New Religious Movements: A Documentary Reader

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.

New religious movements are usually known from an outsider's account, often someone calling them cults and attacking them. This collection of documents provides primary perspectives on 14 movements, among them Christian Science, UFO religious groups, Wicca, Soka Gakkai, the Unification Church, Santería, the Rastafarians, The Nation of Islam, the Peoples Temple, the Adventist tradition, and Heaven's Gate. An appendix analyzes the anti-cult and counter-cult movements. The anthology is intended primarily for college-level courses, but has been assembled to be accessible to general readers as well. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Library Journal

Anthropologists have referred to humankind as Homo religiousus (literally, "religious man") or the God-intoxicated ape. The pervasiveness of relativism, postmodernism, pluralism, and materialism has neither quelled nor quenched humanity's transcendental leanings and yearnings. The evidence? The rise and proliferation of New Religious Movements (NRMs), once pejoratively referred to as cults. Today's religious landscape has become a spiritual smorgasbord, and here's a sampling of the menu: Wicca, the Unification Church, Santer a, the Nation of Islam, Heaven's Gate. This single-volume work profiles 16 such groups, relying-unlike many other books on NRMs-on primary sources. Readers will find excerpts of the writings of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy; Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam; and Jim Jones, the central figure of the People's Temple. Also unique to this work is its taxonomy: NRMs are classified into five categories that range from faiths offering new perceptions on reality and personal identities to those that challenge the social order and look toward the advent of a new age. Particular highpoints include the chapter on Heaven's Gate and a discussion of Anticult and Countercult movements. Overall, this scholarly, succinct work offers a balanced approach to a contentious topic. Public and academic libraries should purchase two copies, one for reference and one for circulating collections.-C. Brian Smith, Arlington Heights Memorial Lib., IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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.