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The transformation of the godmen into moneymen was swift and effective, for the market
had already been created by Christian salesmen, the rightist fundamentalists with whom
they began to compete for money, influence, and souls. Thus, the high tide of the Pacific
paradigm has, ironically, incorporated the waning Atlantic paradigm to accommodate to the
possibilities of the new world marketplace.
This new religiosity came as a surprise for most people. They had settled down to the belief
that the time of religion had ended and the time of secularism had arrived. Yet suddenly,
religion flared up unexpectedly. The simple fact is that this new boom in religion has not
come about in spite of secularization, but because of secularization. As noted earlier, secular
models --whether civil religion, fascism, or communism --do not adequately address
death, love, and boredom. The new religious movements have stepped into this void. But
they also are failing. They too are pseudoreligions.
Many specialists in religion do not recognize these counterfeits for what they are. They
seem to assume that all expressions of religion are genuine, that counterfeits do not exist.
Tell that to an art specialist who has to own up to buying a counterfeit painting!
Counterfeits do exist. And learning to distinguish the genuine from the fake is a challenge
that offers true religosity and true religion an opportunity for renewal.
"Recoding"
The quotation with which we began this essay dealt with Iceland in 1000 A.D. If we should
apply it to Europe and North America in the year 2000, it might read as follows:
The religious change to an oriental religiosity in the year 2000 was something
quite different from conversion from one faith to another. It was not the
content of the Hindu-Buddhist faith that was central in the religious change.
It was rather the recognized need for a new code. The new era was marked
by the oriental world view much more than by faith.
With this understanding of what is already happening in 1991, but which may well find its
culmination at the end of this decade, we can explain why so many deny the confrontation
between Christianity and Hinduism-Buddhism. They do not experience it as a question of
their faith. They see it rather as a question of a new world view, and for them it has nothing
to do with religion or faith or conversion.
This skewed understanding obviously has nothing directly to do with conversion. The
pioneers in the coming religious change have no desire to undertake a conversion to
Hinduism-Buddhism. They do not wish to become Hindus or Buddhists, much less to be
considered Hindus or Buddhists. Many of them, indeed, wish to stay in the Church and be
reckoned as Christians. Some believe, furthermore, that they have become better Christians
by accepting the new world view.
The distinction between religious change and conversion is the key to the situation, for in
1991 a comprehensive religious change in Europe and North America is undoubtedly taking
place, yet there are only a limited number of conversions to oriental religiosity. Moreover,
the content of the religious change is discussed in terms of a new vision of the world.
The process of religious change is most apparent in the religious education in schools. A
debate has been set into motion by a group of educators who have undergone religious
change, even though they have not been converted to anything at all. Of course, they will
not admit this, for it is characteristic of the process of religious change that it is not
recognized. There are, nonetheless, some prominent representatives of the process who
honestly admit that there is a "conspiracy" (see Ferguson, 1980), but most do not see it and
participate unknowingly.

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1991, Page 8
This fundamental recoding stems from a tolerance that is so absolute it becomes intolerant.
The underlying premise of the recoding is that in the religious world all religions have the
same goals and all are true. Those who disagree with this assumption of absolute tolerance
--those who believe that in the arena of religion, as in other arenas, there is the good and
the bad, the best and the worst --are not tolerated at all. Their critique of religion is
rejected by the proponents of "tolerance" as intolerance. Therefore, they cannot be
tolerated!
The process of religious change, which initially and primarily functions as a cosmological
recoding, is decidedly neither neutral nor objective. It operates in close relationship to the
limited number of converts, who in fact guide the process and function as catalysts. A
comprehensive and popular conversion and the consequent establishment of a Hinduist-
Buddhistic religion in the western world will depend on the progress of the process of
religious change. This progress in turn will depend on the progress of the process of
individual conversion. The two have a reciprocal relationship: more religious change makes
individual conversion easier more conversions make religious change easier. Nevertheless,
the two processes are also independent in that each is also influenced by other, distinct
factors.
Responses to New Religious Movements
To date the progress of religious change has occurred in a consistent and determined way.
This progress results in large part from the inability of the old religion's representatives to
notice it. The progress of religious change also results from the churches' systematically
separating themselves from popular religiosity. Their unwillingness to be the force that
forms popular religiosity enables others to take up the unfulfilled task.
Indeed, popular religiosity has developed a resentment toward the churches which have
abandoned it, and toward Christianity in general. Individuals whose religiosity is free of ties
will inevitably seek a religion which can give their "free-floating" religiosity meaning.
Oriental religion seems able to do this, first and foremost because of its vision of the world,
its cosmology.
This word refers to giving the cosmos an explanation and interpretation that are not
intrinsically present in it. Cosmology is a comprehensive system of symbols which gives
structure and order to the meaning of existence. In order to work, this system requires a
conscious development of rituals and symbols that people can use in their religious search
and experience. This new code for the understanding of the world and human existence is
what people seem to find to some degree in the new religious movements. Even though
these new codes may be contorted and unbelievable, they are nonetheless better than the
disorientation and bewilderment of living without meaning and direction.
That churches currently relate to the present processes of religious change and conversion
with almost total incomprehension and passivity --resentment even --is unfortunate. The
possibility of revitalization, however, presents the churches with an opportunity. They must
first seriously attempt to understand the historical movement of which we are a part.
History moves and we with it. It acts on us whether we like it or not, whether we realize it
or not. We are not able to stop it. But we can at any rate re-act more or less responsibly,
depending upon the clarity of our analysis and interpretation of historical data.
When in the middle of the next century some historian gives an account of the last part of
the twentieth century, one chapter title could well read like this: "The period when the most
decisive religious change took place, without the churches noticing it." But it could also read
like this: "The period when the most decisive religious change took place, and the churches
finally came back to reality."