So a University of Wisconsin Oshkosh professor of the history of religions considers the movement. It is a rebirth in chaotic form of an ethos that is reminiscent of the ancient world and the Renaissance which tends to be encapsulated under the rubric of modern gnosticism. He revels in the New Age paradox that draws in the liberal and the traditionalist, the individual and the community.
New age is destiny.
It is crucial. There's a drive to satisfy deep hunger for going beyond inherited religious concepts. Unfortunately one must be prepared for physical, mental and spiritual suffering in the interim. He considers the shift in contemporary religious thought in America as one in which ordinary people are in search of a new freedom to believe, to know and to understand. It holds the seeds of synthesis between science and religion.