Alternative Religions Among European Youth

Luigi Tomasi, Luigi Tomasi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429864025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria religiosa

Frist published in 1999, this book provides an overview of various non-conventional notions of what is sacred, currently held among European young people. It analyses the growing estrangement between traditional religious doctrines and current beliefs among young people in the following countries: France, Austria, Holland, England, Germany, Poland, Russia and Iceland. Using fist-hand statistical support and a well-established theoretical approach, the book examines new religious movements and sects, analysing and interpreting the reasons for their growth and spread among young people. The distinctive features of the book are its investigation of diverse religious phenomena and its verification of whether this spread of 'alternative 'religiosity is due to the reluctance of a growing section of the European population to accept traditional religious beliefs. The result of eight separate empirical surveys, the book is original in its content and innovative in its theoretical approach. Overall, it provides a detailed and documented analysis of the increasing number of young Europeans now attracted by 'alternative' religions.

1 The new religious paradigms and European youth

YVES LAMBERT

Introduction

Various historians and philosophers stress that certain periods in history have been crucial in developing techniques, political structures or world views which came to dominate the scene for the next centuries or millennia before they in turn were questioned and replaced, or altered and inserted into new systems. ‘Man seems to have started again from scratch four times,’ Karl Jaspers wrote in 1949: in the Neolithic age, with the earliest civilisations, with the emergence of universalist religions, philosophy and early science, and with modernity.¹ This is not to imply that everything was removed, only that each of these ‘axial turns’ produced a general reshaping of the ‘symbolic field’, to use Pierre Bourdieu’s term, and especially a religious upheaval which led to disappearances, re-definitions and emergences. Thus, notwithstanding profound changes, only Judaism and Hinduism survived the preceding axial age. One may therefore assume that modernity, especially if it is about to be completed, stands as a major challenge against former creeds, as well as being an indisputable source of religious innovation. Moreover, the hypothesis of modernity as a new axial turn enables consideration in the very long term - that of civilisations - and comparative work to offer an interpretation which accounts not only for the disappearance of religions but also for their revivals, mutations and inventions. This is at odds with the secularization thesis. Of course, secularization is a fundamental feature of the modern landscape, but it is only one among others: it cannot be given primacy a priori, nor can it be considered more than a partial theory of religion in modernity.

Starting from the definition of modernity as a new axial turn, and from global analyses of modernity as a new religious stage, I shall propose a general model of the relationships between modernity and religion, emphasising distinctive religious features and new paradigms. My purpose especially will be to highlight the case of new religious movements (NRMs) and parallel beliefs (astrology, telepathy, spiritism, positive and negative waves, cosmic energies, charms, and so on) in European youth, bearing in mind that the latter are much more widespread than NRMs (in France, telepathy is as pervasive as belief in God). Finally, I shall try to explain why these phenomena have blossomed in the past thirty years.

1. Modernity as a new axial period

The concept of ‘axial age’ used to be applied to the emergence of universalism, and in particular to the sixth and fifth centuries BC, which constituted a key stage in the process: Deutero-Isaiah, the century of Pericles, the Upanishads, Jain, Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tse.² This age is considered ‘axial’ because we are still its heirs and and live its legacy especially through the great religions. But there is in fact no reason for not considering each of these periods to be ‘axial’: the Neolithic age was axial for the Palaeolithic age, and so on. Jaspers himself regarded the onset of modernity in the nineteenth century as the harbinger of a probable ‘second axial period’,³ and he de facto treated modernity as a new axial period. He was not entirely convinced on the matter, however, because globalization had not yet been accomplished (in 1949), although we can assume that it has been today. Jaspers identified modernity with four fundamental features: modern science, a yearning for freedom, the entry of the masses on the historical stage, and globalization. One may also add the growth of capitalism and of functional differentiation.

But are we not already in the post-modern age? I tend to agree with Anthony Giddens when he writes: ‘rather than entering a period of post-modernism, we are moving into one in which the consequences of modernity are becoming more radicalised and universalised than before’,⁴ a period of ‘high modernity’, therefore, or of ‘late modernity’. What defines post-modernity is far from displaying the fundamentally new traits that characterize an axial turn, and it can instead be explained in terms of off-shoots of generalized modernity, except for the possibility of mankind’s self-destruction, although this too is a result of science. The hallmark of post-modernity - loss of confidence in the ‘great narratives’ or in constant progress - differentiates it only from the prior phase of modernity, from the mid-nineteenth century (industrial society, marxism, fascism, positivism) until the collapse of communism. The relativization of science and technology is not a new development: their excesses and dangers have always been denounced; they are merely becoming more serious because of their intensification (nuclear threat, pollution). One could continue in this vein and show that the changes of the past thirty or forty years are in fact in keeping with the distinctive features of modernity (while having their own specificity at the same time). I cite for instance the cases of permissiveness, the primacy of the self, feminism, increasing education, information and communication, computer technology - not forgetting the independence of former colonies, which is curiously overlooked by post-modernists. The same holds true for the selective revival of certain traditions, now that modernity has prevailed over tradition, or for the repeated appeals to local identities provoked by the creation of supranational entities and the weakening of the old nation-states.

