Researching New Religious Movements: Responses and Redefinitions

ISBN-13: 9780415277556 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 464 str.

Elisabeth Arweck

Opis

New religious movements such as Scientology, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Unification Church (Moonies) are now well established in mainstream cultural consciousness. But responses to these "cult" groups still tend to be overwhelmingly negative, characterized by the furious reactions that they evoke from majority interests. Modern societies need to learn how to respond to such movements, and how to interpret their benefits and dangers.
"Researching New Religious Movements" provides a fresh look at the history and development of "anti cult" groups, and the response of mainstream churches to these new movements. In this unique reception study, Elisabeth Arweck traces the path of scholarship of new religious movements, exploring the development of research in this growing field. She considers academic and media interventions on both sides, with special emphasis on the problems of objectivity inherent in terminologies of "sects," "abduction" and "brainwashing." Ideal for students and researchers, this much-needed book takes the debate over new religious movements to a newly sophisticated level.

Recenzje

'The most important 'first' that this book achieves is its bold questioning of the whole intellectual apparatus of the sociology of religion as it has been applied to the understand of the new religious movements.  I am confident that Elisabeth Arweck's study will quickly become required reading in the sociology of new religious movements.' - Professor David Martin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Ecomonics, University of London, UK

'Powerful and original ... it succeeds triumphantly in being at the same time an important, high-quality academic study and a book for our times.' - Professor David Marsland, Professorial Research Fellow in Sociology, University of Buckingham

Spis treści

Foreword  Acknowledgements  1.  What This Book Is About  2. Milestones in a Reseach Itinerary  3. Institutions and Institutional Knowledge  Part 1: Institutions  Part 2: Institutional Knowledge  4. Sketching in the Cultural Background  Part 1: The Contours of Religious Cultures  Part 2: The Contours of Academic Cultures  5. The 'Anti-Cult' Movement's Response  Part 1: The ACM Response in Britain: The Case of FAIR  Part 2: The ACM Response in German: The Case of Elterminitiative  6. The Response of the Mainstream Churches  Part 1: The Response of the Church of England  Part 2: The Response of the Protestant Church in German  Section 1: Evangelische Zentrallstelle fur Weltanschauunsfragen (EZW)  Section 2: Pastror Friedrich-Wilhelm Haack and Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Religions - und Weltanschuunsfragen  Part 3: The Response of the Roman Catholic Church  7. Conclusions  Bibliography

O autorze

Elisabeth Arweck is Research Fellow at the University of Warwick's Religions and Education Research Unit. She co-edits the Journal of Contemporary Religion, and has co-edited several books including New Religious Movements in Western Europe (1997) and Theorizing Faith (2002).