ePub Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia by Siddharth Kara in History

Description

Gnosticism is a countercultural spirituality that forever changed the practice of Christianity. Before it emerged in the second century; passage to the afterlife required obedience to God and king. Gnosticism proposed that human beings were manifestations of the divine; unsettling the hierarchical foundations of the ancient world. Subversive and revolutionary; Gnostics taught that prayer and mediation could bring human beings into an ecstatic spiritual union with a transcendent deity. This mystical strain affected not just Christianity but many other religions; and it characterizes our understanding of the purpose and meaning of religion today.In The Gnostic New Age; April D. DeConick recovers this vibrant underground history to prove that Gnosticism was not suppressed or defeated by the Catholic Church long ago; nor was the movement a fabrication to justify the violent repression of alternative forms of Christianity. Gnosticism alleviated human suffering; soothing feelings of existential brokenness and alienation through the promise of renewal as God. DeConick begins in ancient Egypt and follows with the rise of Gnosticism in the Middle Ages; the advent of theosophy and other occult movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and contemporary New Age spiritual philosophies. As these theories find expression in science-fiction and fantasy films; DeConick sees evidence of Gnosticism's next incarnation. Her work emphasizes the universal; countercultural appeal of a movement that embodies much more than a simple challenge to religious authority.