From Slogans to Mantras: Social Protest and Religious Conversion in the Late Vietnam Era

Certainly, religious strains were evident through postwar popular culture from the 1950s Beat generation into the 1960s drug counterculture, but the explosion of nontraditional religions during the early 1970s was unprecedented. This phenomenon took place in the United States (and at the edges of American-influenced Canadian society) among young people who had been committed to bringing about what they called "the revolution" but were converting to a wide variety of Eastern and Western mystical and spiritual movements.

Stephen Kent maintains that the failure of political activism led former radicals to become involved with groups such as the Hare Krishnas, Scientology, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, the Jesus movement, and the Children of God. Drawing on scholarly literature, alternative press reportage, and personal narratives, Kent shows how numerous activists turned from psychedelia and political activism to guru worship and spiritual quest as a response to the failures of social protest and as a new means of achieving societal change.

Author: Stephen Kent
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 10/01/2001
Pages: 268
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.83lbs
Size: 8.94h x 6.06w x 0.63d
ISBN: 9780815629481

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/15/2001 pg. 66
Library Journal 12/01/2001 pg. 133
Christian Century 09/25/2002 pg. 37
Choice 06/01/2002 pg. 1887