PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, IDENTITY AND CONTEMPORARY RESURGENT RELIGION
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, IDENTITY AND CONTEMPORARY RESURGENT RELIGION

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, I argue that several significant contemporary religious movements are “Post-Secular.” By the term “post-secular” I refer to something very specific: that these religious movements are expressions and articulation of a specifically modern turn towards Self-Love. Stated more specifically, I wish to present a narrative in which several, central, resurgent, religious movements have at their core either the absolute validity of personal experience or personal identity. The movements that I shall discuss are Christian Evangelicals in the US, Contemporary European Islam, and two Israeli phenomena – Radical Religious Zionism and Shas. I argue that significant aspects of three of these religious movements have their roots in the experience of the 1960s. The heart of the cultural and political revival that we refer to as the 60s was placing the self – either its experience or its identity - at the center of culture and politics. It is this motif – what I would call the apotheosis of the self – that was continued by contemporary, resurgent religion.

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