Although we may consider modernity to be a new axial period, we are unable to know where we are in the process. We cannot even know whether this axial period will be followed by some sort of stabilization, as was formerly the case, since modernity is in permanent and even accelerating change, so that it will probably give rise to some sort of permanent shift. On the other hand, it is certain that no new worldly spiritual insight has spread on a wide scale. To date, the principal novel feature of the modern symbolic landscape has been the propagation of secular conceptions and world views (science, ideologies, ethics, human rights, and so on). One also observes fundamental changes in Christianity like demythization, the emphasis on mundane purposes, acceptance of individual freedom, and religious pluralism. ‘I am reasonably sure,’ writes Bellah, that ‘even though we must speak from the midst of it, the modern situation represents a stage of religious development in many ways profoundly different from that of historic religion.’⁵ Besides, as J. Gordon Melton puts it,

during the twentieth century, the West has experienced a phenomenon it has not encountered since the reign of Constantine: the growth of and significal visible presence of a variety of non-Christian and non-orthodox Christian bodies competing for the religious allegiance of the public. This growth of so many alternatives religiously is forcing a new situation on the West in which the still dominant Christian religion must share its centuries-old hegemony in a new pluralistic religious environment.⁶

We may be in a phase of burgeoning evolution, of which ‘quick fixes’, syncretism, nomadism, subjectivism and pragmatism are also indicative signs.

2. Searching for the distinctive religious features of modernity

What can we learn from global analyses of modernity as a new stage in the religious history of humankind, or from those which consider the modernist challenge against religion as a whole? Jaspers restricted himself to some terse but insightful remarks: ‘If a transcendent aid does manifest itself,’ he predicted concerning full-blown modernity, ‘it can only be for a free man and by virtue of his autonomy’,⁷ for ‘he that feels free lets his beliefs fluctuate, regardless of any clearly defined dogma […] in accordance with an unfettered faith, which escapes any specific definition, which remains unattached whilst retaining the sense of the absolute and seriousness, along with their strong vitality’; ‘a faith,’ he adds, which still has not ‘found any resonance with the masses’ and is despised by the representatives of the official, dogmatic and doctrinaire creeds. ‘It is likely, therefore, that the Bible religion will revive and undergo modifications’,⁸ and this will emphasise the will to be free; indeed, Jaspers’ definition fits rather well with contemporary views on individualization. Jaspers himself, moreover, exemplifies radical demythization: he believed neither in divine revelations nor in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, whom he considered only to be a spiritual genius. He was convinced, however, that there was a transcendent dimension in man to be found within the self, and expressed especially through the value attributed to life and effort after achievement. He thus singled out two further possible characteristics of religion in modernity, especially in new forms: uniqueness and worldliness.

Kitagawa emphasises three interrelated characteristic traits - man as the centre, this-worldly soteriology and the search for freedom - which resemble those identified by Jasper. He points out in particular ‘that all classical religions tended to take negative attitudes toward phenomenal existence and recognized another realm of reality’ which was more important, and that ‘in this life, man was thought to be a sojourner or prisoner’ yearning for the heaven or nirvana that would release him from suffering, sin, imperfection, finitude.

A radical change has taken place in this respect in the thinking of modern people, in that they no longer take seriously the existence of another realm of reality. To be sure, they still use such expressions as paradise, Pure Land, Nirvana and the Kingdom of God. These terms have only symbolic meaning for the modern mentality [for which] this phenomenal world is the only real order of existence, and life here and now is the center of the world of meaning.⁹

Kitagawa describes ‘the single cosmos of the modern man’ which compels religions ‘to find the meaning of human destiny in this world - in culture, society and human personality […] in order to fulfill the human vocation’¹⁰ (citing examples like Gandhi), and of a soteriology centred on this world within each religion.

According to Bellah,

the central feature of the change is the collapse of the dualism that was so crucial to all the historic religions […] There is simply no room for a hierarchic dualistic religious symbol system of the classical historic type. This is not to be interpreted as a return to primitive monism: it is not that a single world has replaced a double one but that an infinitely multiplex one has replaced the simple duplex structure.¹¹ (emphasis added)

Bellah continues:

Behind the 96 per cent of Americans who claim to believe in God, there are many instances of a massive reinterpretation that leaves Tillich, Bultman and Bonhoeffer far behind […] the dualistic worldview certainly persists in the mind of many of the devout, but just as surely many others have developed elaborate and often pseudo-scientific rationalization to bring their faith in its experienced validity into some kind of cognitive harmony with the twentieth-century world.¹²

This is due, he explains, to science and individualization, which reduce the distance between the human and the divine, the laity and the clergy. His emphasis on individualization is reminiscent of Jaspers: ‘the symbolization of man’s relation to the ultimate conditions of his existence is no longer the monopoly of any groups explicitly labelled religious’;¹³ ‘now less than ever can man’s search for meaning be confined to the church’;¹⁴ ‘one might almost be tempted to see in Thomas Paine’s ‘My mind is my church’ or in Thomas Jefferson’s ‘I am a sect myself the typical expression of religious organisation in the near future’;¹⁵ ‘each individual must work out his own ultimate solutions and the most the church can do is provide him a favourable environment for doing so, without imposing on him a prefabricated set of answers’,¹⁶ knowing that he will have an ‘open and flexible pattern of membership’. ‘Not only had any obligation of doctrinal othodoxy been abandoned by the leading edge of modern culture, but every fixed position had become open to question in the process of making sense out of man and his situation’,¹⁷ for ‘culture and personality themselves have become to be viewed as endlessly revisable’. Hence we can speak of flexibility and revisability. Bellah observes, moreover, that ‘the search for adequate standards of action, which is at the same time a search for personal maturity and social relevance, is in itself the heart of the modern quest for salvation’,¹⁸ which again relates to earthly fufilment.

Nakamura’s analysis of ‘modern religious attitudes’ examines the features that we have already met, except the collapse of dualism. It also explores humanism more deeply and develops new aspects: pluralism, the movement toward equality, approach to the masses, which echoes Jaspers’ emergence of the masses.¹⁹ In what Nakamura calls the ‘denunciation of religious formalism and stress on inner devotion’ - a pure heart, pure mind, pure faith, with anti-ritualistic and anti-magic emphases - we recognize the Reformation, but he also stresses the typically modern search for authenticity, which can accordingly be added to the picture. He refers to this-wo...