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Erika Kirk says she 'forgives' Charlie's killer before Trump declares 'hate' for foes
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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So, its kinda complicated, but yes, generally, when middle aged or older American diehard Christians refer to New Age, they... basically are referring to anything that involves the word 'quantum' or 'yoga' or ...
You know what, maybe an easier way to explain this would be to say that almost anything on Gaia or GaiaTV or whatever its called... thats 'New Age' to them.
Anything involving a grander sort of... spiritual hierarchy to the world, that isn't directly from the Bible, anything with an 'Ascended Master' or involves a way of mediating your way into enlightenement, in a kind of systemitized and mystic way.
So... its not quite the same as your more tradtional bogey men of Satanism and Witchcraft. Neither of which most Christians actually understand correctly at all, but that doesnt matter to them, as these are all enemy groups that they rarely know anything at all about other than their own invented paranoid fears.
But, even this is... wiggly, diffuse, inexact.
With the rise of the internet.... a whole lot of younger people are basically melding their favorite notions from Christianity and New Age stuff into ... their own versions of what they call Christianity.
Like uh, when I was raised in the 90s, by fairly extreme Christians... the Zodiac was evil sorcery, horoscopes and tarot were signs you were a witch.
But now... its...not. With mainly the younger tiktok crowd of Christians. They have somehow worked this into their idea of Christianity.
Same with manifesting.
In my day, manifesting would have beem seen probably as New Age heresy, spiritual poisoning, presuming yourself more powerful than the will of God, you should be praying to God, not acting like you are God, etc.
But... now... there are tons of younger people who call themselves ardent Christians and who also earnestly believe in the idea of manifesting, manipulating reality via your internal will/intention alone.
Anyway, I blame Helena Blavatsky for all this, lol, I am fairly sure you can historically trace almost every New Age concept or teacher or way of thinking back to her, and Theosophy.
I think this kind of thing comes in waves. You had lots of little xtian denominations that had offshoots in the 60s and 70s (as I understand it) that incorporated things that originated in the "occult". This stuff was hardly new then, either, as you point out, with people like Blavatsky (and the Golden Dawn and Crowley and Steiner, etc). Prior to that bunch, you had spiritualists and Mormons. Before that, you had things like Rosicrucians and Freemasons and John Dee/Edward Kelly....
But it definitely had a revival (again) in the 60s and started to spread in the 70s and you had the inevitable reaction from the militant fundamentalist types, and it manifested in ways like the 80s Satanic Panic...I think when these people start talking a certain way about certain things/groups, using terms like "new age" (and more laughingly, misused terms like "pagan", or pronouncing other xtians members of a "cult"), I think it's partly out of a frustration that not enough people are leaping up to join them to fight against this incursion of what they think is spoiling their "pure" religion...
Yep, totally agree with all of that, no notes!