The twentieth century was bloody and disorienting, shattering assumptions held since the Enlightenment about the nature of life and morality. The “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s, spawned by the birth control pill, challenged norms throughout the Western World. First approved for contraception in the United States in 1960, the birth control pill removed the fear of pregnancy for millions of couples and allowed sexual experimentation by the masses, rather than only by fringe elements of society as had been the case for millennia. Combined, these factors encouraged some westerners to look to non-Western religions such as Hinduism for alternative perspectives on sexuality – what does it mean to be a sexual being, and what does sex itself mean?
To study a religion is, in part, to study its source of authority. Common sources of religious authority include scriptures, traditions, words, and deeds of important people past and present, and the lived experience of its adherents over time. The...
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Harris, M. (2018). Sexuality and Hinduism. In: Leeming, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_9065-1
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