Stephen A. Kent. From Slogans to Mantras: Social Protest and Religious Conversion in the Late Era. Syracuse: Press, 2001. xix + 243 pp. $49.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8156-2923-8.

Reviewed by Jill Gill

Published on H-AmRel (July, 2002)

New Leftists With New Tricks, or Neo-conser‐ who claimed that their religious methods would vatives? bring the same goals to fruition (p. 5). In other In 1974, when Stephen Kent was a 22-year-old words, Kent maintains that the appeal rested in hippie, he found himself in a packed house listen‐ the belief that religious means could achieve what ing to a teen-aged guru that Rennie Davis hailed years of marching and protesting could not: "a as the "Perfect Master." Davis, who had been one fundamental restructuring of social and political of the 's most prominent and gifted lead‐ power in society" (p. 26). He intends his thesis ar‐ ers, came dressed in a business suit, along with gument to complement that of scholars like the guru's entire male entourage. Kent was fab‐ Steven M. Tipton, who emphasizes that the attrac‐ bergasted by the enthusiastic reaction of his peers tion was rooted in a crisis of meaning felt by for this young guru, whose message Kent found youth.[1] In order to discern how activists, like "banal" and whose delivery seemed "amateurish" Davis, exchanged one way of life for another, Kent (p. xvi). Kent's inspiration to write this book came mined the archives of underground and alterna‐ from an overriding question that sparked his cu‐ tive presses, read the literature of religious riosity that day: why were these sixties youth, like groups, and interviewed twenty informants who Rennie Davis, so attracted to and accepting of had moved from activism to mysticism. He is less these authoritarian religious leaders? interested in the numbers of people who made this transition than in the process by which con‐ Kent concludes that, by the late Vietnam War verts rationalized and understood it. era, activist youth were frustrated and disillu‐ sioned by what they perceived to be the failures Kent reminds the reader, frst, that both the of New Left methods to achieve movement goals. activist and countercultural aspects of the sixties' Therefore, they were sufering from a "crisis of youth movement contained spiritual strains. Ac‐ means" which made attractive the messages of tivists embraced their causes as moral ones, and many non-mainstream, mystical religious groups many youth used drugs, as Aldous Huxley wrote, H-Net Reviews

"to be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary percep‐ tarian and conservative in structure and ideology. tion, to be shown for a few timeless hours the out‐ For example, both the Krishnas and Moonies were er and the inner world 'as they are apprehended, anti-communist. The Unifcation Church even sup‐ directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large'" ported U.S. policy in Vietnam, defended Nixon (p. 12). In her song "Woodstock," Joni Mitchell de‐ during Watergate, and endorsed Ronald Reagan's scribes the concert revelers as people who wanted campaigns. Many demanded strict, rigidly to set their souls free and "get back to the Gar‐ planned lifestyles, did not condone questioning, den." In the early to mid-, youth were ideal‐ independent action or thought, and were highly istic about their abilities to change society. By the patriarchal. The and the late 60s and early 70s, however, as the assassina‐ Children of God maintained that women should tions of admired leaders stole their hope, as the be subservient to men and adopt what were es‐ war's destructiveness escalated, and as an in‐ sentially nineteenth-century "cult of domesticity" creasingly violent New Left seemed to accomplish rules for behavior. Even the DLM's emphasis little more than internal implosions, Kent main‐ upon suits and ties for men (as demonstrated by tains that youth turned to spiritual groups as al‐ Rennie Davis) stood in sharp contrast to the youth ternative avenues to the same ends. These groups culture of the time. Kent highlights these contra‐ also provided them with a sense of peace, status dictions and explores how converts rationalized and community. and reconciled them. The explanations include Kent focuses on ten specifc spiritual groups feeling true love and a sense of "specialness" with‐ that wooed many disafected youth into their in their religious communities, as well as genuine‐ ranks, six of eastern origins and four that are ly believing that their own spiritual purifcation western or syncretic: the Divine Light Mission, the was necessary to save the world. Stewart Alpert, a Hare Krishnas, Meher Baba, the Naropa Institute friend of Rennie Davis, wrote that "a lot of young (led by Chogyam Trungpa), Scientology, the Hap‐ people are looking for Christs, Babas, Swamies, py, Healthy, Holy Organization (3HO), Transcen‐ and gurus to pull them out of a never ending dental Meditation, the Unifcation Church (also bummer" (p. 179), and perhaps this made them known as the Moonies), the Children of God (later willing to overlook the hypocrisies. However, I called The Family), and the Christian World Liber‐ would be interested in a deeper, more detailed ac‐ ation Front. While recognizing their diferences, count of how the converts reconciled the contra‐ Kent focuses on their similar messages and meth‐ dictions intellectually. Kent senses the contradic‐ ods of attraction. Frequently they promised that tions as well, for he puzzles over how so many the youth movement's goals could be accom‐ youth abandoned the movement's principle to plished through the purifcation of individual "question authority." lives, and Kent illustrates well how several groups I also see in these paradoxes a contradiction used radical movement rhetoric to hook activists' within Kent's thesis argument (or perhaps a point interest. God will transform society and bring that needs further clarifcation). If the converts peace, they claimed, if enough people purify were attracted to these religions because they themselves by following the religious practices of supposedly maintained movement goals, then certain spiritual leaders. Therefore, converts were why would they enter into and remain with encouraged to switch from targeting the sin in so‐ groups that essentially rejected human equality ciety to focusing on that within the individual. (including feminism), free speech, free expression The most shocking aspect of these conver‐ in dress (non-conformity), critical thinking, an sions is that many of these groups were authori‐ end to red-baiting, and a breakdown of bureau‐ cratic, top-down systems of authority? If, as Kent

