Sarah Harvey – författare

A gorgeously illustrated introduction to the Japanese method of Kaizen – meaning 'change' 'good' – showing you how to make small, step-by-step changes to transform your life.'This beautiful, simple book suggests tiny changes we can make to improve all areas of life, from friendships to a cluttered flat' – Marianne Power, author of Help Me!From Marie Kondo to Hygge to Ikigai, in recent years, philosophies to help people live better lives have taken the world by storm. Kaizen will change your habits for good.This beautifully colour illustrated and photographed book offers a way to build good habits and remove bad ones, without being too hard on yourself along the way. The focus is on having patience, shaping solutions for yourself rather than following others and not giving up when things aren’t working. Rather than being critical of your faults, the emphasis is on mindful, positive change. Well-known in the business and sports worlds as a method for mapping incremental goals, Kaizen is also a wonderful tool for slowly improving aspects of your life, without feeling daunted or overwhelmed by the challenge.Kaizen by Sarah Harvey brings you a personalized and flexible approach to change that you can apply to any area of your life (whether it is health, relationships, money, career, habits, new hobbies or general wellbeing). You can adapt it to suit working style, preferences and personality. Every person’s experience of Kaizen will be different, which is what makes it such an effective tool for positive change.

This volume explores the diversity of beliefs and practices around health and healing in minority religions from different perspectives. The contributors include academics from a variety of disciplines as well as members of minority religions. The introductory chapter focuses on the metaphors and meanings that religions use to indicate their understandings of the body and its boundaries and concepts of health and healing. Chapters follow on the concepts of health and healing in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Panacea Society, Pentecostal Christianity, Paganism, Lubavitcher Hasidim and Daesoon Jinrihoe, amongst others. Other chapters focus on contemporary yoga, the Gisu of Uganda, the psychology of believers in alternative medicine and the French government’s opposition to alternative healing practices. The book will be useful for academics and students of religious studies, especially those interested in minority religions and alternative healing practices.

There are many different ways in which minority religions and counselling may interact. In some cases there can be antagonism between counselling services and minority religions, with each suspecting they are ideologically threatened by the other, but it can be argued that the most common relationship is one of ignorance – mental health professionals do not pay much attention to religion and often do not ask or consider their client’s religious affiliation. To date, the understanding of this relationship has focused on the ‘anti-cult movement’ and the perceived need for members of minority religions to undergo some form of ‘exit counselling’. In line with the series, this volume takes a non-judgemental approach and instead highlights the variety of issues, religious groups and counselling approaches that are relevant at the interface between minority religion and counselling. The volume is divided into four parts: Part I offers perspectives on counselling from different professions; Part II offers chapters from the field leaders directly involved in counselling former members of minority religions; Part III offers unique personal accounts by members and former members of a number of different new religions; while Part IV offers chapters on some of the most pertinent current issues in the counselling/minority religions fields, written by new and established academics. In every section, the volume seeks to explore different permutations of the counsellor-client relationship when religious identities are taken into account. This includes not only ‘secular’ therapists counselling former members of religion, but the complexities of the former member turned counsellor, as well as counselling practised both within religious movements and by religious movements that offer counselling services to the ‘outside’ world.

