In Gnostic Countercultures, fourteen scholars investigate countercultural aspects associated with the gnostic which is broadly conceived with reference to the claim to have special knowledge of the divine, which either transcends or transgresses conventional religious knowledge. The papers explore the concept of the gnostic in Western culture from the ancient world to the modern New Age.

Why do religions fail or die? Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this open access book explores this important question that has received little scholarly attention to date. International contributors provide case studies from the United States, England, Sweden, Japan, New Guinea, and France resulting in a work that explores processes of attenuation, disintegration, transmutation, death, and extinction across cultures. These include: instances where mass suicides or homicides resulted in religious dissolution; the fall of Mars Hills Church and its larger-than-life megachurch pastor, accused of plagiarism and bullying in 2012; the death of the last member of the Panacea Society in England in 2012; and the disintegration of Knutby Filadelfia, a religious community in Sweden with Pentecostal roots that ceased to exist in May 2018 after a pastor shot his wife. Combining case studies and theoretical contributions, The Demise of Religion: How Religions End, Die, or Dissipate fills a gap in literature to date and paves the way for future research The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

To what extent was the evolution of secularism in South and Southeast Asia between the end of the First World War and decolonisation after 1945 a result of transimperial and transnational patterns? To capture the diversity of twentieth-century secularisms, Clemens Six explores similarities resulting from translocal networks of ideas and practices since 1918. Six approaches these networks via a framework of global intellectual history, the history of transnational social networks, and the global history of non-state institutions. Empirically, he illustrates his argument with three case studies: the reception of Ataturk's reforms across Asia and the Middle East; translocal women's circles in the interwar period; and private US foundations after 1945.