Controversial New Religions

Controversial New Religions PDF Author: James R. Lewis
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199315310
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
Written by established scholars as well as younger experts in their field, this updated and revised second edition of Controversial New Religions offers a scholarly, dispassionate look at the new religious groups that have generated the most attention in the media and general public.

Controversial New Religions

Controversial New Religions PDF Author: James R. Lewis
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199315310
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 495

Get Book Here

Book Description
Written by established scholars as well as younger experts in their field, this updated and revised second edition of Controversial New Religions offers a scholarly, dispassionate look at the new religious groups that have generated the most attention in the media and general public.

Mystics and Messiahs

Mystics and Messiahs PDF Author: Philip Jenkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195127447
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In this full-length account of cults and anti-cult scares in American history, Jenkins gives accurate historical perspective and shows how many of today's mainstream religions were originally regarded as cults.

Controversial New Religions

Controversial New Religions PDF Author: James R. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199394369
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
In terms of public opinion, new religious movements are considered controversial for a variety of reasons. Their social organization often runs counter to popular expectations by experimenting with communal living, alternative leadership roles, unusual economic dispositions, and new political and ethical values. As a result the general public views new religions with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, and anxiety, sustained by lavish media emphasis on oddness and tragedy rather than familiarity and lived experience. This updated and revised second edition of Controversial New Religions offers a scholarly, dispassionate look at those groups that have generated the most attention, including some very well-known classical groups like The Family, Unification Church, Scientology, and Jim Jones's People's Temple; some relative newcomers such as the Kabbalah Centre, the Order of the Solar Temple, Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, and the Falun Gong; and some interesting cases like contemporary Satanism, the Raelians, Black nationalism, and various Pagan groups. Each essay combines an overview of the history and beliefs of each organization or movement with original and insightful analysis. By presenting decades of scholarly work on new religious movements written in an accessible form by established scholars as well as younger experts in the field, this book will be an invaluable resource for all those who seek a view of new religions that is deeper than what can be found in sensationalistic media stories.

Encyclopedia of New Religions

Encyclopedia of New Religions PDF Author: Christopher Hugh Partridge
Publisher: Lion Books
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
A comprehensive and authoritative guide to over 200 new religions, sects and alternative spiritualities

The Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements

The Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements PDF Author: Olav Hammer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521196507
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
This volume addresses the key features of new religions, such as Scientology, the Moonies and Jihadist movements, from a systematic, comparative perspective.

New Religious Movements

New Religious Movements PDF Author: Dereck Daschke
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814707025
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
An original collection of primary documents conveying the wide array of ideas connected to new religious movements New Religious Movements is a highly unique volume, bringing together primary documents conveying the words and ideas of a wide array of new religious movements (NRMs), and offering a first-hand look into their belief systems. Arranged by the editors according to a new typology, the text allows readers to consider NRMS along five interrelated pathways—from those that offer new perceptions of existence or new personal identities, to those that center on relationships within family-like units, to those movements that highlight the need for recasting the social order or anticipate the dawn of a new age. The volume includes original documents from groups such as the Unification Church, Theosophy, Branch Davidians, Wicca, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Santeria, and Seventh Day Adventists, as well as many others. Each section is prefaced by a contextual introduction and concludes with a list of sources for further reading. New Religious Movements offers a rare inside look into the worldviews of alternative religious traditions.

