Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality - Couverture souple

Jenkins, Philip

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0195189108 ISBN 13 : 9780195189100

Editeur : Oxford University Press, 2005

Synopsis

In books such as Mystics and Messiahs, Hidden Gospels, and The Next Christendom, Philip Jenkins has established himself as a leading commentator on religion and society. Now, in Dream Catchers, Jenkins offers a brilliant account of the changing mainstream attitudes towards Native American spirituality, once seen as degraded spectacle, now hailed as New Age salvation.
While early Americans had nothing but contempt for Indian religions, deploring them as loathsome devil worship and snake dancing, white Americans today respect and admire Native spirituality. In this book, Jenkins charts this remarkable change, highlighting the complex history of white American attitudes towards Native religions from colonial times to the present. Jenkins ranges widely, considering everything from the 19th-century American obsession with "Hebrew Indians" and Lost Tribes, to the early 20th-century cult of the Maya as bearers of the wisdom of ancient Atlantis, to films like Pocahontas and Dances With Wolves. He looks at the popularity of the Carlos Castaneda books, the writings of Lynn Andrews, and the influential works of Frank Waters, and he explores the New Age paraphernalia found in places like Sedona, Arizona, including dream-catchers, crystals, medicine bags, and Native-themed Tarot cards. Jenkins examines the controversial New Age appropriation of Native sacred places; notes that many "white Indians" see mainstream society as religiously empty; and asks why a government founded on religious freedom tried to eradicate native religions in the last century--and what this says about how we define religion.
An engrossing account of our changing attitudes towards Native spirituality, Dream Catchers offers a fascinating introduction to one of the more interesting aspects of contemporary American religion.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He has published widely on contemporary religious themes, including New Age and esoteric movements, and is the author most recently of The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice and the highly acclaimed The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Oxford University Press
• Date d'édition: 2005
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0195189108
• ISBN 13: 9780195189100
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 306
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Messaggerie Libri; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8; Assago Milano; Italie