Contents:
1 Introduction: A Changing View of the Spiritual World
Spiritual Changes: A New Age of Belief?
Bestsellers and Blockbusters: Spirituality Goes Public
Talking About Spirituality
The Revealed Word and the New Religious Synthesis
Goals of the Study
2 Antecedents of the New Religious Synthesis: A Brief History of Alternative Spirituality in the West
Spiritual Communities in the Middle Ages
Magic and the Hermetic Tradition
Kabbalah: Secrets in the Pentateuch
Neo-Platonism and Magical Science
European Mysticism
Humanism and the Rise of Biblical Criticism
Conclusion
3 The Rise of Biblical Criticism: Allegory, Myth, Codes and the End of History
Thomas Woolston and the English Deists
Lessing, Strauss and German Criticism
John Shelby Spong Rescues the Bible
Michael Drosnin's The Bible Code
Conclusion
4 The Ascent of Reason: Birth of a Deity
Peter Annet
Voltaire and Liberated Reason
Thomas De Quincey
American New Thought: Mind as Divine Healing Force
Ayn Rand's Argument for Reason
Conclusion
5 Science and Shifting Paradigms: Salvation in a New Cosmos
Thomas Paine on the Hope of Science
Robert Green Ingersoll: Science and Deliverance
Carl Sagan: From The Demon-Haunted World to Alien Contact
The New Physics: Science and Ancient Wisdom
Conclusion
6 Evolution and Advancement: The Darwin's' Spiritual Legacy
Erasmus Darwin
Lamarck and Spencer
Charles Darwin: Naturalist Prophet
The Spiritual Vision of Darwin's Early Defenders
Julian Huxley: Transhumanism and the Moral Elite
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Reaching the Omega Point
James H. Austin: Evolving Brain, Evolving Spirit
James Redfield: The Celestine Prophet
Science Fiction and Human Evolutionary Destiny
Conclusion
7 Pantheism in the Modern World: Nature of God
Spinoza and Toland
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ernst Haeckel and The Riddle of the Universe
Bergson and Shaw
A New Pantheistic Physics
Conclusion
8 The Rebirth of Gnosticism: The Secret Path to Self-Salvation
The Fundamentals of Gnosticism
Jacob Ilive: Enlightenment Gnostic
Joseph Smith's Yankee Gnosticism
Carl Jung and the Gnostic Impulse
Jean Houston: Gnosticism and the New Age
Science Fiction: The Final Gnostic Frontier
Conclusion
9 Modern Shamanism: Spirit Contact and Spiritual Progress
Emanuel Swedenborg
Victorian Shamans: Occultism, Theosophy and Spiritualism
John Mack and UFO Abduction
Paul Ferrini and the Jesus Phenomenon
Conclusion
10 The Mystical Path to Pluralism: Discovering that All is One in Religion
An Original Religion
R. M. Bucke
Frithjof Schuon and Transcendent Religious Unity
Joseph Campbell: The Perennial Philosophy as Pluralistic Hope
Marcus Borg and Jesus the Spirit Person
Conclusion
11 Conclusion: A New Spirituality for a New Age
Taking Leave of History
The Advent of Reason
Theological Science
Spiritual Evolution
Pantheism
The New Gnosis
Shamans and the Spiritual Future
Mystical Pluralism
Final Considerations: A New and Better Way?

Includes bibliographical references and index