What’s New with the New Age? Why Christians Need to Remain on Guard against the Threat of New Age Spirituality Phil Johnson Phil Johnson is Executive Director Introduction retail industry, major conventions, count- of Grace to You, which features the New Age spirituality is fast-food religion less seminars and programs, and a very preaching ministry of John MacArthur. perfectly suited for a postmodern culture large community of people who identify He also serves as a pastor at Grace like ours. It offers a quick-and-easy feel- with one another and share common ideas Community Church in Sun Valley, Cali- ing of satisfaction with almost no real and concerns. In fact, those publishers and fornia, a board member of The Martyn nourishment for the soul, while it contains those conferences serve as the backbone Lloyd-Jones Recordings Trust in Eng- additives and artifi cial ingredients that for a vast but informal network of many land, and a member of the Fellowship are actually harmful to true spiritual small sects, cottage industries, and social of Independent Reformed Evangelicals. health. But you can still have it your way. groups all populated by individuals He has previously served as an editor There are no dogmas, few demands, no who practice various forms of spiritual for Moody Press and has edited most sense of self-denial, and little need for self-exploration and who are absolutely of Dr. MacArthur’s major books. faith. This is a kind of anti-religion: a spiri- convinced that we are living at the dawn tually oriented worldview for people with of a New Age. an intuitive sense of the sacred, but who In that sense it is fi tting to speak of are wary of organized religion. the New Age phenomenon as a “move- As a matter of fact, the so-called New ment”—and a religious movement at that. Age movement is nothing like any orga- The clergy of the New Age are usually nized religion. It has no headquarters, no called practitioners rather than priests or central hierarchy, no holy book, no recog- pastors. Their infl uence varies, as does the nized clergy, no common set of doctrines, content of their teaching, because one of and no confessional standards. It is not, the distinctives of New Age spirituality is technically, a religious cult or even a for- that it recognizes no authority higher than mal “movement” (which implies structure one’s own personal experience. This is and membership and mission). indeed a kind of religion, but it is a classic And yet the most outstanding features expression of the postmodern preference of the New Age phenomenon seem very for religion as experience, not dogma. much like distinctives that properly Of course, the New Age phenomenon is belong to a cult or a movement. “New much more than a religion. It is also a social Age” is, after all, mainly an approach to and cultural current that has endured for spirituality—a way of viewing and inter- two or three decades and has had pro- acting with the spiritual realm. It has found effects on western lifestyles. The spawned an enormous publishing and New Age movement has engendered such 74 diverse trends as holistic medicine, natural in a major transition pertaining to the diets, and a unique style of instrumental signs of the zodiac. As a matter of fact, and electronic music. The widespread the position of the earth relative to the fascination with crop circles, UFOs, earth’s constellations does actually shift slightly mysteries, crystals, alchemy, and ancient over time, owing to a kind of slow wobble forms of superstition; the popularity of in the earth’s axis. This phenomenon is astrology, pseudo-science, and environ- known to astronomers as “the precession mentalism; and the burgeoning interest in of the equinoxes,” in which the position Native American culture are all common of sunset at the vernal equinox gradually side effects of New Age spirituality. These moves in a westward circle, at a rate that things and others like them have become would make a full rotation approximately badges of New Age identity. every 25,800 years. As the shift occurs, Because of the diversity of belief among the backdrop of the sun at sunset moves New Age enthusiasts and the amorphous almost imperceptibly from one constel- nature of the New Age network, a formal, lation to another, in rhythmic transitions succinct defi nition of the New Age move- that occur roughly every 2,000 years. ment is practically impossible. But it will One such transition occurred around nevertheless be helpful to begin with a 4,000 B.C., as the location of sunset at simple thumbnail description of the New equinox moved out of Gemini and into Age phenomenon. We will then look more Taurus, the bull. Then around 2,000 closely at some of the major elements of B.C., Taurus gave way to Aries, the ram. this simple description in order to consider About 2,000 years later, the backdrop of why the New Age movement ought to be a the equinox moved out of Aries and into matter of concern for biblical Christians. Pisces, the fi sh. And a similar transition The New Age movement is a diverse and is currently underway as the precession eclectic approach to spirituality that stresses of the equinoxes moves the sunset-point individual self-exploration through a variety from Pisces to Aquarius. of beliefs and practices borrowed from a wide New Agers generally believe that this array of extrabiblical sources and non-Chris- movement through the constellations tian belief systems, ranging from astrology marks the ages of human history and to eastern mysticism to science fi ction, and religious belief. During the age of Taurus, beyond. Notice the key characteristics: the bull (which lasted from antediluvian New Age spirituality is wildly eclectic times until the era of Moses), calf worship and therefore radically syncretistic; it is was popular. The shift to the age of Aries, individualistic and therefore ultimately the ram, supposedly accounts for the rise man-centered; and it is almost purely sub- of Judaism, with its stress on the ritual jective and therefore devoid of any sense sacrifi ce of rams and sheep. And the dawn of absolute authority. As such, it is inher- of Pisces, the fi sh, corresponds to the start ently hostile to virtually every distinctive of the Christian era. That is supposed to element of a biblical worldview. explain why the fish has always been one of the church’s favorite symbols and The Background of the New Age remains so today. In the words of one New The expression “New Age” refers to Age writer, “Our theology is not played a belief that earth’s history is currently out so much in books and literal earthly 75 dramas, but rather in the heavens as the stream of New Age infl uence: Gnosticism. Sun makes it’s [sic] passage through the The fundamental idea that unites all signs of the Zodiac.”1 gnostic and New Age thought is a belief So the most basic of all New Age ideas is that the key to real understanding lies in rooted in astrology—specifi cally, a belief some mysterious, ancient body of hidden that human history is now at the dawn of a knowledge available only to enlightened whole new era: the Age of Aquarius. That, minds. Normally, the way to gain enlight- of course, was the message of the opening enment is by being initiated into whatever song of the 1967 Broadway musical, Hair, a group claims to be the guardians of the song that became, in effect, the anthem of secret knowledge. the New Age and fi rst introduced millions Add a distinctly postmodern brand to the concept. of subjectivity to this eclectic blend of New Age spirituality is a postmodern astrological, metaphysical, psychological, phenomenon with gnostic, pagan, and and gnostic infl uences, and you can begin metaphysical roots. It is impossible in to get a sense of the milieu in which New such a short article to trace all the spiritual Age spirituality has fl ourished. It would tributaries to such a diverse movement, probably be fair to characterize the rise of but it should be noted that the New Age the New Age movement as the spiritual is a direct successor to some of the meta- side of the postmodern paradigm shift.3 physical cults that became popular in the nineteenth century, including New Typical Beliefs and Practices of Thought, Swedenborgianism, Theoso- New Age Spirituality phy, Science of Mind, and even Christian New Age thinking is so diverse, so Science. New Age practitioners liberally fl uid, and so unique to each individual borrow language and ideas from all those practitioner that it is probably not possible sects, freely adapting and reshaping them to make any general statement about the according to personal preference. religion of the New Age that could not Jungian philosophy is another major be challenged by someone pointing out factor in the popularization of New Age signifi cant exceptions to the rule. Never- spirituality. Jung, of course, coined the theless, a few common features dominate concepts of “the collective unconscious,” so much of New Age spirituality that they “the god within,” and mind-expansion need to be highlighted as key characteris- techniques. Wouter Hanegraaff wrote that tics of the mainstream of the movement. Jung “sacralized psychology, by fi lling it Pantheism, for example, is the common with the contents of esoteric speculation. belief of many, but not all, in the New Age The result was a body of theories that movement.