GroshLink

I've just concluded reading Philip Jenkins' Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality. As one shaped by the Smithsonian, PBS/NPR, National Geographic subculture, this piece was hard to set down as it

describes a radical change in American cultural and religious attitudes over the past century or so, namely in popular views of Native American spirituality. Though the process of toleration and dialogue between any of the major religions has been slow, gradual, and often depressing, many Christians historically faced special difficulties in recognizing what American Indians were doing as authentically religious, let along as something that could be permitted or accomodated. Yet attitudes did shift dramatically, until today, the vast majority of Americans respect and admire the Native tradition. Indeed, millions try, controversially, to copy it, to absorb Indian spirituality into their own lives. Americans today are prepared not just to grant that once-familiar religions have virtues, but to admit that the whole concept of religion is much broader than they might once have imagined . . . (too much to share. I'll give a series of excerpts over the coming days to try to give justice to this penetrating piece of scholarship).