Podcast: Another sexy version of the old New Age arrives, with the 'Secular Sabbath'

This podcast post really needs a soundtrack. So, please click on this Secular Sabbath video and leave it running. Then open the GetReligion post in a second browser window and start reading. This will help with the content — I promise.

This week’s “Crossroads” discussion (CLICK HERE to tune that in) focused on a timely, solid feature at The Free Press with this catchy headline: “Can You Find God in a Bikini?” The story was timely because, in many ways, this is a news story that has been with us for decades (if not for centuries, viewed from a theological, pre-electronic-trance-music point of view).

To understand my thinking here, it helps to follow a timeline linking a few books on this topic.

Let’s start here, with “Understanding the New Age,” which was researched in the late 1980s by the great religion-beat pro Russell Chandler. The key to this vague New Age thing, he said, is the movement’s “view of the nature of reality, which admits to no absolutes” and, thus, all “standards of morality” are “relative.”

In the mid-1990s, linked to another burst of New Age media buzz, I interviewed Chandler and the resulting “On Religion” column included this thesis:

A few years ago, most generic bookstores had a "New Age" section. Today, this is rare. But this doesn't mean that the wave of religious trends that crested in the 1980s simply vanished. Truth is, it soaked in.
"You don't see New Age shelves anymore because you can find New Age books in almost every part of the store," said Russell Chandler, an award-winning religion writer best known for his 18 years at the Los Angeles Times. "They're in the psychology section and over on the women's shelf. You'll find them under self-help, stress, holistic health and the environmental, too."
The day of New Age cover stories in news magazines may have passed, but that's beside the point. New Age faith, said Chandler, has "become so visible that it's now all but invisible."

Reading Chandler led me to New Age preachers such as Marianne Williamson (yes, she is seeking — again — the White House as a Democrat) and her bestselling book “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles.”

New-old habits of the postmodern heart: 'When people choose not to believe in God, they do not ... '

It is without a doubt the most famous quotation that journalist and Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton either (a) said, (b) never said, (c) might have said or (d) said in pieces that were latter assembled by someone else into one memorable thought.

I am referring to this statement: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

You can click here for a fascinating investigation into the origins of this statement. The bottom line: There are all kinds of Chesterton statements that may have evolved into this quote. I liked this part:

... Robin Rader of Zambia argued that the epigram can be found divided between two adjacent Father Brown stories:

It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense. [“The Oracle of the Dog” (1923)]

You hard-shelled materialists were all balanced on the very edge of belief -- of belief in almost anything. [“The Miracle of Moon Crescent” (1924)]

I bring this up because this famous Chesterton semi-quote offers a perfect summary of what I felt recently while walking the streets of Prague, thinking about some recent Pew Research Center survey work about religion in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Czech Republic in particular. That turned into my "On Religion" column this past week, which then served as the hook for this week's Crossroads podcast. Click here to tune that in.

But before we get to that, please do this for me. Read the Chesterton statements again and then read this headline from a recent "Gray Matter" essay in The New York Times: "Don’t Believe in God? Maybe You’ll Try U.F.O.s."

Interesting? Here is a key chunk of this fascinating piece: