Today, spiritual leaders find themselves in the midst of major political shifts, taking the initiative from secular activists. Armed with the concept of postsecularism, theologians are boldly wresting the flock from the decrepit postmodern. Quasi-religious artistic actions and their implications are discussed all over the world, penetrating unexpectedly into pop culture. Religion excites modernity, and this is a paradoxical reality for those whose picture of the world is shaped by an advanced, mostly atheist, agenda.
The major sources of the spiritual today are still the great world religions. Their influence is enormous, but no longer so undeniable. Technical and social progress has been harder than others and is gradually leading them to the abyss of choice: transformation or disintegration. On this path to the future, the religious is atomized and embodied in other, smaller and more malleable forms. Over the past half-century a great variety of movements have emerged that take advantage of the challenges of the new everyday that have not been processed in any way by the unwieldy churches of the past. Here, in metaphysical field laboratories in the backwaters of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, the gods of the new age are being synthesized. To comprehend the religious consciousness of the future, we must understand what it is dreaming of and where it is going today.
Toward the new.
Of all the new religions, heresies are the easiest to spot. The intricate offshoots of the dominant faiths have always been there, and modernity is not surprised by them. Today their number is innumerable, but we are interested in those who try to incorporate pressing issues into their preaching. The former, such as the sharply conservative Christian and Islamic groups that have multiplied in recent years, have a negative perception of social change and seek to roll back social change to a time when, for example, abortion was considered an obvious murder and same-sex sexual relations were considered a crime. Understanding to the contrary are organizations like the Episcopal Church, which in the twenty-first century practices ordination of women and, in test mode, homosexuals. American priest Matthew Fox perfectly illustrates the dream of the “new,” trying to preserve the gospel for a world where no one cares about your sexuality and gender identity. As a theologian of the new Christian spirituality, Fox establishes a dialogue between the church and the progressive public. His arsenal includes unexpected Mass raves and 95 theses of the new spirituality, nailed to the doors of Castle Church with deliberate cinematography, as Martin Luther once did.
Toward death.
We should not forget, however, that heresies and religious consciousness can be extremely destructive. Over the past half-century totalitarian and apocalyptic cults have become a favorite subject of mass media attention, manifesting the inherent nature of spiritual madness. Although such sects have always existed, after surviving the horrors of the twentieth century they deliberately exploit the believer’s fear of a complex world and the temptation to find themselves at the final point of the religious narrative, at the end of time, when the appearance of God will be inevitable and obvious. The Branch of David, Aum Sinrique, Jim Jones’ Apostolic Socialism, and dozens of other infamous sects fall into this category, exposing the futile but recurring human interest in self-destruction.
Toward unity and tolerance
In addition to adapting to the obvious social shifts of modernity, large religious movements are working hard to create alternative projects of reality. One of these is universal unity, a dream of a world of cosmopolitanism that duplicates civilizational initiatives of international institutionalization and basic messianic values. We are talking about so-called syncretic religions, the number of which also counts in the hundreds and takes bizarre, sometimes monstrous forms. But the most consistent ones are already an impressive spectacle, with millions of followers scattered around the world with an enormous appetite for absorbing more traditional flocks. This is roughly how Baha’ism functions, whose precepts demand first and foremost the irrefutable unity of all the world’s major religions and acknowledge to each of its members an independent search for truth.
Toward Simplification.
The pursuit of unity reveals not only the positive and constructive spirit of future religious consciousness, but also speaks to an apparent simplification of views. For thousands of years, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism have honed philosophies and practices, forming complex, contradictory, yet rich spiritual systems whose mastery required a lifelong commitment. For members of different cultures, mutual engagement with these systems was not possible at all. But in our time this process has reversed. Zen Buddhism, yoga, transcendental meditation and tantrism have poured from the East to the West. Eclectic and syncretic cults enchanted consumer society with their simplicity and accessibility and gave birth to new-age mutants in their brew, mixing in their genes of everything from ancient shamans to Kabbalah. In the East, Westernization has given rise to bizarre forms of Christianity like the Moon’s Unification Church or unusual movements like the swastika-armed Falun Gong, proving that the trend toward simplistic engagement is now present in all contemporary forms of religious consciousness regardless of mentality.
Toward pseudoscience.
