Getting Saved from the Sixties: Moral Meaning in Conversion and Cultural Change - Softcover

Tipton, Steven M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1625646992 ISBN 13: 9781625646996

Publisher: Wipf and Stock, 2014

Synopsis

This groundbreaking study explores the ways young Americans today understand right and wrong, how they think out their morality, and how they live it out. It describes contrasting ethical styles in the biblical, utilitarian, and personalist traditions of our culture; first, as they structured the conflict between mainstream and counterculture during the 1960s, and second, as they have shaped the transformation of these values in new religious movements since the early 1970s. Coupling descriptive ethics with interpretive sociology, this study pursues biography and moral dialogue with sixties youth who participated in a charismatic Christian sect, a Zen Buddhist meditation center, and a human potential organization (est). It shows the significance of these movements for the adherents' changing ideas of their own identity; their relationships, sex roles, courtship, and marriage; and their politics and vision of society. It analyzes the cultural logic and the social location of their ideas, which break down, recombine, and find renewal in the course of conversion.

About this title

About the Authors

Steven Tipton teaches sociology of religion, morality, and culture at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, where he is Charles Howard Candler Professor and former Director of the Graduate Division of Religion. A native of San Francisco, he studied literature, philosophy, and religion at Stanford University (BA, 1968), then coupled cultural sociology with comparative philosophical and religious ethics for a joint degree in Sociology and the Study of Religion at Harvard University (PhD, 1979).

Robert N. Bellah is Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. He was educated at Harvard University, receiving the B.A. in 1950 and the Ph.D. in 1955. His publications include The Broken Covenant, The Robert Bellah Reader, and most recently (2011) Religion in Human Evolution. In 1985 he was coauthor of Habits of the Heart.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1625646992
• ISBN 13: 9781625646996
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 382