American Decades
The New Spiritualism
New Age.
In 1981 pollster Daniel Yankelovich estimated that 80 percent of Americans were affected, either strongly or marginally, by some form of spiritualism and the ethos of self-help and fulfillment. Ten years later a survey commissioned by the City University of New York to gather data on American religious beliefs and attitudes found only 28,000 Americans willing to identify themselves with significant aspects of New Age spiritualism. These statistics, which forecast the apparent demise of the New Age spiritualist movement in the United States, did not tell the full story. One indication that spiritualism continued to thrive in the United States during the 1990s was the market, numbering in the millions, for New Age books, audiotapes, and videos. The number of New Age book-stores in the United States during the 1990s exceeded five thousand. According to David S. Toolan, S. J., the "crystal gazers and psychic channelers are...
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1990's Lifestyles and Social Trends
