This explores the question of when and why violence by and against new religious cults erupts and whether and how such dramatic conflicts can be foreseen, managed and averted. The authors, leading international experts on religious movements and violent behavior, focus on the four major episodes of cult violence during the last decade: the tragic conflagration that engulfed the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas; the deadly sarin gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo; the murder-suicides by the Solar Temple in Switzerland and Canada; and the collective suicide by the members of Heaven's Gate. They explore the dynamics leading to these dramatic episodes in North America, Europe, and Asia, and offer insights into the general relationship between violence and religious cults in contemporary society. The authors conclude that these events usually involve some combination of internal and external dynamics through which a new religious movement and society become polarized.
Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation Rodney Stark, William Sims Bainbridge. 19 Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation Secularization is the dominant theme in modern assessments of the future of religion.
Cult Controversies: The Societal Response to New Religious Movements
In partnership with TIME magazine, Prentice Hall has created a special TIME edition on world religions that includes over twenty recent articles on major world religions and topics in religious studies.
Thirty-nine members of the UFO faith group Heaven's Gate took their lives in late March 1997, during the comet Hale-Bopp's closest approach to Earth. Some believed that the group, led by Marshall Applewhite, thought that their bodies ...
... 154 Greene , Daphne , as parent of cult Hegstrom , Karen , deprogramming of , member , 231-232 , 238-239 234-239 ... 45 Imperato , Dr. Pascal J. , on Unification size of , 63 Church diet , 135 Incest , attitudes toward in Children ...
It also recounts the very intimate tale of how these confrontations with threatening and often, violent forces cost him the woman he loved and nearly, life itself.
Hell Ranch: The Nightmare Tale of Voodoo, Drugs and Death in Matamoros
La masacre de Waco Texas
Kamikaze Justice
Cult, Myth, and Kingship in Pharaonic Egypt: Inaugural Lecture Delivered at the College on 12 November 1990