The African Christian Roho religion, or Holy Spirit movement, is a charismatic and prophetic movement that arose in the Luo region of western Kenya. This movement has fascinated students of history and religion for more than sixty years, but surprisingly has not been extensively studied. This book fills that lacuna.
In Women of Fire and Spirit, Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton uses the extensive oral histories and life narratives of active participants in the faith, giving them full voice in constructing the history of their Church. In doing so, she counter-balances the existing historical literature, which draws heavily on colonial records. Hoehler-Fatton's sources call into question the paradigm of "schism" that has dominated the discussion of African independent Christianity. Faith, rather than schism or politics, emerges here as the hallmark of Roho religion.
Hoehler-Fatton's book is doubly unusual in foregrounding the role of women in the evolution and expansion of their Church. She traces the gradual transformation of women's involvement from the early years when--drawing on indigenous models of female spirit possession--women acted as soldiers, headed congregations, and served as pastors, to the present condition of Western-style institutionalization and exclusion for women. Despite this marginalization, women members continue to be inspired by the defiance of past heroines.

The African Christian Roho religion, or Holy Spirit movement, is a charismatic and prophetic movement that arose in the Luo region of western Kenya. This movement has fascinated students of history and religion for more than sixty years, but surprisingly has not been extensively studied. This book fills that lacuna.
In Women of Fire and Spirit, Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton uses the extensive oral histories and life narratives of active participants in the faith, giving them full voice in constructing the history of their Church. In doing so, she counter-balances the existing historical literature, which draws heavily on colonial records. Hoehler-Fatton's sources call into question the paradigm of "schism" that has dominated the discussion of African independent Christianity. Faith, rather than schism or politics, emerges here as the hallmark of Roho religion.
Hoehler-Fatton's book is doubly unusual in foregrounding the role of women in the evolution and expansion of their Church. She traces the gradual transformation of women's involvement from the early years when--drawing on indigenous models of female spirit possession--women acted as soldiers, headed congregations, and served as pastors, to the present condition of Western-style institutionalization and exclusion for women. Despite this marginalization, women members continue to be inspired by the defiance of past heroines.

Is evil a state of mind that can be changed? Is there a latent divinity in us all? Is there a personal God? The answers to these questions given by the mind sciences: groups such as Christian Science, Religious Science, and the Unity School of Christianity are not the same ones given by orthodox Christianity. Moreover, these mind sciences appeal to many people who seek cures to illness that conventional medicine and Christianity do not offer. Can we put our trust in them? Why this series? This is an age when countless groups and movements, old and new, mark the religious landscape in our culture, leaving many people confused or uncertain in their search for spiritual truth and meaning. Because few people have the time or opportunity to research these movements fully, these books provide essential information and insights for their spiritual journeys. Each book has five sections: - A concise introduction to the group - An overview of the group's theology in its own words - Tips for witnessing effectively to members of the group - A bibliography with sources for further study - A comparison chart that shows the essential differences between biblical Christianity and the group -- The writers of these volumes are well qualified to present clear and reliable information and help us discern religious truth from falsehood.

Many make the mistake of thinking because a thing is common, it is probably harmless. Masonic Temples are everywhere. Are the Masons just another "service organization"? Though their rites are secret, Masons assure others that their practices are totally compatible with Christianity. But there is an injunction to each Mason to practice "his particular religious creed, that revelation of the Deity which is recognized by his religion." What really goes on behind the Temple door? Here is a discerning, detailed response. -- Why this series? This is an age when countless groups and movements, old and new, mark the religious landscape in our culture, leaving many people confused or uncertain in their search for spiritual truth and meaning. Because few people have the time or opportunity to research these movements fully, these books provide essential information and insights for their spiritual journeys. Each book has five sections: - A concise introduction to the group - An overview of the group's theology -- in its own words - Tips for witnessing effectively to members of the group - A bibliography with sources for further study - A comparison chart that shows the essential differences between biblical Christianity and the group -- The writers of these volumes are well qualified to present clear and reliable information and help us discern religious truth from falsehood.

