On Sutcliffe and Gilhus’ New Age Spirituality
Steven Sutcliffe and Ingvild Saelid Gilhus extend an offering towards a theoretical overhaul of religious studies based in problemizations found in existing approaches toward New Age Spirituality. With increasing frequency academic study relegates a diverse bricolage of practices and beliefs to exceptionalism, supporting a sphere of New Age study on the outskirts of the concrete study of religion. However, the text suggests that components of New Age study highlight failures within the structures of religious study itself. Anyone who has read an academic text from the expansive field of religious studies will encounter, at some level, a lengthy struggle with definitions at the opening of their text (or placed more strategically within a limitations discussion). This precarious “dance of definitions” exists, in our editors’ perspective, because the existing definitions, to give one example, are insufficient and built from the top down with colonial western perspectives influencing their foundation and favor a priority for clearly demarcating “what is” and “what isn’t” religion. Those engaging in the “dance of definitions” often assert from centuries of established scholarship the boundaries and limitations of the field and reinforce the subordinate position of New Age. An alternative practice would prioritize the value of allowing these formations to function without restrictive boundaries, allowing New Age studies to offer materials that will only grow our understanding of the existing formations of religion within comparative religious studies. Our editors would argue that to study the insights of New Age is to study Religion itself, rather than a interesting subset of new apparitions.
World religions and other well-intended, thoroughly problematic models
A central component of the problematic formation exists within the World Religions taxonomy itself; wherein seven (7) pure religions function with privilege, support, and approval at the top of the religious academic food chain (Sutcliffe 2013:23). From there scholars established a top-down procedure for comparing other religions into subordinate “less pure” categories and reinforce the patterns that have been the basis of centuries of theoretical inquiry. Sutcliffe suggests that the “world religions paradigm is embedded in the basic fabric of our thinking about religion and continues to steer research and teaching” (ibid:22). However, “theoretical repositioning of new age beliefs and practices can challenge the paradigm at its roots” (ibid). He motivates the deconstructionist approach to these problematic and entrenched structures by suggesting that we return to Durkheim’s Elementary Forms to begin anew inclusive to position new age data amongst the rest. A complete overhaul with a new starting point for comparative and systematic studies may seem radical, and perhaps, redundant. This approach offers an escape from terminological and internalized bias within existing religious studies and can expound upon our understanding of practices found within new age spiritualities and “traditional religious practice” as is the case with the examples of animism and seekership.
Following this discussion, Ingvild Saelid Gilhus further engages with the problems of the meta-categorical established approaches to the study of religion and highlights a further need to expound existing models. The positive offering this has for the study of religion is an expansion of our attempts to map the locus of where religion is situated in society. Jonathan Smith’s spacial model suggests that religion is “here, there, and everywhere” (Gilhus 2013: 38). Gilhus motivates adoption of a necessary fourth space that allows inclusion of modern dimensions and sources of religion. Increasingly, the internet has changed the landscape of society and, more specifically, religion by moulding religious content and contrastly acting as a conduit by which religion itself is increasingly shaping and disseminating religious information to users, forming new data surrounding “Mediatized Religion” (ibid: 39-40). These new places and practices represent an experiential inclusivity for contemporary data that escaped early considerations in religious study but deserves prioritization within the field; without adaptations the field will certainly miss vital information and allow the well-probed core of traditional religious perspectives to reinforce problematic structures of the past.
The “unruly objects” of New Age studies
The text contains another thirteen chapters of analytical confrontations between new age material and existing formations within religious studies; ranging from macro theoretical content to human interest stories conveying forms of “lived religion” that defy categorization but strike at the heart of the editors’ assertions that while we may clearly recognize religion in these representation the dominant theories from within religious studies, do not. These engagements examine the dichotomy between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’ of Stark and Bainbridge (Frisk 2013: 50-65), encounter new age spirituality existing within religious practices (Hall 2013:146-159; Horie 2013: 99-115), and conversely identify traditional religious aspects within the realm of new age spiritual practice (Chen 2013: 227-241 ; Utriainen 2013: 242-255). The text outlines the connections that are impossible to see from the privileged perspectives of mainstream religious studies represented in examples that highlight the reverse influence spirituality has on religion. From a new starting point, we can chart new paths from the elementary forms that pave this two-way street and make connections to broader sociological shifts and what they may mean for religion itself rather than limiting its usefulness to anecdotal, yet intriguing, stories from a small minority of new age sensationalism.
Conclusion
New Age Spirituality: Rethinking Religion challenges the study of religion to “see the bigger picture” and rewrite the proverbial book with components that have been overlooked in order to allow their contribution to the wider field and thus a better understanding of religion itself. Deconstruction of problematic academic theoretical frameworks and embedded foundations from ages of internalized bias allows religion to function with freedom amongst the sociological processes shaping our contemporary engagement with the world around us. These new methods offer a historically contingent and culturally situated view of “lived religion” built from the bottom up by religion was it is rather than attempting to frame our endeavors in a way that tames the “unruly objects” that defy current theories in the study of religion (Sutcliffe 2013: 18).
Sutcliffe, S., & Gilhus, I. S. (2013). New Age Spirituality: Rethinking Religion. London: Routledge.
