Do ‘spiritual’ self-identifications signify affinity with New Age religion? Survey evidence from the Netherlands

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines nationally representative survey data from the Netherlands, collected in 2015 (N = 2,197) to study whether the ‘spiritual but not religious’ embrace New Age spirituality and reject traditional Christian religion, whereas the ‘both religious and spiritual’ adhere to traditional Christian religion and understand spirituality in a non-New Age fashion (spirituality in a Christian sense). Yet, we find just as much affinity with New Age spirituality among the ‘both religious and spiritual’ as among the ‘spiritual but not religious’. This is because the more liberal and progressive Christians in the former category embrace New Age spirituality, too, while their more conservative and traditional Christian counterparts in the ‘both religious and spiritual’ category rather dismiss it. Thus, both within Christian religion and beyond it, self-identification of ‘being spiritual’ has become a reliable shortcut to identify sympathy with what used to be called ‘New Age’ in the past.