Download or read book American Cult A Graphic History of Religious Cults in America from the Colonial Era to Today written by Robyn Chapman and published by Silver Sprocket. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its earliest days, America was a home for spiritual seekers. In 1694, the religious tolerance of the Pennsylvania Colony enticed a Transylvanian monk and his forty followers to cross the Atlantic. Almost two hundred years later, a charismatic preacher founded a utopian community in Oneida, New York, that practiced socialism and free love. In the 1960s and '70s, a new generation of seekers gathered in vegetarian restaurants in Los Angeles, Satanic coffee shops in New Orleans, and fortified communes in Philadelphia. And in the twenty-first century, gurus find their flocks through self-help seminars and get-rich-quick schemes. Across the decades, Americans in search of divine truths have turned to unconventional prophets for the answers. Some of these prophets have demanded their faith, fortunes, and even their very lives. In American Cult, over twenty cartoonists explore the history of these groups with clarity and empathy--digging deep to find the human stories within.
Download or read book The Allure of Immortality written by Lyn Millner and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2015-10-28 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wall Street Journal’s Five Best Books About Cults For five days in December 1908 the body of Cyrus Teed lay in a bathtub at a beach house just south of Fort Myers, Florida. His followers, the Koreshans, waited for signs that he was coming back to life. They watched hieroglyphics emerge on his skin and observed what looked like the formation of a third arm. They saw his belly fall and rise with breath, even though his swollen tongue sealed his mouth. As his corpse turned black, they declared that their leader was transforming into the Egyptian god Horus. Teed was a charismatic and controversial guru who at the age of 30 had been "illuminated" by an angel in his electro-alchemical laboratory. At the turn of the twentieth century, surrounded by the marvels of the Second Industrial Revolution, he proclaimed himself a prophet and led 200 people out of Chicago and into a new age. Or so he promised. The Koreshans settled in a mosquito-infested scrubland and set to building a communal utopia inside what they believed was a hollow earth--with humans living on the inside crust and the entire universe contained within. According to Teed’s socialist and millennialist teachings, if his people practiced celibacy and focused their love on him, he would return after death and they would all become immortal. Was Teed a visionary or villain, savior or two-bit charlatan? Why did his promises and his theory of "cellular cosmogony" persuade so many? In The Allure of Immortality, Lyn Millner weaves the many bizarre strands of Teed's life and those of his followers into a riveting story of angels, conmen, angry husbands, yellow journalism, and ultimately, hope.
Download or read book American Messiahs False Prophets of a Damned Nation written by Adam Morris and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A history with sweeping implications, American Messiahs challenges our previous misconceptions about “cult” leaders and their messianic power. Mania surrounding messianic prophets has defined the national consciousness since the American Revolution. From Civil War veteran and virulent anticapitalist Cyrus Teed, to the dapper and overlooked civil rights pioneer Father Divine, to even the megalomaniacal Jim Jones, these figures have routinely been dismissed as dangerous and hysterical outliers. After years of studying these emblematic figures, Adam Morris demonstrates that messiahs are not just a classic trope of our national culture; their visions are essential for understanding American history. As Morris demonstrates, these charismatic, if flawed, would-be prophets sought to expose and ameliorate deep social ills—such as income inequality, gender conformity, and racial injustice. Provocative and long overdue, this is the story of those who tried to point the way toward an impossible “American Dream”: men and women who momentarily captured the imagination of a nation always searching for salvation.
Download or read book Mystics and Messiahs written by Philip Jenkins and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Rajneeshpuram written by Russell King and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Russell King has written the most definitive account of this grand American saga. Rajneeshpuram is rich storytelling." —Chapman and Maclain Way, directors of Wild Wild Country In 1981, ambitious young Ma Anand Sheela transported the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to the United States to fulfill his dream of creating a utopia for his thousands of disciples. Four years later, the incendiary Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon collapsed under the weight of audacious criminal conspiracies hatched in its inner sanctum, including the largest bioterrorism attack in US history, an unprecedented election fraud scheme, and multiple attempted murders. Rajneeshpuram explores how this extraordinary spiritual community, featured in the Netflix docuseries Wild Wild Country, went so wrong. Drawing from extensive interviews with former disciples and an exhaustive review of commune records, government and police files, and archival materials, author Russell King probes the charismatic power that Bhagwan (later known as Osho) and Sheela exercised over the community and the turbulent legal and political environment that left commune leaders ready to deceive, poison, and even murder to preserve their home and their master. Rajneeshpuram is a fresh examination of the Rajneesh story, using newly available information and interviews with high-ranking disciples who have never before shared their stories.
