Alastair Lockhart 
Personal Religion and Spiritual Healing [EPUB ebook] 
The Panacea Society in the Twentieth Century

The Panacea Society was a small religious community of women that was established in England in the early twentieth century. They followed the early nineteenth-century mystic Joanna Southcott, as well other emerging spiritual movements of the day, and developed a remarkable spiritual healing practice that spread around the world. Based on the thousands of letters held in the Society’s healing archive, which were sent by ordinary people from around the world, Alastair Lockhart offers a detailed study of the religious ideas of religious seekers from the 1920s to the 1970s. Focusing on Great Britain, Finland, Jamaica, and the US, Lockhart provides unique insight into the personal nature of spirituality in recent times and how ancient and modern spiritual strands were harnessed to the needs of late-modern spiritual seekers. This book addresses debates about the complexity and meaning of the rise or decline of religion in the twentieth century and the processes involved in the formation of popular nontraditional spiritualities. It informs our understanding of global and transnational religions and recent forms of spiritual healing.

Tabella dei contenuti

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments



Introduction: The Panacea Society and the Study of Religion



1. The Panacea Society’s Healing



2. Sources of the Healing



3. Understanding Religion



4. The Healing and Other Movements I: Great Britain



5. The Healing and Other Movements II: The United States, Jamaica, and Finland



6. War and Anxiety



7. Religious Language and Metaphysics



8. Theories of Transcendence



Postscript: The End of the Healing



Appendices

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Circa l’autore

At the University of Cambridge,
Alastair Lockhart is Affiliate Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity and a Fellow of Hughes Hall.