The label 'Suicide Cults' has been applied to a wide variety of different alternative religions, from Jonestown to the Solar Temple to Heaven's Gate. Additionally, observers have asked if such group suicides are in any way comparable to Islamist suicide terrorism, or to historical incidents of mass suicide, such as the mass suicide of the ancient community of Masada. Organizationally and ideologically diverse, it turns out that the primary shared trait of these various groups is a common s...

The twentieth century was a period of rapid change for religion. Secularisation resulted in a dramatic fall in church attendance in the West, and the 1950s and 1960s saw the introduction of new religions including the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), the Church of Scientology, and the Children of God. New religions were regarded with suspicion by society in general and Religious Studies scholars alike until the 1990s, when the emergence of a second generation of 'n...

To the casual observer, similarities between fan communities and religious believers are difficult to find. Religion is traditional, institutional, and serious; whereas fandom is contemporary, individualistic, and fun. Can the robes of nuns and priests be compared to cosplay outfits of Jedi Knights and anime characters? Can travelling to fan conventions be understood as pilgrimages to the shrines of saints?These new essays investigate fan activities connected to books, film, and on...

For 46 years, Carol Minto has quietly gone about her life, carrying with her the most extraordinary and heartbreaking secrets.Born into poverty and with mostly absent parents, Carol helped to raise her nine siblings. But when she was just 11 years old, her older brother began to sexually abuse her. After four years, Carol managed to escape – and ran away from home.Picked up by social services they place her at Aston Hall in Derby; a psychiatric hospital now infamous for the...

Utilizing contemporary scholarship on secularization, individualism, and consumer capitalism, this book explores religious movements founded in the West which are intentionally fictional: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, and Jediism. Their continued appeal and success, principally in America but gaining wider audience through the 1980s and 1990s, is chiefly as a result of underground publishing and the internet. This book deals with immensely popular su...

Drawing together formative works from across the interrelated disciplines of religion and media, this collection will articulate the field of religion and media. Incorporating both historical and contemporary concerns, and a range of methodological approaches, this major work will focus upon the variety of ways in which religion and media impact, facilitate, and imbricate with each other.The field encompassed by this collection is constantly changing and diverse. It covers a range ...

Prophecy, Fate and Memory in the Early and Medieval Celtic World brings together a collection of studies on Celtic inscriptions, religious travel, settlement, penance and prophecy in medieval Celtic nations. The contributors explore the themes of memory, fate and prophecy to capture the worldview of early Celtic speaking nations and challenge the reader to consider what connections can be drawn among sources separated by time, space and language.Going beyond the philologic...

“Enjoying religion” seems to be a contradiction because religion is generally perceived as a serious or even suppressive phenomenon. This volume is the first to study the increase of enjoying religion systematically by presenting eleven new case studies, occurring on four continents. The volume concludes that in our late modern secular societies the enjoyment of religion or of its loose elements is growing. In particular when scholars concentrate on “lived religion” of ordinary people, the...

Children's literature takes many forms - works adapted for children in antiquity, picture books and pop-ups - and now includes the latest online games and eBooks. This vast and amorphous subject is both intimately related to other areas of literary and cultural investigation but also has its own set of concerns, issues and challenges. From familiar authors including Beatrix Potter and Roald Dahl, classic books such as Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and The Secret Garden

Every summer, thousands gather from around the world in the blistering heat of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert for the seven-day celebration of art, community, and fire known as Burning Man. Culminating in the spectacular incineration of a wooden effigy, this festival is grand-scale theater for self-expression, personal transformation, eclectic spirituality, communal bonding, and cultural renewal. In this engrossing ethnography of the Burning Man phenomenon, Lee Gilmore explores why "burners" c...

Avatar and Nature Spirituality explores the cultural and religious significance of James Cameron's film Avatar (2010), one of the most commercially successful motion pictures of all time. Its success was due in no small measure to the beauty of the Pandora landscape and the dramatic, heart-wrenching plight of its nature-venerating inhabitants. To some audience members, the film was inspirational, leading them to express affinity with the film's message of ecological inter...

This collection of fresh essays addresses a broad range of topics in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, both old (1963-1989) and new (2005-present). The book begins with the fan: There are essays on how the show is viewed and identified with, fan interactions with each other, reactions to changes, the wilderness years when it wasn't in production. Essays then look at the ways in which the stories are told (e.g., their timeliness, their use of time travel as a device, etc...