The Church of Scientology

The Church of Scientology PDF Author: Hugh B. Urban
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691158053
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Scientology's long and complex journey to recognition as a religion Scientology is one of the wealthiest and most powerful new religions to emerge in the past century. To its detractors, L. Ron Hubbard's space-age mysticism is a moneymaking scam and sinister brainwashing cult. But to its adherents, it is humanity's brightest hope. Few religious movements have been subject to public scrutiny like Scientology, yet much of what is written about the church is sensationalist and inaccurate. Here for the first time is the story of Scientology's protracted and turbulent journey to recognition as a religion in the postwar American landscape. Hugh Urban tells the real story of Scientology from its cold war-era beginnings in the 1950s to its prominence today as the religion of Hollywood's celebrity elite. Urban paints a vivid portrait of Hubbard, the enigmatic founder who once commanded his own private fleet and an intelligence apparatus rivaling that of the U.S. government. One FBI agent described him as "a mental case," but to his followers he is the man who "solved the riddle of the human mind." Urban details Scientology's decades-long war with the IRS, which ended with the church winning tax-exempt status as a religion; the rancorous cult wars of the 1970s and 1980s; as well as the latest challenges confronting Scientology, from attacks by the Internet group Anonymous to the church's efforts to suppress the online dissemination of its esoteric teachings. The Church of Scientology demonstrates how Scientology has reflected the broader anxieties and obsessions of postwar America, and raises profound questions about how religion is defined and who gets to define it.

Women in New Religions

Women in New Religions PDF Author: Laura Vance
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479847992
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
An in-depth history of selected New Religions that highlights the roles of women in their founding and continual practice Women in New Religions offers an engaging look at women’s evolving place in the birth and development of new religious movements. It focuses on four disparate new religions—Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, The Family International, and Wicca—to illuminate their implications for gender socialization, religious leadership and participation, sexuality, and family ideals. Religious worldviews and gender roles interact with one another in complicated ways. This is especially true within new religions, which frequently set roles for women in ways that help the movements to define their boundaries in relation to the wider society. As new religious movements emerge, they often position themselves in opposition to dominant society and concomitantly assert alternative roles for women. But these religions are not monolithic: rather than defining gender in rigid and repressive terms, new religions sometimes offer possibilities to women that are not otherwise available. Vance traces expectations for women as the religions emerge, and transformation of possibilities and responsibilities for women as they mature. Weaving theory with examination of each movement’s origins, history, and beliefs and practices, this text contextualizes and situates ideals for women in new religions. The book offers an accessible analysis of the complex factors that influence gender ideology and its evolution in new religious movements, including the movements’ origins, charismatic leadership and routinization, theology and doctrine, and socio-historical contexts. It shows how religions shape definitions of women’s place in a way that is informed by response to social context, group boundaries, and identity.

The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements

The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements PDF Author: James R. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190611529
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
The study of New Religious Movements (NRMs) is one of the fastest-growing areas of religious studies, and since the release of the first edition of The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements in 2003, the field has continued to expand and break new ground. In this all-new volume, James R. Lewis and Inga B. T?llefsen bring together established and rising scholars to address an expanded range of topics, covering traditional religious studies topics such as "scripture," "charisma," and "ritual," while also applying new theoretical approaches to NRM topics. Other chapters cover understudied topics in the field, such as the developmental patterns of NRMs and subcultural considerations in the study of NRMs. The first part of this book examines NRMs from a social-scientific perspective, particularly that of sociology. In the second section, the primary factors that have put the study of NRMs on the map, controversy and conflict, are considered. The third section investigates common themes within the field of NRMs, while the fourth examines the approaches that religious studies researchers have taken to NRMs. As NRM Studies has grown, subfields such as Esotericism, New Age Studies, and neo-Pagan Studies have grown as distinct and individual areas of study, and the final section of the book investigates these emergent fields.

Contemporary Religious Satanism

Contemporary Religious Satanism PDF Author: Jesper Aagaard Petersen
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754652861
Category : Religion
Languages : ru
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Despite the fascinating nature of religious Satanism, it has attracted little scholarship until relatively recently. This book brings together a group of international scholars to produce the first serious book-length study of religious Satanism, presenting a collection that will have wide appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike. The first part contains broader studies of influential groups and important aspects of the Satanic milieu, especially regarding historical developments, the construction of tradition and issues of legitimacy. The second part narrows the view to regional variations, especially with studies on Northern and Eastern Europe. The third part consists of primary documents selected for their representational and informational value.