Exploring New Religions

Adopting an objective stance, this book examines the teachings and practices of a wide variety of new religious groups. The first two chapters raise general issues about cults, such as definitions, statistics, evangelization tactics, issues of public concern and methods of study. Subsequent chapters deal with new religions by "genre" - the older minority groups, New Christian groups, Hindu and Buddhist groups, the "self-religions" and the New Age. Each of these chapters begins with a general discussion of the background to each type of movement and selects three representative movements for greater in-depth study. A final chapter explores the societal responses to the new religious movements, and the book concludes with a compendium which gives summary accounts of various movements not covered in the text. Religions that are covered in this volume include Christian Science, the Mormon Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Unification Church, the Jesus Army, Krishna Consciousness, Sai Baba, osho (Rajneesh), the Soka Gakkai, the Baha'i, the Rastafarians, the Church of Scientology and New Age movements.