A spiritual revolution? Wicca and religious change in the 1960s

This free course, A spiritual revolution? Wicca and religious change in the 1960s looks at the ‘crisis’ of traditional religion in the Sixties in the Western world. It explores the process of religious renewal, looking at the development of Wicca, the prototypical form of modern Paganism. Originally presented as a Goddess religion of great antiquity, which had survived the Roman invasion and Church persecution, Wicca is in fact best seen as a new religion, clearly belonging to an age in which sexual norms, gender roles and traditional power structures were changing. It questions to what degree we can view religious change in the 1960s as spiritual revolution.This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course A113 Revolutions63. and is part of a set of four OpenLearn courses, covering Revolutions of the Sixties.Transcript

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• 1 Religious change in the 1960s
• 1 Religious change in the 1960s
• 2 Crisis and innovation
• 2 Crisis and innovation
• 2.1 The rapid decline of traditional Christianity
• 2.2 Preconditions for the Sixties’ Spiritual Revolution
• 2.3 Innovation in established religious traditions
• 2.4 Spiritual seekers
• 3 Wicca and Paganism
• 3 Wicca and Paganism
• 3.1 Gardner’s coven
• 3.2 Wiccan life
• 3.3 The Wiccan altar
• 3.4 The growth of Wicca
• 3.5 Feminist aspects of Wiccan theology
• 3.6 Wicca: a new religious practice
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• References
• Acknowledgements