I was reflecting on the fate of the New Age spirituality, which began in the late seventies but hit public consciousness from the middling 1980s.
There was a tremendous growth in this (loose) "movement" - involving huge numbers of people thousands of whom were professionals (made a living from it), thousands of book titles - with sections in mainstream bookshops and multiple specialized bookshops, a huge expansion of participation in workshops, conferences, residential weekends, pilgrimages and the like.
It seemed to most people at the time that this was evidence of an on-going mass spiritual transformation: which would lead to a much more spiritual and personal; less materialistic and bureaucratic world.
And yet here we are.
Masses of people spend many hours per day interacting with the internet and social media.
A world where small scale institutions are subordinated or co-opted into assimilated to the agenda of globalist or multi-national institutions; a world where all the crafts, guilds or professions of 1980 are now either destroyed or assimilated to a depersonalized (increasingly computer-mediated) totalitarian bureaucracy.
What we got instead of spiritual transformation was spiritually-themed fandom - which is simply a component part of The System: an aspect of the Leisure Industry.
And almost exactly the same has happened to the churches.
Whatever hopes may have been cherished for a positively-transformative religious revival, a church-based Christian revival; have devolved into merely religious themed-fandom.
To be a "devout" Christian church person is nowadays a part of the leisure industry, and implicitly regarded as such as was evident in 2020 when the churches formally acknowledged themselves to be (unlike gardening shops, for example) a part of the non-essential economy - and therefore collaborated eagerly in their own closure.
The churches offer a variety of leisure time and sociable activities; and the really keen Christian will spend hours a day getting updates and inspiring quotes from social media, reading and commenting on social media and (if serious Christians) various essays and blogs - and during their holidays can make pilgrimages, and post photos of their devotion onto their favoured media.
Really serious Christians can be internet "creators": generating their own visual and audio material to stimulate others - ad perhaps gathering a bit of extra income from running advertisements, getting sponsorship, amassing a band of admiring virtual-Patrons, or facilitating drive-by consumers to but them a virtual "cup of coffee".
Christian church activity is nowadays just like any other Leisure activity - except that it "about" Christianity, has a Christina-themed content - instead of being about movies, popular TV series, bestsellers, celebrities or sports stars.
Such activity is precisely analogous to, no deeper than, no more religiously significant than, any of the many other fandoms of sports, franchise products, hobbies and pastimes; special interest groups and charities; with which the mass/social media abounds.
As with New Age - this kind of religious "growth" may be enjoyable; but it has demonstrably-feeble religious depth or motivational power; because the whole activity is encapsulated within the ruling mainstream totalitarian and materialist ideology.
Christian churches here-and-now are just a subtype of System-assimilated fandom - and have no more spiritual significance than any other such.
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