Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: This article describes how one of the most outstanding phenomena along the four last decades emerges and develops. It is a complete new form of spirituality, and inside this general tendency a spiritual trend named New Age. The analysis is principally focused on the United Sates, where it appears to be more strong. This new religiosity fills a vacuum derived from the crisis of two basic institutions of North America’s traditional society, family and religious congregations. Due to the great migratory flows inside this society –members of the family or entire families in search of better life conditions—these two institutions that once relayed on each other, began to fall apart and suffered dramatic changes. Without the guidance of these institutions, a lot of their members adopted libertinage as a way of life, and others began a serious search to find something to give meaning to their lives, specially by experimenting with different religious traditions that came from several parts of the world. Step by step, encouraged by a great publicity and editorial industry, alternative ways of practicing cults are created, that are different from established religions. The idea of choosing one’s own spirituality, many times leads to an eclectic mixture of religions and practices. Some of these fundamental beliefs are similar to Sufism, so a comparison is worthwhile. They are much more older beliefs that recover actuality, strengthened by personal experiences of contact with the sacred.
Source: Estudios de Asia y África
Author: Manuel Ruiz Figueroa
Institutions: Nihon University, El Colegio de México
Language: Spanish
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4383505802