Researching New Religious Movements

Elisabeth Arweck is Research Fellow at the University of Warwick's Religions and Education Research Unit. She co-edits the Journal of Contemporary Religion, and has co-edited several books including New Religious Movements in Western Europe (1997) and Theorizing Faith (2002).

'The most important 'first' that this book achieves is its bold questioning of the whole intellectual apparatus of the sociology of religion as it has been applied to the understand of the new religious movements. I am confident that Elisabeth Arweck's study will quickly become required reading in the sociology of new religious movements.' - Professor David Martin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Ecomonics, University of London, UK'Powerful and original ... it succeeds triumphantly in being at the same time an important, high-quality academic study and a book for our times.' - Professor David Marsland, Professorial Research Fellow in Sociology, University of Buckingham

• Foreword Acknowledgements 1. What This Book Is About 2. Milestones in a Reseach Itinerary 3. Institutions and Institutional Knowledge Part 1: Institutions Part 2: Institutional Knowledge 4. Sketching in the Cultural Background Part 1: The Contours of Religious Cultures Part 2: The Contours of Academic Cultures 5. The 'Anti-Cult' Movement's Response Part 1: The ACM Response in Britain: The Case of FAIR Part 2: The ACM Response in German: The Case of Elterminitiative 6. The Response of the Mainstream Churches Part 1: The Response of the Church of England Part 2: The Response of the Protestant Church in German Section 1: Evangelische Zentrallstelle fur Weltanschauunsfragen (EZW) Section 2: Pastror Friedrich-Wilhelm Haack and Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Religions - und Weltanschuunsfragen Part 3: The Response of the Roman Catholic Church 7. Conclusions Bibliography