heavenArticle Free Pass In some traditions, heaven seems to
recede into the background. Native American cultures, for
example, are oriented toward the totality of earth, sky, and the
four directions rather than toward heaven alone. Although heaven
is not typically the abode of the blessed dead in Native
American mythology, the stars, Sun, Moon, clouds, mountaintops,
and sky-dwelling creators figure significantly. The Christian-
influenced prophetic visions characteristic of revitalization
movements such as the 19th-century Ghost Dance and the religion
of Handsome Lake are fervently millenarian, proclaiming the
advent of an eschatological paradise to be accompanied by the
return of the dead and the restoration of tribal life. New
models of heaven in the modern West have been influenced by
ideals of progress, evolution, social equality, and domestic
tranquility. The 19th-century Spiritualist movement, adapting
the doctrines of the Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel
Swedenborg and of the German physician Fr