Spiritual Emptiness

Since the 60’s there has been a flight of Westerners to eastern religions. Many have commented on the moral implications of this move, as Eastern thought begins to pervade our culture through books, movies, television, and music, but the cause of this change must be recognized if anything is to be done about it. For the past one hundred years Christianity as a general, public movement has ceased to meet the needs of the human soul. In many cases, Christian ministers and spokes-people do not even mention the soul, let alone describe its needs and its care. The New Age movement has stepped in to fill this void. And by all means, what it offers to modern humanity should not be ignored. But there is a question of its adequacy to the actual needs of the soul, and here traditional Christianity in its Classical, Monastic, and Protestant forms should be examined for a comparison.
There are some contemporary Christians who seek to remedy this admittedly undesirable condition. Most notably there is Richard Foster and his Renovare organization. But the currents behind this New Age soul movement are deep, and must be fully explored if there is to be any hope of restoration.
The main way we got into this situation is the rise of materialism in our Christian institutions. This movement began in the university, overturning Christ’s ethical and theological systems in the late 19th century. But it spread over the church through the education of ministers under the shadow of the university. The torrents of bitterness that it unleashed on the popular arena came through the literature movements during the 40’s and 50’s, and the musical movements (the Beatles, Bob Dylan) of the 1960’s. People found, in the 60’s especially, that the Eastern Religions had something to offer that could not be found in contemporary Christianity. Because the practice of Eastern religions often does not initially require acceptance of the ethical or ontological claims, people have been able to integrate it into their lives in positive ways, and the ultimate claims seep in later.
This blog has attempted to deal with the ethical and theological claims of Christianity which are under attack by both the materialistic and New Age movements. Perhaps it is time to present traditional Christian spirituality as it functioned until the mid 19th century.