That said I'm pretty interested in ASANAS because of the missiological issues. Here are bunches of people who are trying to articulate and fashion their responses to a sense of the spiritual using the tools and raw materials that they find around them in globalized western culture and with a sense that the Christian faith has lost the plot. I think that we have a lot to learn from that as a church.
I think we should be looking to take on board the networked nature of affiliation, perhaps. And the sense that we don't have to emulate traditional church services to express what we're about [which is what Vitorian NAM equivalents tended to do]-meditation exercises and meals would be afine way to do church [I should say 'is]. What's with all this singing? It's become an undominical sacrament for many churches ... And I enjoy it but ...
We need to think hard about the how we engage with the views of God/Ultimate Reality. I think that personal dimension is important, NAM tend towards a 'Force' view -though many also seem parasitically to take Love as ultimate too [and I think we should press the point -how is love not personal? Part of what I think may commend Trinitarianism is that if God is Love then that implies a non-monistic God; threefoldness is implied by being inherantly love]. We also need to think through the challenge posed by the implicity technique-centredness of a 'Force' view of divinity -not least becasue it has taken root in some church cultures -just look at the way we do healing ministry.
We need to take seriously the experiential and even be confident enough to put it out there and tie up the doctrinal later. Personally I'm looking at setting up as a meditation teacher as a means of outreach. No programme, just see how it develops.
Oh this could get long so I'll leave it there and see if anyone wants to get back to me.
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