Author: Sarah M. Pike File Type: pdf From Shirley MacLaines 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.From Publishers WeeklyThis installment in Columbias Contemporary American Religion series explores the rise of New Age and Neopagan religions in America, phenomena that are difficult to study because of the diverse array of people and movements that claim shelter under their umbrellas. Pike, who teaches religion at California State University, draws attention to the main concerns and daily lives of participants in these new religious movements, dissecting what healing rituals, self-awareness meditation and channeling mean to the people who practice them. Although most readers could do without the dissertation-like literature review that dominates the introduction, the remainder of the book is informative and accessible for the general reader. Pike writes well, with a journalists eye for an engaging story and a scholars sense of the larger historical picture. One particularly helpful chapter surveys the traditions most visible groups and central teachings, which include an emphasis on nature, womens spiritual leadership, seasonal ritual and personal transformation. Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. ReviewThis work offers general readers a scholarly assessment of Neopaganism and the New Age movement.... Pike provides an overview of key themes of these movements and traces their beliefs back to 19th-century traditions of mesmerism, seances, Swedenborgianism, and Theosophy.... her book provides a necessary complement to Margot Adlers Drawing Down the Moon and Paul Heelass The New Age Movement.(Library Journal )A view from the mountain...an admirable job of weaving together multiple strands of New Age practice into a single pattern.(Michael F. Brown Natural History )Pikes study is fascinating in all its detail.(Dan Barnett Enterprise Record )A superb introduction to the visions and practices of both neopagan and New Age movements.... Highly recommended.(W. L. Pitts Jr. Choice )[A] lucid and interesting survey of esoteric and New-Age religions.(Philip Jenkins Journal of American History 9105)Pike makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of New Age and Neopagan religions in America...(David H. Vila, John Brown University Religious Studies Review Jan-April 2005)[Pike] offers a succinct, thorough introduction to the wolrds of Neo-Pagan and New Age practices.(Ed Cook Journal of Church and State 642007)This book works wonderfully to introduce readers to the fascinating and still developing religions... An excellent text for courses.(Cynthia Eller Journal of Religion Vol. 88, No. 1)A clear and well-written primer for what is a bedazzling array of religious worldviews and practices.(Guy Lancaster Mission Studies 2008, 115-152)

Author: Martin J. de Nys File Type: pdf What does it mean to have a distinctively religious orientation toward reality? Martin J. De Nys offers a philosophy of religion grounded within the phenomenological tradition as a way to understand religious life. Focusing on the key concepts of sacred transcendence, religious discourse, and radical self-transcendence, De Nys contends that a phenomenological view of religion allows considerable diversity in regard to the possibility of religious truth. Phenomenology also helps to account for the dizzying variety of religious expressions and religious lifeways. Ultimately, De Nys reaches a universal and complete method of describing a philosophical approach to religious life. This compelling book plays a valuable role in describing human engagement with religion.