The beginnings of the Templar Order are shrouded in mystery. Very little is known about its foundation, inner workings or its rapid growth. This lack of knowledge can lead to all sorts of speculation and, sometimes, bizarre theories. This book - developed from a conference held on the theme at Emerson College, England - offers new, well-grounded perspectives that utilize both esoteric and exoteric sources. From varying points-of-view, the contributors tackle key questions relating to the forming of the Order and its aims and intentions. They explore the Knights Templar's spiritual and historical background, as well as the Order's significance at the present time and its continuing impulse in the future. With its broad scope, this stimulating anthology encourages independent, open-minded enquiry and research. Featuring contributions by: Peter Tradowsky, Gil McHattie, Horst Biehl, Margaret Jonas, Rolf Speckner, Sylvia Francke, Simon Cade-Williams, Jaap van der Haar, Alfred Kon, David Lenker, Peter Snow, Christine Gruwez, Frans Lutters, Walter Johannes Stein and Siegfried Rudel.

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.

Robert Frykenberg's insightful study explores and enhances historical understandings of Christian communities, cultures, and institutions within the Indian world from their beginnings down to the present. As one out of several manifestations of a newly emerging World Christianity, in which Christians of a Post-Christian West are a minority, it has focused upon those trans-cultural interactions within Hindu and Muslim environments which have made Christians in this part of the world distinctive. It seeks to uncover various complexities in the proliferation of Christianity in its many forms and to examine processes by which Christian elements intermingled with indigenous cultures and which resulted in multiple identities, and also left imprints upon various cultures of India.
Thomas Christians believe that the Apostle Thomas came to India in 52 A.D./C.E., and that he left seven congregations to carry on the Mission of bringing the Gospel to India. In our day the impulse of this Mission is more alive than ever. Catholics, in three hierarchies, have become most numerous; and various Evangelicals/Protestant communities constitute the third great tradition. With the rise of Pentecostalism, a fourth great wave of Christian expansion in India has occurred. Starting with movements that began a century ago, there are now ten to fifteen times more missionaries than ever before, virtually all of them Indian. Needless to say, Christianity in India is profoundly Indian and Frykenberg provides a fascinating guide to its unique history and practice.

This book explores the history and evolution of Inochentism, a controversial new religious movement that emerged in the Russian and Romanian borderlands of what is now Moldova and Ukraine in the context of the Russian revolutionary period. Inochentism centres around the charismatic preaching of Inochentie, a monk of the Orthodox Church, who inspired an apocalyptic movement that was soon labelled heretical by the Orthodox Church and persecuted as socially and politically subversive by Soviet and Romanian state authorities. Inochentism and Orthodox Christianity charts the emergence and development of Inochentism through the twentieth century based on hagiographies, oral testimonies, press reports, state legislation and a wealth of previously unstudied police and secret police archival material. Focusing on the role that religious persecution and social marginalization played in the transformation of this understudied and much vilified group, the author explores a series of counter-narratives that challenge the mainstream historiography of the movement and highlight the significance of the concept of 'liminality' in relation to the study of new religious movements and Orthodoxy. This book constitutes a systematic historical study of an Eastern European 'home-grown' religious movement taking a 'grass-roots' approach to the problem of minority religious identities in twentieth century Eastern Europe. Consequently, it will be of great interest to scholars of new religions movements, religious history and Russian and Eastern European studies.

Rebecca Musser grew up in fear, concealing her family's polygamous lifestyle from the 'dangerous' outside world. Covered head-to-toe in strict, modest clothing, She recieved a rigorous education at Alta Academy, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' school headed by Warren Jeffs. Always seeking to be an obedient Priesthood girl, in her teens she became the nineteenth wife of her people's prophet: 85-year-old Rulon Jeffs, Warren's father. Finally sickened by the abuse she suffered and saw around her, she pulled off a daring escape and sought to build a new life and family. The church, however, had a way of pulling her back in-and by 2007, Rebecca had no choice but to take the witness stand against the new prophet of the FLDS in order to protect her little sisters and other young girls from being forced to marry at shockingly young ages. The following year, Rebecca and the rest of the world watched as a team of Texas Rangers raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a stronghold of the FLDS. Rebecca's subsequent testimony would reveal the horrific secrets taking place behind closed doors of the temple, sending their leaders to prison for years, and Warren Jeffs for life.

