Conspiracy
Theories
Militant New Age critic Constance E. Cumbey, a semiretired trial lawyer from Detroit, was in her element.
Talking nonstop all the while, she sifted frenetically through a thick sheaf of file folders and page after page of yellow legal-size notepaper that she had extracted in stacks from her behemoth briefcase. Cumbey, whose 1983 book, Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, set off shock waves throughout the evangelical Christian community, was looking up evidence to support her points in a spirited public debate. Her opponents were other conservative Christian cult watchers attending an annual anti-cult convention.1
Cumbey's basic contention was — and is — that the New Age movement is a sinister conspiracy led by Satan to take over the world, stamp out Christians and Jews, and force universal worship of the Antichrist.
By 1988 Cumbey's sensationalist influence had waned somewhat, but others had taken up the cudgel, churning out similar dire conspiracy theories about New Age and the end times. In the process, several prominent Christian leaders had been fingered as collaborators in New Age diabolism — according to Cumbey, expose writer Dave Hunt, and others of that ilk.
Most of the New Age conspiracy books have sold extremely well in the Christian market, attesting to an ongoing fascination
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with end-time prophecies. The Spiritual Counterfeits staff calls the genre "Conspiracy Apocalyptic."2
Texe Marrs, a retired U.S. Air Force officer, wrote Dark Secrets of the New Age: Satan's Plan for a One World Religion, relying heavily on his interpretation of Bible prophecy, particularly the book of Daniel, to link "evil" New Age objectives with the "rush to Armageddon."
The New Age appears to be the instrument that Satan will use to catapult his Antichrist to power. Once he is firmly entrenched, he will unite all cults and religions into one: the New Age World Religion. When Christians refuse to be initiated into this satanic religious system, they will be dealt with very harshly. Many will be put to death. The New Age is working hard today to set up an environment of hatred towards Christians and what they stand for, so the public mood will be ready when the Antichrist begins his brutal anti-Christian programs.
A New Age propaganda campaign is already at full-throttle to brand us as warmongers and separatists. We are described as the Beast, the Antichrist, a racially inferior species unfit for the New Age kingdom. Discerning Christians see the signs and know what is happening (emphasis added).3
And Elissa Lindsey McClain, a former New Ager turned fundamentalist Christian, cites "the World 'Plan' by New Age 'Wise Persons' " as being "practically identical to Adolph Hitler's SS Occult Bureau in Germany on which Nazism was founded."4
She attributes this information to Cumbey (who wrote the introduction to McClain's book, Rest from the Quest) and Hunt, who laid out his conspiracy theories in The Seduction of Christianity and Peace, Prosperity and the Coming Holocaust, as well as other books.
The trouble with these books, from a journalistic perspective, is that the research, while extensive, lacks support from incontrovertible evidence. Facts are mishandled, claims are undocumented, conclusions are biased, and logic is flawed at vital connection points. That is not to say that all — or even nearly all — of the assertions are untrue. But they are often tied to unprovable assumptions as well as careless inferences.
So what about it? Is the New Age conspiracy fact or fiction?
For starters, we need to examine what New Agers mean —
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or at least say they mean — by conspiracy, and then compare that with the way conspiracy is projected by Christian critics of New Age.
Marilyn Ferguson, whose flagship New Age book, The Aquarian Conspiracy, roiled the waters and stirred much of the debate, talks about "a leaderless but powerful network . . . working to bring about radical change in the United States." This network "is a conspiracy without a political doctrine. Without a manifesto. With conspirators who seek power only to disperse it, and whose strategies are pragmatic, even scientific, but whose perspective sounds so mystical that they hesitate to discuss it."5
These "little clusters" and "loose networks" are everywhere, Ferguson believes: "tens of thousands of entry points" — all spreading the "new options" of the New Age in a kind of self-generating, self-organizing collective process.
A conspiracy? Yes, indeed, she proclaims. A collusion of shared assumptions: "A series of resounding clicks and the networks become the long-prophesied conspiracy."6
Hugely overstated, no doubt. Even wishful thinking. Like Hunt and Cumbey, Ferguson (to whom Cumbey, oddly, is a confidante) also sees conspiracies at the end of every New Age rainbow.
As Cumbey represented it in Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, the leadership of the entire New Age movement has been united for decades in following the instructions of Alice Bailey (1880 -1949), the onetime Theosophist and arcane spiritualist whose followers typically meditate together at every full moon. Her writings, averred Cumbey, are "followed meticulously by the New Age movement . . . She is literally followed like a recipe."7 And, Cumbey added, the overall direction of the conspiracy, called "the Plan," was strategized in H.G. Wells's book, The Open Conspiracy.
