In which of these times and places were religious beliefs the wackiest?

[Aurelius2]

Go.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Option 4: the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Option 4: the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

This, but I voted for the Burnt-Over District. Great options all around, though.

[PSOL]

Where’s Utah or Egypt during the Amarna period?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Where’s Utah

Subsumed within the second option. Mormonism is just another of Upstate New York's legacies to America and the world.

[Person Man]

Option 2. Most of those ideas were just awful, in reality pyramid schemes, and many of them inspired a lot of the weird sh**t with the hippies.

The hippies were trying on a bunch of different hats to see what would fit. They were a movement of knowing that they didn't want what society had to offer but didn't know what they wanted.

 Option 3 was actually a very constructive time, even if a lot of those ideas were at least as bad as some of them in 1 and 2.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Don’t see how anyone couldn’t vote 3. The third and fourth century Mediterranean religious ferment produced some truly crazy Gnostic stuff that makes Mormonism look conventional, as the Nag Hammadi texts attest.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Interesting that the runaway winner is also far and away the most “successful”, in terms of present-day adherents to belief systems that sprung up in that context.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Don’t see how anyone couldn’t vote 3. The third and fourth century Mediterranean religious ferment produced some truly crazy Gnostic stuff that makes Mormonism look conventional, as the Nag Hammadi texts attest.

In defense of my vote, Mormonism is far from the weirdest Burnt-Over District new religious movement, just the one with the most staying power.

[Aurelius2]

I'm surprised the Burned-over district is winning by so much. Yes, it gave us Mormonism, the Millerites, Shakers, the Oneida Community, etc. But California in the Age of Aquarius had probably hundreds of groups far nuttier than Oneida, including truly special groups like People's Temple and Scientology. And at the peak of Gnosticism there were dozens of separate, well-developed mystery cults that all had their own crazy combinations of passed-by-telephone Greco-roman paganism with a veneer of Christianity.

Maybe it's the case that there's just a lot of crazy stuff that came out of the burned-over district that I'm just not familiar with? If so, any recommended reading that isn't overly academic? I guess one could also argue the New York movements were further out of the mainstream of the time.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Don’t see how anyone couldn’t vote 3. The third and fourth century Mediterranean religious ferment produced some truly crazy Gnostic stuff that makes Mormonism look conventional, as the Nag Hammadi texts attest.

In defense of my vote, Mormonism is far from the weirdest Burnt-Over District new religious movement, just the one with the most staying power.

Don’t sleep on spiritism! In my experience, Brazilian Spiritists (n=2) are more impressed by me being from near where the Fox sisters lived than Mormons (n=many) are by me being from near the Sacred Grove.

(FWIW, I am one of the two votes for California - the Manson family, Jim Jones, the Source (the people who run those organic supermarkets), etc - although I strongly considered the Burned Over District for the hometown pride.)

[LabourJersey]

I'm surprised the Burned-over district is winning by so much. Yes, it gave us Mormonism, the Millerites, Shakers, the Oneida Community, etc. But California in the Age of Aquarius had probably hundreds of groups far nuttier than Oneida, including truly special groups like People's Temple and Scientology. And at the peak of Gnosticism there were dozens of separate, well-developed mystery cults that all had their own crazy combinations of passed-by-telephone Greco-roman paganism with a veneer of Christianity.

Maybe it's the case that there's just a lot of crazy stuff that came out of the burned-over district that I'm just not familiar with? If so, any recommended reading that isn't overly academic? I guess one could also argue the New York movements were further out of the mainstream of the time.

People's Temple began in Indianapolis actually.

I also think 1960s California are being a hot bed for wacky spiritual and religious scenes is a bit exaggerated. Berkeley, Height Asbury and Big Sur are just portions of a very large and religiously diverse state.

[Samof94]

2 led to Mormons.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

2 led to Mormons.

Who were, again, not even as weird as it got. There is a lot about Mormonism that is bizarre and unpleasant to outsiders, and a lot about early Mormonism that is bizarre and unpleasant even to Mormons today, but a lot of it boils down to a combination of probably-Freemason-derived esotericism and early modern Anglosphere folk magic, both of which individually are barely weird at all once you get outside a present-day American religious headspace. For weirder movements there's the Oneida Community, whose craziness I think Aurelius is underselling, and Spiritualism, which Alfie mentioned. The on-paper tenets of Spiritualism are not that strange (again, once you decenter the current US religious landscape as a universal benchmark), but some legitimately baffling and at times quite abusive practices (read the novel Affinity by Sarah Waters for a fictional but well-researched treatment of just how bad it could get) more than make up for that. Also worth mentioning with Spiritualism are how many perceptive and even otherwise scientifically-minded people thought there might be something to it at its height, its continuing influence on popular culture to this day, and its influence on later "alternative" religious movements including the Age of Aquarius stuff that's another option in this poll.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