Download or read book The Cult of Individualism written by Aaron Barlow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American individualism: It is the reason for American success, but it also tears the nation apart. Why do Americans have so much trouble seeing eye to eye today? Is this new? Was there ever an American consensus? The Cult of Individualism: A History of an Enduring American Myth explores the rarely discussed cultural differences leading to today's seemingly intractable political divides. After an examination of the various meanings of individualism in America, author Aaron Barlow describes the progression and evolution of the concept from the 18th century on, illuminating the wide division in Caucasian American culture that developed between the culture based on the ideals of the English Enlightenment and that of the Scots-Irish "Borderers." The "Borderer" legacy, generally explored only by students of Appalachian culture, remains as pervasive and significant in contemporary American culture and politics as it is, unfortunately, overlooked. It is from the "Borderers" that the Tea Party sprang, along with many of the attitudes of the contemporary American right, making it imperative that this culture be thoroughly explored.
Download or read book Strange Gods written by David G. Bromley and published by Beacon Press (MA). This book was released on 1981 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines in detail the history, fund-raising, and possible use of brain-washing by such religious cults as the Unification Church, People's Temple, and Hare Krishnas.
Download or read book The Cult of the Constitution written by Mary Anne Franks and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A powerful challenge to the prevailing constitutional orthodoxy of the right and the left . . . A deeply troubling and absolutely vital book” (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate). In this provocative book, Mary Anne Franks examines the thin line between constitutional fidelity and constitutional fundamentalism. The Cult of the Constitution reveals how deep fundamentalist strains in both conservative and liberal American thought keep the Constitution in the service of white male supremacy. Franks demonstrates how constitutional fundamentalists read the Constitution selectively and self-servingly, thus undermining the integrity of the document as a whole. She goes on to argue that economic and civil libertarianism have merged to produce a deregulatory, “free-market” approach to constitutional rights that achieves fullest expression in the idealization of the Internet. The fetishization of the first and second amendments has blurred the boundaries between conduct and speech and between veneration and violence. But the Constitution itself contains the antidote to fundamentalism. The Cult of the Constitution lays bare the dark, antidemocratic consequences of constitutional fundamentalism and urges readers to take the Constitution seriously, not selectively.
Download or read book The Wrong Way Home written by Arthur Deikman and published by Beacon Press (MA). This book was released on 1994 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Evil Harvest written by Rod Colvin and published by Addicus Books. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a peaceful August morning in 1985, grim-face FBI agents led a dawn raid on an eighty-acre farm outside Rulo, Nebraska, said to be occupied by a gorup of religious survivalists led by the charismatic Mike Ryan. What they found on the farm shocked even experience investigators. For months Ryan's Nebraska neighbors spoke in whispers of gunfire in the night, the disappearance of women and children, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. But little did the locals know what was happening to those Mike Ryan decided to punish for their &“sins.&” In Evil Harvest, Rod Colvin re-creates a chilling story of torture, hate, and perversion, and how good, ordinary people could be pulled into a destructive, religious cult—a cult that committed unthinkable acts in the name of God.
Download or read book The Money Cult written by Chris Lehmann and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A grand and startling work of American history America was founded, we’re taught in school, by the Pilgrims and other Puritans escaping religious persecution in Europe—an austere and pious lot who established a culture that remained pure and uncorrupted until the Industrial Revolution got in the way. In The Money Cult, Chris Lehmann reveals that we have it backward: American capitalism has always been entangled with religion, and so today’s megapastors, for example, aren’t an aberration—they’re as American as Benjamin Franklin. Tracing American Christianity from John Winthrop to the rise of the Mormon Church and on to the triumph of Joel Osteen, The Money Cult is an ambitious work of history from a widely admired journalist. Examining nearly four hundred years of American history, Lehmann reveals how America’s religious leaders became less worried about sin and the afterlife and more concerned with the material world, until the social gospel was overtaken by the gospel of wealth. Showing how American Christianity came to accommodate—and eventually embrace—the pursuit of profit, as well as the inescapability of economic inequality, The Money Cult is a wide-ranging and revelatory book that will make you rethink what you know about the form of American capitalism so dominant in the world today, as well as the core tenets of America itself.
