The Christian Countercult Movement

The Christian Countercult Movement PDF Author: Douglas E. Cowan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100906228X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 141

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many seemingly strange questions on yoga, salvation, religious pluralism, and so forth have been actively debated among members of a small but influential group of evangelical apologists known as the Christian countercult movement. This Element explores the history of this movement from its origins in the anti-heresy writings of the early church to its modern development as a reaction to religious pluralism in North America. It contrasts the apologetic Christian countercult movement with its secular anticult counterpart and explains how faith-based opposition both to new religious movements and to non-Christian religions will only deepen as religious pluralism increases. It provides a concise understanding of the two principal goals of Christian countercult apologetics: support for the evangelization of non-Christian believers and maintenance for the perceived superiority of the evangelical Christian worldview.

The Christian Countercult Movement

The Christian Countercult Movement PDF Author: Douglas E. Cowan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100906228X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 141

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many seemingly strange questions on yoga, salvation, religious pluralism, and so forth have been actively debated among members of a small but influential group of evangelical apologists known as the Christian countercult movement. This Element explores the history of this movement from its origins in the anti-heresy writings of the early church to its modern development as a reaction to religious pluralism in North America. It contrasts the apologetic Christian countercult movement with its secular anticult counterpart and explains how faith-based opposition both to new religious movements and to non-Christian religions will only deepen as religious pluralism increases. It provides a concise understanding of the two principal goals of Christian countercult apologetics: support for the evangelization of non-Christian believers and maintenance for the perceived superiority of the evangelical Christian worldview.

Bearing False Witness?

Bearing False Witness? PDF Author: Douglas E. Cowan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031305701X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
From Hare Krishna to the Latter-Day Saints, and from Jehovah's Witnesses to the New Age, religious pluralism in North American presents evangelical Protestantism with significant challenges. Declaring newer religious groups cults, aberrant sects, and heretical religions, the Christian countercult movement has warned that these groups represent a threat to society. In ^IBearing False Witness?^R Cowan considers the Christian countercult as a whole, locating it in sociological perspective as an entity distinct from the secular anti-cult. Through his analysis, the author argues that the primary purpose of the countercult movement is to reinforce and repair the Christian worldview when it appears threatened by the advent of alternative religious traditions. This unique analysis of the Christian countercult helps explain why conservative Christian responses to competing religious movements have taken the form that they have in addition to how those responses are carried out. Unlike the anti-cult movement, which is concerned with removing individuals from cults and returning them to their families, the Christian countercult movement, according to the author, attempts not only to remove cultists from the negative influences of the cults to which they belong, but also to insure that they will join the particular version of Christianity adhered to by the countercultists themselves. Beginning with the countercult's early history, the author provides an historical account of the movement and its present activities. Since the rise of new religious movements, the growing interest in religions imported from outside North America, and the broadening of the religious marketplace continues to grow, understanding the Christian countercult and its presence as a countervailing pressure to these increasingly socioreligious dynamics becomes ever more important.

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

Get Book Here

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.

The Kingdom of the Cults

The Kingdom of the Cults PDF Author: Walter Martin
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 0764228218
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 704

Get Book Here

Book Description
Newly updated, this definitive reference work on major cult systems is the gold standard text on cults with nearly a million copies sold.

Encountering New Religious Movements

Encountering New Religious Movements PDF Author: Irving Hexham
Publisher: Kregel Academic
ISBN: 9780825494826
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Using historical and biblical accounts, the authors present practical advice for evangelizing practitioners of new religions with approaches similar to those used to reach foreign people groups.

The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview

The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview PDF Author: John P. Newport
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802844309
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 636

Get Book Here

Book Description
John Newport delivers a comprehensive study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture - and on Christianity itself - while also offering an effective, biblical antidote to today's worldview crisis. After first surveying the historical development of the New Age worldview, from ancient times through important tendencies in nineteenth-century America to recent Far Eastern influences, Newport explores in depth eleven key areas of the New Age worldview and contrasts each area of belief with the traditional biblical worldview.

Understanding New Religious Movements

Understanding New Religious Movements PDF Author: John A. Saliba
Publisher: AltaMira Press
ISBN: 0585483108
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book Here

Book Description
Discussions of any religion can easily raise passions. But arguments tend to become even more heated when the religion under discussion is characterized as new. Divisions around the study of new religious movements (NRMs), or cults, or nontraditional or alternative or emergent religions are so acute that there is even controversy over what to call them. John Saliba strives to bring balance to these discussions by offering perspectives on new religions from different academic perspectives: history, psychology, sociology, law, theology, and counseling. This approach provides rich descriptions of a broad range of movements while demonstrating how the differing aims of the disciplines can create much of the controversy around NRMs. The new second edition has been updated and revised throughout and includes a new foreword by noted historian of religion, J. Gordon Melton. For classes in religion or the social sciences, or for interested individuals, Understanding New Religious Movements offers the most objective introduction possible.

The Kingdom of the Occult

The Kingdom of the Occult PDF Author: Walter Martin
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 1418589837
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 750

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Kingdom of the Occult delivers the timely followup to Dr. Martin's best-selling The Kingdom of the Cults This book takes Dr. Walter Martin's comprehensive knowledge and his dynamic teaching style and forges a strong weapon against the world of the Occult-a weapon of the same scope and power as his phenomenal thirty-five year bestseller, The Kingdom of the Cults (over 875,000 sold). Chapters include: Witchcraft and Wicca, Satanism, Pagan Religions, Tools of the Occult, Demon Possession and Exorcism, Spiritual Warfare, etc. Features include: Each chapter contains: Quick Facts; History; Case Studies; Theology; Resources

The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements

The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements PDF Author: James R. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190466170
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements both covers the current state of the field and breaks new ground. Its contributors, drawn form both sociology and religious studies, are leading figures in the study of NRMs.

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

Get Book Here

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