Comments on: The new gurus http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2009/09/27/the-new-gurus-2/ Secularism, religion, and the public sphere Thu, 16 May 2013 19:41:38 +0000 hourly 1 By: Marian Ronan http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2009/09/27/the-new-gurus-2/comment-page-1/#comment-6903 Marian Ronan Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:51:38 +0000 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/?p=3069#comment-6903 Thanks to Katie Lofton for articulating how thoroughly underwhelmed I was by the women’s spirituality article in the Times. A “missionary profile all its agnostic own” indeed. Out here in Flatbush I live walking distance from storefront mosques, imposing shuls, and vibrant West Indian Baptist and Catholic churches, but to the Times, religion is as worthy of note as passing fashions.

]]> By: Daromir Rudnyckyj http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2009/09/27/the-new-gurus-2/comment-page-1/#comment-6899 Daromir Rudnyckyj Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:48:28 +0000 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/?p=3069#comment-6899 Reading the article I was struck by two things. First, was the gendered dimension of this new movement. Are there no men who are involved in analagous projects of spirituality and self-help? If not, then why not?

Second, this configuration of self-help, spirituality, and personal transformation is not a New York or American phenomenon, but rather a global one. I have conducted research and published on groups active in Southeast Asia (mainly Indonesia) that draw on many of the same principles, practices, and texts that the groups represented in the article also reference.

The spirituality, is explicitly Muslim in these cases, but it is represented as universal. Also, the scale of meetings is much larger; they occur in vast hotel ballrooms and conference centers with as many as 1000 attendees. They are mixed gendered rather than exclusively female and involve elaborately narrated Powerpoint presentations. However, the message is quite similar in so far as they advocate spiritual development and self-transformation as the key to business, family, and personal success.

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