The Saviours

The 20^th century was the century of religions. Michael Stausberg uses 47 biographies to describe how saviours of all kinds - from Rudolf Steiner to the Dalai Lama - spread religious energy around the globe who overcame geographical and often even denominational barriers and created the dazzling religious multiverse in which we live today.

The transformation of the world in the 19^th century led to cross-border new beginnings. Leo Tolstoy created the prototype of a universal religion that links Western and Eastern traditions. Eastern teachers spread their post-religious teachings 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 inner liberation through Transcendental Meditation. Besides the peaceful world- and self-improvers, there were violent preachers like Osama bin Laden or Jim Jones, but they also reached people beyond traditional bonds. This is all the more true for the writers, film directors, psychologists and physicists who were religious visionaries. In his brilliant panorama Michael Stausberg shows how in the 20^th century new announcements of salvation changed not only the established religions, but also politics and culture.