Secular Beats Spiritual

The decline of Christianity in the West is undeniable but commentators differ in their understanding of what this represents. For some, it shows a decline in interest in religion; for others, religion has not declined, only changed shape. Possible candidates for Christianity’s replacement are the new religious movements of the late 1960s and what is variously called New Age, alternative, or contemporary spirituality. This detailed study of the religious and spiritual innovations since the 1970s assesses their popularity in Britain and concludes that the ‘not-decline-just-change’ view is unsustainable. Serious interest in spirituality has grown far less quickly than has the number of people with no religious or spiritual interest. The most popular and enduring movements have been the least religious ones; those that have survived have done so by becoming more ‘this-worldly’ and less patently religious or spiritual. Yoga is popular but as a secular exercise programme; Transcendental Meditation now markets its technique as a purely secular therapy; British Buddhists now offer the secular Mindfulness; the Findhorn Foundation (Europe’s oldest New Age centre) no longer promotes counter-cultural communalism but sells its expertise to major corporations. The book also demonstrates that, although eastern religious themes such as reincarnation and karma have gained popularity as the power of Christianity to stigmatize them as dangerous has declined, such themes have also been significantly altered so that what superficially looks like the easternization of the West might better be described as the westernization of the easternization of the West.