In an increasingly secular age, an increasing number of people are distancing themselves from organised religion. As a result, communities have become splintered, and we are ushering in a new era of individualism. But there may be a way to escape this trap through immersing ourselves in rave culture, argues Robin Sylvan. In this article, he uncovers transformative nature of these experiences, and explains how raves can function as the new churches.

Every weekend in numerous locations around the planet, thousands of people regularly attend electronic dance music parties, also known as raves. Since the mid-to-late 1980s, raves and the culture surrounding them have become a huge global phenomenon that has made an enormous impact, not only in the lives of the people directly involved, but also on many aspects of larger mainstream popular culture as well. While most media accounts of raves sensationalize their negative features, emphasizing excesses of drug use and bacchanalian revelry, what goes unnoticed is perhaps their most important positive feature – their tremendous spiritual and religious power. For thousands of ravers worldwide, raves are one of their primary sources of spirituality and the closest thing they have to a religion, a theme that ravers have articulated over and over in my interviews with them:

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“It's definitely a spiritual experience. And I never had any spirituality before, so this was my first time that I had ever experienced that.