Since the Age of Enlightenment, France has upheld clear constitutional guidelines that protect human rights and religious freedom. Today, however, intolerant attitudes and discriminatory practices towards unconventional faiths have become acceptable and even institutionalized in public life. Susan Palmer offers an insightful examination of France's most stigmatized new religions, or ''sectes,'' and the public management of religious and philosophical minorities by the state. The New Heretics of France tracks the mounting government-sponsored anticult movement in the wake of the shocking mass suicides of the Solar Temple in 1994, and the negative impact of this movement on France's most visible religious minorities, whose names appeared on a ''blacklist'' of 172 sectes commissioned by the National Assembly. Drawing on extensive interviews and field research, Palmer describes the controversial histories of well-known international NRMs (the Church of Scientology, Raelian Movement, and Unificationism) in France, as well as esoteric local groups. Palmer also reveals the partisanship of Catholic priests, journalists, village mayors, and the passive public who support La Republique's efforts to control minority faiths - all in the name of ''Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.'' Drawing on historical and sociological theory, Palmer analyzes France's war on sects as a strategical response to social pressures arising from globalization and immigration. Her study addresses important issues of religious freedom, public tolerance, and the impact of globalization and immigration on traditional cultures and national character.

Like flipping pages through a wedding album, the rich imagery in His Majesty Requests paints a vivid portrait of who the Beloved bride truly is and how she makes herself ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb. By matting and framing the story of one father's desire to find a suitable wife for his son in ancient Israel, the mystery of God's love for Jews and non-Jews throughout the ages is revealed. This devotional beautifully illuminates the spiritual significance of the ancient Hebrew wedding customs and how the Messiah fulfilled each one. As family heirlooms, many of these traditions such as bride price and the veil may be recognizable, while others will flash new insight into the teachings and ways of a Jewish Savior. The restoration and brilliance of these lost pictures are sure to fill the believer's heart with a renewed love for their Heavenly Bridegroom.

This book traces the history of the outlawed mystical fellowship, the 'Family of Love', in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The Familists, devoted followers of a Messianic Dutch mystic named 'H. N.', were passionately denounced by many literate contemporaries, and an association with extremism, subversion and hypocrisy has endured. The author tracks the English Familists into their houses, fields and places of work. Although members of the Family were few in number and highly secretive, identification has proved possible in contexts ranging from the court of Elizabeth I to rural villages in Cambridgeshire. The author also examines the distinctive way of life which was developed by Family members within a wider society that, on the face of it, was hostile to religious dissenters: one surprising conclusion is that most English men and women seem to have possessed an impressive capacity to tolerate known 'heretics' in their midst.

This study explores the controversial relationship between B.W. Newton and J.N. Darby, two of the principal leaders of the early Brethren movement Darby's eschatological views had far-reaching effects on evangelicalism and Burnham explores the development of his prophetic system and his biblical literalism which led to his distinctive views on pretribulational, premillenial dispensationalism. While having much in common with Darby, Newton departed from him on key points. In many ways, Newton and Darby were products of their times, and this study of their relationship provides insight not only into the dynamics of early Brethrenism, but also into the progress of nineteenth-century English and Irish evangelicalism.

This monograph demonstrates that the books of Exodus-Numbers, taken together, are the result of one, highly creative, hypertextual reworking of the book of Deuteronomy. This detailed reworking consists of around 1,200 strictly sequentially organized conceptual, and at times also linguistic correspondences between Exodus-Numbers and Deuteronomy. The strictly sequential, hypertextual dependence on Deuteronomy explains numerous surprising features of Exodus-Numbers. The critical analysis of Exodus-Numbers as a coherently composed hypertextual work disproves hypotheses of the existence in these writings of Priestly and non-Priestly materials or multiple literary layers.

Viewing the world with abhorrence, members of utopian sects isolate themselves from its influence. As this book, first published in 1975, shows, they seek to establish and promulgate radically distinctive forms of society according to what they claim to be God's blueprint and which they believe are destined by his intervention and their example to spread throughout the world. Rooted in the sociology of religion and more particularly in the concepts of sectarianism and communitarianism, this study presents an analysis of three sects: the Shakers; the Oneida Community; and the Bruderhof. The author examines the origins, religious conceptions, social structure and composition, modes of social control, and development of each group; and in a concluding chapter he discusses the utopian sect as a distinctive social form.

