Week 9 - Eunice Valencia

Eunice Valencia

ASA 189B

Week 9

Secularization has become more popular today than ever before. Secular states include the United States, Great Britain and India. Less people are interested in religious traditional practices, in which the West has become dissatisfied. In the New Age, it is believed that individuals create their own reality. New age and Neo-paganism “Both take part in the contemporary spiritual consumer market and both display tendencies to appropriate spiritual idioms from a range of  other traditions.” The New Age and Neo-paganisms are known to be allies but they differ as well, “Paganism itself subscribes to an immanent understanding of the godhead or divine, which allows—or even centralizes —the natural world as manifest sacrality. New Age, on the other hand, descends from a competing theological perspective, namely, a Gnostic/Theosophical and New Thought tradition via the American Metaphysical Tradition which views nature as an obscuring obstacle to hidden spiritual truth.” John Newport argues that the New Age doesn’t have practical decision making. New Age supports the “spiritual counterparts of capitalism,” instead of rejecting free market principles which means the New Age is “fully financed.” One main idea is that all religion may have come from one another or are connected. Another argument mentioned was “if secularization refers to a supposed pervasive decline of  interest in religious traditions, it might just equally signify an opening in ideas of new forms and identities of spirituality.”

What is the difference between spirituality and religion?