Sexuality and New Religious Movements PDF Download

Author: J. Lewis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137386436
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Issues relating to sexuality, eroticism and gender are often connected to religious beliefs and practices, but also to prejudices against and fear of religious groups that adopt alternative approaches to sexuality. This is especially apparent in connection with new religious movements, which many times find themselves accused by the media and anti-cultists of promoting illicit and controversial views on sexuality. This anthology aims to critically investigate the role of sexuality in a number of new religious movements, including Mormon fundamentalist communities, the Branch Davidians, the Osho movement, the Raël movement, contemporary Wicca and Satanism, in addition to the teachings of Adidam and Gurdjieff on sexuality.

Author: J. Lewis
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781349681464
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This anthology brings together leading scholars in the field of New Religious Movements to critically investigate the role of sexuality in some of the most well-known new religious movements.

Author: Laura Vance
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479847992
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
An in-depth history of selected New Religions that highlights the roles of women in their founding and continual practice Women in New Religions offers an engaging look at women’s evolving place in the birth and development of new religious movements. It focuses on four disparate new religions—Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, The Family International, and Wicca—to illuminate their implications for gender socialization, religious leadership and participation, sexuality, and family ideals. Religious worldviews and gender roles interact with one another in complicated ways. This is especially true within new religions, which frequently set roles for women in ways that help the movements to define their boundaries in relation to the wider society. As new religious movements emerge, they often position themselves in opposition to dominant society and concomitantly assert alternative roles for women. But these religions are not monolithic: rather than defining gender in rigid and repressive terms, new religions sometimes offer possibilities to women that are not otherwise available. Vance traces expectations for women as the religions emerge, and transformation of possibilities and responsibilities for women as they mature. Weaving theory with examination of each movement’s origins, history, and beliefs and practices, this text contextualizes and situates ideals for women in new religions. The book offers an accessible analysis of the complex factors that influence gender ideology and its evolution in new religious movements, including the movements’ origins, charismatic leadership and routinization, theology and doctrine, and socio-historical contexts. It shows how religions shape definitions of women’s place in a way that is informed by response to social context, group boundaries, and identity.

Author: Elizabeth Puttick
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312172602
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
It is often believed that women are oppressed and exploited by the charismatic male leaders of new religious movements. This book exposes the abuse of power within some movements, but also demonstrates that there is more evidence of fulfillment and empowerment. This book explores the social and spiritual issues tracing developments from the 1960s counter-culture to 1990s Goddess spirituality and culminates in a new typology of religious needs and values.

Author: Elizabeth Puttick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780333692066
Category : Cults
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
It is often believed that women are oppressed and exploited by the charismatic male leaders of new religious movements. This book exposes the abuse of power within some movements, but also demonstrates that there is more evidence of fulfillment and empowerment. This book explores the social and spiritual issues tracing developments from the 1960s counter-culture to 1990s Goddess spirituality and culminates in a new typology of religious needs and values.

Author: W. Michael Ashcraft
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351670832
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
The American public’s perception of New Religious Movements (NRMs) as fundamentally harmful cults stems from the "anticult" movement of the 1970s, which gave a sometimes hysterical and often distorted image of NRMs to the media. At the same time, academics pioneered a new field, studying these same NRMs from sociological and historical perspectives. They offered an interpretation that ran counter to that of the anticult movement. For these scholars in the new field of NRM studies, NRMs were legitimate religions deserving of those freedoms granted to established religions. Those scholars in NRM studies continued to evolve methods and theories to study NRMs. This book tells their story. Each chapter begins with a biography of a key person involved in studying NRMs. The narrative unfolds chronologically, beginning with late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century perceptions of religions alternative to the mainstream. Then the focus shifts to those early efforts, in the 1960s and 1970s, to comprehend the growing phenomena of cults or NRMs using the tools of academic disciplines. The book’s midpoint is a chapter that looks closely at the scholarship of the anticult movement, and from there moves forward in time to the present, highlighting themes in the study of NRMs like violence, gender, and reflexive ethnography. No other book has used the scholars of NRMs as the focus for a study in this way. The material in this volume is, therefore, a fascinating viewpoint from which to explore the origins of this vibrant academic community, as well as analyse the practice of Religious Studies more generally.

Author: Stephen Hunt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351914715
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Since the 1960s a fresh wave of new religions and what has come to be termed 'spiritualities' have been evident on a global scale. This volume in The Library of Essays on Sexuality and Religion focuses on these 'new' religions and their often contentious attitudes towards human sexuality. Part 1, through previously-published articles, provides instances of affirming orientations of the 'new' religions towards sexuality. This entails scrutinising examples of innovative religion from a historical perspective, as well as those of a more contemporary nature. Part 2 examines, with pertinent illustrations, the controversial character of 'new' religions in their 'cultist' forms and matters of sexual control and abuse. Part 3 considers sexuality as articulated through paganism, the occult and esotericism in the postmodern setting. Part 4 examines both hetero- and non-hetero- expressions of sexuality through the so-called 'New Spiritualities', Quasi-religions and the more 'hidden' forms of religiosity.

Author: Lawrence Foster
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252011191
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
"Most writers have treated these three groups and the social ferment out of which they grew as simply an American sideshow. . . . In this book, therefore, I have attempted to go beyond the conventional focus on what these groups did; I have also sought to explain why they did what they did and how successful they were in terms of their own objectives. By trying sympathetically to understand these extraordinary experiments in social and religious revitalization, I believe it is possible to come to terms with a broader set of questions that affect all men and women during times of crisis and transition."--From the preface Winner of the Best Book Award, Mormon History Association

Author: Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319615270
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
In this book, historians of religion and gender studies explore the biographies of a number of female leaders, and the factors within their groups and cultural contexts that support these women’s religious leadership. New Religious Movements have been supportive of women taking roles of leadership for a long time. Authors of this book examine issues of gender and female leadership from diverse theoretical and methodological standpoints. The book covers a broad range of groups both with regard to time and place, covering Paganism, Hindu guru groups, Christian organizations, esoteric/ mystical movements, African churches, and a Japanese NRM. The common focal point is the powerful, prophetic, charismatic women who have founded and/ or led New Religious Movements.

Author: J. Lewis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137386436
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

View

Book Description
Issues relating to sexuality, eroticism and gender are often connected to religious beliefs and practices, but also to prejudices against and fear of religious groups that adopt alternative approaches to sexuality. This is especially apparent in connection with new religious movements, which many times find themselves accused by the media and anti-cultists of promoting illicit and controversial views on sexuality. This anthology aims to critically investigate the role of sexuality in a number of new religious movements, including Mormon fundamentalist communities, the Branch Davidians, the Osho movement, the Raël movement, contemporary Wicca and Satanism, in addition to the teachings of Adidam and Gurdjieff on sexuality.