New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements ─ Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America

New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements is a comprehensive study of alternative spiritual currents in modern America. Hugh Urban covers a range of emerging religions from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, including the Native American Church, Mormonism, Spiritualism, Scientology, the Nation of Islam, ISKCON, Wicca, the Church of Satan, Peoples Temple, and the Branch Davidians. Each chapter focuses on one important issue involving a particular faith group that raises larger issues in the study of religion and American culture, such as the role of women and feminism in Wicca and the debate over human cloning in the Raelian movement.

Urban also addresses key theoretical and methodological issues in the study of new religions: Why has there been such a tremendous proliferation of new spiritual forms in the past 150 years, even as our society has become increasingly rational, scientific, technological, and secular? Why has the United States become the heartland for the explosion of new religious movements? How do we deal with complex legal debates, such as the use of peyote by the Native American Church or the practice of plural marriage by some Mormon communities? And how do we navigate issues of religious freedom and privacy in an age of religious violence, terrorism, and government surveillance?