Demise of Religion

Michael Stausberg is Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. His most recent book (co-edited with Steven Engler) is The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion (2016). Stuart A. Wright is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Criminal Justice at Lamar University, USA. His most recent book is Storming Zion: Government Raids on Religious Communities (2016), with Susan J. Palmer. Carole M. Cusack is Professor in the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is currently the Editor of the journal Literature & Aesthetics and is a member of the editorial board of eleven journals.

The Demise of Religion is a robust contribution to new religions studies. The book effectively deploys a broadly applicable set of analytical categories to examine how these movements end without encouraging single-variable analyses or creating formulaic depictions. Moreover, the array of organizations covered speaks to this approach’s versatility. Beyond elucidating specific groups’ terminations, each case study showcases and broadens the editors’ arsenal of endogenous and exogenous factors that contribute to decline. In doing so, the volume establishes a theoretical foundation for normalizing new religious decline and fall, pointing the way for future studies of new religious demise.

• Introduction, Michael Stausberg (University of Bergen, Norway)1. Religious Demise: Definitional Issues and Conceptual Considerations, Stuart A. Wright (Lamar University, USA), Michael Stausberg (University of Bergen, Norway) and Carol M. Cusack (University of Sydney, Australia)2. How Religions End: A Case Study of the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea, Joel Robbins (University of Cambridge, UK)3. The Ends and Endings of Aum Shinrikyo, Erica Baffelli (University of Manchester, UK)4. The Demise of Religion: The Case of Knutby Filadelfia in Sweden, Lisolette Frisk (Dalarna University, Sweden)5. Religious Failure Deferred: The Panacea Society, Alistair Lockhart (Cambridge University, UK)6. Denominationalization or Death? Comparing Processes of Change within the Jesus Fellowship Church and the Children of God aka The Family International, Eileen Barker (London School of Economics, University of London, UK)7. How Online Counter-Narratives Catalyze Change: The Fall of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Jessica Johnson (College of William and Mary, USA)8. The Creation and End of an Anti-Religious Religion, Michael Stausberg (University of Bergen, Norway)9. State Actions Leading to Religious Demise, Stuart A. Wright (Lamar University, USA)10. Collective Violence as Religious Demise, James Lewis (Wuhan University, China) and Carole M. Cusack (University of Sydney, Australia)BibliographyIndex