2 H-Net Reviews says, the overriding movement goal was "a funda‐ churches have been torn apart by them since the mental restructuring of social and political power sixties era, I wonder how Kent might frame his in society" (p. 26), then why did youth convert to subject of study in light of them. groups that ignored many New Left goals in prac‐ From Slogans to Mantras is clearly and suc‐ tice, and seemed interested in restoring certain cinctly written, and makes for a quick, engaging behaviors that resembled 1950s America? One read. The examples Kent cites provide a window fascinating piece of Kent's research includes an into the minds of disillusioned youth from the late examination of how sociologists frst treated this Vietnam War era, as well as into ten popular non- religious phenomenon. Sociologists tended to see traditional religious groups that captured their in‐ the youth conversions as positive because these terest during this period. This book would be a religious groups were bringing wayward rebels worthwhile addition to an American religious his‐ back into conformity with societal norms. Even tory course interested in raising questions about these sociologists recognized that the dictates of the post-Protestant establishment era. the religious groups were more refective of con‐ Notes servative rather than radical values. Was there a disjunction between religious groups' rhetoric [1]. See Steven M. Tipton, Getting Saved from and practice in terms of goals that youth simply the Sixties: Moral Meaning in Conversion and Cul‐ chose to overlook in these supposedly "perfect" tural Change (Berkeley: University of California societies? Or were youth willing to forgo some Press, 1982). specifc movement goals in favor of the vague [2]. Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of ones of "love" and "world peace," which were ex‐ American Religion (Princeton: Princeton Universi‐ tolled, not only by gurus, but by many liberals and ty Press, 1988), pp. 146-149. conservatives alike. Finally, while the sociologists interpreted these religious youth as moving back into con‐ formity with society's more conservative social norms, did the youth perceive themselves as be‐ coming more "conservative"? In other words, were they in some manner following the paths of former activists like David Horowitz, or religious ones like Richard John Neuhaus (Lutheran) and Michael Novak (Catholic), into openly neo-conser‐ vative, and supposedly more moral, ideologies? Can any connections be made here? Robert Wuth‐ now distinguishes religious "liberals" from "con‐ servatives" by their preferred methods of making social change. Liberals, he says, favor direct ac‐ tion against the social injustices, while conserva‐ tives advocate appealing to the individual's soul and attacking the sin lying therein.[2] Using his criteria, Kent's youth moved from "liberal" to "conservative" when they surrendered direct ac‐ tion in favor of promoting individual purity. Such labels can be slippery, and yet, because mainline

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Citation: Jill Gill. Review of Kent, Stephen A. From Slogans to Mantras: Social Protest and Religious Conversion in the Late Vietnam War Era. H-AmRel, H-Net Reviews. July, 2002.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=6497

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