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Holy Places and Religious Language in New Religious Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Alastair Lockhart
Alastair Lockhart*
Affiliation:
Hughes Hall, Cambridge, CB1 2EW
*
ASL21@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

The idea of sacred sites or holy ground has been an important aspect of a number of major world religions. While the concept has received longstanding scholarly attention in connection with the traditional Abrahamic faiths, the ways in which late-modern and contemporary movements have developed the idea has been little studied. This paper reviews the ways in which twentieth-century new religions adopted and developed the idea of holy place. Three movements form the core case studies: The Panacea Society, a breakaway Anglican group based in Bedford in England, which came to believe their garden was the site of Eden; the American Theosophical Society, which founded a utopian community in California understood as the site of the emergence of a new spiritual age; and Jamaican Rastafari who came to regard a territory south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia as salvific. Common themes emerging from the case studies include the ways in which ideas about holy ground (1) draw on available theological motifs, (2) express emerging theological principles, and (3) are catalysed by stress or challenge. Finally, the discussion reflects on the role of holy ground in these movements in the light of classic and contemporary understandings of place and religious imagination.

Keywords

RastafariTheosophyPanaceasacred territoryholy ground
Type
Catholic Theological Association 2019 Conference Papers
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 101 , Issue 1092 , March 2020 , pp. 163 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Panacea Charitable Trust, 14 Albany Road, Bedford.

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44 The movement is often referred to as “Rastafarianism”, however, following Jahlani Niaah's recommendation, this paper follows the convention of referring to “Rastafari”. Jahlani Niaah, ‘Back to Ethiopia: back to Africa movements from the West Indies since 1930’ in Kwesi Kwaa Prah eds., Back to Africa: Volume II: The Ideology and Practice of the African Returnee Phenomenon from the Caribbean and North America to Africa. pp. 437-462. (Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society, 2012) p. 437.

45 Lockhart, Personal Religion, pp. 12, 64, 70-77.

46 The book is difficult to source, this study has worked from Robert Athlyi Rogers, The Holy Piby: The Blackman's Bible [no place, no date - volume acquired in 2019, original dated 1924] (isbn: 1453814760).

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