Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach [Paperback]

Irving Hexham (Editor), Stephen Rost (Editor), John W. Morehead II (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2004

Using historical and biblical accounts, the authors present practical advice for evangelizing practitioners of new religions with approaches similar to those used to reach foreign people groups. (20070301)

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book is must reading for those involved in cross-cultural witness, especially to new religionists. Most evangelicals will be stimulated and challenged by it. The subtitle, A Holistic Evangelical Approach, does not reflect a dilution of revealed truth but rather a cross-cultural perspective in presenting truth effectively by marrying missiology to apologetics for effective evangelism. It points us toward approaching new religionists the same way intercultural missionaries approach animists, atheists, secularists, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, or any other belief systemópresenting the gospel in culturally sensitive ways and using terms they can understand as we seek to love them to saving faith in Christ. (William T. Commons Criswell Theological Review )

From the Back Cover

In the last century. new religious movements (NRMs) have sprung up around the world This book’s contributors propose that the most effective way to reach these groups is to view them missiologically as different people groups—and thus to approach them with a cross-cultural mindset—instead of following more traditional methods that focus on biblical heresies and doctrinal aberrations.

In this book, top missiologists present biblical and historical considerations, methodology and practical advice for reaching out to groups such as the Latter-day Saints, New Spirituality, Wicca, Mother Goddess, and Satanism.

 “An important ‘breakthrough’ book. Exactly what we need for an effective presentation of the gospel to folks seduced by the false promises of non-Christian worldviews.”

—Richard J. Mouw
President and Professor of Christian Philosophy, Fuller Theological Seminary

 “At last, apologetics and missiology meet! Proactive in intent and positive in tone, it . . . [charts] a new way forward.”

—Ken Mulholland
Former president, Evangelical Missiological Society

“This resource is not merely a valuable compilation of strategic thinkers in the fields of Christian apologetics and missiology; it synthesizes the two disciplines and offers practical strategies for evangelism in a new day!” 

—Rudy Gonzalez
Director, North American Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention

Irving Hexham, professor of religious studies at the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is the author of seven books, including Understanding Cults and New Religions and The Pocket Dictionary of Cults and New Religions.

Stephen Rost, pastor of Grace Fellowship of Dixon in Dixon, Cal., has served as president of the Society for the Study of Alternative Religions study group in the Evangelical Theological Society.

John W. Morehead II, associate director of Watchman Fellowship in Sacramento, Cal., is the cofounder and coeditor of Sacred Tribes: Journal of Christian Missions to New Religious Movements, an e-journal that focuses on reaching adherents of new religions.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Kregel Academic & Professional (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0825428939
• ISBN-13: 978-0825428937
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Irving Hexham is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary and adjunct professor of World Christianity at Liverpool Hope University. He has published twenty-seven academic books, including The Concise Dictionary of Religion, Understanding Cults and New Religions, and Religion and Economic Thought, plus eighty major academic articles and chapters in books, numerous popular articles, and book reviews. Recently he completed a report for the United Nations' refugee agency on religious conflict in Africa and another for the Canadian Government's Department of Canadian Heritage on Religious Publications in Canada. He is listed in Who's Who in Canada and various scholarly directories. In 2008, he was honored at the historic Humboldt University in Berlin with a Festschrift, Border Crossings: Explorations of an Interdisciplinary Historian (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read for those serious about encountering culture....., August 22, 2006

By 

Scott D. Eggert (Fair Oaks, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach (Paperback)

This book is both exhaustive and exhausting to read as a lay person. If you are an ardent fan of more poetic Christian Living writing as offered by many of our current prolific evangelical writers, this book is not for you. If however you are looking for innovative, effective, and even orthodox ways to engage members of these spiritual movements that are moving from the fringe to the mainstream of western culture, then buy this book! This book casts some new light on techniques and approaches to evangelism to new religious movements. The ministry examples are insightful and present fresh ideas on contextualizing the gospel to many of the subcultures that have traditionally been bumbled by the Western Church.

Our efforts must go beyond the handing out of tracts, confrontational discussions of apologetics, and holding demonstrations. Encountering New Religious Movements provides an in-depth history of apologetics and missions to new religious movements as well as chronicling the successes and failures their-in. Though the book is written by several authors, there is a continuous attention brought to solid doctrine and sound missional philosophy in outreach. The authors are each leaders in their respective areas and provide strong biblical foundations and historical data outlining the inception of the movement they represent and the methodology they recommend.

Too many of our seminary graduates are not equipped with the knowledge of how to engage our various subcultures with the Gospel. Many of our seminaries continue to turn out pastors equipped only to perpetuate an ineffective Christendom approach to church and outreach. If our goal is to get out of the church and to impact our culture, then we must have leadership that is prepared. This book should be high on the list of required reading in our seminaries and our various church boards, sessions, and leadership teams.

