Based on an interview with Andrew Gough
In studying the religion of popular culture, I am adopting the approach of an anthropologist who might seek to understand a Third World culture. If a missionary wants to work among a new people group, one of the necessary prerequisites is to find out the beliefs of that group. It is not until you know what they believe that you can find points of similarity between the gospel and what they believe, points that are radically opposed to the gospel, and other aspects of culture that are relevant to communicating the message of Christ. There is virtually no culture outside the West where missionaries do not make a determined effort to understand the religious belief systems of the people among whom they will work. The only place they don't do that is in the West where, unless people have a `named religion'(one that could be written on a form), it is assumed that they have no religion. I would dispute that. There are a whole range of religious commitments and beliefs among this group. Amongst them would be folk Christianity, nationalism, the worship of money, the occult (such as astrology and witchcraft), and a whole mish-mash of ideas. These belief systems comprise my area of study.
One of the problems I face is how to communicate these ideas to the academic community. I want to say, for example, that The Sun newspaper has a worldview and that that worldview is religious. One of the debates about `religion' concerns exactly what it is, and I am facing the problem that evolutionary concepts are still in place in the study of religions. Explicitly, they have gone. Fraser, who wrote The Golden Bough, and Tyler worked at the end of the Nineteenth Century and were very heavily influenced by evolutionary ideas. Their approach to religion continued within academic circles up to the Second World War. In simple terms, these scholars believed in an evolutionary development of religious beliefs: originating with animism, moving on to polytheism, progressing to monotheism, with modern liberal westernised humanist versions of Christianity at the pinnacle. Western people were seen as `advanced'; numerous tribal groups were studied as representing `primitive' religions. Now, this evolutionary school has been discarded in academic circles - it does not give a coherent picture. However, it is still in the background and, at a more popular level, people are still taking Fraser seriously!
Because evolutionary concepts are influential at the implicit level, many academics have mental blocks about my thesis. This is that when we look at British culture today, we are not seeing something radically different from totemism, animism and other forms of paganism. The academic view is dominated by a vaguely theistic humanism with loose roots in Christianity - which is regarded as the most advanced form of religion. This is what is on offer to the people of the West. Logically, according to their way of thinking, the people of the West should be moving in this direction. In fact, they are not! What we find is that as people leave the formal church structures - which is what ought to be happening as people realise that their beliefs in a `God out there' are outdated - they do not move into this beautiful abstract theistic humanism. Oh no! They actually go to paganism! This is where the crunch comes for these evolutionary humanists because what the ordinary people are doing is going back - not just one step - but right back to the bottom. The scholars have not come to terms with this! An analogy could be drawn with evolutionary biology: an advanced mammal evolves before your very eyes and becomes a dinosaur, or even a trilobite! It is nonsensical! It just does not make sense, and the academics refuse to see it. It challenges at a fundamental level something which is implicit in their thinking.
My academic research involves me looking at media influences going into society, analysing the ideas on offer and relating them to the beliefs of real people. I am seeking to establish this as a valid approach to the study of religious life in Britain. But further, as a Christian, I have a wider perspective. If you want to evangelise effectively, you had better know what the beliefs are of the people you are evangelising. This is part of becoming more effective as a communicator - to speak to the actual beliefs of those who hear.
One facet of contemporary British western society which is forcing a rethink in religious studies is New Age. This is the province of those who study what are usually referred to as New Religious Movements - what Christians call the cults. New Age however is not a `movement', it has no organisation nor a set of doctrines nor scriptures - how then do you study it? The only links are in the deepest levels of the underlying philosophy; but its surface manifestations cover an enormous range from chalk to cheese via coal! Old categories simply will not do in analysing this situation - it is also very difficult to deny the move towards paganism as much of it is explicit.
Much of New Age thinking is concerned with nature - Green issues are often linked with New Age religious commitments. Here, we have a lot of things which we can use to point people towards God and Christ. New Agers are also challenging scientism - and if you start debunking scientism, you are going to be less bothered about moving away from mainstream evolutionary thinking. Indeed, some New Agers are actually critical of Darwinian evolution, and we may find more common ground than we might have first thought. Scientists are, in their eyes, very human figures, often lacking wisdom. Sometimes they are seen as a disaster! They don't speak words of infallible truth; they speak words which, if you put them into practice, will potentially destroy the world. So whilst there are some positives in New Age, there is also a dangerous tightrope for us to walk! I am very much against the mentality which says `There is nothing in there I can use' and tries to proclaim an abstract gospel based on three spiritual laws or whatever. Such an approach has no hooks on the person's understanding and falls on deaf ears most of the time.
I think that the situation at the moment is possibly better than it has ever been for creationists speaking out - and having credibility. The scientist is becoming the bogey man - for instead of solving all our problems, we see him replacing one set of problems with another. So crises of famine and illness are replaced by the threat of nuclear war, acid rain, the destruction of the rainforests, the greenhouse effect, and so on. The scientists, who were supposed to be our saviours, have created a rather threatening society. Consequently. in the public eye, science has reached an extremely low ebb of confidence. Now, if we leave it to the New Agers to confront scientism, we have got problems. They will replace science with a weird pseudo-science. They use a lot of the language of science but go down some dangerous roads. Christians should not sit on the sidelines and let them do it; we have an enormous wealth of resources where we can not just debunk scientism, but provide a Christian worldview which will promote better science. We have a great opportunity!
Andrew Gough (1992)
