The Challenge of Religion after Modernity Beyond Disenchantment Routledge Revivals Series

This title was first published in 2003:If God has departed, as Baudrillard claims, is religion still relevant? A new religious landscape is appearing in the new millennium. The middle classes with their electronic technologies are producing a culture of commodified images and signs that is radically transforming the religious landscape and re-enchanting the world. Ecstatic experiences pervade the reenchanted world. Both fundamentalism and the New Age movement promote the free flow of charisma, reshaping religion in unforeseen directions. Analysing the crisis of modernity, this book delves into the intricacies of these movements to examine the implications of religious change in the new millennium. The authors provide an incisive assessment of religious change in the West and Asia to suggest an eclecticism in re-enchantment that will usher in new ideas about charisma, consciousness and spirituality. These ideas focus on new forms of shamanism that point the way to experiences of empowerment beyond the structures of disenchantment.

Contents: Divinity after modernity; The immanence of charisma; The re-enchantment of the middle classes; Fundamentalism: revenge of the symbol; The renewal of Shamanism; The new religion of dreaming; The consequences of re-enchantment; Bibliography; Index.

Lee, Raymond L. M.; Ackerman, Susan E.