Download or read book The Inner Circle Book One written by Peter Blachly and published by Sheep Island Press. This book was released on 2021-05-23 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Macdonald Blachly takes us on a unique adventure, documenting the seventeen years he spent in a spiritual cult, while providing candid insights into the circumstances and conditions that set him up for manipulation by a charismatic and malevolent narcissist posing as a spiritual teacher. He provides a colorful and spellbinding description of adventures in India where he travels extensively with a group of fellow converts performing the sacred music of the Sikhs for audiences of tens of thousands. Back in the US, he forms a "spiritual" rock band that tours the country from Maine to Vancouver, weaving his travel adventures together with his own journey of spiritual awakening and his gradual disillusionment and eventual break from his Guru. Blachly's understanding of psychology and human frailties, make the lessons he draws from his own experiences universal and highly relevant today, when personality cults have infected both the political and religious life of the nation. While he pulls no punches about the moral failings of his Guru, the book is not an expose. Instead, while acknowledging that most people who started studying yoga with him in the late 1960s and early '70s did not join the cult, he writes with humor and introspection about his own vulnerabilities and the misplaced idealism that set him up for exploitation. Regarded by his fellow Sikhs as a powerful personality and pillar of the community, he is unflinching about acknowledging his own fractured sense of identity that he struggles to overcome. Most of all, "The Inner Circle" is an entertaining and compelling read about his journey into and back out of a cult that remains active today.
Download or read book Cultish written by Amanda Montell and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of those life-changing reads that makes you see—or, in this case, hear—the whole world differently.” —Megan Angelo, author of Followers “At times chilling, often funny, and always perceptive and cogent, Cultish is a bracing reminder that the scariest thing about cults is that you don't realize you're in one till it's too late.”—Refinery29.com The New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Magical Overthinking and Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how “cultish” groups, from Jonestown and Scientologists to SoulCycle and social media gurus, use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.
Download or read book Masscult and Midcult written by Dwight Macdonald and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Review Books Original An uncompromising contrarian, a passionate polemicist, a man of quick wit and wide learning, an anarchist, a pacifist, and a virtuoso of the slashing phrase, Dwight Macdonald was an indefatigable and indomitable critic of America’s susceptibility to well-meaning cultural fakery: all those estimable, eminent, prizewinning works of art that are said to be good and good for you and are not. He dubbed this phenomenon “Midcult” and he attacked it not only on aesthetic but on political grounds. Midcult rendered people complacent and compliant, secure in their common stupidity but neither happy nor free. This new selection of Macdonald’s finest essays, assembled by John Summers, the editor of The Baffler, reintroduces a remarkable American critic and writer. In the era of smart, sexy, and everything indie, Macdonald remains as pertinent and challenging as ever.
Download or read book Biographical Dictionary of American Cult and Sect Leaders written by J. Gordon Melton and published by New York : Garland Pub.. This book was released on 1986 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 212.
Download or read book Moonies in America written by David G. Bromley and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 1979-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Moonies in America' advances our understanding of social movements, using the particular data provided by a study of the Unification Church -- one of the most widely known and least understood of the cults which blossomed in the 1970. The organizational structure, historical developments, and society's response to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's movement are examined in detail. 'Shupe and Bromley have written an important book with an analysis which is based on sound empirical study, and which is genuinely original at the theoretical level. It is a book which can, without reservation, be recommended to anyone with the slightest interest in the dynamics of resource mobilization in the case of a world-transforming movement.' -
Download or read book The Cult of Trump written by Steven Hassan and published by Free Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *As featured in the streaming documentary #UNTRUTH—now with a new foreword by George Conway and an afterword by the author* A masterful and eye-opening examination of Trump and the coercive control tactics he uses to build a fanatical devotion in his supporters written by “an authority on breaking away from cults…an argument that…bears consideration as the next election cycle heats up” (Kirkus Reviews). Since the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s behavior has become both more disturbing and yet increasingly familiar. He relies on phrases like, “fake news,” “build the wall,” and continues to spread the divisive mentality of us-vs.-them. He lies constantly, has no conscience, never admits when he is wrong, and projects all of his shortcomings on to others. He has become more authoritarian, more outrageous, and yet many of his followers remain blindly devoted. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and a major Trump supporter, calls him one of the most persuasive people living. His need to squash alternate information and his insistence of constant ego stroking are all characteristics of other famous leaders—cult leaders. In The Cult of Trump, mind control and licensed mental health expert Steven Hassan draws parallels between our current president and people like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Ron Hubbard, and Sun Myung Moon, arguing that this presidency is in many ways like a destructive cult. He specifically details the ways in which people are influenced through an array of social psychology methods and how they become fiercely loyal and obedient. Hassan was a former “Moonie” himself, and he presents a “thoughtful and well-researched analysis of some of the most puzzling aspects of the current presidency, including the remarkable passivity of fellow Republicans [and] the gross pandering of many members of the press” (Thomas G. Gutheil, MD and professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School). The Cult of Trump is an accessible and in-depth analysis of the president, showing that under the right circumstances, even sane, rational, well-adjusted people can be persuaded to believe the most outrageous ideas. “This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the current political climate” (Judith Stevens-Long, PhD and author of Living Well, Dying Well).
