In Search of an Authentic Christian Life Style : New Religious Communities

Today people of all ages and from a wide divergence of religious and social backrounds form already a certain kind of new movement, a movement o f the dissatisfied who seek new ways of authentic life. In Europe, secularism still seems to be triumphant, even i f alternative movements—often associated with the peace issue and ecological responsibility—gain ground. This is diffierent in the United States and the so-called Third World, where secularization and posi-secuJaristic reawakening of different forms takes place at the same time. What seems to be common to this rather diverse and even contradictory scene is a (re)discevery of values which had been neglected in purely economy-oriented societies, values such as the sacred, the inferiority of man, meditation, silence ana leisure, communion etc.