I remember attending conferences in the late ’80s and early ’90s at which the belief that God was going to bring a revival to Britain was a significant expectation. Yet, in spite of the Toronto Blessing, the prophecies seem to be unfulfilled. But, actually, something was happening to the spirituality of this country. It’s just that it wasn’t coming from the Christian faith.

In 1987, David Hay, a researcher from the University of Nottingham, found that 48 per cent of the non-churchgoers whom he researched admitted, often nervously, to having had religious and spiritual experiences. When he repeated the study in 2000, this figure had risen to 76 per cent.

There was also a shift in the understanding people had of such experiences — away from reporting an awareness of God’s presence towards that of supernatural forces at work to determine events, or the presence of the spiritual in the natural world.

This move towards New Age and pagan beliefs can be seen on television. Fictional programmes such as Sea of Souls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, or Hex connect with an interest in magic and alternative spirituality. Twenty years ago, the university paranormal investigators in Sea of Souls would be exposing fake supernatural events, but, in today’s culture, you know that the sceptical investigators will yet again be convinced of the truth of the supernatural.

Reality-TV programmes such as Psychic Challenge and Haunted Homes have allowed mediums and psychics to appear as people to be taken seriously, even being used by the police in real-life criminal investigations. Noel Edmonds re-launches his career through the power of Cosmic Ordering, and builds it into the game show Deal or No Deal. It is not that people in Britain have suddenly all become New Agers or pagans, but that these ideas have become acceptable.

It is hard to measure how many are committed followers of the new spiritualities: many are not members of groups or signatories to creeds. It seems likely that a minority, though a growing one, are committed disciples of such ideas. The adoption of the beliefs associated with the New Age or paganism, though, is much wider. The survey by ORB for the BBC programme Soul of Britain in 2000 suggested that, while 70 per cent of the sample said it believed in God, almost two-thirds of the respondents believed God to be something like the Force in Star Wars rather than a personal deity.

Polls suggest that about half the population believes in an afterlife, but half of these believes in reincarnation. Forty-five per cent of those surveyed tell researchers that fortune-telling works. Furthermore, in nearly every area, the younger people are, the more likely they are to hold beliefs consistent with these new spiritualities, and not with the Christian faith (as in, for example, the Populus poll of April 2005).

I BELIEVE it is no coincidence that while the Church was looking for revival, and the Charismatic movement was growing, there was also a rise in non-Christian spirituality. Both are a result of God’s pouring out his Spirit within the Church, but also beyond it — on people who have lost an understanding of Christian language and beliefs in which to express the experience of God.

I believe we need to be open to people who have such experiences, helping them to listen for God in their lives, and, as St Paul said, to grow in understanding of the unknown God whom they encounter.

This does not mean I agree with all their practices and beliefs. Neither do I believe that all spiritual experiences are of God. I have encountered what I can describe only as evil spiritual forces, and have met others who are devotees of these new spiritualities who have also done so. These, however, are far less common than some Christians expect.

There are beliefs that we are called on to challenge. For many, reincarnation offers an explanation of the various fortunes that “fate” has bestowed on people. As a Christian, I find the accompanying assertion that a person is to blame for his or her own suffering morally unacceptable.

Elsewhere, the desire for personal therapy seems to come without any striving for social justice. Many practices view spiritual forces as under the control of humans, who make themselves the masters of the spiritual realm. “God”, in such a view, is like a spiritual electric current, into which we plug, and which we can direct.

The Church, however, is prone to similar temptations. For example, some Christians seem to sell Jesus as a therapist who can solve personal problems, or to treat prayer as a magic spell to get the desired response.

Yet if God can use a pagan priest such as Melchizedek or Balaam, or announce Jesus’s birth using astrology, why should we be surprised if he can also work through non-Christian spiritual practitioners today?

If, like St Paul, we are called to become “to the spiritual seekers like a spiritual seeker”, then we must also learn how to be counter-cultural in our spirituality. To remain on the sidelines, lest we are somehow tainted, is to ensure the rise of alternative spiritualities as the Church’s decline continues. To become just like them is to lose the transformative power of Jesus, the one who is drawing them on to find who they truly are in him.

Some churches are now working in this area, and have become involved in activities such as Mind, Body, Spirit fairs. They run stalls that offer prayer, reflective space, people to talk to, and material to take away. They seek to make Christianity accessible, and to show that it is not about technique, but about openness to God’s love.

Others have joined non-Christian spirituality chat rooms on the internet or meetings of such groups. In this, they are helping those who have little or negative experience of the Church to discover its depth of spirituality, and to see how God may indeed be at work in them.

  Building relationships in this way also enables seekers to ask questions that can challenge them, and Christians as well, to explore belief. It can also give them a glimpse of a lifestyle that contributes to a changed world, not just a greater sense of personal well-being.

The Revd Steve Hollinghurst is Researcher in Evangelism to Post-Christian Culture at the Church Army Sheffield Centre.