51 min listen
Ann Taves, “Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths” (Princeton UP, 2016)
Ann Taves, “Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths” (Princeton UP, 2016)
ratings:
Length:
44 minutes
Released:
Oct 10, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
I’ve often asked myself this question: “How do religions begin?” I don’t know about you, but I think I would be very, very skeptical if someone told me that they’d had just received a revelation, communicated with some spiritual “higher power,” or had some sort of mystical-though-divinely-inspired experience. Ditto with miracles: I just don’t know if I’d believe someone who claimed to have witnesses a miracle. Perhaps it’s the age we live in: most of us just have a hard time swallowing encounters with the “supernatural.”
Yet “religions” (if that’s the right word, and I think it is) have appeared in modern times among people who (dare I say) think pretty much the way I do–and perhaps you do as well. How does this happen? Well, Ann Taves, has written a wonderful book that attempts to answer this question, and in a way that is very respectful of the new religions she studies. It’s called Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths (Princeton University Press, 2016) and I highly recommend it to you.
In the interview, we spend most of our time talking about Bill Wilson and the emergence of Alcoholics Anonymous, a “spiritual path” (to use her excellent phrase) that I myself have walked. Listen in.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Yet “religions” (if that’s the right word, and I think it is) have appeared in modern times among people who (dare I say) think pretty much the way I do–and perhaps you do as well. How does this happen? Well, Ann Taves, has written a wonderful book that attempts to answer this question, and in a way that is very respectful of the new religions she studies. It’s called Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths (Princeton University Press, 2016) and I highly recommend it to you.
In the interview, we spend most of our time talking about Bill Wilson and the emergence of Alcoholics Anonymous, a “spiritual path” (to use her excellent phrase) that I myself have walked. Listen in.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Oct 10, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Samuel Kassow, “Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive” (Indiana UP, 2007): Scholars argue about whether the Holocaust was unprecedented. It’s a difficult question. On the one hand, slaughters litter the pages of history. On the other hand, none of them seem quite as calculated, systematic and horribly efficient as the Nazi mu... by New Books in Religion