In the nineteenth century, a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of electricity led to the emergence of spiritualism. Such a tradition has not gone anywhere and has become entrenched in religious consciousness. The superficial perception of science began to lead in the direction of the metaphysical and the emergence of techno-myths, nlo-religions and schools of pseudo-psychology. People already brought up on a scientific picture of the world still want to find an outlet for their spiritual energy and notice God in the supernatural, in alien civilizations, while not denying the material basis of the universe. For example, Raelites defend the values of the sexual revolution, the development of scientific progress, the absence of God as such, but they themselves believe in supercivilization, recognizing in themselves the need to meet and dissolve into the higher and inaccessible. By flirting with psychology and science, Scientologists assert their intellectual origins in Dianetics, but instantly lose them as soon as they discover the vivid cosmic opera in which their world is immersed. Such movements resemble in their inner logic the cargocults of self-worshippers, but they also obviously register a thirst for the religious in those who are perfectly aware of the theories of evolution and the big bang.
Toward ecology.
The next step of religious consciousness was the return of interest in the external environment. As evidenced by the revival of ancient pagan cults and the popularity of the myth of natural balance. Every known folk tradition of the past has gone from sleep and been embodied in the practices of grateful descendants, who without any problem have connected in their souls the presence of cellular communication and deification of the ancient forces of nature. Urbanization, global warming and ecological disasters awaken in them not only an interest in political activism, but also a longing for the transcendent. The growing gap between the natural and the technological only strengthens this trait and pushes especially sensitive to nature people not only to geographical but also spiritual escapism.
Toward mysticism.
In addition to simplistic systems and flying saucers, the information society of the last fifty years has revived a mystical consciousness. The victorious march of virtual everything, from economics to sex, could not fail to revive the dormant occult powers driven deep underground by world religions. Modern man’s interest in magic and the occult has increased dramatically, which in no way contradicts the observed triumph of the symbolic in the world. Modern tricksters use this hedonistic and aesthetically appealing side of religious consciousness with pleasure, degenerating into psychics, channeling, tarot casting, sorcery and other conscious charlatanism, and gradually building a road to deification of illusions.
Toward antireligiosity.
Religious consciousness today is also paradoxically used to expose the apparent contradictions between itself and the modern world. Parody religions such as the flying macaroni monster, the invisible pink unicorn, the sensible fall, the church of the underdog, combined with pop-culture mockery such as Jediism and the cult of the Big Lebowski invite people to ironically interpret the inherent absurdity that is inherent in the entire spiritual sphere. This irony reads especially well when dealing with the rabid proponents of creationism and other pseudoscientific ideas posed as real alternatives to science. Similarly, only without much irony, movements like the Church of Euthanasia, Copism, or the well-known Church of Satan operate. These movements use the institutional nature of religion to solve problems in societies where spiritual enterprises are given not only ideological but also legal advantages over other forms of self-organization.
Toward Pragmatism.
If we set aside the maximum metaphysical and turn to the spiritual with an exemplary manager’s approach, functional practices emerge from religious consciousness that work as well as psychological and corporate training. The former organize movements like the Art of Living and are more akin to personal growth seminars. The latter, like Scientologists, deliberately use the work of psychological schools, sometimes mutating into business ventures like Zepter and Amway, whose commercial activities are based on quasi-religious ceremonial and motivational ecstatic sermons. This kind of attitude toward spiritual needs reinforces corporate culture and, despite its totalitarianism, turns a processed religious consciousness into an obvious managerial tool for the companies of the future.
Toward transgression.
Hardly identifiable movements like polygamous sects, rather like swinger parties with a light ritual atmosphere, or bloody spiritual leaders who gather people with manic tendencies around them, or racist organizations like the Church of the Creator, not only attract great public attention, but also point to the clear transgressive potential of religion. Without understanding how to sell their anti-social needs to society, these groups of people clothe their cravings in the form of a cult and justify themselves with the supernatural order of things. This loophole to absolute freedom through God is likely to remain reserved for the religious mind, and no amount of rational argument or obvious evidence will fundamentally prevent it.
If intuition does fail the apocalyptic cults, then all of the aforementioned directions will only thicken in the future. It is important to understand that the way forward here is not paved by ignorance or the evil design of a group of enterprising priests, but by a special perception of the world, developed and formed in the beat of civilization, which does not appeal to the logical answers of the external, scientific world, but listens to the familiar whisper of the inner. Called religious, such consciousness is able to work not only with the obvious task of overcoming the psychological corruptibility of existence, but also to solve other more mundane problems at the same time. Such a condition cannot be uprooted, as radical atheist propaganda wants it to be, nor can it be denied-even in the twenty-first century it manifests itself in an overwhelming majority of humanity and in amazing diversity. So the rational and productive position in the future will be one that learns to contact and work with religious consciousness, implying that it is indeed consciousness rather than a set of primitive delusions of collective insanity.