Perennial Philosophy
Contemporary sociologist Christopher Partridge observes: "the whole thrust of Enlightenment secularism ... has prepared the ground for spiritual and mystical religion." He sees secularism and pagan spirituality as kissing cousins -or, as progressive spiritualist would say, "Enlightenment ... is a necessary stage in the evolution of the human mind." Partridge notes that "we are witnessing a return to a form of magical culture, ... a significant religio-cultural shirt happening in the real world."
The great expert and proponent of interfaith, earth-worshipping religion, Huston Smith, says this as clearly as anyone else. Believing postmodernism to be provisional, only a stage in human development, he predicts that it is cause humanity to return to the Perennial Philosophy (see below); a coded term, used by a certain number of elite thinkers, for the age-old pagan belief in the divinity of the human-natural world. Perennialism has emerged aboveground. King Charles (when he was Prince Charles) is the Patron of the Temenos Academy, dedicated to the central ideas of the Perennial Philisophy. He declares: "Only this great Tradition, in its sacralization of Nature, will solve the envoromental crisis of the 21st century. In other words, he says only the pantheistic worship of Nature will save us. This coming from the one who is to have watch care over the Church of England.
Years ago, the Christian theologian Francis Schaeffer predicted the massive invasion of Eastern spirituality into the West. "Pantheism will be pressed as the only answer to ecological problems and will be one more influence in the West's becoming increasingly Eastern in its thinking;... the Eastern religions will be to Christianity a new, dangerous, Gnosticism." Which leads us to the next ism.
In spite of the political slogans of forward-looking hope and change, of beating back the forces of old-fashioned prejudice and tradition, many of the leading "progressive" foreces actually believe that the pagan past will save us. This postsecular mystical search for meaning in the nonrational is to be observed in the return to the modern world of the ancient religious system known as Gnosticism.
Before we move on:
- What is the Perennial Philosophy? How is it a form of pantheism? How might postmodernism be preparing the way for this philisophy?
- In what ways is pagansim seen as being a possible source of salvation? (it is not, only Christ is, but how might people see it as a source of salvation?)