Gnostic Afterlives in American Religion and Culture

April D. DeConick, Ph.D. (1994, University of Michigan), is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Rice University. She has published extensively on early Christianity, esotericism, mysticism, and Gnosticism, including The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today (Columbia University Press, 2016).Jeffrey J. Kripal is the Associate Dean of the Faculty and Graduate Programs in the School of the Humanities and the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. Jeff is the author of nine books, including, most recently, The Flip: Who You Really Are and Why It Matters (Penguin, 2020), where he envisions the future centrality and urgency of the humanities in conversation with the history of science, the philosophy of mind, and our shared ethical, political, and ecological challenges.

• 1 Introduction: Gnostic Afterlives in American Religion and CultureApril D. DeConickPart 1: Theorizing the Gnostic in Modernity2 The Sociology of Gnostic SpiritualityApril D. DeConick3 Can We Recover Gnosis Today?Gregory Shaw4 What Is Gnosis: An ExplorationArthur VersluisPart 2: (Neo-)Gnostic Movements in America5 The Knowing of KnowingNeo-Gnosticism, from the O.T.O. to ScientologyHugh B. Urban6 Know Place: Heaven’s Gate and American GnosticismCathy Gutierrez7 American Gnosis: Jesus Mysticism in A Course in MiraclesSimon J. Joseph8 The New Age and Gnosticism: Terms of CommonalityMitch HorowitzPart 3: The Gnostic in Popular American Culture9 The Gnostic in Us All: Thinking from the Macrobiotics of Michio KushiCatherine L. Albanese10 The Space Jockey and the Future of Enjoyment: Alienated Sentience in the World of H. R. GigerEric Wargo11 A Metaphysical Rebel? Camus’s Analysis of Gnosticism and Its Influence on Literature and CinemaLautaro Roig Lanzillotta12 Eric Voegelin and Gnostic HollywoodFryderyk Kwiatkowski13 The Afterlives of the Archons: Gnostic Literalism and Embodied Paranoia in 21st CE Conspiracy TheoryMatthew Dillon14 The Electric Chrism Acid Test: The Problem of Psychedelic Gnosis Erik Davis15 Reflections of an American GnosticJeffrey J. KripalIndex