Christopher Partridge

Religions in the modern world : traditions and transformations

Introduction: The Modern Contexts of Religion 1. How to Study Religion Kim Knott 2. Hinduism David Smith 3. Buddhism (Cathy Cantwell and Hiroko Kawanami 4. Sikhism Christopher Shackle 5. Chinese Religions Stephan Feuchtwang 6. Japanese Religions Robert Kisala 7. Judaism Seth Kunin 8. Christianity Linda Woodhead 9. Islam David Waines 10. Religion in Africa Charles Gore 11. Native American Religions Kenneth Mello 12. Spirituality Giselle Vincett and Linda Woodhead 13. New Age Religion Wouter J. Hanegraaff 14. Paganism Graham Harvey 15. New Religious Movements Douglas Cowan 16. Religion and Globalization David Lehmann 17. Religion and Politics Jeffrey Haynes 18. Religion and Violence Charles Selengut 19. Religion and Gender Linda Woodhead 20. Religion and Popular Culture Christopher Partridge 21. Secularism and Secularization Grace Davie and Linda Woodhead

The Spiritual and the Revolutionary: Alternative Spirituality, British Free Festivals, and the Emergence of Rave Culture

This article examines the sacralisation of festival and rave culture. Beginning with an exploration of the British free festival as a site of countercultural ideology and alternative spirituality, it traces the spiritual and ideological lines of continuity between the free festivals that took place with increasing frequency in Britain throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s and the rave culture of the 1980s and 1990s.

Alien demonology: The Christian roots of the malevolent extraterrestrial in UFO religions and abduction spiritualities

Abstract Initially, the sacralisation of the extraterrestrial led to an understanding of the alien as a fundamentally benevolent, messianic figure—a ‘technological angel’. This was largely because of the Cold War environment in which much UFO religion arose. Those attracted to the myth looked beyond a politically and militarily unstable planet to extraterrestrial saviours. Furthermore, because UFO religions have their roots in the Theosophical tradition, the religious understanding of the extraterrestrial tended to be fundamentally indebted to the concept of the wise and benevolent ascended master. The aim of this article is to examine the technological angels foil. The central thesis is that, in their construction of the malevolent alien, UFO religionists and abductees turn not to Theosophy and Eastern religious traditions but to the myths and symbols of Christian demonology. Moreover, in exploring the origins and nature of the demonologies of contemporary UFO religions and abduction spiritualities, the article also draws attention to the importance of popular culture in the West, which, itself influenced by the Christian tradition, contributes to the formation of both popular demonology and also UFO mythology, which are in turn synthesised in UFO demonologies.

The Invention of Sacred Tradition: Antisemitism, conspiracy culture, Christianity, and Islam: the history and contemporary religious significance of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

“One of the most important forgeries of modern times.” In 1939 the French scholar of antisemitism, Henri Rollin, concluded that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was probably the most widely distributed book in the world after the Bible. Indeed, there are few languages, including Hebrew, into which it has not been translated. Moreover, “its distribution was accompanied by a mountain of secondary literature comprising well more than one thousand titles.” The Protocols is, as Norman Cohn has argued, “the supreme expression and vehicle of the myth of the Jewish world-conspiracy.” Pretending to be lectures, or notes of lectures, taken during twenty-four sessions of a congress held by representatives of “the twelve tribes of Israel,” the Elders of Zion, led by a Grand Rabbi – whom a later edition claimed to be the founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl – it sets out a plot to take over the world and to subjugate gentiles. While not easy to summarize, the standard version of the Protocols expounds three principal themes: a critique of liberalism, an exposition of the methods by which Jews intend to take over the world, and an overview of the world government that the Elders of Zion intend to establish. The work is “a slapdash patchwork composed of several earlier, unrelated writings” constructed as the Protocols by the Okhrana (the czarist secret police) and published in Russian newspapers during 1903 in order to strengthen the position of Nicholas II. However, while one might have expected such an obvious and ludicrous forgery to have quickly lost credibility, its combination of the twin motifs of conspiracy and anti-semitism quickly found eager believers and translators.