This Element analyses issues of abuse in new religious movements (NRMs). It argues that abuse in NRMs is not unique but that certain factors can be intensified in NRM contexts - propensities for separation from wider society, teachings on unique legitimacy and exclusivity, and charismatic authority. First, a historical overview addresses how abuse in NRMs has been approached and understood, linking this to the development of NRM and cultic studies and their preferred terminology. Second, a theoretical framework allows consideration of the ways in which the interlinked structural and cultural factors of religious movements can contribute to the perpetration, legitimisation or concealment of abuse. Finally, the Element presents an applied case study analysing the interplay of these factors in the Jesus Fellowship Church, a UK-based NRM which closed in 2019, partly in recognition of abuses that had occurred. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element analyses issues of abuse in new religious movements (NRMs). It argues that abuse in NRMs is not unique but that certain factors can be intensified in NRM contexts - propensities for separation from wider society, teachings on unique legitimacy and exclusivity, and charismatic authority. First, a historical overview addresses how abuse in NRMs has been approached and understood, linking this to the development of NRM and cultic studies and their preferred terminology. Second, a theoretical framework allows consideration of the ways in which the interlinked structural and cultural factors of religious movements can contribute to the perpetration, legitimisation or concealment of abuse. Finally, the Element presents an applied case study analysing the interplay of these factors in the Jesus Fellowship Church, a UK-based NRM which closed in 2019, partly in recognition of abuses that had occurred. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Building on thirty years accompanying the church’s growth, this book is the first to treat the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) as a global organization and the first to balance the devotional and ritual life of the church with its impact on politics and the media.Based in Brazil, the UCKG claims to have 17,000 bishops and pastors, 12,300 places of worship and 10 million followers in 135 countries. Within a lifetime of fifty years it has become a model for neo-Pentecostalism worldwide epitomized by its mammoth ‘Temple of Solomon’ in São Paulo.Drawing on ethnographic research in 13 countries from Brazil and Spanish America to Europe, North America and Israel, David Lehmann demonstrates how the church’s practices, and those of Pentecostalism in general, are reshaping contemporary concepts of ritual and the supernatural. It further argues that the Church’s use of social media to spread its teachings, and its leader Edir Macedo’s extensive political, business and mediatic interests, have paved the way to a fusion of religious and secular domains.The church’s bishops, pastors and assistants mobilize their followers by age and gender and channel their commitment into activities ranging from fundraising to seniors’ gatherings to prison and hospital visiting. Gender emerges repeatedly as a central theme, expressed in the phenomenon of the childless pastoral couple, gendered self-improvement networks, the church’s messaging on relationships, ‘love therapy’ and even the provision of dating apps for the faithful.Exceeding previous work in scope and theoretical range, this book opens completely new perspectives on Pentecostalism worldwide.

Secular and spiritual prophets of doom abound in the information-rich twenty-first century - as they have for millennia. But there has yet to be worldwide floods, meteor impact, global computer failure, obvious alien contact, or direct intervention from God to end the world as we know it. Considering the frequency with which prophecy apparently fails, why do prophecies continue to be made, and what social functions do they serve? This volume gives a concise, but comprehensive, overview of the rich diversity of prophecy, its role in major world religions as well as in new religions and alternative spiritualties, its social dynamics and its impact on individuals’ lives. Academic analyses are complimented with contextualized primary source testimonies of those who live and have lived within a prophetic framework. The book argues that the key to understanding the more dramatic, apocalyptic and millenarian aspects of prophecy is in appreciating prophecy’s more mundane manifestations and its role in providing meaning and motivation in everyday life.

Secular and spiritual prophets of doom abound in the information-rich twenty-first century - as they have for millennia. But there has yet to be worldwide floods, meteor impact, global computer failure, obvious alien contact, or direct intervention from God to end the world as we know it. Considering the frequency with which prophecy apparently fails, why do prophecies continue to be made, and what social functions do they serve? This volume gives a concise, but comprehensive, overview of the rich diversity of prophecy, its role in major world religions as well as in new religions and alternative spiritualties, its social dynamics and its impact on individuals’ lives. Academic analyses are complimented with contextualized primary source testimonies of those who live and have lived within a prophetic framework. The book argues that the key to understanding the more dramatic, apocalyptic and millenarian aspects of prophecy is in appreciating prophecy’s more mundane manifestations and its role in providing meaning and motivation in everyday life.

There are many different ways in which minority religions and counselling may interact. In some cases there can be antagonism between counselling services and minority religions, with each suspecting they are ideologically threatened by the other, but it can be argued that the most common relationship is one of ignorance – mental health professionals do not pay much attention to religion and often do not ask or consider their client’s religious affiliation. To date, the understanding of this relationship has focused on the ‘anti-cult movement’ and the perceived need for members of minority religions to undergo some form of ‘exit counselling’. In line with the series, this volume takes a non-judgemental approach and instead highlights the variety of issues, religious groups and counselling approaches that are relevant at the interface between minority religion and counselling. The volume is divided into four parts: Part I offers perspectives on counselling from different professions; Part II offers chapters from the field leaders directly involved in counselling former members of minority religions; Part III offers unique personal accounts by members and former members of a number of different new religions; while Part IV offers chapters on some of the most pertinent current issues in the counselling/minority religions fields, written by new and established academics. In every section, the volume seeks to explore different permutations of the counsellor-client relationship when religious identities are taken into account. This includes not only ‘secular’ therapists counselling former members of religion, but the complexities of the former member turned counsellor, as well as counselling practised both within religious movements and by religious movements that offer counselling services to the ‘outside’ world.