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The significance of this for understanding the crystallization of New Age thought into Neopaganism will be discussed later. What must be recognized now is that if evangelicals have fundamentally misunderstood New Age thinking they will be unprepared for its latest manifestation.

This critical assessment is supported by Michael York's analysis of survey evidence in his excellent book, The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements, (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995). Although York is the first to admit that interpreting the data is difficult, it becomes quite clear that when a wide range of surveys from Britain and North American are examined, New Age believers do not believe many of the things most evangelical writers claim they believe.For example, one survey found that only 58 percent of the respondents rejected the biblical concept of God. Similarly, although "between one-quarter and one-third of" respondents in eleven out of twelve major surveys held that "God is an impersonal force," many others were less certain about the nature of God, while a significant minority, again about one-third, believed in God as a personal being. Clearly, the assumption of a monolithic monistic-pantheism simply does not stand up in the face of empirical evidence.

Another important research finding is that Neopagan beliefs coexist with and grow out of the ethos of the New Age. Of course, as York painstakingly explains, there are differences. Thus, criticisms and tension sometimes exists between representatives of both movements. But at their cores, the ethos of these broadly based manifestations of a new spirituality overlap. This is because they share common historical roots.

Paul Heelas's The New Age Movement (Blackwell, 1996) is a well-researched, academic, yet readable, book that provides insightful descriptions of the New Age in contemporary Britain. It also has some useful comments on North America and other countries where New Age beliefs are popular. Once again this book is firmly grounded in empirical research, including participant observation and survey research.

The book suffers from its relative neglect of the historical dimensions of New Age ideas and the author's failure to provide biographical information about key figures in the movement. Nevertheless, Heelas presents a detailed analysis of the New Age, showing that while it centers on the "inner life," the belief system is varied and complex. A particularly useful section of this book is Heelas's attempt to assess the numerical strength of the New Age movement and its "diffusion through culture" in various countries. Essentially uncritical, Heelas writes from the perspective of a Religious Studies professor deeply committed to the idea of empathic understanding.

Whatever the weaknesses of Heelas's empathic approach, they are not evident in M.D. Faber's New Age Thinking: A Psychoanalytic Critique (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1996). Here no attempt is made to enter the mindset of believers or share their spiritual vision. Instead Faber presents devastating criticisms which scrutinize the New Age and many ideas associated with contemporary paganism from a medical perspective. In his view these belief are "essentially regressive or infantile in nature." They "make war on reality" and disparage "reason" with politically threatening consequences.

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December (Web-only) 1999, Vol. 43