When Mary Marshall Dyer (1780-1867) joined the Shakers in 1813 with her husband and five children, she thought she had found salvation. But two years later, she fled the sect, calling them subversive of Christian morality and a danger to American society. When her husband and the Shaker authorities denied her request for the return of her children, Dyer joined forces with an aggressive anti-Shaker movement – an informal yet effective group linked together by their despisal of Shakerism and their determination to thwart the new faith. Distraught, angry, and alone, Dyer turned her anguish into action and embarked on a fifty-year campaign against the Shakers -- and was the centerpiece of the Shakers’ counterattack. The American public followed the debate with great interest, not least because it offered titillating details into the mysterious sect, but also because Dyer’s experiences reflected profound changes in the family, religion, and gender in antebellum America. In this compelling study of Dyer and her world, Elizabeth A. De Wolfe suggests that while neither the Shakers nor Dyer would agree, the latter, a mother without children and a wife without a husband, and the former, a celibate communal sect that disavowed the marriage bond, shared similar positions on the margins of antebellum society.

Beyond Christianity draws on rich ethnographic work in a Religious Science church in Oakland, California, to illuminate the ways a group of African Americans has adapted a religion typically thought of as white to fit their needs and circumstances.

This predominantly African American congregation is an anomalous phenomenon for both Religious Science and African American religious studies. It stands at the intersection of New Thought doctrine, characterized by personal empowerment teachings, and a culturally familiar liturgical style reminiscent of Black Pentecostals and Black Spiritualists. This group challenges oversimplified concepts of the Black church experience and broadens the concept of Black religion outside the boundaries of Christianity--raising questions about what it means to be an African American congregation, and about the nature of blackness itself. Beyond Christianity adds a new dimension to the scholarship on Black religion.

The Ranters - like the Levellers and the Diggers - were a group of religious libertarians who flourished during the English Civil War (1642a "1651), a period of social and religious turmoil which saw, in the words of the historian Christopher Hill, 'the world turned upside down'.
A Collection of Ranter Writings is the most notable attempt to anthologise the key Ranter writings, bringing together some of the most remarkable, visionary and unforgettable texts. The subjects range from the limits to pleasure and divine right, to social justice and collective action.
The Ranters have intrigued and captivated generations of scholars and philosophers. This carefully curated collection will be of great interest to historians, philosophers and all those trying to understand past radical traditions.

Viewing the world with abhorrence, members of utopian sects isolate themselves from its influence. As this book, first published in 1975, shows, they seek to establish and promulgate radically distinctive forms of society according to what they claim to be God's blueprint and which they believe are destined by his intervention and their example to spread throughout the world. Rooted in the sociology of religion and more particularly in the concepts of sectarianism and communitarianism, this study presents an analysis of three sects: the Shakers; the Oneida Community; and the Bruderhof. The author examines the origins, religious conceptions, social structure and composition, modes of social control, and development of each group; and in a concluding chapter he discusses the utopian sect as a distinctive social form.

Miguel Pro: Martyrdom and Politics in Twentieth-Century Mexico examines the complex relationship of modern martyrdom as preserved by memory and factual truth, and as retold through stories intended to impel political and religious aims. Martyr narratives depend on institutional affiliation to remain in the public memory, and are altered in order to maintain their ability to mobilize followers within changing social and political contexts. In order to examine the evolution of lasting martyr narratives, Lopez-Menendez scrutinizes the various renditions of the 1927 execution of Miguel Pro, a Jesuit priest caught in the bloody conflict between Catholics and the post-revolutionary state.

