Gnostic Afterlives in American Religion and Culture

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-90-04-47193-1
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 499 g

In Gnostic Afterlives, fourteen scholars explore the intersection of Gnostic spirituality in American religion and culture. Papers theorize Gnosis/Gnostic in modernity, examine neo-Gnostic movements in America, and investigate the Gnostic in popular American films, literature, art, and other aspects of culture.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

DeConick, April

Kripal, Jeffrey J

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Alternative Glaubensformen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Introduction: Gnostic Afterlives in American Religion and Culture

April D. DeConick

Part 1: Theorizing the Gnostic in Modernity

2 The Sociology of Gnostic Spirituality

April D. DeConick

3 Can We Recover Gnosis Today?

Gregory Shaw

4 What Is Gnosis: An Exploration

Arthur Versluis

Part 2: (Neo-)Gnostic Movements in America

5 The Knowing of Knowing

Neo-Gnosticism, from the O.T.O. to Scientology

Hugh B. Urban

6 Know Place: Heaven’s Gate and American Gnosticism

Cathy Gutierrez

7 American Gnosis: Jesus Mysticism in A Course in Miracles

Simon J. Joseph

8 The New Age and Gnosticism: Terms of Commonality

Mitch Horowitz

Part 3: The Gnostic in Popular American Culture

9 The Gnostic in Us All: Thinking from the Macrobiotics of Michio Kushi

Catherine L. Albanese

10 The Space Jockey and the Future of Enjoyment: Alienated Sentience in the World of H. R. Giger

Eric Wargo

11 A Metaphysical Rebel? Camus’s Analysis of Gnosticism and Its Influence on Literature and Cinema

Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta

12 Eric Voegelin and Gnostic Hollywood

Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

13 The Afterlives of the Archons: Gnostic Literalism and Embodied Paranoia in 21st CE Conspiracy Theory

Matthew Dillon

14 The Electric Chrism Acid Test: The Problem of Psychedelic Gnosis

Erik Davis

15 Reflections of an American Gnostic

Jeffrey J. Kripal

Index

Über Autor(innen)

April D. DeConick, Ph.D. (1994, University of Michigan), is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Rice University. She has published extensively on early Christianity, esotericism, mysticism, and Gnosticism, including The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today (Columbia University Press, 2016).

Jeffrey J. Kripal is the Associate Dean of the Faculty and Graduate Programs in the School of the Humanities and the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. Jeff is the author of nine books, including, most recently, The Flip: Who You Really Are and Why It Matters (Penguin, 2020), where he envisions the future centrality and urgency of the humanities in conversation with the history of science, the philosophy of mind, and our shared ethical, political, and ecological challenges.