New Age and Neopagan Religions in America

Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-0-231-12403-4
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 151 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 370 g

Reihe: Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series

From Shirley MacLaine's spiritual biography Out on a Limb to the teenage witches in the film The Craft, New Age and Neopagan beliefs have made sensationalistic headlines. In the mid- to late 1990s, several important scholarly studies of the New Age and Neopagan movements were published, attesting to academic as well as popular recognition that these religions are a significant presence on the contemporary North American religious landscape. Self-help books by New Age channelers and psychics are a large and growing market; annual spending on channeling, self-help businesses, and alternative health care is at $10 to $14 billion; an estimated 12 million Americans are involved with New Age activities; and American Neopagans are estimated at around 200,000. New Age and Neopagan Religions in America introduces the beliefs and practices behind the public faces of these controversial movements, which have been growing steadily in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century America.

What is the New Age movement, and how is it different from and similar to Neopaganism in its underlying beliefs and still-evolving practices? Where did these decentralized and eclectic movements come from, and why have they grown and flourished at this point in American religious history? What is the relationship between the New Age and Neopaganism and other religions in America, particularly Christianity, which is often construed as antagonistic to them? Drawing on historical and ethnographic accounts, Sarah Pike explores these questions and offers a sympathetic yet critical treatment of religious practices often marginalized yet soaring in popularity. The book provides a general introduction to the varieties of New Age and Neopagan religions in the United States today as well as an account of their nineteenth-century roots and emergence from the 1960s counterculture. Covering such topics as healing, gender and sexuality, millennialism, and ritual experience, it also furnishes a rich description and analysis of the spiritual worlds and social networks created by participants.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pike, Sarah M.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionssoziologie und -psychologie, Spiritualität, Mystik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Religionssoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Alternative Glaubensformen Okkultismus und andere religiöse Praktiken

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Ancient Mysteries in Contemporary AmericaIntroduction to the Religious Worlds of Neopagans and New AgersEarly Varieties of Alternative Spirituality in American Religious HistoryThe 1960s Watershed YearsHealing and Techniques of the Self"All Acts of Love and Pleasure Are My Rituals": Sex, Gender, and the SacredThe Age of Aquarius

Über Autor(innen)

Sarah M. Pike is associate professor of religious studies at California State University in Chico.