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The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview: Conflict and Dialogue. By John P. Newport. Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1998. xv + 614 pp. $35.00 (paper).
The Way of the (Modern) World. Or, Why it's Tempting to Live as if God Doesn't Exist. By Craig M. Gay. Foreword by J.1. Packer. Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1998. xii + 338 pp. $22.00 (paper).
John Newport has done for all Christian people an enormous service by writing a massive yet very readable survey of New Age movements in this country. In fact, the everyday reader will be amazed by the sheer number of New Age groups that have come to permeate our culture and by the depth of their penetration.
Retired from Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Professor Newport has made his study of the New Age a life's work. We are the beneficiaries. Beginning with a profile of leading New Age ideas, the author goes on to describe with objectivity and abundant, fascinating information the range of New Age teachers and organizations that now contribute to almost every facet of thought. He covers channeling in its many forms, ecology and the New Age, health issues and the New Age, business and the New Age, also education, science, the arts, academic scholarship and finally modern Satanism! Newport's personal knowledge and experience of these movements from the 1950s to the 1990s is astonishing. I became glued to the page and actually had to read the whole long thing without skimming.
A strong unity of ideas characterizes the New Age: "All is One" or Monism, Everything is God (Pantheism), and God is within You (pp. 3-5). Reincarnation and Karma, together with the mandate to...