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THE NEW SPIRITUALISM

New Age

In 1981 pollster Daniel Yankelovich estimated that 80 percent of Americans were affected, either strongly or marginally, by some form of spiritualism and the ethos of self-help and fulfillment. Ten years later a survey commissioned by the City University of New York to gather data on American religious beliefs and attitudes found only 28,000 Americans willing to identify themselves with significant aspects of New Age spiritualism. These statistics, which forecast the apparent demise of the New Age spiritualist movement in the United States, did not tell the full story. One indication that spiritualism continued to thrive in the United States during the 1990s was the market, numbering in the millions, for New Age books, audiotapes, and videos. The number of New Age book-stores in the United States during the 1990s exceeded five thousand. According to David S. Toolan, S. J., the "crystal gazers and psychic channelers are the lunatic fringe" of the spiritualist movement. Most 1990s New Agers, Toolan argued, although more liminal than most Americans, share with many of their middle-class brethren a sense that the 'American Dream" had broken down and that economic, social, political, educational, and ecclesiastical institutions no longer functioned well. For New Agers, modern life is superficial, hollow, and meaningless. Yet, they have not responded to the crisis of American civilization by embracing conservatism, nostalgia, or despair. On the contrary, the spiritualist movement became aggressively millennialist and messianic. Spiritualists welcomed the death of the old America as the necessary, if painful, prelude to a major cultural realignment that would produce a paradigm shift in medicine, psychology, science, politics, business, education, and religion. These changes, asserted spiritualists, would not lead to the mending but the remaking of American society. New Age spiritualism is "certainly the culmination of the 1960s generation coming to power in America," explained Gene Taback, president of Bookpeople, one of the largest distributors of New Age literature. There is also a strong link between the New Age spiritualism of the 1990s and the drug culture of the 1960s. "A lot of people got their starts in the 1960s running head shops selling the tremendous number of products for consumption of recreational drugs," Tabak explained. "The 1960s set transcendence as an individual quest rather than as a traditional religious quest. But the idea of pharmacological transcendence has turned into a transcendence with more spiritual overtones and become New Age in the 1990s." Curiously, given their origins, New Agers may be reactionaries of a sort, the only Americans still left who wholeheartedly subscribe to the historic mission of the nation to create a novus ordo saeculorum (new sacred order)—a city upon a hill.

Spirituality in the Workplace

Increasingly during the 1990s the phenomenon of "corporate spiritualism" came to be introduced as a means of motivating employees by emphasizing their individual autonomy and responsibility. Indebted to the New Age movement, the advocates of corporate spiritualism have posited that human beings are not victims or pawns, and are thus not limited by conditions or conditioning. They are independent agents, and their success or failure depends solely on individual imagination and initiative. Neither organizational nor institutional factors ought to hinder personal achievement, productivity, or fulfillment. Corporate spirituality, experts contended, can enhance workers' "intuition," "energy," and "commitment." In Awakening Corporate Soul: Four Paths to Unleash the Power of People at Work (1998), Eric Klein and John B. Izzo argued that such "life forces" bring "the deepest and most dynamic energies into work.… Corporate Soul is the expression of this primary life-giving energy in work and the workplace. When Corporate Soul is awake, work flourishes, overflows, and manifests as productivity, creativity, innovation, and inspiration." Thus, it followed, that the corporation provided individuals with a medium through which to satisfy their needs and realize their goals, ideally forming an alternate community and family. With enthusiasm and even love directed toward work, employees theoretically were supposed to transform what was once a chore into a tool to develop, nourish, and enrich their lives. Workers, maintained Klein and Izzo, must "accept primary responsibility for [their] sense of fulfillment," even if the conditions under which they labor prove less than satisfactory. Therefore, an employee ought to be willing to adjust to the needs of the corporation, to make personal sacrifices, and to work harder not because "I have to but because this job is the place were [sic] I become more myself." In an effort to cement the link between employee self-fulfillment, job performance, and corporate profits, spiritual "inner-renewal" training programs gained momentum throughout the 1990s. A clear indication of the growing popularity of corporate spiritualism was the combined $30 billion that American companies spent during the decade to promote it among their employees. The advocates of New Age corporate spiritualism thereby sought to foster employees' identification with a "spiritualized corporate image," making work the means of "self-actualization" and "self-fulfillment."

Evangelical Capitalism

Although a heterogenous group, evangelical Christians have shared a commitment to fashioning a social order grounded in the free enterprise system and the nuclear family and the elimination of government-sponsored welfare programs perceived to foster dependency on the state, undermine the family, alter traditional gender roles, and promote moral decay. Ultimately, this Christian society is anchored in the reconstruction of an idealized America that would promote devotion to family, patriotism, hard work, individual freedom, responsibility, and morality. In a sense, it can be argued that evangelicals have Christianized the self-help movement. During the 1990s evangelical Christians worked toward achieving their social vision not only through political action and religious conversion, but through business and commerce as well. They asserted an intimate connection between America, capitalism, and Christianity. Christian capitalists believed that religion not only belonged in the workplace but that it was essential to economic success. As a class, the Christian capitalists of the 1990s were primarily managers, professionals, and the owners of small businesses. They were mostly male, predominantly southern, and overwhelmingly members of nondenominational Protestant churches. Evangelical executives tended to regard themselves as spiritual and economic leaders, engaged in a covenant with God and a custodial relationship with their families, their employees, and their customers. Jesus, for many of them, was the ultimate CEO. According to Laurie Beth Jones's popular manual Jesus, CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership (1995), Christ adhered to all the basic precepts of effective organizational management: "Jesus regularly visualized the success of his efforts." "Jesus kept in constant contact with his boss." "Jesus knew his mission statement, and he did not deviate from it." Increasingly influential, Christian capitalists during the 1990s were determined to make their mark on American society. "Support of Christian businesses is one area where we can [regain control of] our culture and politics is another," asserted Bob Reese, vice president of Flowdata, a Dallas company that manufactures industrial meters. Many Christian capitalists, such as Norm Miller, chairman of Interstate Batteries, thus used a portion of their profits to finance conservative political causes. Miller, for example, donated large sums to the Free Market Foundation, which helps voters in Texas identify socially conservative political candidates. Some Christian capitalists have given money directly to the Republican Party, while others, such as S. Truett Cathy, CEO of Chick-Fil-A fast-food restaurants, have funded local or regional social-welfare programs. Such stewardship was among the most important responsibilities of successful Christian capitalists. "When one of your restaurant operators is sitting on a $500,000 investment and not doing anything with it," Cathy insists, "he is not being a steward of the Lord." Throughout the 1990s the economic and political power of conservative Christian capitalists and Christian groups continued to grow. These entrepreneurs and organizations clearly wanted to exercise greater influence on how the nation conducted business, promoting both individually responsible spiritual lives and a socially responsible economic system. "For too long," declared Republican strategist William Bennett, "religious conservatives have been ignored, and now they are trying to take back their institutions one by one."