Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [117]-127).

My research is concerned with the impact of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994 (CJA) on Britain's Travellers, and combines an historical analysis of anti-nomadism with action research in the field. The CJA had been widely interpreted as signaling the beginning of the end of a viable nomadic existencei n Britain, as well as representinga further entrenchmenot f the powers of the state at the expense of civil liberties. In relation to Travellers, the CJA withdrew the former duty to provide adequate sites for Gypsies whilst simultaneously rendering unauthorised sites liable to peremptory evictions, and Travellers themselves faced the prospect of criminalisation for following a nomadic lifestyle. However, the CJA had more far-reaching powers than those directed towards nomads and many of its provisions impinged on the rights to protest, to assemble and to celebrate, The relationship between nomads and the state is a complex one that has evolved over hundreds of years, and invokes issues of ethnicity, 'race' and class with which this research is concerned. Analysing the history of 'Gypsy' people in Britain reveals the processes which, on the one hand, underlie their 'pariah' status and, on the other, render them fictionalised romantic figures of popular folklore. The antithesis of the 'real Gypsy' is arguably the 'New Age' Travellers and the thesis goes on to examine the role this latter group has played in the legitimation of anti-nomadic legislation in our on times. By working with different groups of Gypsy and New Traveller families in their attempts to legalise their sites, the research also examines the effects of the legislation on the everyday lives of real Travellers on the road today, The similarities between the experience of traditional and New Travellers revealed in this analysis are related to their respective marginal positions in society, and reinforce the view that nomadism per se has been rendered problematic in contemporary sedentary discourse.

Le Temple Guaracy de Paris fait partie d’une maison d’umbanda internationale présente au Brésil et dans plusieurs pays d’Europe et d’Amérique. Tout en s’inspirant de l’umbanda, une religion afro-brésilienne centrée sur le culte d’entités spirituelles et de divinités associées à la nature ainsi que sur la médiumnité, le Temple s’inscrit dans l’univers plus large des spiritualités contemporaines et propose à ses adeptes, en France comme ailleurs, un parcours dit de « développement spirituel ». Cette thèse porte sur les mécanismes de construction identitaire à l’œuvre dans ces pratiques et qui permettent aux adeptes du Temple de se définir comme étant « spirituels ». La description détaillée et l’analyse formelle des activités rituelles du groupe visent à circonscrire les soubassements pragmatiques qui soutiennent la construction de la figure de l’adepte et du médium dans ce contexte. Elles montrent ainsi que la pratique généralisée de la médiumnité consiste dans ce cas à révéler les participants à eux-mêmes sous un autre regard, qui est celui d’entités spirituelles dotées de la capacité de déceler la « véritable nature » des êtres humains. La production, par ce biais, d’un soi spirituel passe par des glissements relationnels subtils entre participants, opérés au sein d’un dispositif rituel finement régulé qui fait émerger des individus ambigus et « extraordinaires », humains et entités à la fois. Il s’avère que le sens de soi ainsi produit habilite les participants à apprécier et à créer d’autres pratiques similaires qui, toutes, s’inscrivent dans l’univers des spiritualités contemporaines et du New Age. / The Temple Guaracy de Paris is part of an international Umbanda shrine house located in Brazil and also established in several European and North American countries. In order to offer participants a “spiritual development”, in France and its other locales, the Temple draws on the mediumistic practice of Umbanda, an Afro-Brazilian religion focused on the worship of spiritual entities and divinities related to nature, in the elaboration of its ceremonial activities. The Temple is thus part of the wider universe of contemporary spiritual practices. This thesis studies the ritual mechanisms that bestow participants a special identity which allows them to define themselves as “being spiritual”. The detailed description and the formal analysis of the group’s ritual practices aim to define the pragmatic foundations of the identity processes at work in this context. They show that mediumistic practice consists of revealing the participants to themselves and to others in a new perspective which is that of the spiritual entities invoked in ritual, endowed with the capability to unveil the “real nature” of human beings. The making of a spiritual self by this means depends on complex relational shifts generated by a subtly regulated ritual device which produces ambiguous and “extraordinary” persons who are both humans and entities. The spiritual sense of self produced in this way enables participants to engage in and to create analogous practices that make up the universe of contemporary spirituality.

This study is going to convey knowledge about New Age as a word and some specializations and their meaning. Five persons who practice New Age have been interviewed about thier belief, relevant terms and related phenomena. The most common New Age-specializations is meeting with spirits, spirituality and healing, the study aslo mention how the informants defines New Age as a word or belief. The result present deep information about NEw Age as a word and phenomena, meeting with spirits, spirituality and healing.

