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This book is a study of religious ecstasy, and the ways that it has been suppressed in both the academic study of religion, and in much of the modern practice of religion. It examines the meanings of the term, how ecstatic experience is understood in a range of religions, and why the importance of religious and mystical ecstasy has declined in the modern West. June McDaniel examines how the search for ecstatic experience has migrated into such areas as war, terrorism, transgression, sexuality, drug use, and anti-institutional forms of spirituality. She argues that the loss of religious and mystical ecstasy, as both a religious goal and as a topic of academic study, has had wide-ranging negative effects. She also proposes that the field of religious studies must go beyond criminalizing, trivializing and pathologizing ecstatic and mystical experiences. Both religious studies and theology need to take these states seriously as important aspects of lived human experience.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: What Happened to Ecstasy? Mysticism, Ecstasy and the Constructivist Loop.- Chapter 2: Some Examples of Religious Ecstasy.- Chapter 3: Attacks on Ecstasy, Pathologizing in Academia.- Chapter 4: Attacks on Ecstasy, Theology: We Don't Want It Either.- Chapter 5: Destructive Ecstasies: Wargasm and the Joy of Violence.- Chapter 6: The Spiritualized Ecstasies: Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll.- Chapter 7: Return of the Repressed: Millenial, Charismatic and Renewal Movements.- Chapter 8: The Case of Hinduism: Ecstasy and Denial.- Chapter 9: Ecstasy and Empathy: Some Venerable Elders and New Directions.- Chapter 10: Conclusions: Can We Go Beyond Criminalizing, Pathologizing, and Trivializing? Or The Problems of Shooting Yourself in the Foot.
About the author
June McDaniel is Professor of the History of Religions at the College of Charleston, USA.
Summary
This book is a study of religious ecstasy, and the ways that it has been suppressed in both the academic study of religion, and in much of the modern practice of religion. It examines the meanings of the term, how ecstatic experience is understood in a range of religions, and why the importance of religious and mystical ecstasy has declined in the modern West. June McDaniel examines how the search for ecstatic experience has migrated into such areas as war, terrorism, transgression, sexuality, drug use, and anti-institutional forms of spirituality. She argues that the loss of religious and mystical ecstasy, as both a religious goal and as a topic of academic study, has had wide-ranging negative effects. She also proposes that the field of religious studies must go beyond criminalizing, trivializing and pathologizing ecstatic and mystical experiences. Both religious studies and theology need to take these states seriously as important aspects of lived human experience.
