New Age Spirituality Rethinking Religion

New Age and holistic beliefs and practices - sometimes called the "new spirituality" - are widely distributed across modern global society. The fluid and popular nature of new age makes these movements a very challenging field to understand using traditional models of religious analysis. Rather than treating new age as an exotic specimen on the margins of 'proper' religion, "New Age Spirituality" examines these movements as a form of everyday or lived religion. The book brings together an international range of scholars to explore the key issues: insight, healing, divination, meditation, gnosis, extraordinary experiences, and interactions with gods, spirits and superhuman powers. Combining discussion of contemporary beliefs and practices with cutting-edge theoretical analysis, the book repositions new age spirituality at the forefront of the contemporary study of religion.

Introduction: 'All mixed up': thinking about religion in relation to new age spiritualities, Ingvild Salid Gilhus and Steven J. Sutcliffe; PART I: RETHINKING NEW AGE SPIRITUALITIES; 1. New Age, World Religions and Elementary Forms, Steven J. Sutcliffe; 2. 'All over the place': The Contribution of New Age to a Spatial Model of Religion, Ingvild Salid Gilhus; 3. Towards a New Paradigm of Constructing 'Religion': New Age Data and Unbounded Categories, Liselotte Frisk; 4. On Transgressing the Secular: Spiritualities of life, Idealism, Vitalism, Paul Heelas; 5. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Organizational Forms of 'Unorganized Religion', Ann Taves and Michael Kinsella; PART II: COMPARING NEW AGE BELIEFS AND PRACTICES; 6. Narrow New Age and Broad Spirituality: A Comprehensive Schema and a Comparative Analysis, Norichika Horie; 7. Dolphins and other Humans: New Age identities in Comparative Perspective, Mikael Rothstein; 8. New Age, Sami Shamanism and Indigenous Spirituality, Trude Fonneland and Siv Ellen Kraft; 9.

Steven J. Sutcliffe is Senior Lecturer in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. Ingvild Sælid Gilhus is Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway.