Nov

Spirituality, the New Religion:Are Americans beginning to choose liberation over salvation

Spirituality has gripped the American public around the throat over the last three decades. What started as a movement of enlightenment in the late 1960s, with the Beatles visiting the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, has gradually gathered moss among new age philosophers and recently mainstream Americana. With devout American church-goers aging, the Generation X and Millennial demographic are leaving pews empty, according to some Christian leaders.

The majority of our church-goers, other than nondenominational new churches, are aging,” says Craig Miller, director of New Congregational Development for UMC. “We just had a study out showing that 60 percent of our membership is over the age of 60. It also applies to many other denominations. They have been the mainstay of many churches across the country.

The Generation X and Millennial Americans witnessed the inception of the home computer, video games and the internet, while the younger made them an extension of their bodies. They multitask, walk, talk, listen, type and text their way through life. A generation so inundated with technology is seeking liberation from their daily lives. Are Americans ages 18 to 45 years beginning to seek liberation over salvation?

The three major religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, are centered on salvation. Devout followers seek salvation through worship and submission to God or Allah. Some hurdles younger generations have regarding salvation are the unclear notions of it. Professor Arland Hultgren recently stated, “Salvation depends totally on what one has done. And so the author of the Epistle of James wrote: “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” It’s this type of uncertainty, or vague clarification, that causes young Americans to ask the question – why worship? If people live a fruitful, noble, productive life is that not good enough in the eyes of God?

Another point of view is to seek salvation in other religions based upon liberation. Religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism are all centered on liberation. Liberating you soul, or essence, is the ultimate goal. In Hinduism liberation is called moksha, in Buddhism its called enlightenment, and in Taoism it’s called “the way.” The way to liberating oneself is through meditation and reflecting within for answers, opposed to seeking forgiveness as with the biblical and Islamic religions.

Recently, theologians have investigated the “liberating” religions and attempted to link their liberating path to the soteriological, salvation, way of Christianity. Dr. Kristin Johnston Largen wrote:

I find it of no small importance that in all three religions there is an understanding of a positive connection between the deity and the believer, an efficacious relationship that has the ability to further the devotee along the soteriological path. While I certainly would not go so far as to say that it is the same deity at work in all three cases, it does raise the possibility for Christians that the Holy Spirit is in some form present and working in non-Christian religions, in ways that perhaps we cannot fully understand or appreciate, leading those faithful disciples to a salvific goal that remains a mystery to Christians.

It’s seemingly impossible, for most people to believe, that salvation based beliefs such as Christianity, and Hinduism, a liberating religion, are fundamentally the same religion; theologians are beginning to become aware, and acknowledge, there is more than one path for which we seek.

If every religion, including liberation based religions, could be linked to salvation, is there a theoretical possibility that liberation and salvation are the exact same pursuit? Atheists would deny any linkage in their beliefs, or lack thereof, to a deity. Some Atheists contemplate their existence with a quote made famous by the father of western philosophy, Rene Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.” Some new-age Atheists are seeking salvation and enlightenment through meditation. Steven Antinoff, author of Spiritual Atheism, writes: “spiritual atheism begins with three realizations: that our experience of ourselves and our world leaves us ultimately dissatisfied, that our dissatisfaction is intolerable and so must be broken through, and that there is no God.”

If Atheists are meditating and seeking salvation, and theologians are looking to liberating religions for underlying connections to salvation based beliefs, than is everyone seeking salvation and liberation, just in a different way?

Antinoff goes on in his article on Atheism to comment, “The most common way of contending with the intrinsic disquiet of being an “I” is to evade it.” Americans are no longer evading themselves. Either through salvation or liberation, Americans ages 18 to 45 are seeking out ways to quiet their minds and find inner peace. What proved to be true in Descartes days over four hundred years ago is true in our modern 21^st century society. Whether an Atheist seeks to quiet their mind through meditation or a Muslim prays to Allah (God), we are all followers of consequentialism. Americans are seeking liberation and salvation, the end result is the same, it just the means that differs.