RE: Commercialised religion
March 8, 2015 at 12:46 pm
(This post was last modified: March 8, 2015 at 12:47 pm by abaris.)
(March 8, 2015 at 12:24 pm)Metis Wrote: I've kind of got a project going at the moment and I need to look into how religion has become (or always has been) a commodity to be bought and sold. Anything from pay to pray, new age self help books, pilgrimages, relics; all of it.
Well, I recommend a degree in history. Seriously. There's not one book to catch them all.
It starts with Thebes over Delphi to Rome, Mekka, the relics trade of the Middle Ages and so on and so on until you end up with megachurches and televangelists.
The history of religion being a commodity is such a vast field that you have to do some serious reading and be at least somehow versed in understanding the historical and social environment in which it took place. "Kind of a project" certainly doesn't cover it.