New Religious Movements: A Documentary Reader - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814707025 ISBN 13: 9780814707029

Publisher: New York University Press, 2005

Synopsis

New Religious Movements is a highly unique volume, bringing together primary documents conveying the words and ideas of a wide array of new religious movements (NRMs), and offering a first-hand look into their belief systems.

Arranged by the editors according to a new typology, the text allows readers to consider NRMS along five interrelated pathways—from those that offer new perceptions of existence or new personal identities, to those that center on relationships within family-like units, to those movements that highlight the need for recasting the social order or anticipate the dawn of a new age.

The volume includes original documents from groups such as the Unification Church, Theosophy, Branch Davidians, Wicca, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Santeria, and Seventh Day Adventists, as well as many others. Each section is prefaced by a contextual introduction and concludes with a list of sources for further reading. New Religious Movements offers a rare inside look into the worldviews of alternative religious traditions.

About this title

About the Authors

Dereck Daschke is assistant professor of philosophy and religion at Truman State University.

W. Michael Ashcraft is associate professor of religion at Truman State University and author of The Dawn of the New Cycle: Point Loma Theosophists and American Culture. He is a former chairman of the New Religious Movements Group of the American Academy of Religion.

Edition details

• Publisher: New York University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814707025
• ISBN 13: 9780814707029
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 277
• Editor: Daschke Dereck, Ashcraft Michael