Thinking allowed

spiritual hunger

In an art­icle ‘Spir­itu­al spend­ing’ costs women £670m a year in today’s Daily Tele­graph (free regis­tra­tion required, fake details okay!), a num­ber of ‘altern­at­ive’ forms of spir­itu­al­ity are lis­ted, includ­ing reflex­o­logy, acu­punc­ture, mas­sage, reiki, and so on. Appar­ently women are spend­ing a lot of time and money on these ‘to com­bat the stress of mod­ern life’. Chris­tian­ity and oth­er reli­gions don’t even get a mention.

As has been sug­ges­ted by oth­ers, there does seem to be a hun­ger for spir­itu­al­ity that the mod­ern world doesn’t oth­er­wise sup­ply. I won­der what it is that these new age tech­niques provide that is lack­ing in Chris­tian­ity? Or, con­trari­wise, what is it about Chris­tian­ity that is unwel­come? Com­mit­ment per­haps? An accom­pa­ny­ing social mes­sage? Or is it ‘post-imper­i­al­ism’ — Chris­tian­ity hav­ing ruled the roost in the west for so long, many people would rather look else­where, or per­haps don’t see any­thing par­tic­u­larly spir­itu­al about the faith­ful few at their loc­al church? Per­haps they want to asso­ci­ate with people of a sim­il­ar age and don’t find that (or think they won’t) at the church either?