Mirakel, mysterier och moraliteter. Från puritanism till New Age - en religionshistorisk studie av Helen Shucman och A Course in Miracles

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is a spiritual teaching that was said to be channelled by Helen Shucman during 1965-1972. Shucman received what she described as an inner dictation, which she wrote down in shorthand. Her collegue and friend; William Thetford was then copy-typing the text. It came to comprise of around 1,200 pages of text, and is presented as a program of self-tuition, aimed to change a person’s mind and perception, towards an alignment with God. This study examines and challenges the notion that Shucman was an atheistic academic, who unexpectedly heard an inner voice, which led her to write a religiously accentuated text, without having any prior knowledge of the spiritual field. The study shows that she, especially during her younger years, was going through an intense search for God, which led her to experience many different religious manifestations. Thus, Shucman could rather be said to have been predisposed for mystical experiences, which she came to have after many years of seeking religious truth. One of the theologies which both Shucman and Thetford had come across earlier was Christian Science. A comparison is made between this teaching and ACIM, which shows that there are close points of similarity between them. Another basis of the thesis is the assumption that there are important mentalities, half conscious, and half semi-conscious, displaying themselves as ideas, conceptions, attitudes, or what Alexis de Touqueville called moeurs. These have been associated with the American society, shared by its people, and continually reproduced as core values within the culture. Mentalities, this study argues, are not only a part of a cultural ainstream, but are also necessary to address in the formulation of theologies. The mapping of mentalities, and their appearances in values and ideas, is applied in this study from Puritanism to New Age, including their permeation of A Course in Miracles