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Heaven's Gate
Author: Benjamin E. Zeller
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2014-10-31
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 1479803812
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In March 1997, thirty-nine people in Rancho Santa Fe, California, ritually terminated their lives. To outsiders, it was a mass suicide. To insiders, it was a graduation. The author explores the question of why the members of Heaven's Gate committed ritual suicides, and examines the origin and evolution of the religion, its appeal, and practices.
How and when "Heaven's Gate" (the Door to the Physical Kingdom Level Above Human) May be Entered
Violence and New Religious Movements
Author: James R. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-04-06
Total Pages: 456
ISBN-13: 9780199831319
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The relationship between new religious movements (NRMs) and violence has long been a topic of intense public interest--an interest heavily fueled by multiple incidents of mass violence involving certain groups. Some of these incidents have made international headlines. When New Religious Movements make the news, it's usually because of some violent episode. Some of the most famous NRMs are known much more for the violent way they came to an end than for anything else. Violence and New Religious Movements offers a comprehensive examination of violence by-and against-new religious movements. The book begins with theoretical essays on the relationship between violence and NRMs and then moves on to examine particular groups. There are essays on the "Big Five"--the most well-known cases of violent incidents involving NRMs: Jonestown, Waco, Solar Temple, the Aum Shunrikyo subway attack, and the Heaven's Gate suicides. But the book also provides a richer survey by examining a host of lesser-known groups. This volume is the culmination of decades of research by scholars of New Religious Movements.
Handbook of Hyper-real Religions
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2012-03-28
Total Pages: 456
ISBN-13: 900422694X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Today a new trend is clearly discernable, that of ‘hyper-real religions’. These are innovative religions and spiritualities that mix elements of religious traditions with popular culture. If we imagine a spectrum of intensity of the merging of popular culture with religion, we might find, at one end, groups practicing Jediism appropriated from the Star Wars movies, Matrixism from the Matrix trilogy, and neo-pagan rites based on stories from The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series. At the other end of the spectrum, members of mainstream religions, such as Christianity can be influenced or inspired by, for example, The Da Vinci Code. Through various case studies, this book studies the on- and off-line religious/spiritual consumption of these narratives through a social scientific approach.
Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation
Author: Margo Kitts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-05-01
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13: 0190656506
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Suicide in the forms of martyrdom, self-sacrifice, or self-immolation is perennially controversial: Should it rightly be termed suicide? Does religion sanction it? Should it be celebrated or anathematized? At least some idealization of such self-chosen deaths is found in every religious tradition treated in this volume, from ascetic heroes who conquer their passions to save others by dying, to righteous warriors who suffer and die valiantly while challenging the status quo. At the same time, there are persistent disputes about the concepts used to justify these deaths, such as altruism, heroism, and religion itself. In this volume, renowned scholars bring their literary and historical expertise to bear on the contested issue of religiously sanctioned suicide. Three examine contemporary movements with disputed classical roots, while eleven look at classical religious literatures which variously laud and disparage figures who invite self-harm to the point of death. Overall, the volume offers an important scholarly corrective to the axiom that religious traditions simply and always embrace life at any cost.
