Download or read book The Religious Fringe written by Richard G. Kyle and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America--the land of the free--has from its earliest days spawned and nurtured a wide range of new or alternative religious. Often veering from traditional roots or seeking to find their way back toward the center, these religious fringe groups have a fascinating story long overlooked in many treatments of American history. Richard Kyle here traces the origins and development of alternative religions, showing their influence on American culture.
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 Making the American Religious Fringe written by Sean McCloud and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an examination of religion coverage in Time, Newsweek, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Ebony, Christianity Today, National Review, and other news and special interest magazines, Sean McCloud combines religious history and social theory to analyze how and why mass-market magazines depicted religions as "mainstream" or "fringe" in the post-World War II United States. McCloud argues that in assuming an American mainstream that was white, middle class, and religiously liberal, journalists in the largest magazines, under the guise of objective reporting, offered a spiritual apologetics for the dominant social order. McCloud analyzes articles on a wide range of religious movements from the 1950s through the early 1990s, including Pentecostalism, the Nation of Islam, California cults, the Jesus movement, South Asian gurus, and occult spirituality. He shows that, in portraying certain beliefs as "fringe," magazines evoked long-standing debates in American religious history about emotional versus rational religion, exotic versus familiar spirituality, and normal versus abnormal levels of piety. He also traces the shifting line between mainstream and fringe, showing how such boundary shifts coincided with larger changes in society, culture, and the magazine industry. McCloud's astute analysis helps us understand both broad conceptions of religion in the United States and the role of mass media in American society.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements written by George D. Chryssides and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New religious movements--commonly known as cults--are defined as organizations that have arisen within the last 200 years. Most treatments of these movements have typically resorted to sensationalism rather than objectivity, and New religious movements tend to receive negative media publicity. Despite their unfavorable portrayal in popular culture, however, new religious movements are a global phenomenon and much remains to be studied about these movements. In this newly updated second edition of the Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements, George D. Chryssides traces the rise and development of new religious movements throughout the world. An updated introduction summarizes the phenomenon of new religious movements and lays out the changes to the dictionary since the 2001 edition, while the main body of the dictionary consists of close to 600 cross-referenced entries on key figures, ideas, themes, and places related to various new religious movements. An index organizes the information in the dictionary, and a comprehensive bibliography leads the researcher to further sources. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about new religious movements.
Download or read book New Religious Movements written by Dereck Daschke and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2005-06-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
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 Divine Hierarchies written by Sean McCloud and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-01-05 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Placing the neglected issue of class back into the study and understanding of religion, Sean McCloud reconsiders the meaning of class in today's world. More than a status grounded in material conditions, says McCloud, class is also an identity rhetorically and symbolically made and unmade through representations. It entails relationships, identifications, boundaries, meanings, power, and our most ingrained habits of mind and body. He demonstrates that employing class as an analytical tool that cuts across variables such as creed, race, ethnicity, and gender can illuminate American religious life in unprecedented ways. Through social theory, historical analysis, and ethnography, McCloud makes an interdisciplinary argument for reinserting class into the study of religion. First, he offers a new three-part conception of class for use in studying religion. He then presents a focused cultural history of religious studies by examining how social class surfaced in twentieth-century theories of religious affiliation. He concludes with historical and ethnographic case studies of religion and class. Divine Hierarchies makes a convincing case for the past and present importance of class in American religious thought, practice, and scholarship.
Download or read book Another Gospel written by Ruth A. Tucker and published by HarperCollins Christian Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruth A. Tucker's book is a comprehensive survey of all the major alternative religions in the United States, including the new groups since the 1960s.
Download or read book Building God s Kingdom written by Julie Ingersoll and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating book, Julie Ingersoll draws on years of research, Reconstructionist publications, and interviews with believers to paint the most complete portrait of the Christian Reconstructionist movement yet published.
Download or read book Knocking on Heaven s Door written by Mark Oppenheimer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the various aspects of the "counterculture" of the 1960s had a significant impact on American religious institutions.
Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Cults Sects and New Religions written by James R. Lewis and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2001-03 with total page 951 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surpassing the scope and the thoroughness of the first edition, this new edition of The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions is the most wide-ranging and accessible resource on the historically significant and more obscure, sinister, and bizarre religious groups. Including many entries by scholarly specialists, this volume explains more than 1,000 diverse groups and movements, from such well-known sects as the Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo, and Heaven's Gate, to obscure groups like Ordo Templi Satanas, Witches International, and the Nudist Christian Church of the Blessed Virgin Jesus. In addition to an exhaustive index and handy cross-references, the second edition includes over a hundred new topical entries on subjects relevant to understanding sectarian movements, from snake-handling and satanic ritual abuse to brainwashing and exorcism.This book, a must for all libraries and schools, will endure as the first and only point of reference for researchers, scholars, students, and anyone interested in fringe religious groups.
