New Religions, Spiritualities, and Popular Music

Christopher Partridge is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, UK. He is the author of several books, including High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World (2018) and Mortality and Music: Popular Music and the Awareness of Death (2015).Tom Wagner is is Teaching Fellow in Music Performance and Digital Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Music, Branding, and Consumer Culture in Church (2019) and co-editor of three edited collections on music and religion including Congregational Music Making in a Mediated Age (2015).

“Groundbreaking” is accurate. There is nothing like this at all. An essential on-the-shelf text for anyone researching or teaching about the lived religion of NRMs.

• List of IllustrationsList of ContributorsIntroduction, Christopher Partridge (Lancaster University, UK); Tom Wagner (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)1. The Mormon Hip Hop Musical Project, Jake Johnson (University of Oklahoma, USA)2. ISKCON and Popular Music, Guy Beck (Tulane University, USA)3. Globalist Breathing: Voice, Technology, and Antecedence in the Music of Islamic State, Tom Parkinson (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)4. Religion, Music, and Cold War Politics: The Unification Church and The Little Angels in South Korea, Hee-sun Kim (Kookmin University, South Korea)5. Haunted Paradise: The Continuity of Music-Making from Jonestown and the Peoples Temple, Helen Hawa-Diggle (Independent Scholar, UK)6. Chant Down Babylon: Rastafari and Reggae, Christopher Partridge (Lancaster University, UK)7. Children of Barleycorn: Music in the Druidic Religious Imagination, Christopher W. Chase (Iowa State University, USA)8. Musical Creativity in The Process, William Sims Bainbridge (National Science Foundation, USA)9. I Think I See the Mothership Coming: From Christian Scepticism to Alternative Religious Experiences in the P-Funk Universe, Richard Worth (University of Liverpool, UK)10. ‘Did You Ever Go Clear?’: The Use (and Abuse) of Scientology in Popular Music, Tom Wagner (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)11. A Melodic Disorder: Chaos Gnosticism in Contemporary Music, Paul Linjamaa (Lund University, Sweden); Johnny Olsson (Independent Scholar, Sweden)12. New Age Music: The Sonic Production of Utopia, Steven J. Sutcliffe (Open University, UK); Mary Briggs (University of Edinburgh, UK)13. The Spirit of ’76: Father Yod, The Source Family, and the Role of Popular Music, Alistair Smith (University of Exeter, UK)14. Psychic TV: Hauntological Cultic Rejection and Autoethnographic Legacies, Mike Dines (Middlesex University, UK); Alastair Gordon (De Montfort University, UK); Francis Stewart (University of Stirling, UK)15. Sacred Jazz and Devotion at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, Peter Jan Margry (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands); Daniel Wojcik (University of Oregon, USA)16. Spinning Centripetally or Spinning Centrifugally: Building a Religion from the Grateful Dead’s Music, Michael Kaler (University of Toronto-Mississauga, Canada)Index