Cultpunk

Poetic Faith (or, Why Oscar Wilde Declined to Join the London Thirteen Club)

Despite their distinct lack of streaming video options, the ladies and gentlemen of the late 19th century were not short of amusing and instructive pastimes. Late Victorian social media was centered around clubs running the thematic gamut from banal to whimsically outré. During the 1890s, examples of the latter kind ranged from the Whitechapel Club of … Read morePoetic Faith (or, Why Oscar Wilde Declined to Join the London Thirteen Club)

“Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion”

Social philosopher Alain De Botton’s essential argument is stated in his final line – “Religions are intermittently too useful, effective and intelligent to be left to the religious alone”. The first two-thirds of “Religion for Atheists” demonstrate the strength of that position via examples drawn from many spheres, persuading the reader how – having been, … Read more“Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion”

“… a religion of atmosphere instead of faith, a cosmos, in a word, constructed by the imagination.”

So wrote American scholar of new religions Robert S. Elwood in 1973, describing the then-new and burgeoning religious movement known as neo-Paganism. Elwood was among the first academics to pay any serious attention to the phenomenon that it pleases us, now, to refer to as Cultpunk, or (less edgily, more splendidly) as Poetic Faith; the … Read more“… a religion of atmosphere instead of faith, a cosmos, in a word, constructed by the imagination.”