Reading “New” Religious Movements Historically: Sci-Fi Possibilities and Shared Assumptions in Heaven's Gate
This article surveys the relationship of the Heaven's Gate movement to the cultural context of science fiction while also engaging broader issues in the retrospective account of violence in new religious movements. Against theories that see violence as the consequence of social isolation and th...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2012
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| In: |
Nova religio
Year: 2012, Volume: 16, Issue: 2, Pages: 29-46 |
| Further subjects: | B
religion and popular culture
B UFO Religions B Historiography B Heaven's Gate B Science Fiction |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article surveys the relationship of the Heaven's Gate movement to the cultural context of science fiction while also engaging broader issues in the retrospective account of violence in new religious movements. Against theories that see violence as the consequence of social isolation and the escalating confusion of representation and reality, I argue that members of Heaven's Gate were not only “tapped in” to the reality outside the group but were markedly self-conscious about their engagement with that reality through the medium of science fiction. Using Heaven's Gate as an example, I propose that we read the concepts espoused by new religious movements in the past not in light of their fate but rather as imbedded in the historical realities in which they originally functioned in a meaningful and deliberate fashion. |
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| ISSN: | 1541-8480 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Nova religio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1525/nr.2012.16.2.29 |