A Study on the Meaning of Life and New Age Beliefs Among Theology Faculty Students

An important psychological need that affects people's outlook on life is the search for meaning. This need can be structured around different religions, beliefs, ideologies, worldviews, and philosophical understandings. It is seen that people who are increasingly lonely, alienated, and struggling to adopt traditional values under the influence of modernization, capitalism, complex urban life, etc., are turning to new ways of searching for meaning. Today, New Age beliefs, which have become fashionable trends, are attracting diverse interests and increasingly occupying the agenda. Large mass movements of people and developments in science, technology, and communication have accelerated such changes. Based on the fact that New Age beliefs are attracting the attention of young people in the context of popular culture, mass media, and developmental characteristics, this study deals with the meaning of life and the tendency to adopt New Age beliefs among students in higher religious education. In this study, the Meaning and Purpose of Life Scale and the New Age Beliefs Scale were administered to a group of participants selected by a convenience sampling technique from the students of the Theology Faculty of Erciyes University. At the end of the application, the participating students had high scores for Meaning and Purpose of Life and low scores for New Age Beliefs. When the scores obtained from both scales were analyzed in terms of the gender variable, significant differences were found. Females had higher averages than males in both the meaning and purpose of life and the meaninglessness of life and lack of purpose subdimensions. In the context of New Age beliefs, male participants scored higher than female participants on the total spiritualism and psychic powers scale and the New Age beliefs scale. In the correlation analysis conducted between both phenomena, it was found that there was a slight, significant, and inverse relationship between the meaning of life and New Age beliefs.