Routledge New Religions
About the Book Series
The popularity and significance of New Religious Movements is reflected in the explosion of related articles and books now being published. This series offers an invaluable resource and lasting contribution to the field.
Leading the Hare Krishna Movement: The Crisis of Succession in the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
1st Edition
By Angela R. Burt
September 29, 2025
This book examines issues of leadership and succession in the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) which was founded in by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in 1966. After the founder’s death in 1977, the movement was led by a group of gurus in a "zonal system" ...
Contemporary Spiritualities: Enchanted Worlds of Nature, Wellbeing and Mystery in Italy
1st Edition
By Stefania Palmisano, Nicola Pannofino
May 30, 2022
Contemporary alternative spirituality, as studied by sociologists, is usually seen as a recent phenomenon dating from the 1960s and 1970s. However, when viewed from a longer-term perspective this form of religious expression is actually seen to reintroduce concepts that recur throughout Western ...
Israelism in Modern Britain
1st Edition
By Aidan Cottrell-Boyce
May 06, 2022
This book unpacks the history of British-Israelism in the UK. Remarkably, this subject has had very little attention: remarkable, because at its height in the post-war era, the British-Israelist movement could claim to have tens of thousands of card-carrying adherents and counted amongst its ...
Paganistan: Contemporary Pagan Community in Minnesota's Twin Cities
1st Edition
By Murphy Pizza
December 13, 2021
Paganistan - a moniker adapted by the Twin Cities Contemporary Pagan community - is the title of a history and ethnography of a regionally unique, urban, and vibrant community in Minnesota. The story of the community traces the formation of some of the earliest organizations and churches in the US,...
Heaven's Gate: Postmodernity and Popular Culture in a Suicide Group
1st Edition
Edited
By George D. Chryssides
June 30, 2021
On March 26, 1997, the bodies of 39 men and women were found in an opulent mansion outside San Diego, all victims of a mass suicide. Messages left by the Heaven's Gate group indicate that they believed they were stepping out of their 'physical containers' in order to ascend to a UFO that was ...
Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith
1st Edition
By Carole M. Cusack
June 30, 2021
Utilizing contemporary scholarship on secularization, individualism, and consumer capitalism, this book explores religious movements founded in the West which are intentionally fictional: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, and Jediism. Their continued appeal and ...
Inochentism and Orthodox Christianity: Religious Dissent in the Russian and Romanian Borderlands
1st Edition
By James A. Kapaló
March 31, 2021
This book explores the history and evolution of Inochentism, a controversial new religious movement that emerged in the Russian and Romanian borderlands of what is now Moldova and Ukraine in the context of the Russian revolutionary period. Inochentism centres around the charismatic preaching of ...
A Historical Introduction to the Study of New Religious Movements
1st Edition
By W. Michael Ashcraft
December 12, 2019
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...
The Indigo Children: New Age Experimentation with Self and Science
1st Edition
By Beth Singler
December 12, 2019
The Indigo Child concept is a contemporary New Age redefinition of self. Indigo Children are described in their primary literature as a spiritually, psychically, and genetically advanced generation. Born from the early 1980s, the Indigo Children are thought to be here to usher in a new golden age ...
Yearning to Belong: Discovering a New Religious Movement
1st Edition
By John Paul Healy
June 07, 2019
Cutting across three areas of interest within New Religious Movements - insider perspectives, sociology of religion and the helping professions - this book explores insiders' experience of the Indian Guru-disciple Yogic tradition and is authored by a former member of that tradition. Highlighting ...
Sacred Suicide
1st Edition
Edited
By James R. Lewis, Carole M. Cusack
February 06, 2018
The label 'Suicide Cults' has been applied to a wide variety of different alternative religions, from Jonestown to the Solar Temple to Heaven's Gate. Additionally, observers have asked if such group suicides are in any way comparable to Islamist suicide terrorism, or to historical incidents of mass...
Jehovah's Witnesses: Continuity and Change
1st Edition
By George D. Chryssides
February 05, 2018
From its origins in nineteenth century Adventism until the present day, the Watch Tower Society has become one of the best known but least understood new religious movements. Resisting the tendency to define the movement in terms of the negative, this volume offers an empathetic account of the ...