WRTG 101: Professor Zapin

Available in print and ebook.
This book explores the question of when and why violence by and against new religious cults erupts and whether and how such dramatic conflicts can be foreseen, managed and averted. The Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo, Solar Temple, and Heaven's Gate are discussed.

An introduction to cults and new religious movements. Chapters review the origins, leaders, beliefs, rituals and practices of New Religious Movements, highlighting the specific controversies surrounding each group.

Features more than 500 cross-referenced entries on key figures, ideas, themes, and places related to various new religious movements that have arisen within the last 200 years

The Rhetoric of Religious Cults takes as its departure point the notion that 'cults' have a distinctive language and way of recruiting members. First outlining a rhetorical framework, which encompasses contemporary discourse analysis, the persuasive texts of three movements - Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses and Children of God - are analysed in detail and their discourse compared with other kinds of recruitment literature. Cults' distinctive negative profile in society is not matched by a linguistic typology. Indeed, this negative profile seems to rest on the semantics and application of the term 'cult' itself.