From slogans to mantras: social protest and religious conversion in the late Vietnam War era

Abstract

This book takes a provocative look at early 1970s - an often overlooked yet colorful period when Vietnam War and student protests were on wane as new religious groups grew in size and visibility. Certainly, religious strains were evident through postwar popular culture from 1950s Beat generation into 1960s drug counterculture, but explosion of nontraditional religions during early 1970s was unprecedented. This phenomenon took place in United States (and at 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 failure of political activism led former radicals to become involved with groups such as Hare Krishnas, Scientology, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, Jesus movement, and 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 failures of social protest - and as a new means of achieving societal change.