If you live somewhere that you do not believe these subcultures are present, then either you do not live in the Western World or you are simply mistaken.

4.0 out of 5 stars Sympathetic Christian responses to alternative spirituality and cults, March 28, 2010

By 

Darren Cronshaw (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach (Paperback)

ENCOUNTERING NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS: A HOLISTIC EVANGELICAL APPROACH

Irving Hexham, Stephen Rost, & John W Morehead II, General Editors
Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004

Another evangelical but more explicitly missiological approach to new spirituality can be found in some of the articles of Encountering New Religious Movements. The authors are North Americans and Australians who are engaging apologetically and missiologically with new religious movements. The North American writers provide introductory and methodological chapters and a chapter on cross-cultural mission to Latter-day Saints. The Australian chapters include Harold Taylor's discussion of contextualised mission in history (especially in Celtic and Muslim missions) and then most of the practical applications.

Philip Johnson and John Smulo discuss reaching Wiccan and Mother Goddess devotees - seeing them as a subculture with their own customs and traditions to understand, and John Smulo similarly works toward a contextualized apologetic to LaVeyan Satanism. Ruth Pollard explores sacred oils and the gospel (a good chapter for anyone interested in arguments over complementary medicine). Philip Johnson evaluates the festival booth ministry of Community of Hope with new age and do-it-yourself seekers, explaining their change from an adversarial and dismissive approach to one of dialogue and cultural understanding. In another chapter Philip explores the challenges of reaching a Bible-based group like the Christadelphians. Ross Clifford reframes a traditional apologetic to reach "new spirituality" seekers, arguing for the centrality of the resurrection, debunking myths that new spirituality seekers are not interested in factual discussion and metanarrative, and engaging rather than dismissing culture.

The paradigm shift the whole book espouses is to move away from being confrontational and aggressive with what has traditionally been called `the cults', and seek to incarnationally and sympathetically understand the culture of people in what is better termed `new religious movements'. Rather than basing ministry on mainly refuting heresy and asserting correct doctrine (as in Walter Martin's The Kingdom of the Cults), the authors espouse an approach that includes cross-cultural missiological methods including worldview analysis and cross-cultural communication.

The world is shrinking and innovations in travel and communication (let alone religious consumerism) bring a smorgasbord of religious options. The challenge is not just to hold up the cross to protect the church and our children, but to take the cross to this variety of cultural groups in evangelism. There is plenty of room for further development of these ideas and their missiological application to other new religious movements.

Darren Cronshaw is a student and teacher of practical theology and originally reviewed this for Australian Journal of Mission Studies, Vol.1, No.2 (December), p.58.

20 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Busting Old Paradigms - Creating New Ones, January 4, 2004

By 

John W. Morehead "John W. Morehead" (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach (Paperback)

It would be inappropriate for me as a co-editor and co-author of this book to provide a review, given my obvious favorable "bias" toward the book's content, but perhaps some background as to whey the book was created will be helpful for those who are considering its purchase.

As an evangelical working in the area of alternative spirituality, new religious movements, or "cults" as they are popularly called in evangelicalism, for many years I used an apologetic methodology popularized by the late Walter Martin. This method begins with Protestant biblical orthodoxy and then compares and refutes the beliefs of alternative spiritualities as heresy. Having used this methodology for many years I reflected on it in light of my further research into missions literature, as well as insights provided by sociology and communication theory. The more I looked at the confrontational methodology of "countering the cults" the more it appeared to be better suited to "preaching to the choir" of evangelical churches rather than to evangelism. Curiously, while the religiously plural situation of America would seem to present evangelicals with unique opportunities for evangelism, the prevalent use of confrontational apologetic methodologies has in fact stifled effective disciple making.

Consider the cultural state of affairs in the U.S. in the early 21st century. Religious pluralism abounds and the post-Christendom culture in which evangelicals find themselves has pushed evangelicalism to the fringes of American culture. In the "between times" of the modernism/postmodernism paradigm shift, dogmatic and confrontational methodologies need to be reconsidered.

For these and other reasons the editors and contributors toward Encountering New Religious Movements have produced an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and responding to new religious movements. This book moves beyond mere denunciation and refutation in an attempt to sympathetically understand these movements; to consider why thousands, perhaps millions of people find them fulfilling; and to consider strategies for effective communication of the way of Christ in culturally appropriate ways to the varying religious cultures of alternative spiritualties. This volume represents a significant step toward creating a new paradigm for evangelicals in the 21st century. Read the book, engage the editors and authors in discussion about the book's contents, and participate in the growing movement creating this paradigm!