RESTORING PRIMITIVE TRUTH
For many years I taught a course on Sects, Cults and New Religious Movements. Scholars produce many reasons why new religions should attract particular groups, and offer similar messages, eg the...
View ArticleWHERE HAVE ALL THE CULTISTS GONE?
One of the most enjoyable academic conferences on religious studies is CESNUR, the Center for the Study of New Religions, and this past month we hosted the group’s annual meeting at Baylor. I spoke on...
View ArticleChristians and Communists
There is an odd but very useful source on early Christianity that remains strangely unfamiliar to many historians of that topic. Even less known is the discussion by a totally unexpected nineteenth...
View ArticleMaking Monks, Forming Souls
I have been reading an important new book called Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity: Cognition and Discipline (Cambridge University Press, 2017). This is by my former...
View ArticleSpread The Picture On A Wider Screen
Jacob S. Dorman has a really fine new book out on the historic Black religious sect called the Moorish Science Temple of America, MSTA: the enticing title is The Princess and the Prophet: The Secret...
View ArticleStrange Rites, Harry Potter, and the New World of Cults
One of the most interesting books on religion published this past year was Tara Isabella Burton’s Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. I think it might turn out to be among the most...
View ArticleQAnon, Cults, and Religion Online
Last time I wrote about Tara Isabella Burton’s recent book Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. In particular, I argued that she solved a great contemporary mystery, namely why today we no...
View ArticleCredulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism. And Rabbits.
Through the years, I have posted repeatedly at this site on religious images in art, and what they can tell us about ideas and debates in earlier eras. Scholars still pay insufficient attention to the...
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