Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 8, 1992 TAG: 9202080056
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
`NEW AGE' IDEAS CROSS BOUNDARIES OF THE MOVEMENT
A recent survey indicates that most Americans have never heard of the "New Age" movement - and that most of those who know about it disapprove.Why then, do many accept some of the best-known "New Age" ideas?
"There can be reasonable explanations for it," said sociologist Barry Kosmin, who directed a survey in the fall of 113,000 Americans about their religion, turning up hardly a trace of New Agers.
He said sometimes seemingly incompatible results can be due to an incongruous mix of elements.
For example, he said, suppose that a group with curious tenets also holds that the Earth is round; and if those disapproving the group are then asked if they consider the Earth round, they'll doubtlessly agree.
Such factors may have figured in a recent extensive survey by the Gallup organization about the so-called New Age movement, which has been the subject of numerous books and articles.
The movement is less a religion than a loose-knit array of beliefs, disseminated by some writer-advocates and entertainment figures such as Shirley MacLaine.
Some hefty criticism of it - and sometimes apprehensions about its impact - have come from biblical quarters, Jewish and Christian.
It is among the "most serious theological errors Christianity has ever faced," an "alternative world view," says Maurice Smith of the Southern Baptist Interfaith Witness department.
He says a New Age belief that "all is one," akin to Eastern religions, with everything from people to water to energy considered a unitary whole, leads to a view that everything, including each individual, is God.
"If I had to put my finger on one reason New Age is popular, it is the belief that you are God," Smith says, "and therefore can determine what is right and wrong. . . . New Age is the ultimate do-it-yourself religious system."
However, its grip is not as extensive as sometimes indicated. Gallup's survey of a nationwide representative sample of 2,045 adults found that only a fourth of Americans have ever heard of New Age.
Of the minority who have, only 18 percent have a favorable opinion, while 49 percent disapprove, the others undecided. Only 13 percent of the minority aware group think effects of New Age are good for society.
The findings, detailed in Emerging Trends, published by the Gallup organization's Princeton Religion Research Center, with an error possibility of plus or minus 3 percent, also bring out this odd quirk:
That while most Americans have never heard of New Age, and most of those who have hold an unfavorable view of it, a surprisingly high proportion accept many of its practices and beliefs.
The New Age movement stresses the paranormal, the harnessing of special mental powers, and also techniques such as presumably drawing energy from crystals and communicating with the dead, including messages "channeled" from dead sages.
Among some paranormal phenomena espoused by New Age, the survey found:
About half of Americans believe in extrasensory perception, the ability to perceive thoughts or feelings by means other than the five senses.
More than a third believe in mental telepathy through which people presumably can communicate their thoughts to others through pure mental energy.
A fourth believe in astrology - that affairs of their lives may be governed by movements of planets.
About a fifth say they have been in touch to varying degrees with the dead.
The survey found that most Americans, like New Agers, believe in life after death - 84 percent of Catholics and 74 of Protestants, and that about 45 percent of adults share New Age belief in psychic or spiritual healing.
But that and other parallels are because the views on life after death are not exclusive to New Agers.
On reincarnation, a belief New Age shares with Hinduism that lives are repeated in different bodies, Catholics (11 percent) were twice as likely as Protestants (5 percent) to believe in it.
Even on this matter, Kosmin, of the Graduate School of the City University of New York, points out some respondents might understand "reincarnation" simply to mean life in the hereafter. He said that could make the agreement with New Age thought appear larger than it actually is.
Clearly, the survey found that Americans overwhelmingly reject the New Age movement's more esoteric, distinctive features, such as deriving energy from crystal rocks.
Under 3 percent of adults think that's possible. Under 2 percent accept the New Age notion that long-dead sages can possess minds and bodies of present-day persons to "channel" messages.