The study of New Religious Movement (NRMs) is one of the fastest growing areas of religious studies. In this title, core chapters deal with such central issues as conversion, the…

Cults examines the history and current status of cults across the United States, Europe, and East Asia. Focusing on the principal controversial religions and movements that have attracted major media…

Contains an encyclopaedic survey of end-time predictions which looks at the history of prophets and the religious sects that forecast the exact dates that civilisation would take its final bow…

Although speech is the most natural form of communication between humans, most people find using speech to communicate with machines anything but natural. Drawing from psychology, human-computer interaction, linguistics, and…

Sects & Stats aims to overturn the conventional wisdom by drawing on current quantitative data from two sources: questionnaire research on select NRMs and relevant national census data collected by…

Violence involving alternative religions has long been a topic of intense public interest. This volume examines the famous incidents of murder and suicide concerning Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate, AUM Shinrikyo, the…

This volume is the first English-language anthology to engage with the fascinating phenomena of recent surges in New Age and alternative spiritualties in Israel.

This volume provides the first book-length study of religious schisms as a general phenomenon. Examples are drawn from a wide variety of different traditions and geographical areas, from early Mediterranean…