Dr. David A. Noebel, president of Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs, Colorado, has been involved in training students in Christian apologetics for more than 30 years. This article is taken from his book, Understanding the Times.

New Age proponents believe that truth resides within each individual and, therefore, no one can claim a corner on the truth or dictate truth to another. “The New Age,” explains Christian writer Johanna Michaelsen, “is the ultimate eclectic religion of self.”

In recent years, a fourth worldview has begun to gain visibility. Commonly referred to as the New Age movement, it is more accurately described by the term Cosmic Humanism. Because it is still in its formative stages and professes a marked disdain for dogma, this worldview is more vaguely defined than the other three. Indeed, some members of the New Age movement go so far as to claim that their worldview “has no religious doctrine or teachings of its own.”[1]

This attitude results from the New Age belief that truth resides within each individual and, therefore, no one can claim a corner on the truth or dictate truth to another. “The New Age,” explains Christian writer Johanna Michaelsen, “is the ultimate eclectic religion of self: Whatever you decide is right for you is what’s right, as long as you don’t get narrow-minded and exclusive about it.”[2]

By assuming that truth resides within each individual, however, one lays the cornerstone for a worldview. Granting oneself the power to discern all truth is a facet of theology, and this theology has ramifications that many members of the New Age movement have already discovered.

Some have grudgingly begun to consider their movement a worldview. Marilyn Ferguson, author of The Aquarian Conspiracy (a book referred to as “The New Age watershed classic”), says the movement ushers in a “new mind—the ascendance of a startling worldview.”[3] This worldview is summed up in its skeletal form, agreeable to virtually every Cosmic Humanist, by Jonathan Adolph:

“In its broadest sense, New Age thinking can be characterized as a form of utopianism, the desire to create a better society, a ‘New Age’ in which humanity lives in harmony with itself, nature, and the cosmos.”[4]

While the New Age movement still appears to be fragmented and without strong leadership, it has grown at a remarkable rate. The Stanford Research Institute estimates that “the number of New Agers in America could be as high as 5 to 10 percent of the population—12 million or more people.”[5] Others have put the figure as high as 60 million, although this includes people who merely believe in reincarnation and astrology. John Randolph Price, a world leader of the New Age movement, says, “there are more than half a billion New Age advocates on the planet at this time, working among various religious groups.”[6] Furthermore, people adhering to the Cosmic Humanist worldview are gaining power in our society and around the world. Malachi Martin lists dozens of organizations that are either New Age or New Age sympathetic. Barbara Marx Hubbard, a spokeswoman for the New Age, made a bid for the 1984 Democratic vice presidential nomination. Clearly, Cosmic Humanism is becoming a “fourth force” in the Western hemisphere.