Customer Reviews

New Religions: A Guide: New Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative Spiritualities

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New Religions: A Guide : New Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative Spiritualities edited by Christopher Partridge (Oxford University Press) Well conceived and handsomely executed these descriptions of new religions provide a personal touch with each entry attempting to note some of the unique features these various groups have and to whom they appeal. The book also ahs great design features and is fun to read and browse, providing authoritative, personable cultural contexts, a "cliff-notes" to who's who in the NRMs.

Use this like you would an encyclopedia, not a book to sit down and read. The huge number of religions is great; just about everything imaginable is in there. Each group is explained in a summary in one column to three pages in length, using easy to understand language, hitting the highlights and main points in a factual, non-judgmental way. The only drawback are the pictures as they are a little dated.

I had to buy it as a textbook for a college class but I'll be keeping it around when the class is done because of the user-friendly format.

As with any kind of encyclopedia you will find a brief amount of info on a particular topic, and one hopes that the info there is both truthful and objective since your usually using a book like this for a report on something or maybe just for some advice. Since I worked for two years in a library I can say from direct experience that encyclopedias are like the internet. They are often just recycled information taken from other books or articles containing half truths. Reading this book gave me the impression of just this and that the researchers had done little if any actual reading of the sacred texts of any of these groups. I find the above reviewers comment that this books was used for a college class amazing and unbelievable! And so, while a lot of it may be true a small percentage is very inaccurate due to the authors inability to grasp the psychological depth of each system. In fact, because I read a lot of sacred texts, a lot of the so called research of this book appears more like newspaper reporting. Like, Think I'll call the local Hare Krisha center up and ask em to give me brief description of what their all about. You could just do that yourself without the personal filters of these authors and probably get a clearer picture. I actually did call some of these places they mentioned and asked them about this book and its information and each center I called reported information that was completely inconsistent with the information presented in this book. I was sort of shocked that the authors had so little respect and integrity for these groups. As an academic writer my impression of this book as a useful source of information is that it was written by people who's only real concern was to have their names published in a book in order to help give them more credibility so as to be considered authorities on religion. I would never recommend this book to any students or teachers because it contains both an incredible amount of misinformation and ethnocentrism and also very little insight into the psychological aspects of many of these groups and systems, which to me is very disrespectful.
To wrap it up, If like you McDonald's you'll love this book.
This is the McGuide to new religions. As long as you don't mind that their may be just a little filler in your meat, and that your just eating fast food you'll be ok.
A very good book however for Christians who think all other religions are cults, atheists who see all religions as cults and people in general who believe they are so much smarter than all these other people who join newer religions.