ABSTRACT
In the closing decades of the last millennium in both Western Europe and the United States of America, there was a massive rise in interest in various forms of ‘non-orthodox’ spirituality such as Eastern faiths, non-conventional Christianity, and ‘New Age’ spiritualities. Within a decade, these ‘New Age’ activities moved from being a marginal ‘freak show’ to a mainstream activity, affecting many areas of popular culture. For example in the USA, the programme director of the ‘Whole Life Expo’, Timm Gunns, stated that
While sociological writers such as Finke and Stark (1988, p. 245) dismissed this phenomenon as ‘more of an amusement than a religion’, resulting from media hype and involving few followers, many Christian commentators expressed concern over these developments. Christianity Today went so far as to dub 1995 as ‘the Year of the Neo-Pagan’ (ibid.).
