Salvation and Witches in a "Secular" Age

Abstract

The article discusses sociological research. Sociologists James T. Richardson and Caroll Stoner are concerned with various aspects of the contemporary religious situation related to the "new religions" rather than with specific groups. Some of the authors refer mainly to a particular cult or sect or cluster of related groups i.e. the Jesus Movement, a UFO cult, the Church of the Sun, the Meher Baba and Guru Maharaj-ji movements, a Catholic Charismatic Renewal group, but the focus of attention is on the process of conversion and withdrawal from non-traditional groups. Stoner is a journalist who has examined "the cult experience-salvation or slavery" mainly by following the lives of individual members in Moon's Unification Church, the Divine Light Mission, Love Israel's Church of Armageddon, Hare Krishna, the Children of God, and Scientology. Clearly, there are individual factors that make some persons more sensitive to those conditions than others. Among the individual factors are some demographic items that have been quite well measured during the last decade: soclo-economic status, level of education, race, sex, age, and religious background.

Publisher

American Sociological Association / SAGE Publications

Publication Date

7-1-1980

Publication Title

Contemporary Sociology

Department

Sociology

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2066221

Keywords

Cults, Church, Sociology--Research, Social scientists, Behavioral scientists, Methodology

Language

English

Format

text

Link to Full Text

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