This thesis argues that narratives about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) act as the central point of contact between conspiracist and popular millennial fields. Their confluence has come to form a field here termed ‘metaphysical conspiracism’, combining teleological narratives, the promise of soteriological knowledge and the threat of occluded malevolent agencies. I argue that metaphysical conspiracism offers a unique perspective on the interplay of knowledge, power and the construction of the other in contemporary popular discourse. Narratives about UFOs (and their extra-terrestrial occupants) have their roots in the Cold War period, but from the 1980s were increasingly constructed within a supernatural framework. Discourse analysis of popular literature from this period reveals a process of discursive transfer as the UFO narrative is contested and negotiated between conspiracist discourses concerning powerful, hidden agencies and popular millennial discourses of personal and planetary transformation, including ‘New Age’, 'Ascension' and '2012'. Using historical discourse analysis, supported by small-scale ethnographic sampling, I examine this discursive transfer in the work of three popular writers who together offer a broad overview of the field. Whitley Strieber was a central figure in the 'alien abduction' narrative in the 1980s, but his speculations on its meaning led him increasingly towards millennial and conspiratorial narratives. David Icke's well-known theory that a conspiracy of reptilian extraterrestrials has secretly seized control of the planet is demonstrated to have developed in the 1990s from a post-Theosophical narrative of benevolent UFOs as harbingers of the 'New Age'. Although less well-known, David Wilcock's work demonstrates that UFOs were also instrumental in the incorporation of conspiracist material into the recent '2012' millennial narrative. I seek to answer two questions with this thesis. Firstly, what is the common mechanism which facilitates the hybridisation I uncover between conspiracy narratives and popular millennialism? Secondly, how do the resulting metaphysical conspiracist narratives serve their subscribers? Despite a number of structural similarities, I argue that the common mechanism is the mobilisation of counter-epistemic strategies; that is, those predicated upon access to non-falsifiable sources of knowledge. The UFO narrative is particularly well-suited to suggesting sociological uncertainty about the boundaries between scientific and other strategies for the legitimisation of knowledge, encouraging its adoption by both conspiracist and millennial discourses. Secondly, metaphysical conspiracism reconciles the utopian vision of popular millennial discourse with the apocalyptic critique of modern global society announced by conspiracists. I therefore argue that metaphysical conspiracism supplies an effective popular theodicy with a Gnostic flavour in which these millennial prophecies did not ‘fail’, but were prevented from arriving by hidden malevolent others.

Thesis advisor: Paul Schervish / The rapid increase in the number of religious non-affiliates in the United States makes non-affiliation an important issue to study. Traditional secularization theories have explained the overall increase in the number of people who report not belonging to a specific religion, but have not explored the diversity among them. Studies attempting to explain the rise in non-affiliation have been basically descriptive, focusing on sociodemographic characteristics or social networks of religious non-affiliates, examining the effects of cohort, political orientation, parents' religions, and peer religions. There is no comprehensive social theory on the dynamics of religious non-affiliation. In sum, the previous literature requires us to reconsider the theoretical limits of modernity and the unilateral understanding of secularization and suggests a new framework for multiple secularities in accordance with high modernity. In this study, I conceptualize religious non-affiliation as "multiple secularities," creating a new framework that takes into account the existence of various forms of non-affiliation in the United States. Specifically, I identify three types of worldviews (theism, spiritualism, immanent frame) and two categories of institutional religious affiliation (affiliation and non-affiliation). Thus, six forms of belief are considered--affiliated theism, affiliated spiritualism, affiliated positivism, unaffiliated theism, unaffiliated spiritualism, and unaffiliated positivism. Utilizing the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey and the Religion Module of the 2008 International Social Science Survey, this dissertation explores differences among multiple secularities in the U.S. with respect to three dimensions of holistic implications: head, heart, and hand. Findings indicate that there are distinct differences among unaffiliated individuals based on belief types. Compared to unaffiliated spiritualists and unaffiliated positivists, unaffiliated theists place less importance on the role of human agency as compared to divine agency, have lower levels of moral liberalism, are more likely to favor religion when considering the tension between religion and science, more likely to report experiences of being filled with the Spirit, more likely to participate in political associations, but less likely to attend political rallies and demonstrations. Unaffiliated spiritualists have the highest rates of reporting experiences of oneness with the universe and interest in New Age (astrology and alternative medicine), and they are most likely to participate in political rallies or public protests among the unaffiliated individuals. Unaffiliated positivists are most likely to place importance on human agency, and they have the lowest rates of religious and spiritual experiences among the unaffiliated. These findings make several important contributions to the literature. First, they contribute to the recognition of the limits of the `secularization' thesis in a high (or late) modern society such as the United States and provide a new framework for understanding `multiple secularities' by examining interactions between the institutional level of secularity (non-affiliation) and the individual level of secularity (privatization of belief). Second, they confirm the Weberian insight that `elective affinities' exist between worldviews and ideological, experiential, and social aspects of life in a high modern society. Third, they demonstrate that social research should further explore the subdivisions among "unchurched believers" (unaffiliated theists and spiritualists). Fourth, they contribute to the debate on "spiritual individualism" versus "engaged spirituality" by demonstrating that spirituality promotes various forms of social engagement. Finally, this dissertation suggests that contemporary social scientists should recognize the limits of the traditional secularization thesis and face a new conundrum of post-secularity beyond belief types and affiliation types in order to promote social cohesion. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

