About this item
John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age follows the spiritual sojourn of John E. Fetzer, a Michigan business tycoon. Born in 1901 and living most of his life in Kalamazoo, Fetzer parlayed his first radio station into extensive holdings in broadcasting and other enterprises, leading to his sole ownership of the Detroit Tigers in 1961. By the time he died in 1991, Fetzer had been listed in Forbes magazine as one of the four hundred wealthiest people in America. And yet, business success was never enough for Fetzer-his deep spiritual yearnings led him from the Christianity of his youth to a restless exploration of metaphysical religions and movements ranging from Spiritualism, Theosophy, Freemasonry, UFOology, and parapsychology, all the way to the New Age as it blossomed in the 1980s.
About the Author
Brian C. Wilson is Professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. A native of Santa Clara, California, he earned a B.S. in Medical Microbiology from Stanford University (1982) , and, after three years in the Peace Corps (Honduras, Dominican Republic) , went on to earn an M.A. in Hispanic Studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies (1990) and an M.A. (1991) and Ph.D. (1996) in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Wilson joined the faculty of the WMU Department of Comparative Religion in 1996 and was its chair from 2001 to 2009. His areas of interest include theory and method in the academic study of religion and American religious history with an emphasis on new religious movements and religion in the Midwest. His most recent book is Yankees in Michigan, part of the Discovering the Peoples of Michigan Series published by Michigan State University Press in 2008. His latest book, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living (Indiana University Press) , is available now.
