Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1 The Nature of Religion
2 Of Churches, Sects, and Cults

I THE RELIGIOUS ECNOMY
3 The Spectrum of Faiths
4 Religious Regionalism

II SECT MOVEMENTS
5 The Eternal Exodus: Causes of Religious Dissent
and Schism
6 American-Born Sect Movements
7 Sect Transformation and Upward Mobility:
The Missing Mechanisms
 
III CULTS
8 Three Models of Cult Formation
9 Cult Movements in America: A Reconnaissance
10 Client and Audience Cults in America
11 Cult Membership in the Roaring Twenties
12 Scientology: To Be Perfectly Clear
13 The Rise and Decline of Transcendental Meditation

IV RECRUITMENT
14 Networks of Faith: Interpersonal Bonds and Recruitment
to Cults and Sects
15 Friendship, Religion, and the Occult
16 The Arithmetic of Social Movements:
Theoretical Implications
17 The "Consciousness Reformation" Reconsidered
18 Who Joins Cult Movements?

V SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS
19 Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation
20 Church and Cult in Canada
21 Europe's Receptivity to Cults and Sects
22 Rebellion, Repressive Regimes, and Religious Movements

Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Rodney Stark is one of the leading authorities on the sociology of religion. Stark has authored more than 150 scholarly articles and 32 books in 17 different languages, including several widely used sociology textbooks and best-selling titles. William Sims Bainbridge earned his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1975. Altogether he has published about 300 articles and written or edited 40 books in a variety of scientific fields.

Reviews

"The authors break new ground for the social scientific study of religion in scope and theory. The result is an empirically based rebuttal of the secularization thesis. . . . Future will enlighten its intended audience: social scientists who study religion, and their students. Its conceptual and empirical rigor enhances the standing of the sociology of religion in the scientific community."
*Journal of the American Academy of Religion*

"Students of American religion need lots of help in lots of ways, and they will find much welcome assistance in this volume. It offers definitions of such troublesome terms as church, sect, and cult, with specification as to the nature of organization peculiar to each."
*Church History*

"Every serious sociologist of religion will have to confront this book and anyone with an interest in religion should read it."
*Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion*

"This volume presents the material in an interesting, exciting, and challenging manner and should provide the starting point for any theological evaluation of, and Christian response to, the new religious movements."
*Theological Studies*