culture affects us all spiritually

One of the things that I'm struck by and sometimes comment on when I help people to learn about post-modern spirituality, is that most of the stuff that Christians label 'new age' has fairly direct parallels in evangelical and charismatic sub-cultures: angels, celtic spirituality, commodification, and so forth. So, pleased was I to read John Morehead musing about emerging church and new spiritualities and making a pretty similar observation, only more focused on EC.

"This is our thesis: the socio-spiritual dynamics that surfaced in mainstream society in the 1980s with New Age spirituality are now being mirrored sociologically inside the church through EC. Please note we are not saying that the EC teaches New Age doctrines or that it is New Age in disguise. The EC and New Age are theologically poles apart. The parallels we draw concern their social phenomena: What New Age was for secular society, the EC is to Protestantism. Both the EC and New Age have arisen as reactions to very broad societal changes and cultural influences."

I particularly liked his careful statement about not jumping to too-easy conclusions but making a careful observation.

In a later articlette he looks at DIY spiritualities -what I have tended to deal with under the label 'post-modern spiritualities'- and makes a good summary observation [which would also work to some degree for evangelical and charismatic 'markets'].

Within these alternate spiritualities, we have discerned a broad spectrum of positions. There is a distinct "soft end" of the spectrum, which is very consumerist and faddish and pandered to with chic books and trinkets. But there is also a distinct "hard core" - those who are very savvy about the consumerist nature of spirituality and in fact despise its commercialisation. The hard core yearn for depth and integrity to their spirituality.

But it is worth noting that the fluffy, frothy dismissable thing we often in Christian circles associate with this DIY spirituality is not the only kind; and we have let down badly the 'hard core' seachers.

I also, in this connection want to draw attention to something Phil Johnson wrote recently about the way that the pick'n'mix approach to things, not least spiritual searching, has deeply affected the culture of spiritual consciousness in the west. I have said before that we need to recognise that so-called folk religion in the west has been changing from one which tends to reference Christian thought-forms and memes to one where more eastern memes are picked up. However, not without being transmuted in the process by the strange alchemy of cultural transfer. Phil says:

In New Age thought karma and rebirth have been reinterpreted in a human potential-upwards evolutionary manner. These three outlooks now help people to reshape their understanding of life and death and suffering. These outlooks differ in quite a few ways from the Christian teachings on the purpose of life, the problem of suffering and sin, and the resurrection.

Which means, of course, that in relating to it, we need not to be caught by the philosophical sleight of hand and end up thinking that we should be working our apologetics towards Buddhist/Hindu notions when in fact we should be more engaged with the evolutionary human potential stuff. I do have questions about how long this particular meme will last but we should be aware that karma etc are not quite the same.

Why might they not last? Well, the trend for Buddhism to be making more inroads may well mean a better understanding of the real teachings and reflection on karma and rebirth could grow. Also, the post-modern turn tends to problematise progress and the kind of evolutionary view hiding under these western recyclings is actually, if I mistake it not, simply the Enlightenment notion of Progress transposed into the key of Spirituality; I'm not sure it can withstand the interrogation it is already getting. I'm also skeptical of its longevity because it tends to be so dualist, and I think that 'emergentist' accounts of human nature will be the more plausible in the future and such 'detachable soul' [or whatever] ideas will simply fail to convince. That will go for more Cartesian Christian accounts too, btw.

So the apologetic task I think I am setting myself, is to develop an emergentist and Christian anthropology which has a corporate, embodied basis [not hard, we have never dropped the resurrection of the body from the creed] ... more later, I hope. How much later, I don't yet know.
MoreheadsMusings: The Emerging Church: Some Critical Issues: