1st Edition
Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories Comparing and Connecting Old and New Trends
Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories contributes to the study of conspiracy culture by analysing the religious and esoteric dimensions of conspiracy theories.
The book examines both historical and contemporary examples to explore transnational and transhistorical continuities between religious doctrines, eschatologies, and conspiracy theories. It draws on a broad range of disciplinary insights from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars. The book has a global focus and features case studies from North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
This book will be of great interest to researchers of conspiracy theories, esotericism, extremism, and religion
Introduction: Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories
FRANCESCO PIRAINO, MARCO PASI, AND EGIL ASPREM
PART I
Reading History with New (Conspiracist) Lenses
- The Bacchanalian Conspiracy: From the Paranoid Styleo Conspirituality
VICTORIA E. PAGÁN - Magic, Money, Ink, and Blood: Mediating the Social Body in the Case of Simon of Trent
EMILY POTHAST - Anti-Masonic Conspiracy Theories and Universal Religion: From the French Revolution to the New World Order
TOMASZ SZYMAŃSKI - Jewish Refugees
AVERY MORROW - Esoteric Nationalism and Conspiracism in WWI
AARON FRENCH - ‘Going to the Ends of the Earth to Unmask Conspiracy’: Radical Skepticism in the Modern Gnostic Narratives of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum
NIKLAS NENZÉN - ‘Toxic Positivity’: From New Thought to Donald Trump
ALLISON P. COUDERT - Conspiracy Theory, Altered States, and Alternative Community: Conspiracy Beliefs in a Sample of Nordic Yoga-Practitioners
ASBJØRN DYRENDAL AND INGA BÅRDSEN TØLLEFSEN - Conspiracy Theories in Africa: A Continuum of Narratives About Evil Agents
JOHANNEKE KROESBERGEN-KAMPS - When Conspiracy Meets Faith: Making Sense of Tragic Events in Bucharest, Romania
GIUSEPPE TATEO - Jesuit Fathers, Maronites, Muslim ʿUlamāʾ, and Islamists: The Role of Religious Institutions and Organisations in the Spread of the Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy Myth in the Middle East
BARBARA DE POLI - The Eurasia Network: Riding the Conspiracist Tiger in Contemporary Italy
FRANCESCO PIRAINO - Qvangelicalism: QAnon as a Hyper-Real Religion
MARC-ANDRÉ ARGENTINO
PART II
Connecting New Phenomena with Old Trends
Biography
Francesco Piraino is Postdoctoral Scholar at Ca’ Foscari University, Italy, and the Director of the Centre of Comparative Studies of Spiritualties and Civilisations at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, Italy.
Marco Pasi is Associate Professor in the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is a founding member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE).
Egil Asprem is Professor in the History of Religions, with a focus on esotericism, new religious movements, alternative spiritualities, and the cognitive science of religion, at Stockholm University, Sweden. He is editor-in-chief of Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism.