Pentecostalism was born at the turn of the twentieth century in a "tumble-down shack" in a rundown semi-industrial area of Los Angeles composed of a tombstone shop, saloons, livery stables and railroad freight yards. One hundred years later Pentecostalism has not only proven to be the most dynamic representative of Christian faith in the past century, but a transnational religious phenomenon as well. In a global context Pentecostalism has attained a membership of 500 million growing at the rate of 20 million new members a year. Aimee Semple McPherson, born on a Canadian farm, was Pentecostalism's first celebrity, its "female Billy Sunday". Arriving in Southern California with her mother, two children and $100.00 in 1920, "Sister Aimee", as she was fondly known, quickly achieved the height of her fame. In 1926, by age 35, "Sister Aimee" would pastor "America's largest 'class A' church", perhaps becoming the country's first mega church pastor. In Los Angeles she quickly became a folk hero and civic institution. Hollywood discovered her when she brilliantly united the sacred with the profane. Anthony Quinn would play in the Temple band and Aimee would baptize Marilyn Monroe, council Jean Harlow and become friends with Charlie Chaplain, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Based on the biographer's first time access to internal church documents and cooperation of Aimee's family and friends, this major biography offers a sympathetic appraisal of her rise to fame, revivals in major cities and influence on American religion and culture in the Jazz Age. The biographer takes the reader behind the scenes of Aimee's fame to the early days of her harsh apprenticeship in revival tents, failed marriages and poverty. Barfoot recreates the career of this "called" and driven woman through oral history, church documents and by a creative use of new source material. Written with warmth and often as dramatic as Aimee, herself, the author successfully captures not only what made Aimee famous but also what transformed Pentecostalism from its meager Azusa Street mission beginnings into a transnational, global religion.

This is the first study of an important group in early Methodism. It was quite separate from Wesley's followers, with its own preachers, chapels, training college, and statement of belief. The book shows how the Connexion operated at the grass roots - including how congregations formed, how chapels came to be built, and how the Connexion related to other religious groups.

In this first volume of his magisterial study of the foundations of Mormon thought and practice, Terryl L. Givens offers a sweeping account of Mormon belief from its founding to the present day. Situating the relatively new movement in the context of the Christian tradition, he reveals that Mormonism continues to change and grow.
Givens shows that despite Mormonism's origins in a biblical culture strongly influenced by nineteenth-century Restorationist thought, which advocated a return to the Christianity of the early Church, the new movement diverges radically from the Christianity of the creeds. Mormonism proposes its own cosmology and metaphysics, in which human identity is rooted in a premortal world as eternal as God. Mormons view mortal life as an enlightening ascent rather than a catastrophic fall, and reject traditional Christian concepts of human depravity and destiny. Popular fascination with Mormonism's social innovations, such as polygamy and communalism, and its supernatural and esoteric elements-angels, gold plates, seer stones, a New World Garden of Eden, and sacred undergarments-have long overshadowed the fact that it is the most enduring and even thriving product of the nineteenth century's religious upheavals and innovations.
Wrestling the Angel traces the essential contours of Mormon thought from the time of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to the contemporary LDS church, illuminating both the seminal influence of the founding generation of Mormon thinkers and the significant developments in the church over almost 200 years. The most comprehensive account of the development of Mormon thought ever written, Wrestling the Angel will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Mormon faith.

A collection of more than 50 talks on the vast range of inspiring and universal truths that have captivated millions in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. Readers will find these talks alive with the unique blend of all-embracing wisdom, encouragement, and love for humanity that have made the author one of our era's most revered and trusted guides to the spiritual life.

For "New York Times" reporter Dennis Covington, what began as a journalistic assignment--covering the trial of an Alabama pastor convicted of attempting to murder his wife with poisonous snakes--would evolve into a headlong plunge into a bizarre, mysterious, and ultimately irresistible world of unshakable faith: the world of holiness snake handling.

Set in the heart of Appalachia, "Salvation on Sand Mountain" is Covington's unsurpassed and chillingly captivating exploration of the nature, power, and extremity of faith--an exploration that gradually turns inward, until Covington finds himself taking up the snakes.

