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Erin Prophet

Contact Information

Email: eprophet
Office: 130 Anderson Hall

Lecturer

  • Religion and Medicine, Religion and Nature, American Religion in the 19th Century, Sociology of New Religious Movements, Health Humanities

Erin Prophet is a lecturer in the Department of Religion, University of Florida. She received a PhD in religion, with a specialization in Western esoteric traditions, from Rice University, Houston, Texas (2018). She earned a master’s degree in public health with an epidemiology concentration from Boston University (2014). She focuses on the relationship between religion and medicine. Her dissertation focuses on nineteenth-century religious responses to Darwin. She is the co-lead author on a paper about long-term survival in lung cancer, which was published in 2018 by JNCI Cancer Spectrum. She also studies cults and new religious movements and contributes to the University of Florida’s program in Religion and Nature.

She teaches Spirituality and Health Care, Cults and New Religious Movements, Environmental Ethics, Religion and Nature in North America, and Religion and the Paranormal.

Books

  • Kripal, Jeffrey J. with Ata Anzali, Andrea R. Jain, and Erin Prophet. Comparing Religions: Coming to Terms. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.
  • Prophet, Erin. Prophet’s Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside Church Universal and Triumphant. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2009.

Articles

  • “Charisma in New Religious Movements.” In Routledge Handbook of Charisma, edited by José Pedro Zúquete. Routledge, forthcoming.
  • “Potential Influence on Clinical Trials of Long-Term Survivors of Stage IV Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer” Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) Cancer Spectrum (master’s degree research, co-lead author). Jennifer S Davis, Erin Prophet, Ho-Lan Peng, Hwa Young Lee, Rebecca S Slack, J Jack Lee, Anish Thomas, Eva Szabo, Shine Chang. https://doi.org/10.1093/jncics/pkz010. June 2019.
  • “Hermetic Influences on the Evolutionary System of Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophy,” Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies 3(2018): 84-111. doi 10.1163/2451859X-12340050
  • “Deconstructing the Scientology ‘Monster’ of Popular Imagination,” Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 5:2 (2015): 239–60. doi: 10.5840/asrr20152183. Also published in Handbook of Scientology. Edited by James Lewis and Kjersti Hellesøy. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
  • “Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Gender, Sexuality and the Divine Feminine.” In Female Leaders of New Religious Movements, edited by Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen and Christian Giudice. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
  • “Esotericism Imagined: Major Ideas and Perspectives of Esotericists.” In Religion: Secret Religion, Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks, edited by April D. DeConick, 231–248. Boston: Macmillan Reference, 2016.
  • “New Religion.” In Religion: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies, Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks, edited by Jeffrey J. Kripal, 159–76. Boston: Macmillan Reference, 2016.
  • “Charisma and Authority in New Religious Movements.” In Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements vol. 2, edited by James Lewis and Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen, 36–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Reviews

  • Review of Recycled Lives: Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy, by Julie Chajes. 2019. Correspondences7(2): 499–504. https://correspondencesjournal.com/volume-7/issue-2/
  • Review of Handbook of the Theosophical Current. Edited by Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein. 2013. Religious Studies Review 41, no. 2 (March 2015):7.
  • Review of Transhumanism and the Body: The World Religions Speak. Edited by Calvin Mercer and Derek F. Maher. Religious Studies Review 41, no. 4 (October 2015): 176.

For more information, see Erin Prophet’s web page. www.eprophet.info