Lost Ecstasy

Description

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. Front Matter ....Pages i-viii Introduction: What Happened to Ecstasy? Mysticism, Ecstasy, and the Constructivist Loop (June McDaniel)....Pages 1-24 Some Examples of Religious Ecstasy (June McDaniel)....Pages 25-58 Attacks on Ecstasy: Pathologizing in Academia (June McDaniel)....Pages 59-102 Attacks on Ecstasy: Theology—We Don’t Want It Either (June McDaniel)....Pages 103-128 Destructive Ecstasies: Wargasm and the Joy of Violence (June McDaniel)....Pages 129-157 The “Spiritualized” Ecstasies: Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll (June McDaniel)....Pages 159-204 The Return of the Repressed: Millennial, Charismatic, and Renewal Movements (June McDaniel)....Pages 205-233 The Case of Hinduism: Ecstasy and Denial (June McDaniel)....Pages 235-256 Ecstasy and Empathy: Some Venerable Elders and New Directions (June McDaniel)....Pages 257-300 Conclusions: Can We Go Beyond Criminalizing, Pathologizing, and Trivializing? Or, the Problems of Shooting Yourself in the Foot (June McDaniel)....Pages 301-318 Back Matter ....Pages 319-325