Histories of the Future
Author: Susan Harding
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2005-07-21
Total Pages: 375
ISBN-13: 082238681X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →We live in a world saturated by futures. Our lives are constructed around ideas and images about the future that are as full and as flawed as our understandings of the past. This book is a conceptual toolkit for thinking about the forms and functions that the future takes. Exploring links between panic and nostalgia, waiting and utopia, technology and messianism, prophecy and trauma, it brings together critical meditations on the social, cultural, and intellectual forces that create narratives and practices of the future. The prognosticators, speculators, prophets, and visionaries have their say here, but the emphasis is on small narratives and forgotten conjunctures, on the connections between expectation and experience in everyday life. In tightly linked studies, the contributors excavate forgotten and emergent futures of art, religion, technology, economics, and politics. They trace hidden histories of science fiction, futurism, and millennialism and break down barriers between far-flung cultural spheres. From the boardrooms of Silicon Valley to the forests of Java and from the literary salons of Tokyo to the roadside cafés of the Nevada desert, the authors stitch together the disparate images and stories of futures past and present. Histories of the Future is further punctuated by three interludes: a thought-provoking game that invites players to fashion future narratives of their own, a metafiction by renowned novelist Jonathan Lethem, and a remarkable graphic research tool: a timeline of timelines. Contributors. Sasha Archibald, Susan Harding, Jamer Hunt, Pamela Jackson, Susan Lepselter, Jonathan Lethem, Joseph Masco, Christopher Newfield, Elizabeth Pollman, Vicente Rafael, Daniel Rosenberg, Miryam Sas, Kathleen Stewart, Anna Tsing
Bounded Choice
Author: Janja A. Lalich
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2020-11-30
Total Pages: 354
ISBN-13: 0520384024
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Heaven's Gate, a secretive group of celibate "monks" awaiting pickup by a UFO, captured intense public attention in 1997 when its members committed collective suicide. As a way of understanding such perplexing events, many have seen those who join cults as needy, lost souls, unable to think for themselves. This book, a compelling look at the cult phenomenon written for a wide audience, dispels such simple formulations by explaining how normal, intelligent people can give up years of their lives—and sometimes their very lives—to groups and beliefs that appear bizarre and irrational. Looking closely at Heaven's Gate and at the Democratic Workers Party, a radical political group of the 1970s and 1980s, Janja Lalich gives us a rare insider's look at these two cults and advances a new theoretical framework that will reshape our understanding of those who join such groups. Lalich's fascinating discussion includes her in-depth interviews with cult devotees as well as reflections gained from her own experience as a high-ranking member of the Democratic Workers Party. Incorporating classical sociological concepts such as "charisma" and "commitment" with more recent work on the social psychology of influence and control, she develops a new approach for understanding how charismatic cult leaders are able to dominate their devotees. She shows how members are led into a state of "bounded choice," in which they make seemingly irrational decisions within a context that makes perfect sense to them and is, in fact, consistent with their highest aspirations. In addition to illuminating the cult phenomenon in the United States and around the world, this important book also addresses our pressing need to know more about the mentality of those true believers who take extreme or violent measures in the name of a cause.
Prophets and Protons
Author: Benjamin E Zeller
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2010-03-01
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 0814797261
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This in-depth study shows how new religious movements offer a variety of strategies for reconciling science and religious faith. By the twentieth century, established religious traditions were forced to grappled with the challenges presented by scientific knowledge and innovation. But emerging religions, still led by a living founder to guide them, found news ways to respond to science. The Hare Krishnas, the Unification Church, and Heaven’s Gate each found distinct ways to incorporate major findings of modern American science, understanding it as central to their wider theological and social agendas. In Prophets and Photons, Benjamin Zeller examines how these New Religious Movements (NRMs) crafted their views on science during their founding period, and how those views evolved over time. These NRMs shed light on how religious groups—new, old, alternative, or mainstream—could respond to the tremendous growth of power and prestige of science in late twentieth-century America. In this engrossing book, Zeller carefully shows that religious groups had several methods of creatively responding to science, and that the often-assumed conflict-based model of “science vs. religion” must be replaced by a more nuanced understanding of how religions operate in our modern scientific world.
Cults and New Religions
Author: Douglas E. Cowan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2015-04-27
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 1118723503
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This unparalleled introduction to cults and new religiousmovements has been completely up-dated and expanded to reflect thelatest developments; each chapter reviews the origins, leaders,beliefs, rituals and practices of a NRM, highlighting the specificcontroversies surrounding each group. A fully updated, revised and expanded edition of anunparalleled introduction to cults and new religious movements Profiles a number of the most visible, significant, andcontroversial new religious movements, presenting eachgroup’s history, doctrines, rituals, leadership, andorganization Offers a discussion of the major controversies in which newreligious movements have been involved, using each profiled groupto illustrate the nature of one of those controversies Covers debates including what constitutes an authenticreligion, the validity of claims of brainwashing techniques, theimplications of experimentation with unconventional sexualpractices, and the deeply rooted cultural fears that cultsengender New sections include methods of studying new religions in eachchapter as well as presentations on ‘groups towatch’
