Cults, New Religious Movements, and Your Family: A Guide to Ten Non-Christian Groups Out to Convert Your Loved Ones [Paperback]

Richard Abanes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1998

To help guard yourself and your loved ones against unbiblical spiritual systems, Cults, New Religious Movements, and Your Family offers a concise overview of ten religious groups that a young person is likely to encounter in the 21st century.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Crossway Books (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891079815
• ISBN-13: 978-0891079811
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,217,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Alarmist, Inflammatory, Unbalanced, Ill-Informed, June 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Cults, New Religious Movements, and Your Family: A Guide to Ten Non-Christian Groups Out to Convert Your Loved Ones (Paperback)

The title of this review should make my opinion of Richard Abanes's book fairly obvious.

This is a relentlessly one-sided, invariably hostile, completely unbalanced treatment of its various subjects. It valiantly destroys straw men. Some achievement.

In the case of "Mormonism," the movement I know most about, it fails to confront the strongest versions of Mormon arguments, but, instead, demolishes weaker defenses (or inadequately justified, poorly sketched versions of the stronger ones) with a rather irritating smugness -- carefully cultivating the false impression in innocent readers that no stronger arguments exist. (To give Mr. Abanes the benefit of the doubt, it is highly possible that he really isn't aware of the more powerful arguments that Mormon scholars -- such as those affiliated with FARMS -- advance. This may let him off the ethical hook, but it then immediately raises the question of why so unqualified a person should have written this book at all.)

The thrust of this volume is manifestly not to help its readers understand other faiths, but to encourage them to disdain the beliefs of others, to warn them against regarding other beliefs with open-mindedness or even minimal respect, and to convince them, preferably, never to look at or listen to anybody from a background that isn't precisely identical to Abanes's own evangelical/fundamentalist Protestantism. Instead, this rather repugnant volume urges its victims to regard their neighbors with fear, suspicion, and contempt.

While those who read Abanes's book -- and trust it -- will learn relatively little that they can rely upon, they will have their negative prejudices reinforced. Or, alternatively, they will be assisted in developing new prejudices and negative stereotypes. What a helpful contribution! What a wonderful way to build communities and relationships!

I cannot recommend this book. I wish I didn't have to give it a star at all.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars To much like another book . . ., November 28, 2004

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Cults, New Religious Movements, and Your Family: A Guide to Ten Non-Christian Groups Out to Convert Your Loved Ones (Paperback)

Richard Abanes comment's on Scientology are way too much like other comments on the same subject in a more well known Cult book. In the latter book, namely "The Kingdom of the Cults," Mr. Abanes makes comments which are IDENTICAL to Mr. Kurt Van Gorden comments on the same subject. I'm talking "the exact same syntax." Someone plagiarized off someone. But who? Let me give you a hint: "The Kingdom of the Cults" came out a year before Abanes's book did. Don't beleive me? [...]

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful, balanced assessment, September 27, 2004

By 

NRM observer (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cults, New Religious Movements, and Your Family: A Guide to Ten Non-Christian Groups Out to Convert Your Loved Ones (Paperback)

Beware of highly negative reviews! Abanes has produced a careful, thorough critique of some of the most significant groups of our day. Of particular value are the chapters on Scientology, the Nation of Islam, and The Family (Children of God), which few evangelical researchers have been able (or willing) to tackle in this kind of work. Balanced and biblically sound, this book is strongly recommended to all readers.