A New Age for a New Century: Anti-Vivisection, Vegetarianism, and the Order of the Golden Age

Abstract

The work of Josiah Oldfield and the Christian-inspired Order of the Golden Age, whose objective was to bring about the Messianic Kingdom of peace and harmony with nature, serves as a case study of the work of the new age movement in the early-twentieth century. Oldfield founded a vegetarian hospital, an anti-vivisection hospital and a fruitarian colony. The theological basis of the movement was that the development of humankind was being held back by an undue preoccupation with the world of the flesh, particularly meat-eating and vivisection, which were barriers to spiritual progress. For new age reformers, science needed to be less materialistic and more open to the influence of faith and feeling.