Exploring New Religions

Many of the prominent 'cults' or new religious movements are discussed here. Chapters cover offshoot developments from the major religions and include well known groups such as the Mormons, Jehovas Witnesses and Hare Krishna. One chapter covers the 'death cults', and the last looks at the anti-cult movement. I very much enjoyed reading this book, and think others with similar interests will like it as well. It gives us an in depth look at the cults and is one of the few works to examine the issue in a detached, methodical way. Most books are written either to attack or defend particular groups in question. Chryssides desires only to learn about them. This is close to a five star book. Well, almost. The author suffers from a typical academic inability to make judgements, even in the easiest cases. No group can be condemned. Of course we understand that one must be open minded to the claims and arguments of these cults, and not believe everything said about them, but matters are taken to an absurd extreme here. Time and again crimes are excused and immoral practices played down. The worst examples are found in the section on the death cult Jonestown. Chryssides goes as far as to suggest that the sect was driven to mass suicide by a hostile and racist world. What nonsense! I suppose if he was writing about the Japanese cult responsible for the underground gas attack in 1995, he would say they were only seeking to reduce subway crowding. True enough, we shouldn't be too quick to attack new religions in our midst. But they shouldn't all be let off the hook either.

It would be easy for anyone embarking on a exploration into new religious movements to be swayed by the sensationalist media reporting that many of these groups have been subjected to. This book, however, deals with a host of faiths and belief systems in a subjective and unbiased way, however bizarre they appear to be. Even Jim Jones gets a fair hearing!A great source of information for anyone interested in NRM's which wets the appetite for further study.