Late Modern Esoteric Christianities

Abstract

“Esoteric Christianity” is a term that has been used to describe a range of practices, philosophies, movements, and organizations that espouse a sui generis “inner” tradition within or alongside the stream of historic Christianity. The term has arisen in different religious contexts in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, from Theosophy (Besant 1914) and continental esoteric traditions (Tomberg [1980] 2002) to more recent attempts to locate the origins of esoteric Christianity in the early church (Amis 1995). Richard Smoley has recently attempted to collate these disparate streams of Christian esotericism in his influential Inner Christianity (2002), which continues to be cited widely by proponents of alternative Christianities. While these writers are interested in making authoritative claims about the existence of an alternative or submerged stream of Christianity (at varying degrees of divergence from the historic or “exoteric” Christian churches), which emphasizes higher teachings and inner experience of the divine over and against creedal orthodoxy and assent to doctrine, I am interested in this paper primarily in esoteric Christianity as a discursive phenomenon of late 20^th and 21^st century American religious culture. Specifically, I am interested in the search for the esoteric as a phenomenon of modernity that reflects concerns about secularization and religious pluralism, drawing on identified themes of 20^th century American religion such as primitivism, individualism, and the therapeutic nature of religion. Finally, I am interested in the ways that this term is embodied and naturalized in by religious practitioners, both individually and in community. In this paper, I will analyze the trends of late modern esoteric Christianities. attempting to characterize some of the emergent practices and identities that fall under this umbrella, what I have roughly termed the “liturgical-contemplative,” “New Age revelation,” and “ecclesial neo-Gnostic” groupings.