This book, first published in 1984, examines the whole range of new religious movements which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s in the West. It develops a wide-ranging theory of these new religions which explains many of their major characteristics. Some of the movements are well-known, such as Scientology, Krishna Consciousness, and the Unification Church. Others such as the Process, Meher Baba, and 3-HO are much less known. While some became international, others remained local; in other ways, too, such as style, belief, organisation, they exhibit enormous diversity. The movements studied here are classified under three ideal types, world-rejecting, world-affirming and world-accommodating, and from here the author develops a theory of the origins, recruitment base, characteristics, and development patterns which they display. The book offers a critical exploration of the theories of the new religions and analyses the highly contentious issue of whether they reflect the process of secularisation, or whether they are a countervailing trend marking the resurgence of religion in the West.

This book, first published in 1984, examines the whole range of new religious movements which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s in the West. It develops a wide-ranging theory of these new religions which explains many of their major characteristics. Some of the movements are well-known, such as Scientology, Krishna Consciousness, and the Unification Church. Others such as the Process, Meher Baba, and 3-HO are much less known. While some became international, others remained local; in other ways, too, such as style, belief, organisation, they exhibit enormous diversity. The movements studied here are classified under three ideal types, world-rejecting, world-affirming and world-accommodating, and from here the author develops a theory of the origins, recruitment base, characteristics, and development patterns which they display. The book offers a critical exploration of the theories of the new religions and analyses the highly contentious issue of whether they reflect the process of secularisation, or whether they are a countervailing trend marking the resurgence of religion in the West.

There's mischief in the air from the first pages of this vividly evocative 'pawnography' (a genre described by the author as 'the biography or autobiography of a pawn in the game of life'). In the beginning it is no more than the comparatively innocent escapades of a group of young boys growing up in the Sussex countryside against the distant background of the Second World War. Their scrapes will evoke keen nostalgia in anyone who remembers a time when children were free to roam and learn by misadventure. As the boys grow up and girls begin to dominate their thoughts, the mischief becomes bawdier - but this is nothing compared with the sexual exploits of the narrator's time in National Service, chronicled with the same unblushing relish for detail. Humour, however, remains the watchword, and the reader will rejoice when lust and love appear at last to mingle in an ideal denouement. But beware - the mischief we may encounter in maturity is altogether darker and more dangerous.