Who Buys New Age Materials? Exploring Sociodemographic, Religious, Network, and Contextual Correlates of New Age Consumption

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in New Age spirituality, few studies have explored the correlates of participation in New Age groups or activities. Drawing from previous work on New Age phenomena, and from other established traditions in the sociology of religion, we outline a set of hypotheses linking the consumption of New Age materials with four sets of factors: (a) sociodemographic characteristics; (b) conventional religious affiliation and participation; (c) embeddedness within networks of New Age believers and consumers; and (d) community religious context. We then test these hypotheses using data from a recent telephone survey of Texas residents. Few of the expectations are supported. Indeed, among Texans the purchase of New Age materials is more common and more evenly distributed across social space than previously suspected. By far the strongest predictor of such consumption is embeddedness within interpersonal networks composed of other New Age devotees. We conclude by identifying a number of promising directions for future theoretical and empirical work on New Age phenomena.

Religion and Paranormal Belief

“…Emmons and Sobal (1981) found that "nones" are more likely to believe paranormal claims but the correlations were low and many were not statistically significant when background characteristics were controlled. A Texas study (Mears and Ellison 2000), in which purchasing New Age books and tapes is the dependent variable, found a similar pattern: "nones" were the most frequent purchasers, but not after their social backgrounds were controlled. In contrast, Wuthnow (1978) reports that compared to those whose preference is a conventional religious group, "nones" are more sure that ESP exists (40 percent vs. 32 percent) and more likely to report having experienced ESP themselves (60 percent vs. 55 percent), although the size of these differences must be considered modest.…”

Social Networks and Religion: The Role of Congregational Social Embeddedness in Religious Belief and Practice

“…A considerable literature shows connections between the religious composition of friendship networks and religious activities (Barrett et al 2007;Erickson 1992;Kadushin and Kotler-Berkowitz 2006;Martin et al 2003;Mears and Ellison 2000;Regnerus et al 2004). Unfortunately, these studies are mainly limited to adolescents and are also limited in that they do not consider the consolidation of friendships in the respondent's congregation, but rather measure the religious composition of general friendship networks.…”

What Would Jesus Buy: American Consumption of Religious and Spiritual Material Goods

“…While we have suggested some broad hypotheses for the amount of consumption and the tradition‐specific nature of religious consumption, we do not have any standard measures that capture how different genres of religious goods might vary among consumers. Earlier studies focused on the “electronic church” (i.e., religious television and sometimes religious radio programs), while recent studies have looked at New Age “materials” (Mears and Ellison 2000), or include single measures of religious goods such as “gospel music” (Bryson 1996), or “religious or inspirational literature” (Wuthnow 2003). While we have broad theoretical predictions of consumption by drawing on work in the sociology of culture and religion, there still may be specific products that deviate from these broader patterns.…”