Modern spiritualities

Once the exclusive property of Western monastics and Eastern mystics; spirituality is now one of the commonplace metaphors, like the rising sun and the four corners of the earth, which remind us of more ancient cosmologies and anthropologies. New Age spirituality, in particular, with its call for a renewed understanding of human nature and our place in the world, has contributed a great deal to the ways in which Christian denominations have reevaluated their ideas and practices. In this volume, sixteen essays range over a wide variety of themes including early Christian humor; the influence of heresy on Christian ideas of the spiritual "man"; the "quantum metaphysics" of Teilhard de Chardin and Frank J. Tipler; Buddhist, Islamic, and modern African spiritual enlightenment; New Age spirituality; and neospirituality and the paranormal. The diversity of these modern "spiritualities" and the critiques of the phenomenon included here point to an enormous energy seeking to define itself in new forms in communities that sense the end of the old religious order.