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Maybe someday
48
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
38/100Critics
13/100Scholars
93/100Author:
Tara Isabella Burton
Publisher:
PublicAffairs
Date:
June 16, 2020
Tara Isabella Burton takes a tour through contemporary American religiosity. As traditional churches continue to sink into obsolescence, people are looking elsewhere for the intensity and unity that religion once provided. We're carrying on a longstanding American tradition of religious eclecticism, DIY-innovation and 'unchurched' piety (and highly effective capitalism). A strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age.
What The Reviewers Say
A tension runs through Strange Rites unresolved. Sometimes, Burton, a theologian who wanted, she confesses, more, and who, judging by her other writings, is a believing Christian, seems to expect seriousness from ‘religion’. But more often than not, she appears to accept that if there is enough meaning to support ritual, community and purpose then, say, even fandom can be enough, though she misses the self-irony that comes with so much of it.
...excellent.
Strange Rites is a bracing tour through the myriad forms of bespoke spiritualism and makeshift quasireligions springing up across America: the ersatz piety and self-veneration of “wellness culture”; the startlingly earnest and deeply strange world of Harry Potter fan fiction; the newer, woker forms of sexual utopia, witchcraft and satanism that are now prevalent among the affluent young.
The title of this book is misleading as it has little, if anything, to do with sacred rites—at least not as most people envision them.