When James Faubion visited the site of the Branch Davidian compound after its conflagration, what he found surprised him. Though the popular imagination had relegated the site's millennialist denizens to the radical fringe, Faubion found not psychopathology but a sturdy and comprehensive system for understanding the world. He also found, in the person of Amo Paul Bishop Roden, a fascinating spokeswoman for that system.

Based on more than five years of fieldwork, including extensive life-history interviews with Roden, Faubion interprets millennialism as a ''master-pedagogy.'' He reveals it as simultaneously a poetics, a rhetoric, a physics, an approach to history, a course of training, a gnosis, and an ethics. Millennialism resists the categories that both academic and popular analysts use to discuss religion by melding the sacred and secular, the spiritual and political, and the transcendental and commonsensical. In this respect, and in others, millennialism is a premodern pedagogy that has grown resolutely counter-modern. Yet, mainstream culture sees in it not a critique of modernity but dangerous lunacy.

This disjunction prompts Faubion to investigate how the mainstream came to confine religion to an inner and other-worldly faith--an inquiry that allows him to account for the irrationalization of millennialism. Against this historical background, we can discern the genealogy of Adventist millennialism and make sense of contemporary religious events, including the actions of a small group in the central Texas prairie.

'Christianity is not a matter of a religion or even a denomination; it is not a question of a particular culture. Christ is there for all humanity.' In the old Mystery cultures the human being experienced himself as a child of the Gods, or even an instrument of them. According to Rudolf Steiner's spiritual-scientific research, the birth of independent thinking came only with our present state of consciousness - through becoming aware of the individual self. But who is this self? Who am I? Virginia Sease and Manfred Schmidt-Brabant maintain that real self-knowledge is intimately connected with knowledge of the central being of world evolution: the Christ, or the 'I AM'. Focusing on the being of Christ and on Christianity, "The New Mysteries" presents a series of engaging lectures on the developing Mystery wisdom of our age. Having given an overview of the history of the Mysteries in their book "Paths of the Christian Mysteries", the authors deepen and further their study by paying special attention to the effect of the "Christ Mysteries". Among the essential themes of the new volume are the transformation of conscience, the place of prayer and meditation, and the significance of sacrifice today.

Americans were enthralled by the Shakers in the years between 1925 and 1965. They bought Shaker furniture, saw Shaker worship services enacted on Broadway, sang Shaker songs, dressed in Shaker-inspired garb, collected Shaker artifacts, and restored Shaker villages. William D. Moore analyzes the activities of scholars, composers, collectors, folklorists, photographers, writers, choreographers, and museum staff who drove the national interest in this dwindling regional religious group. This interdisciplinary study places the activities of individuals -- including Doris Humphrey, Charles Sheeler, Laura Bragg, Juliana Force, and Edward Deming Andrews -- within the larger cultural and historical contexts of nationalism, modernism, and cultural resource management. Taking up previously unexamined primary sources and cultural productions that include the first scholarly studies of the faith, material culture and visual arts, stage performances, and museum exhibitions, Shaker Fever compels a reconsideration of this religious group and its place within American memory. It is sure to delight enthusiasts, public historians, museum professionals, furniture collectors, and anyone interested in the dynamics of cultural appropriation and stewardship.

The 1993 government assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, resulted in the deaths of four federal agents and eighty Branch Davidians, including seventeen children. Whether these tragic deaths could have been avoided is still debatable, but what seems clear is that the events in Texas have broad implications for religious freedom in America.
James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher's bold examination of the Waco story offers the first balanced account of the siege. They try to understand what really happened in Waco: What brought the Branch Davidians to Mount Carmel? Why did the government attack? How did the media affect events? The authors address the accusations of illegal weapons possession, strange sexual practices, and child abuse that were made against David Koresh and his followers. Without attempting to excuse such actions, they point out that the public has not heard the complete story and that many media reports were distorted.
The authors have carefully studied the Davidian movement, analyzing the theology and biblical interpretation that were so central to the group's functioning. They also consider how two decades of intense activity against so-called cults have influenced public perceptions of unorthodox religions.
In exploring our fear of unconventional religious groups and how such fear curtails our ability to tolerate religious differences, "Why Waco?" is an unsettling wake-up call. Using the events at Mount Carmel as a cautionary tale, the authors challenge all Americans, including government officials and media representatives, to closely examine our national commitment to religious freedom.

