Deploying a distinctive disaggregative approach to the study of 'religion', this volume shows that spiritual movements with extensive counterfactual beliefs have been more creative - redeveloping older resources, often in unexpected ways - than one might expect.
Specifically, Wayne Hudson explores the creativity of six spiritual movements: the Baha'is, a Persian movement; Soka Gakkai, a Japanese movement; Ananda Marga and the Brahma Kumaris, two reformed Hindu movements; and The Church Universal and Triumphant and the Latter-Day Saints, two controversial American churches. Most of these six movements have counterintuitive features that would lead secular Western intellectuals, basing themselves on Enlightenment thinking, to dismiss them as irrelevant and inconsequential. However, this book reveals how these movements have responded to modernity in ways that are creative and practical, resulting in social, scientific, educational and cultural initiatives.
Building on research surrounding the ways in which spiritual movements engage in cultural productions, this book takes the discussion in a new direction, considering the utopian intentionality that such cultural productions reveal.
- ISBN10 1350331716
- ISBN13 9781350331716
- Publish Date 15 December 2022
- Publish Status Forthcoming
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 208
- Language English