Mobilities in Religious Knowledge
Phiroz Mehta and the Logics of Transreligiosity in 1970s-80s South London
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3570060 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Karen O’brien-Kop (0000-0001-9954-8321, King's College London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 907 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel14070907 |
| OpenAlex | W4384299565 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
This paper examines transreligiosity in the context of the transmission of South Asian concepts of spirituality to the UK in the 20th century. Between the 1920s and 1990s, Indian teacher and author Phiroz Mehta (1902-1994) crossed borders in a colonial and postcolonial shuttling between India and the UK but also transgressed conceptual and practice borders of religion, teaching Indian religious concepts to post-Christian spiritual seekers in 1970s-80s South London. Mehta cultivated an elasticity between many religious and philosophical traditions, recognising the post-institutional fatigue of subjects who sought alternative forms of 'belonging without believing'. Privileging the domestic space for teaching, as well as transitory 'camp' gatherings in the UK and Germany, Mehta often operated in the social margins, combining teachings from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity with Zoroastrianism, Judaism (specifically Kabbalah), and Daoism. He offered his tutees the freedom to practice religion in whatever way they chose by drawing on a broad range of traditions concurrently to create a transreligiosity. This paper examines Panagiotopoulos and Roussou's 'transgressional webs of practising individualised forms of alternative spirituality' in relation to Mehta's followers in the 1970s-1980s and asks how transreligiosity relates to other theoretical analyses, such as religious exoticism, bricolage, religious appropriation, cultural re-articulation or assemblage. This paper focuses on qualitative interviews with original members of the Mehta community conducted between 2021 and 2022
Aesthetics · Appropriation · Buddhism · Cult · Epistemology · Ethos · Hinduism · Piety · Sociology · Spiritualities · Spirituality · Theology · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Religious studies
Race and Religion in American BuddhismWhite Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation
Relational Religion
Transnational Transcendence
Assemblage Theory
We have always been transreligious
Outside the Fold
Believing without Belonging’ in Twenty European Countries (1981–2008) De-institutionalization of Christianity or Spiritualization of Religion
Mobility Among the Spatialities
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |