Gary Laderman
Sarah Pike's book is a totally absorbing investigation of understudied though extremely important segments of American religious culture: the New Age and Neopaganism. Pike provides a fine historical analysis of the roots of these religious cultures, particularly in the post-1960s era, and offers a compelling portrait of religious life within New Age and Neopagan communities. She also engages in an illuminating thematic discussion, exploring gender, healing, sexuality, and other significant common elements found in both "new" but old movements. This is an informative, intriguing, and innovative study that fills a striking gap in the literature on religion in America.
— Gary Laderman, author of Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America
Stephen J. Stein
Sarah Pike's New Age and Neopagan Religions in America is required reading for everyone who thinks that the story of religion in the United States can be told exclusively in terms of churches and/or ecclesiastical institutions. Pike provides a perceptive analysis of the history and contemporary expressions of these two alternative spiritual subcultures that are thriving in America today. She traces the roots of these movements back into the nineteenth century. Pike also guides the reader into the contemporary worlds of healing and ritual activities that dominate these subcultures, and she explains the ways in which issues of sexuality and gender, which are of concern, reflect and influence the debates on these topics in the larger culture. Pike brings to this study her own fieldwork and a balanced, even-handed approach. Her account alerts us to the fact that these spiritual subcultures are likely to thrive in the context of the twenty-first century. She also provides valuable resources which will assist us in the further study of these movements.
— Stephen J. Stein, Chancellor's Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University at Bloomington
Jeffrey Kaplan
Sarah Pike's New Age and Neopagan Religions in America is less a comparative work than it is a fascinating study of the convergence of two highly variegated belief systems: the fantastically diverse universe of Wiccan and (neo)pagan religions with the no less disparate milieu of New Age believers. The book is enlivened by extensive fieldwork and yet it retains a remarkable analytical and theoretical sophistication. This approach allows Dr. Pike's many interviewees to tell their own stories, which she then weaves into a seamless theoretical narrative. The result is the best of all possible worlds: a book which will be of immense value to scholars concerned with new religious movements in America and to professors looking for an undergraduate or graduate level textbook in courses broadly focused on American religion or more narrowly focused on new religious movements and/or New Age cultures. Moreover, New Age and Neopagan Religions in America is beautifully written and completely accessible to a broad mainstream audience. I recommend it highly to scholars, practitioners and the general reader alike.
— Jeffrey Kaplan, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
