New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America

by Davis, Derek; Hankins, Barry

• ISBN13: 9780929182643
• ISBN10: 0929182642
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-01
• Publisher: Baylor Univ Pr

Summary

It has been said that the measure of a healthy and civilized society is how well it treats its elderly and indigent. Perhaps it should be said also that the measure of the health of religious liberty in a society is the degree to which minority, nontraditional faiths are protected. This book is a collection of essays on the subject of religious liberty and new religious movements (NRMs). NRMs are often called "cults" by popular media commentators and the public at large, but scholars eschew that term because it is so pejorative that it skews the argument from the very beginning. By contrast, the term "new religious movements" attempts to place NRMs squarely in the mix with older, more traditional forms of religion. This is due in part to the fact that in America there should be no correlation between the level of social approval a group has achieved and the degree of religious liberty it enjoys. As the Supreme Court itself averred famously in the 1872 case Watson v. Jones, "The Law knows no heresy and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment o

Author Biography

Derek H. Davis is director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University Barry Hankins is associate professor of history and church-state studies at Baylor University

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Controversial Christian Movements: History, Growth, and Outlook	p. 1
The Cult Awareness Network and the Anticult Movement: Implications for NRMs in America	p. 21
A Contemporary Ordered Religious Community: The Sea Organization	p. 45
Women in Controversial New Religions: Slaves, Priestesses, or Pioneers?	p. 81
Satanism and Witchcraft: Social Construction of a Melded but Mistaken Identity	p. 87
A Critical Analysis of Evidentiary and Procedural Rulings in Branch Davidian Civil Case	p. 101
New Religious Movements and Conflicts with Law Enforcement	p. 115
Scientology: Separating Truth from Fiction	p. 141
Christian Reconstructionism after Y2K: Gary North, the New Millennium, and Religious Freedom	p. 163
A Not So Charitable Choice: New Religious Movements and President Bush's Plan for Faith-Based Social Services	p. 181
Contributors	p. 199
Index	p. 203
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.