The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition

The Making of the New Spirituality is an informative survey of western religious ideas and how they have evolved over the past few centuries. It is also a rather sad survey in that it chronicles a steady erosion of what the author calls the "Revealed Word" view (essentially Christian orthodoxy) as various new notions of spirituality have overtaken that view and in some instances crept into the church. The author did a huge amount of research to pull together all of the ideas and information contained in the book. As I read, I had several recurring thoughts: First, I was struck by how many proponents of the various new views rejected the Revealed Word view on the basis of reason, modern criticism, science, etc., and then set up in its place something less scientific, less reasonable, more subjective, more mystical, more speculative, etc. The inconsistency was often glaring. Second, I was struck by the vehemence of the opposition to the Revealed Word view and the apparent readiness of the masses to cast off that view and adopt other views. I've wondered a lot about the causes of this vehemence. The possibilities, some of which the author himself raises, include: the appeal of novelty; the appeal of intellectual or spiritual fads; a desire to believe in the innate goodness and progress of mankind; resentment of Christianity's truth claims; a desire to shed moral absolutes; a "burned over," spiritually weary mindset that existed in some places; and the manner in which the church conducted herself and represented (or misrepresented) Christ. Third, I found myself wondering whether anyone in the church was effectively replying to the various new notions of spirituality and religious truth. I kept wanting to hear the Christian response -- either then or now. In this regard the last chapter of the book, which points out the deficiencies of the various new spiritualities as compared to the Revealed Word view, was a welcome ending.

The book presents a concise historical and theological review of the new spirituality, what we used to call the New Age movement. He reveals its roots in ancient pagan religions as well as in Gnosticism. What I found out supports my own experiences. Many aspects of Gnosticism have infiltrated the evangelical church in the quest for spiritual meditation, spiritual experience, and true worship. Herrick is to be commended for his work, though I would agree with one reviewer that his writing tends to be a bit difficult to get through. Despite that I would recommend all pastors to read this to develop their spiritual discernment. Our congregants are being swayed by the media in more ways than we think.

Herrick's work is a wonderful intellectual history tracking the general religious shift from what might be recognized as the Judeo-Christian tradition (what the author calls the Revealed Word tradition) to one marked by religious pluralism, pantheism, Gnosticism, and several other trends. He not only lays out the influential sources in this shift in a convincing and easy to understand manner, but he engages what he labels the New Religious Synthesis from the Revealed Word tradition. Anyone who finds the current religious milieu in the Western world interesting, or anyone who would like a serious work on the current state of affairs in our religious culture would find this a thoroughly researched and well-argued book.

The research that went into this book is impressive. There really is a lot of sound, historical meat. My only beef is with the quality of the writing itself. The way the author constantly includes hand-tipping phrases like "In the next chapter we are going to be looking at..." is not state-of-the-art writing. I teach my high school students to avoid references to yourself, and to avoid telling the reader what you're about to tell him, because it gets in the way of the actual ideas presented in the writing. Just say it. Just write it.Francis Schaeffer didn't tell you what he was going to tell you; Francis Schaeffer just told you. Francis Schaeffer didn't need summary conclusions at the end of every chapter, too.I also wish the author would've expressed more of his contrary, biblically held opinions (without referring to himself) alongside the nefarious gnostic opinions he writes about. A non-believer could go some way through parts of this book without being apprised that these gnostic beliefs were/are actually mistaken.All that said, taken as a whole and as a piece of research, the book is nearly impeccable. Well worth reading.P.S. I got this from my pastor at my church, and some of my fellow parishioners actually apparently know the author. They tell me he is amazingly intelligent. I believe them. There is a LOT of knowledge packed in this book.

A fine book. While the them of this work contrasts "Revealed Word" religion with the "New Spirituality" rather than just focusing on Christian (revealed word) perspectives, Herrick expands his investigation of New Age to throughly trawl our society's quest for transcendence. This work has acted to focus many threads of thought I have suspected for a while, particularly the popularity of Eastern mysticism and the quasi-mystical language of pop-science, as is the case with Carl Sagan and Dick Dawkins. Furthermore, it is rather serious in it's exposition of the background spirituality of many famous "secular" thinkers of the 18-20th centuries. It turns out many of these paragons of logic were as mired in "irrational" behaviour as the proles they scorned.