This thesis studies New Age tourism and New Age tourists in New Zealand. In order to better understand this phenomenon, the research reviews literature pertaining to spirituality, religious tourism, pilgrimage and sacred sites. Using the theory of strategic groups, the study also shows that New Age tourism is distinct from other forms of travelling.The thesis argues that as a New Age destination, New Zealand's rich natural and cultural resources present immense potential for development. Key New Age attractions in the country are identified and future development prospects discussed. Although a relatively new phenomenon, the research contends that the New Age market is not homogenous and visitors exhibit differences in 'interest', 'experience' and 'profile characteristics'. Nevertheless, a dominant theme in all New Age travel appears to be the pursuit of unique and transcendental life knowledge.To analyze the New Age tourists in detail, the study employs two research methodologies. Quantitatively, the profile characteristics of tourists are scrutinized and a specialization index is adopted to delineate differences between market segments. It will be shown that New Age tourists comprise three distinct groups: the low, medium and highly specialized individuals. Qualitatively, the New Age visitors are analyzed by means of a phenomenological method. Through in-depth understanding of their motivations, needs and opinions, the New Age traveller is seen to be constantly in search of extraordinary and life-changing experiences. Overall, the thesis demonstrates that a corroborative methodology combining quantitative and qualitative techniques provides not only a holistic view of New Age tourism, but also invaluable empirical insights into this burgeoning field of contemporary travel.

This study is about quantum physics and the role it can play in a religious perspective. I intend to examine how moderna physics may be related and understood as New age and Myths. My material consists of two books in the new age genre: "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra and "The Quantum Self" by Danah Zohar. My first two question to these books are which 1) religious and 2) scientific content they have. My other questions are too 3) investigate and demonstrate how these books are new age and 4) to exanine how the books can function as myths and adopt mythical features. And last 5) to compare important content and ideas between the books. My methods are a simple hermeneutic close reading with a qualitative inductive analysis grounded in previous research and theory. My method is also inspired by a contextual analysis of ideas and an exploratory study. In the investigation I start by showing what religious and scientific materials the books contain. My conslusion is that these two books thoroughly fulfill many criteria for the New age genre. They should however not be counted as Myths becuse they do not meet the requirenents I have defined in the theory section. Moreover, the books share many similarities, such as many common references and resistance to some ideas from the Western tradition of ideas. But there are also some differences, mainly in how they use quantum physics. Firstly, a difference is that Capra primarily make parallels between quantum physics and Eastern philosophical tradition which Zohar does not. Secondly, Capra uses quantum physics to approach the mesage, that is primarily derived from Buddhism, which is that the reality is dynamic and in the end that the world is a "non-existing thing". Zohar is opposed to this and she would call it an extreme solipsism. She argues that the reality consists of both a particle and wave structure wich she applices at the consciousness.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka kristna personers attityder gentemot sekularisering och modern andlighet. För att undersöka detta intervjuades medlemmar ur frikyrkliga svenska samfund; en intervju i fokusgrupp (med fyra deltagare) samt tre individuella intervjuer. Intervjumaterialet bestod av ett case uppdelat i fem sektioner, där respondenterna fick resonera fritt kring olika religiösa dilemman. Deltagarna uppvisade främst negativa emotionella attityder gentemot sekularisering och modern andlighet, främst riktat mot sambandet till individualiseringen av samhället. Respondenterna uppvisade förståelse för den subjektiva aspekten av tro, samt religionens brister och hur dessa står i samband till vissa sekulära yttringar. Respondenternas personliga tro upplevdes som oförändrad. Det kan därmed tolkas att kristnas attityder har påverkats av samhällets individualisering, men att detta inte står i samband till en eventuell förlust av tro och minskad religiös makt. Resultaten visade även att respondenternas attityder till modern andlighet generellt sett var negativa, även om en viss förståelse för fenomenet var inarbetad i deras attityder.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-31).