Elliot Miller, editor of the Christian Research Journal, a conservative anti-cult publication, rather neatly disposes of Cumbey's theory:
[T]he NAM [New Age Movement] cannot be as Cumbey portrayed it in Hidden Dangers and at the same time be the loosely structured, uncentralized meta-network (network of networks) that both New Agers like Marilyn Ferguson . . . and
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Christian observers like myself have claimed. For the entire movement to be following one detailed Plan "like a recipe" it would have to be tightly organized and hierarchical. Such perfectly coordinated activity is unheard of (among occultists, Christians, or anyone else) where such controls do not exist. . . .
For the NAM to be coldly orchestrating major developments on every level of society and capable of an imminent world takeover, it would have to be almost omnipotent and omnipresent. In short, we would no longer be talking about movement but a conspiracy in the most subversive and menacing senses of the word, similar to the all-pervasive, monolithic conspiracies attributed by some to the Illuminati, Jesuits, international bankers, etc.8
Miller also demolishes Cumbey's argument that H.G. Wells's world-state dovetails with the New Age "planetary guidance system." In fact, he says, Wells's plan left no room for mysticism.9
Alice Bailey does outline a "Plan" for preparing the world for the New Age and a New Age Christ, and some important New Age leaders are working to put it in place. The Bailey-related School for Esoteric Studies in New York advertises materials about the New Group of World Servers, which is the network of individuals Bailey predicted would channel the energy of the reappeared Christ, the eclectic Avatar of the New Age.10
But those who see the Bailey Plan as a present, organized conspiracy are naive. It is as if they believe a giant Dungeons and Dragons fantasy game is laid out, with rules and esoteric characters all in place, and that the players exist and are already interacting on some great "game board" of the world. Proof of this cannot be convincingly demonstrated.
Dave Hunt, an intrepid researcher and cogent lecturer, also overreacts to the dangers of New Age, in my opinion. He uses a mile-wide brush to paint into the same corner everyone who even faintly entertains notions compatible with New Age thinking. Thus, in defining "sorcery" he lumps in visualization and "positive/possibility thinking" with "any attempt to manipulate reality (internal, external, past, present, or future) by various mind-over-matter techniques that run the gamut from alchemy to astrology."11
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That is not too surprising, perhaps, in light of Hunts's frame of reference, Christians who employ any of the psychotechnologies are in bed with the New Age, even if innocently.
Hunt's error, according to H. Newton Malony, director of programs integrating psychology and theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, is that Hunt "idealizes rationalism and correct dogma," turning it into a "hyper-rational religion."12
Interestingly enough, some consider Hunt a wimp and have taken him to task for presenting a "truncated vision" (in Section of Christianity) that doesn't assert the biblical worldview strongly enough.
"This shrunken faith cannot stand before the New Age . . . thinking [that] has swept over the modern church in a tidal wave of heresy, error and seduction," thump Gary DeMar and Peter J. Leithart in The Reduction of Christianity: Dave Hunt's Theology of Cultural Surrender.
But there is danger of overreaction from the other side, as well.
In response to a statement by Gordon Melton that he didn't see New Age as a threat, TIME magazine pontificated: "Even that, though, is perhaps too harsh a condemnation to serve as the final word on an essentially harmless anthology of illusions."13
The famous historian Will Durant predicted in the 1950s that the last major confrontation of Western history would not be between democracy and communism but between the Western Christian mind-set and Eastern religions. Such a clash of worldviews, occidentally or accidentally, is hardly harmless or, in today's world, an illusion.
A moderate — and correct, in my opinion — view of New Age as conspiracy is set forth in Douglas Groothuis's Unmasking the New Age: "[T]he New Age movement is better viewed as a worldview shift than a unified global conspiracy. This is not to minimize its influence but to recognize it as an intellectual, spiritual and cultural force to be reckoned with in all sobriety."14
In an interview in the basement office of the Probe Study Center in Seattle, Groothuis added this about overreacting to the New Age agenda: "The philosophy that if New Agers can
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do it, then we Christians can't do it, is a process that eventually quarantines off areas of life that God intended we should enjoy."15
Nor should distinctive New Age vocabulary be fenced off simply because it's in vogue. It would be "as erroneous to conclude that these words always indicate New Age spiritual commitments as it would be to conclude that biblical terminology always indicates Christian commitment," points out New Age researcher-critic Robert Burrows.16
The Cumbey guilt-by-association trip taints perfectly good words like "holistic," "peace," "global village," "global thread," "spaceship Earth," "Mother Earth," "rainbow," "interdependent," "paradigm," "vision," "self-realization," "consciousness," "personal growth," "positive mental attitude" (PMA), "human potential," "energy," "unity," "oneness," and "awakening," along with such phrases as "Do your own thing," "I'm feeling good vibes [vibrations]," and "That blows my mind."
