Burning Man & the New Age: Gospel Missionary Tells All

Burning Man is the “mothership” of a global transformation that New Age adherents and their allies believe will usher in the “Age of Aquarius” to replace the Christian era, explained a leading Christian researcher and missionary who has attended three times so far.
Every year tens of thousands gather in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert for Burning Man—part art festival, part temporary city, part spiritual experiment. Behind the music and spectacle, missionary Taylor Skidmore sees something more: a living laboratory for New Age, pagan, and anti-Christian ideas that are rapidly filling the space left by America’s fading Christian culture.
Skidmore, author of the upcoming book Divine Hunger, has attended three Burns. After studying the New Age movement, he concluded it is not a fringe movement but one of the fastest-growing belief systems in the country. Not every “burner” is advancing a hidden agenda, he says. Many are wounded, searching, and hungry for meaning. That is why he goes—not to party, but to offer the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who have already rejected everything else.
While reporting on the ground with a team for The New American magazine and FreedomProject Media, journalist Alex Newman sat down with Skidmore to hear what he has learned: who is actually there, what they are looking for, and why a small group of Christians believes the harvest is real even in one of the darkest corners of American culture.