Download or read book The Fringe Hours written by Jessica N. Turner and published by Revell. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every woman has had this experience: you get to the end of the day and realize you did nothing for you. And if you go days, weeks, or even months in this cycle, you begin to feel like you have lost a bit of yourself. While life is busy with a litany of must-dos--work, parenting, keeping house, grocery shopping, laundry and on and on--women do not have to push their own needs aside. Yet this is often what happens. There's just no time, right? Wrong. In this practical and liberating book, Jessica Turner empowers women to take back pockets of time they already have in their day in order to practice self-care and do the things they love. Turner uses her own experiences and those of women across the country to teach readers how to balance their many responsibilities while still taking time to invest in themselves. She also addresses barriers to this lifestyle, such as comparison and guilt, and demonstrates how eliminating these feelings and making changes to one's schedule will make the reader a better wife, mother, and friend. Perfect for any woman who is doing everything for everyone--except herself--The Fringe Hours is ideal for both individuals and small group use.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature written by Bron Taylor and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 1927 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, originally published in 2005, is a landmark work in the burgeoning field of religion and nature. It covers a vast and interdisciplinary range of material, from thinkers to religious traditions and beyond, with clarity and style. Widely praised by reviewers and the recipient of two reference work awards since its publication (see www.religionandnature.com/ern), this new, more affordable version is a must-have book for anyone interested in the manifold and fascinating links between religion and nature, in all their many senses.
Download or read book Perfect Children written by Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-08 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children born and raised on the religious fringe are a distinctive yet largely unstudied social phenomenon. They are irreversibly shaped by the experience, having been thrust into radical religious cultures that often believe children to be endowed with heightened spiritual capabilities. The religious group is all encompassing: it accounts for their family, their school, social networks, and everything that prepares them for their adult life. Using research gathered from over fifty in-depth interviews, Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist explores the lives of individuals born into new religious groups, some of whom have stayed in these groups, and some of whom have left. The groups she considers include the Bruderhof, Scientology, the Family International, the Unification Church, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The book draws on the author's visits to these groups, their schools and homes, and support websites maintained by those who left the religious groups that raised them. It also details her experiences at conferences held by NGOs concerned with the welfare of children in "cults." The arrival of a second generation of participants in new religious movements raises new concerns and legal issues. Whether they stay or leave, children raised on the religious fringe experience a unique form of segregation in adulthood. Perfect Children examines the ways these movements adapt to a second generation, how children are socialized, what happens to these children as they mature, and how their childhoods have affected them. Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist is the deputy director of Inform, a non-profit information center specializing in minority religious movements, spiritualities, and fringe political movements, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science in London. As part of her work, she has encountered and researched a range of topics and issues dealing with minority and/or new religions.
Download or read book Blood and Faith written by Damon T. Berry and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, the term “religious right” entered the popular lexicon, coming to signify a politically and socially conservative form of Christianity that informs American conservatism to this day. Less well known are other ideologies that have influenced the far right since well before 1980, including Odinism, Creativity, and racialized atheism. The rising popularity of these extreme groups and their philosophical grounding in racial politics and religious bigotry has caused a shift away from—and often hostility toward—even racist forms of Christianity among American white nationalists. In Blood and Faith, Berry deftly explores the causes of this shift, rooted largely in response to racialized anxieties that are by no means exclusive to extremists in America. Focusing on the challenges these tensions pose for contemporary white nationalists seeking access to mainstream conservative politics, Berry also considers the recent rise of the so-called “alt-right” and the unifying issues of anti-multiculturalism and anti-immigration around which moderate and fringe groups have rallied. Blood and Faith is a provocative investigation of the complex, evolving role of white nationalism and an urgent reminder of the outsized influence of religion in American political life.
Download or read book Religion and the Law in America 2 volumes written by Scott A. Merriman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-05-18 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is a comprehensive survey of one of the oldest—and hottest—debates in American history: the role of religion in the public discourse. The relationship between church and state was contentious long before the framers of the Constitution undertook the bold experiment of separating the two, sparking a debate that would rage for centuries: What is the role of religion in government—and vice versa? Religion and the Law in America explores the many facets of this question, from prayer in public schools to the addition of the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, from government investigation of religious fringe groups to federal grants for faith-based providers of social services. In more than 250 A–Z entries, along with a series of broad, thematic essays, it examines the groups, laws, and court cases that have framed this ongoing debate. Through its careful, balanced exploration of the interaction between government and religion throughout the history of the United States, the work provides all Americans—students, scholars, and lay readers alike—with a deep understanding of one of the central, enduring issues in our history.
Download or read book Witches of America written by Alex Mar and published by Sarah Crichton Books. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Witches are gathering." When most people hear the word "witches," they think of horror films and Halloween, but to the nearly one million Americans who practice Paganism today, witchcraft is a nature-worshipping, polytheistic, and very real religion. So Alex Mar discovers when she sets out to film a documentary and finds herself drawn deep into the world of present-day magic. Witches of America follows Mar on her immersive five-year trip into the occult, charting modern Paganism from its roots in 1950s England to its current American mecca in the San Francisco Bay Area; from a gathering of more than a thousand witches in the Illinois woods to the New Orleans branch of one of the world's most influential magical societies. Along the way she takes part in dozens of rituals and becomes involved with a wild array of characters: a government employee who founds a California priesthood dedicated to a Celtic goddess of war; American disciples of Aleister Crowley, whose elaborate ceremonies turn the Catholic mass on its head; second-wave feminist Wiccans who practice a radical separatist witchcraft; a growing "mystery cult" whose initiates trace their rites back to a blind shaman in rural Oregon. This sprawling magical community compels Mar to confront what she believes is possible-or hopes might be. With keen intelligence and wit, Mar illuminates the world of witchcraft while grappling in fresh and unexpected ways with the question underlying every faith: Why do we choose to believe in anything at all? Whether evangelical Christian, Pagan priestess, or atheist, each of us craves a system of meaning to give structure to our lives. Sometimes we just find it in unexpected places.