What is a religion? That is the question that Richard Kent Evans attempts to answer in this book. He does so through the story of MOVE, a little-known group with a fascinating story. MOVE emerged in Philadelphia in the early 1970s. It was a small, mostly African American group devoted to the teachings of John Africa. In 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department - working in concert with federal and state law enforcement - attacked a home that "MOVE people" as they preferred to be known, shared in West Philadelphia. Hundreds of police officers and firefighters laid siege to the building using tear gas, ten thousand rounds of ammunition, and improvised explosives. Most infamously, a police officer riding in a helicopter dropped a bomb containing C-4 explosives, which he had acquired from the FBI, onto the roof of the MOVE house. The bomb started a fire, which officials allowed to spread in hopes of chasing the MOVE people out of the house. Police officers fired upon those who tried to escape the flames. Eleven MOVE people died in the attack, including John Africa. Five of those who died were children. In this book, Richard Kent Evans tells the story of MOVE - a story that has been virtually lost outside of Philadelphia. What was MOVE? Many MOVE members thought of themselves as belonging to a religion, and they sought legal recognition. But to others, including other religious groups like the Quakers and, more importantly, the courts, MOVE was anything but a religion. Evans dives deep into how we decide what constitutes a genuine religious tradition, and the enormous consequences of that decision.

Organized in chronological order of the founding of each movement, this documentary reader brings to life new religious movements from the 18th century to the present. It provides students with the tools to understand questions of race, religion, and American religious history. Movements covered include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), the Native American Church, the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and more. The voices included come from both men and women. Each chapter focuses on a different new religious movement and features: - an introduction to the movement, including the context of its founding - two to four primary source documents about or from the movement - suggestions for further reading.

In this superb cultural history, Hall presents a reasoned analysis of the meaning of Jonestown: why it happened and how it is tied to our history as a nation, our ideals, our practices, and the tensions of modern culture. Hall deflates the myths of Jonestown by exploring the social character of Jim Joness Peoples Temple--how much of what transpired was unique to the group and its leader and how much can be explained by reference to wider social processes? The book begins by examining the cultural origins of Jonestown: Who was Jim Jones? Where did he get his ideas and followers? How was his Peoples Temple established? The organiational base of the Temple is analyed through relevant comparisons with modern institutionalied practices in economics, bureaucracy, social control, public relations, and power.

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.

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.

Apocalypse Observed is about religious violence. By analysing five of the most notorious cults of recent years, the authors present a fascinating and revealing account of religious sects and conflict.
Cults covered include:
* the apocalypse at Jonestown
* the Branch Davidians at Waco
* the violent path of Aum Shinrikyo
* the mystical apocalypse of the Solar Temple
* the mass suicide of Heaven's Gate.
Through comparative case studies and in-depth analysis, the authors show how religious violence can erupt not simply from the beliefs of the cult followers or the personalities of their leaders, but also from the way in which society responds to the cults in its midst.

Apocalypse Observed is a book about religious violence. By analysing five of the most notorious cults of recent years, the authors present a fascinating and revealing account of religious sects and conflict.
*the apocalypse at Jonestown
*the Branch Davidians at Waco
*the violent path of Aum Shinrikyo
*the mystical apocalypse of the Solar Temple
*the mass suicide of Heaven's Gate
Through comparative case studies and in-depth analysis, the authors show how religious violence can erupt not simply from the beliefs of the cult followers or the personalities of their leaders, but also from the way in which society responds to the cults in its midst.

Chosen by Yahweh, saved by Jesus, Messianic Jews identify themselves as both Christian and Jewish and yet neither. Passing Over Easter brings this peculiar movement to life with an ethnographic look at Adat HaRauch, a Messianic Jewish congregation in Southern California. The ethnic Jews who have "found the Lord," the Gentiles with a "heart for Israel" that make up Adat HaRauch negotiate their identity borrowing from both traditions. The congregants see Yshua (the Hebrew name for Jesus) as the Jewish Messiah, the passover matzoh as symbolic of Yshua's body being broken for sinners, the New Testament as a fulfillment of the Old. Through participant observation, in-depth interviews, and reflections on her own beliefs and role as researcher, Feher paints a fascinating picture of this fluctuating religious group. Passing Over Easter makes a compelling read for sociologists concerned with new religious movements and group formation, students of Jewish identity and Jewish-Christian relations and anyone interested in the contemporary American religious scene.