Exploring New Religions

Exploring New Religions PDF

Author: George D. Chryssides

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 1999-12-01

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0826438903

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An objective, well-researched history of contemporary new religions and cults.New religious movements - popularly known as cults - arouse strong public opinion and most books on the subject are polemical, giving hostile reaction rather than informed exploration. Exploring New Religions provides an account of a wide variety of new religions, focusing on their origins, beliefs and practices, which are set out in a dispassionate way, leaving readers to form their own value judgements. George Chryssides provides important analysis of the killer cults-the Jonestown People's Temple, Waco, the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate-examining the factors that made their followers willing to die for their cause. Older groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Latter-day Saints (Mormons) are discussed, and Chryssides traces the development of a variety of strands of spirituality, ranging from New Thought, Spiritualism and Theosophy. Subsequent chapters include the Baha'i, the Family (formerly Children of God), the Hare Krishna movement (ISKCON), the Jesus Army, the Rastafarians, the Church of Scientology, Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the Unification Church ('the Moonies'). Lower profile groups are also discussed including: EST (Erhard Seminar Training), the New Kadampa Tradition, Brahma Kumaris, Sai Baba, Subud and the Western Buddhist Order. A study of the New Age phenomenon, and an account of societal responses to new religions at religious, societal and political levels is also included.

New Religions [2 volumes]

New Religions [2 volumes] PDF

Author: Eugene V. Gallagher

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-02-15

Total Pages: 637

ISBN-13:

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A valuable resource for students and general audiences, this book provides a unique global perspective on the history, beliefs, and practices of emergent faith communities; new religious traditions; and religious movements worldwide, from the 19th century to the present. New Religions: Emerging Faiths and Religious Cultures in the Modern World provides insightful global perspectives on the emergent faith communities and new traditions and movements of the last two centuries. Readers will gain access to the information necessary to explore the significance, complexities, and challenges that modern religious traditions have faced throughout their history and that continue to impact society today. The work identifies the themes and issues that have often brought new religions into conflict with the larger societies of which they are a part. Coverage includes new religious groups that emerged in America, such as the Seventh-day Adventists, the Latter-day Saints, and the Jehovah's Witnesses; alternative communities around the globe that emerged from the major Western and Eastern traditions, such as Aum Shinrikyo and Al-Qaeda; and marginalized groups that came to a sudden end, such as the Peoples Temple, Heaven's Gate, and the Branch Davidians. The entries highlight thematic and broader issues that run across the individual religious traditions, and will also help students analyze and assess the common difficulties faced by emergent religious communities.

Encyclopedia of New Religions

Encyclopedia of New Religions PDF

Author: Christopher Hugh Partridge

Publisher: Lion Books

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13:

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

Children in New Religions

Children in New Religions PDF

Author: Susan J. Palmer

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780813526195

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The late 1960s and early 1970s constituted a remarkable period for spiritual experimentation and for the proliferation of new religious groups. Now the children born into these religions have come of age. While their parents made the decision as adults to embrace alternative religious practices, the children have been raised with a very different orientation toward the larger society. While they take their religious communities for granted, many of these children gaze with curiosity at the surrounding secular world which their parents, not they, chose to reject. The contributors to this volume examine children from many different alternative religious movements worldwide, including The Family, Hare Krishna, Wiccans, and Pagans, Messianic Communities, and the Rajneesh (Osho) Movement. The essays explore two general questions: 1) What impact does the presence of children have on a new religion's lifestyle and chance of surviving into the future? 2) Is child abuse more likely to occur in unconventional religions, or are children born into them, the 'new' religions have grown up and have become an important and rapidly changing social force that we cannot reasonably dismiss or wisely ignore

Controversial New Religions

Controversial New Religions PDF

Author: James R. Lewis

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 0199315310

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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.

Exploring the Spirituality of the World Religions

Exploring the Spirituality of the World Religions PDF

Author: Duncan S. Ferguson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2010-06-25

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 144116054X

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This book is an insightful guide to the diverse ways that religious faith is practiced and spirituality is understood. Discussing contemporary issues such as post-modernism and the emergence of a "new paradigm," the new realities of geopolitics, globalization and global warming, this book explores the importance of religion in people's lives to provide direction in the society today. This book demonstrates the common quest among the world religions for a deeper and more profound spirituality. Describing the spiritual pathways of the various world religions, it assesses the ways that the beliefs, values and practices of these traditions can be life-giving, leading to personal and social responsibility and transformation, but also sometimes harmful and divisive, even used for dangerous purposes. Promoting constructive engagements between the world's religions, this book will connect social justice and ethical engagements with core religious practices and spiritualities. This is an ideal introductory text for students of world religions, spirituality and interfaith relations, broadening their understanding of these lived faiths.

Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production

Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production PDF

Author: Carole Cusack

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2012-03-28

Total Pages: 821

ISBN-13: 9004221875

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This volume fills a lacuna in the academic assessment of new religions by investigating their cultural products (such as music, architecture, food et cetera). Contributions explore the manifold ways in which new religions have contributed to humanity’s creative output.

Women in New Religions

Women in New Religions PDF

Author: Elizabeth Puttick

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780312172602

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It is often believed that women are oppressed and exploited by the charismatic male leaders of new religious movements. This book exposes the abuse of power within some movements, but also demonstrates that there is more evidence of fulfillment and empowerment. This book explores the social and spiritual issues tracing developments from the 1960s counter-culture to 1990s Goddess spirituality and culminates in a new typology of religious needs and values.

Strange Rites

Strange Rites PDF

Author: Tara Isabella Burton

Publisher: Public Affairs

Published: 2022-01-18

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9781541762527

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A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age. Fifty-five years have passed since the cover of Time magazine proclaimed the death of God and while participation in mainstream religion has indeed plummeted, Americans have never been more spiritually busy. While rejecting traditional worship in unprecedented numbers, today's Americans are embracing a kaleidoscopic panoply of spiritual traditions, rituals, and subcultures -- from astrology and witchcraft to SoulCycle and the alt-right.As the Internet makes it ever-easier to find new "tribes," and consumer capitalism forever threatens to turn spirituality into a lifestyle brand, remarkably modern American religious culture is undergoing a revival comparable with the Great Awakenings of centuries past. Faith is experiencing not a decline but a Renaissance. Disillusioned with organized religion and political establishments alike, more and more Americans are seeking out spiritual paths driven by intuition, not institutions. In Strange Rites, religious scholar and commentator Tara Isabella Burton visits with the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; Satanists and polyamorous communities, witches from Bushwick, wellness junkies and social justice activists and devotees of Jordan Peterson, proving Americans are not abandoning religion but remixing it. In search of the deep and the real, they are finding meaning, purpose, ritual, and communities in ever-newer, ever-stranger ways.