Mani, a third-century preacher, healer and public sage from Sasanian Mesopotamia, lived at a pivotal time and place in the development of the major religions. He frequented the courts of the Persian Empire, debating with rivals from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, philosophers and gnostics, Zoroastrians from Iran and Buddhists from India. The community he founded spread from north Africa to south China and lasted for over a thousand years. Yet the genuine biography of its founder, his life and thought, was in good part lost until a series of spectacular discoveries have begun to transform our knowledge of Mani's crucial role in the spread of religious ideas and practices along the trade-routes of Eurasia. This book utilises the latest historical and textual research to examine how Mani was remembered by his followers, caricatured by his opponents, and has been invented and re-invented according to the vagaries of scholarly fashion.

What spiritual or esoteric practices took place within the mysterious and often controversial Knights Templar? Whilst little is known about this aspect of the Order's history, speculation and wild rumours continue to persist. Having taken the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, the members of the Templar Order were required to live the life of other monastic orders. However, their remarkable rise to a successful elite community - followed by the insidious machinations and slander that led to their spectacular fall and destruction - suggests that they were involved in something more significant than straightforward medieval religious practices. There have been many theories as to whether their 'secret' involved material wealth and special treasure. But could it have been connected to a science of initiation - the knowledge, experience and understanding of spiritual dimensions that can enlighten the pupil on an esoteric path? In The Templar Spirit Margaret Jonas penetrates these questions, examining some of the various claims and revealing something of the esoteric practices and beliefs of the Order, including influences from other religious traditions. She presents her own research into the meaning of the mysterious 'head' that the Templars were accused of worshipping, and examines the historical figures that lent their wisdom and guidance to the founding of the Order.

Break free from spiritual bondsIf you've ever ended a relationship you knew wasnt Gods will for your life, but you can't seem to stop thinking about that person-If your behavior is being influenced in a negative way by people you come in contact with-If you're cursing yourself through forbidden statues, jewelry, and practices-It's time for you to break free from the ties on your soul!Dr. Gary Greenwald will explain how the transference of spirits and soul ties can create dominion over your life. Learn how to defeat the deceiving spirits that control many of the things you come in contact with every day.You can be delivered into a life ruled only by the holy spirit!

Eugene Smith lost his mother, wife, and infant son in the mass murder-suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978. Repatriated by the US authorities on New Year's Eve, he broke a $50 bill stashed in his shoe to buy breakfast for himself and a fellow survivor. Returning to California at age twenty-one, Smith faced the daunting challenge of building from scratch a meaningful and self-sufficient life in the American society he thought he had left behind. 'My first responsibility as a survivor,' he writes, 'was not to embarrass my mother or my wife or my child, and to set an example that can't be questioned.' Back to the World: A Life after Jonestown is the story of a double survival: first of the destruction of the idealistic but tragically flawed Peoples Temple community, then of its aftermath. Having survived, Smith has hard questions for today's America. 'It's irritating to me that, four decades later, like a broken record, we're going through all this all over again,' he writes.

In this study of Christian Science and the culture in which it arose, Amy B. Voorhees emphasizes Mary Baker Eddy's foundational religious text, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Assessing the experiences of everyday adherents after Science and Health's appearance in 1875, Voorhees shows how Christian Science developed a dialogue with both mainstream and alternative Christian theologies. Viewing God's benevolent allness as able to heal human afflictions through prayer, Christian Science emerged as an anti-mesmeric, restorationist form of Christianity that interpreted the Bible and approached emerging modern medicine on its own terms. Voorhees traces a surprising story of religious origins, cultural conversations, and controversies. She contextualizes Christian Science within a wide swath of cultural and religious movements, showing how Eddy and her followers interacted regularly with Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Catholics, Jews, New Thought adherents, agnostics, and Theosophists. Influences flowed in both directions, but Voorhees argues that Christian Science was distinct not only organizationally, as scholars have long viewed it, but also theologically, a singular expression of Christianity engaging modernity with an innovative, healing rationale.