Re-enchantment: Why are young people getting back into the weird and the magical?

About this episode

The episode explores the trend of young people in Gen Z moving away from atheism towards spiritual practices and beliefs.

Surveys suggest growing numbers of younger adults in Gen Z refuse the label ‘atheist’ and instead consider themselves to be spiritual in some way, even if not religious in a conventional sense. Some commentators connect this with the increase in interest in everything from crystals, manifesting, mindfulness to astrology, witchcraft and reiki. Post-Enlightenment modernity was said to be ‘disenchanted’ and have lost touch with the magical, mystical and spiritual aspects of the universe) instead grounded in a purely physicalist and scientific view of reality). Are we now seeing the reverse of that trend, as post-modern Western culture becomes ‘re-enchanted’? And if so, is this good news for a church trying to reignite interest from irreligious post-Christians? Or should we as believers stand against this revival in pagan and New Age practices? • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism…

Topics covered

• spirituality
• modernity
• pagan practices
• New Age
• re-enchantment
• youth culture

Keywords

• spirituality
• Gen Z
• re-enchantment
• New Age
• paganism
• witchcraft
• mindfulness

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Matters of Life and Death, Premier Unbelievable?

Places: Gen Z

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