Religious and Spiritual Mobility in Britain: The Panacea Society and Other Movements in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Historiographical accounts of religious change in Britain increasingly reflect the sociological notion that decline in one area of religious activity does not necessarily imply the decline of religious or spiritual activity in society overall. This kind of understanding calls for a historical account of the complexity of spirituality and religious affiliation. Based on a study of the archives of a religious group called the Panacea Society, which promoted a spiritual healing method from 1924 to 2012, the article describes the main styles of engagement with a non-traditional religious form in Britain. The article analyses the Church of England's understanding of the migration of adherents between Christian Science, Theosophy, Spiritualism and itself in the interwar period. Showing the religious and spiritual mobility of individuals, the article indicates the capacity for non-traditional religion to engage people who were not especially religious and to take on the fullest religious significance for some participants.

Introduction to the Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Apocalypticism

“…Barltrop and her followers began a media campaign aimed at getting the Bishops of England to gather in Bedford to open a sealed box of prophetic writings composed by Joanna Southcott (1750–1814). Barltrop discovered Southcott's writings a century after the latter's death and her own followers believed her to be the incarnated messianic child of Southcott, who had died alleging she was with child (a pregnancy supposedly made possible by god, not man) but whom an autopsy revealed to be not pregnant (see Allan , 646; Lockhart , 158–59). The Panaceans believed that Southcott's secrets of eternal peace and contentment were contained within the box.…”

“…Thousands of people from around the world requested and received the squares at no cost, and with only the expectation that they report back. A vast archive of these correspondences is held by the Panacea Charitable Trust; using them, Lockhart () explores England's early twentieth century economy of religious communities.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2015

“…She encourages us to put these depictions into the context of popularized psychological concepts of the ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ child and the increasing implementation of progressive educational ideas that she claims artificially limited working‐class pupils’ horizons. In the realm of religious life and attitudes, Lockhart presents a historiographical account of religious change in Britain in the twentieth century. His archival work indicates that decline in one area of religious activity does not necessarily imply the decline of religious or spiritual activity in society overall.…”