For example, the New Age use of the rainbow symbol apparently began a number of years ago with small rainbow decals on car windows and license plates. The exact connection with the occult and which group or groups first used the symbol is unclear. Some observers point to the Tibetan teaching that the rainbow symbolizes man's ultimate perfect state of divinity and the fusion of good and evil, shadow and light. Others cite New Age references to the "rainbow bridge," "rainbow energies," and the colors of the "seven rays" of the chakras. In any case, the symbol's association with the New Age movement became firmly fixed in the minds of many with the publication of Cumbey's book, Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow.
Yet in the Bible the rainbow is God's first heavenly sign of promise; it has had great meaning for Jewish and Christian believers through the ages. Thus it seems an unnecessary capitulation on the part of these believers to veer away from a cherished symbol imbued with prior significance!
The meaning behind these expressions depends on who is using them and the context. Only from this deeper interpretation can the speaker's worldview be discerned.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, issued a statement about the New Age
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movement in 1985 that contains sound advice:; "Be particularly careful that you are not inclined toward a kind of uninformed hysteria characterized by oversimplification and indiscriminate fear that you are threatened by conspiracies of all sorts. While New Age thinking and New Age-oriented activities are serious and dangerous, do not allow their presence and influence to drive you to indiscriminate distrust of fellow Christians and blanket disenchantment with authentic Christian institutions."17
Speaking colorfully about New Age conspiracy theories, Carl Raschke cautioned against falling for either of "two myths we live by."
One, he said, is the presumption that the New Age movement is "grassroots, unstructured, efflorescent, the deeply repressed longings and sensibilities that are popping up like mushrooms all over the dank soil of the Judeo-Christian culture.
"The other myth is that this is some gigantic, centralized conspiracy against the Christian church headed by Lucifer himself."18
Robert Ellwood, expert on New Age religions, had his own parting thought about putting it all in perspective as we closed an hour of discussion and he prepared to dash off to teach a class:
"[D]on't get carried away by seeing New Age as the only or most important thing going on in American society, or as a turning point in American history. Conventional religion is still big and probably will be all during the decade.
"There are always an awful lot of people living ordinary lives more or less untouched by what's being picked up by the media and appears to be prominent."19
Chapter 25 || Table of Contents
1. Conference on the Cults, El Toro, Calif., 18 November 1983.
2. Karen Hoyt et al., New Age Rage (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1987), 188.
3. Texe Marrs, Dark Secrets of the New Age: Satan's Plan for a One World Religion (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books/Good News Publishers, 1987), 262.
4. Elissa Lindsay McClain, Rest from the Quest (Shreveport, La.: Huntington House, 1984), preface.
5. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980), 23.
6. Ibid., 63.
7. Constance Cumbey, Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow (Shreveport, La.: Huntington House, 1983), 115, 90.
8. Elliot Miller, "A Summary Critique," Christian Research Journal (Summer 1987): 26.
9. Cited in ibid., 28.
10. Advertisement for School of Esoteric Studies, New Age Journal (November–December 1987): 59; Alice Bailey, Reappearance of the Christ (New York: Lucis Publishing Co., 1969), 77, 111.
11. Dave Hunt and T.A. McMahon, Seduction of Christianity: Spiritual Discernment in the Last Days (Eugene, Oreg.: Harvest House Publishers, 1985), 12, 143.
12. H. Newton Malony, interview with author, Pasadena, Calif., 20 November 1987, 72.
13. Otto Friedrich et al., "New Age Harmonies" (cover story), TIME, 7 December 1987, 72.
14. Douglas R. Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 35.
15. Douglas R. Groothuis, interview with author, Seattle, Wash., 21 December 1987.
16. Robert Burrows, "Buzz Words and Worldview," Spiritual Counterfeits Project Newsletter (Winter 1984–85): 5.
17. Maurice Smith, "Understanding and Responding to the New Age Movements," Interfaith Witness Department, Home Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention, 1985, 8.
18. Carl A. Raschke, interview with author, Denver, Colo., 2 December 1987.
19. Robert Ellwood, interview with author, Los Angeles, Calif., 14 December 1987.
