New Age Movements

The term New Age has been widely and variously used to refer to a range of beliefs, theories, practices, and lifestyles that do not fit into traditional religious belief systems and that have emerged primarily in modern, postwar, postindustrial societies, particularly in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Moreover, there is evidence of the increasingly global presence of identifiably New Age ideas and practices, particularly in the large cosmopolitan cities and conurbations of Brazil, South Africa, Japan, India, and many of the postSoviet states.