Die Heilsbringer

The 20th century was the century of religions. The renowned religious scholar Michael Stausberg describes through 47 portraits how saviors of all kinds – from Rudolf Steiner to the Dalai Lama, from Mary Baker Eddy to the Beatles – sent waves of religious energy around the globe, overcoming geographical and often even confessional barriers, thus creating the vibrant religious multiverse in which we live today. The 20th century was also an age of extremes in religious terms. Saviors proclaimed religious breakthroughs that transcended established patterns. Leo Tolstoy created the prototype of an ethical universal religion. Eastern teachers spread their post-religious concepts of Zen, yoga, or mindfulness in the West. For Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Bob Marley, religion was the starting point for political liberation, while the Beatles sang of salvation through cosmic love and experimented with Transcendental Meditation. Alongside the peace-loving world and self-improvers, there were violent preachers like Osama bin Laden or Jim Jones, whose actions caused outrage. Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II filled stadiums worldwide, and the Dalai Lama reaches out to people beyond traditional religious ties. This is even more true for writers, filmmakers, psychologists, and physicists who acted as religious meaning-makers. In his spectacular panorama, Michael Stausberg shows how new messages of salvation in the 20th century not only changed established religions but also politics, culture, and ultimately our perception of the world.