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Holy Places and Religious Language in New Religious Movements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
The idea of sacred sites or holy ground has been an important aspect of a number of major world religions. While the concept has received longstanding scholarly attention in connection with the traditional Abrahamic faiths, the ways in which late-modern and contemporary movements have developed the idea has been little studied. This paper reviews the ways in which twentieth-century new religions adopted and developed the idea of holy place. Three movements form the core case studies: The Panacea Society, a breakaway Anglican group based in Bedford in England, which came to believe their garden was the site of Eden; the American Theosophical Society, which founded a utopian community in California understood as the site of the emergence of a new spiritual age; and Jamaican Rastafari who came to regard a territory south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia as salvific. Common themes emerging from the case studies include the ways in which ideas about holy ground (1) draw on available theological motifs, (2) express emerging theological principles, and (3) are catalysed by stress or challenge. Finally, the discussion reflects on the role of holy ground in these movements in the light of classic and contemporary understandings of place and religious imagination.
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- Catholic Theological Association 2019 Conference Papers
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- Copyright © 2020 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
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