Editing New Age (section)

===Decline or transformation: 1990–present===
By the late 1980s, some publishers dropped the term ''New Age'' as a marketing device.{{sfn|Hess|1993|p=35}} In 1994, the scholar of religion [[Gordon J. Melton]] presented a conference paper in which he argued that, given that he knew of nobody describing their practices as "New Age" anymore, the New Age had died.{{sfn|Kemp|2004|p=178}} In 2001, Hammer observed that the term ''New Age'' had increasingly been rejected as either pejorative or meaningless by individuals within the Western cultic milieu.{{sfn|Hammer|2001|p=74}} He also noted that within this milieu it was not being replaced by any alternative and that as such a sense of collective identity was being lost.{{sfn|Hammer|2001|p=74}}

Other scholars disagreed with Melton's idea; in 2004 Daren Kemp stated that "New Age is still very much alive".{{sfn|Kemp|2004|p=179}} Hammer himself stated that "the New Age ''movement'' may be on the wane, but the wider New Age ''religiosity''... shows no sign of disappearing".{{sfn|Hammer|2001|p=75}} MacKian suggested that the New Age "movement" had been replaced by a wider "New Age sentiment" which had come to pervade "the socio-cultural landscape" of Western countries.{{sfn|MacKian|2012|p=7}} Its diffusion into the mainstream may have been influenced by the adoption of New Age concepts by high-profile figures: U.S. First Lady [[Nancy Reagan]] consulted an astrologer, British [[Diana, Princess of Wales|Princess Diana]] visited spirit mediums, and Norwegian Princess [[Princess Märtha Louise of Norway|Märtha Louise]] established a school devoted to communicating with angels.{{sfn|MacKian|2012|p=146}}
New Age shops continued to operate, although many have been remarketed as "Mind, Body, Spirit".{{sfn|Chryssides|2007|p=17}}

In 2015, the scholar of religion [[Hugh Urban]] argued that New Age spirituality is growing in the United States and can be expected to become more visible: "According to many recent surveys of religious affiliation, the 'spiritual but not religious' category is one of the fastest-growing trends in American culture, so the New Age attitude of spiritual individualism and eclecticism may well be an increasingly visible one in the decades to come".{{sfn|Urban|2015|p=11}}

Australian scholar Paul J. Farrelly, in his 2017 doctoral dissertation at [[Australian National University]], argued that, while the term New Age may become less popular in the West, it is actually booming in [[Taiwan]], where it is regarded as something comparatively new and is being exported from Taiwan to the Mainland [[China]], where it is more or less tolerated by the authorities.<ref>{{cite thesis |type=PhD |last=Farrelly |first=Paul J. |date=2017 |title=Spiritual Revolutions: A History of New Age Religion in Taiwan |publisher=Australian National University}}</ref>