And of course there are many psychics and mediums today! There’s a town near Buffalo called Lily Dale that’s absolutely full of them.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Surprised the option 3 isn't getting more votes. Some of those Gnostic sects were truly bespoke. I always go back to the Valentinians, who basically constructed their own pantheon:

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

     Surprised the option 3 isn't getting more votes. Some of those Gnostic sects were truly bespoke. I always go back to the Valentinians, who basically constructed their own pantheon:

There was even a Christian sect in modern day Turkey and some Greek islands that worshipped Satan alongside God (they basically believe that Satan was some sort of right-hand man of God and also beloved) and practiced ritual incest.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Surprised the option 3 isn't getting more votes. Some of those Gnostic sects were truly bespoke. I always go back to the Valentinians, who basically constructed their own pantheon:

There was even a Christian sect in modern day Turkey and some Greek islands that worshipped Satan alongside God (they basically believe that Satan was some sort of right-hand man of God and also beloved) and practiced ritual incest.

     Gnostic sects have continued on well past the Classical Period, with various groups like the Albigensians and the Bogomils (which Western Christians hilariously confused with Bulgarians) existing in the Medieval Period. You also have some blatantly Gnostic tendencies among certain Old Believer sects like the Skoptsy, who believed that sex characteristics were the Mark of Cain and practiced ritual castrations and mastectomies. There are innumerable varieties of Old Believers that are not well-documented because of their extreme remoteness and suspicion of civilization, but the Skoptsy at least are said to have existed into the 20th century.

[PSOL]

     Surprised the option 3 isn't getting more votes. Some of those Gnostic sects were truly bespoke. I always go back to the Valentinians, who basically constructed their own pantheon:

How much of this is philosophical musings and parables?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Surprised the option 3 isn't getting more votes. Some of those Gnostic sects were truly bespoke. I always go back to the Valentinians, who basically constructed their own pantheon:

How much of this is philosophical musings and parables?

     To your question, I would point out that the concept of a sharp divide between theology and philosophy is relatively modern and tracks with a decline in respect for both. They probably believed it was all philosophical musings and parables and also that it was a genuine revelation of the nature of God.

[PSOL]

     Surprised the option 3 isn't getting more votes. Some of those Gnostic sects were truly bespoke. I always go back to the Valentinians, who basically constructed their own pantheon:

How much of this is philosophical musings and parables?

     To your question, I would point out that the concept of a sharp divide between theology and philosophy is relatively modern and tracks with a decline in respect for both. They probably believed it was all philosophical musings and parables and also that it was a genuine revelation of the nature of God.

Soooooo….they had a Christian theology just with more named angels doing things? How does this differ from what Catholics do with saints.

[Aurelius2]

The discussion of the burned-over district reminds me that I have a book "American Messiahs" that talks about a lot of these sorts of figures in American history and the social movements they rose from, but I shelved it after 50 pages because I couldn't stand the author's college-freshman-style ranting about capitalism that had nothing to do with the topic. Might have to pick it up and finish it with a critical eye.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Surprised the option 3 isn't getting more votes. Some of those Gnostic sects were truly bespoke. I always go back to the Valentinians, who basically constructed their own pantheon:

How much of this is philosophical musings and parables?

     To your question, I would point out that the concept of a sharp divide between theology and philosophy is relatively modern and tracks with a decline in respect for both. They probably believed it was all philosophical musings and parables and also that it was a genuine revelation of the nature of God.

Soooooo….they had a Christian theology just with more named angels doing things? How does this differ from what Catholics do with saints.

     They're also monists (i.e. denying a true distinction between different beings), so it isn't so much more named angels as it is 30 persons of God (and one of them is humanity). I guess the graph wasn't enough of a primer in what exactly Gnosticism is.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

    Surprised the option 3 isn't getting more votes. Some of those Gnostic sects were truly bespoke. I always go back to the Valentinians, who basically constructed their own pantheon:

There was even a Christian sect in modern day Turkey and some Greek islands that worshipped Satan alongside God (they basically believe that Satan was some sort of right-hand man of God and also beloved) and practiced ritual incest.

     Gnostic sects have continued on well past the Classical Period, with various groups like the Albigensians and the Bogomils (which Western Christians hilariously confused with Bulgarians) existing in the Medieval Period. You also have some blatantly Gnostic tendencies among certain Old Believer sects like the Skoptsy, who believed that sex characteristics were the Mark of Cain and practiced ritual castrations and mastectomies. There are innumerable varieties of Old Believers that are not well-documented because of their extreme remoteness and suspicion of civilization, but the Skoptsy at least are said to have existed into the 20th century.

This thread made me take a look at Epiphanius' Panarion. One of the sects he describes is the Valesians, who castrated themselves and allegedly kidnapped passers-by to castrate them as well:

Valesians. They live, I believe, in the chief village of Philadelphia in Arabia, Bacathus; they make eunuchs of all who happen by and accept their hospitality. Most of them are castrated eunuchs themselves. (2) They teach certain other things which are full of heresy, reject < the teachings > of the Law and the Prophets, and introduce certain other obscenities.