Dream Catchers How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality [Paperback]

In books such asMystics and Messiahs, Hidden Gospels, andThe Next Christendom, Philip Jenkins has established himself as a leading commentator on religion and society. Now, inDream Catchers, Jenkins offers a brilliant account of the changing mainstream attitudes towards Native American spirituality, once seen as degraded spectacle, now hailed as New Age salvation.
Jenkins charts this remarkable change by highlighting the complex history of white American attitudes towards Native religions, considering everything from the 19th-century American obsession with Hebrew Indians and Lost Tribes, to the early 20th-century cult of the Maya as bearers of the wisdom of ancient Atlantis. He looks at the popularity of the Carlos Castaneda books, the writings of Lynn Andrews and Frank Waters, and explores New Age paraphernalia including dream-catchers, crystals, medicine bags, and Native-themed Tarot cards. He also examines the controversial New Age appropriation of Native sacred places and notes that many white indians see mainstream society as religiously empty. An engrossing account of our changing attitudes towards Native spirituality,Dream Catchersoffers a fascinating introduction to one of the more interesting aspects of contemporary American religion.

Jenkins presents this hitory with an enormous range of facts, but his description and analyais remain lucid. --Numen

Philip Jenkins, one of the world's leading religion scholars joined Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion as Distinguished Professor of History and Co-Director for the Program on Historical Studies of Religion.