Americanized Buddhism and the Rise of the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness
dc.contributor.advisor | Gould, Mark | |
dc.contributor.advisor | Herrala, Mark | |
dc.contributor.author | Kaplow, Benjamin J. | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2019-04-05T15:27:54Z | |
dc.date.available | 2019-04-05T15:27:54Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2018 | |
dc.description.abstract | Drawing upon fieldwork conducted at two Buddhist centers in the Philadelphia area, I characterize the nature of religious commitment within Americanized Buddhism as part of a distinctly American transformation in religious thought, rather than a superficial modification of Asian Buddhist practice. This form of the religious commitment, the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness, is defined by the attributes of individualism, the primacy of experiential practice, and the universalization of religious validity, ritual, and access to religious truth. I claim that the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness is not limited to Buddhism, but is found in a variety of religious groups arising from the counterculture of the 1960s-70s. Utilizing Mark Gould’s theory of motivated religious disorder (Gould 2014), I analytically characterize the requisite causal conditions for the genesis of the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness, and aim to trace its institutionalization across religious movements. Drawing on a case study of Erhard Seminars Training, I argue that the Human Potential Movement and imported Zen of the 1960s and 70s were the first religious organizations to articulate this form of religiosity. Utilizing resource mobilization theory, I aim to articulate why the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness was first institutionalized in these movements. Lastly, by examining the organizational and religious composition of those early individual-experiential movements, I attempt to explain why they were superseded by the contemporary form of Americanized Buddhism. | |
dc.description.sponsorship | Haverford College. Department of Sociology | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10066/20657 | |
dc.language.iso | eng | |
dc.rights.access | Tri-College users only | |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ | |
dc.subject.lcsh | Buddhism -- United States | |
dc.subject.lcsh | Religion and sociology -- United States | |
dc.subject.lcsh | Human potential movement -- United States | |
dc.subject.lcsh | Zen Buddhism -- United States | |
dc.subject.lcsh | Gould, Mark | |
dc.title | Americanized Buddhism and the Rise of the Individual-Experiential Religious Consciousness | |
dc.type | Thesis |