Displaying the top 100 results that match your query. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/rssapi.jsp?Ne=7107&N=3+5927 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1715488 In the tradition of Escape and Stolen innocence, the first look behind the curtains of the Westboro Baptist Church, by a young woman cast out from its clutches--Provided by the publisher. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1393602 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1685760 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=751967 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=624811 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=434454 Published for an eponymous Open U. course taught by Pearson (religious studies), this text explores the forms and increasing popularity of New Age Movements in the UK and US. Part 1 consists of chapters on the genesis of modern paganism and Wicca; contemporary Celtic spirituality; American Indian wannabes; and religion, science, and the New Age. The rest of the 11 contributions delve further into neopaganisms roots and images, Celtic Christianity as postmodern primitivism, the issue of spiritual exploitation, and radical feminist appropriation of the Burning Times. Includes b&w photos of prominent occultists, modern rites, and ancient sites; color media images; and glossaries. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=392955 This book takes a practical approach to studying the cults, focusing attention on 12 of the primary representative cults or categories of cults. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=404492 Chryssides (religious studies, U. of Wolverhampton, England) presents this resource volume of new religious movements (NRMs) dating from the mid-1700s to 2000. Included are entries for approximately 400 religions--and separate entries for many of the founders--from throughout the world. The author focuses on origins, beliefs and practices, and seeks to convey a sense that each of the NRMs contain a definite train of thought and internal coherence. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=316856 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=352722 A fascinating expose that delves into the psychological makeup of rogue messiahs. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=317542 Brown and McDonald profiles three familiesQone in Middlesboro, Kentucky, one in Newport, Tennessee, and one in Jolo, West VirginiaQinvolved in religious practices which showcase the handling of snakes. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=317507 From a unique insiders perspective - including interviews with more than seven hundred family members - James D. Chancellor charts The Familys course since its emergence as the most controversial group to grow out of the Jesus People Movement in the 1960s. The young disciples heeded the call of their prophet to flee a soon-to-be-destroyed North America. Dispersed throughout Europe, Latin America, Africa, and East Asia, they virtually disappeared from the American landscape. In the late 1980s, The Family had gone through extreme theological and lifestyle changes, including a radical reordering of their sexual ethos. The Children started to come home. Now a worldwide counterculture of some twelve thousand members, the movements colorful history reveals a profoundly religious group that has tested the limits of the human experience.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=316857 Examines various alternative religions, or New Religious Movements, that have existed in the United States from colonial times through the twentieth century and from the perspectives of both insiders and outsiders. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=296979 In Mystics and Messiahs, the first full account of cults and anti-cult scares in American history, Jenkins shows that, contrary to popular belief, cults were by no means an invention of the 1960s. In fact, most of the frightening images and stereotypes surrounding fringe religious movements are traceable to the mid-nineteenth century when Mormons, Freemasons, and even Catholics were vehemently denounced for supposed ritualistic violence, fraud, and sexual depravity. As Charles Ferguson observed in 1928, America has always been the sanctuary of amazing cults. But America has also been the home of an often hysterical anti-cult backlash. Jenkins provides an analysis of why cults arouse such fear and hatred both in the secular world and in mainstream churches, many of which - Baptists, Quakers, Pentecostals, and Methodists - were themselves originally regarded as cults. Most importantly, Jenkins argues that an accurate historical perspective is urgently needed if we are to avoid the kind of catastrophic confrontation that occurred in Waco or the ruinous prosecution of imagined Satanic cults in the 1980s.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=292936 Known variously as Tianhou or Tin Hau, Mazu or A-Ma, the Empress of Heaven is one of Chinas most important deities. Renowned for her control of water and her willingness to help those in distress, she is worshipped by city dwellers, farmers, and fisherfolk alike. Treating all aspects of the Empresss worship, this book begins with the myth of a girl from Putian, in Fujian province, whose magical powers allowed her to rescue her father and brothers from a shipwreck. It examines the history of her cult, her gradual rise in the Chinese pantheon, and the meaning of her worship today. Drawing examples from Hong Kong, Fujian, and Taiwan, it explores the siting and decoration of her temples, common practices of devotion, and her unique festivals.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=368584 This is the story of three centuries of devotion to the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. Today, Guadalupe remains the primary Marian devotion in New Mexico where her abiding popularity among Catholics -- of all ethnicities -- has crossed over into mainstream culture. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=283710 For the first time ever, a survivor of the Waco massacre tells the inside story of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, and what really happened at Mount Carmel. of photos. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=138717 The shocking mass suicide of the Heavens Gate cult alerted people worldwide to the dangers of cults, sects, and new religions. This extensive resource explains more than 1,000 diverse groups and movements ranging from the early days of alternative religiosity to sects practicing today. An ideal reference for researchers, scholars, students, and anyone interested in cults and similar groups. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=89284 In this investigation of faith and legend, journalist Liz Trotta follows the footsteps of the New Testaments most elusive saint through Italy, Turkey, the lands of old Armenia, and the United States in search of the shadowy origins, history, and sacred sites of Jude Thaddeus. A modern-day pilgrimage, Jude is filled with rich historic lore, insightful reportage, poignant anecdotes, and personal reflections. As though guided by Jude himself, Trotta encounters an extraordinary number of meaningful coincidences - synchronicities which are the very heart of the Jude experience. In every city, at every turn, her sleuthing seems led by an invisible hand, drawing her down narrow alleyways, toward rarely seen relics, to conversations with miracle-seeking people with AIDS. Each experience an added title, this portrait of Jude emerges as a beautifully rendered mosaic, filled with colorful history, strange artifacts, and stories of the miraculous powers of faith.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=94087 Hearing the Voices of Jonestown restores the individual voices that have been erased so that we can better understand what was created - and destroyed - at Jonestown, and why. Piecing together information from interviews with former group members, archival research, and diaries and letters of those who died there, Mary McCormick Maaga describes the women leaders as educated political activists who were passionately committed to achieving social justice through communal life. Maagas book analyzes the historical and sociological factors which, she states, contributed to the mass suicide, such as growing criticism from the larger community and the influx of an upper class, educated leadership that eventually became more concerned with the symbolic effects of the organization than with the daily lives of its members.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=310761 Shrines were an important institution of the middle ages, yet until now they have never been systematically studied as artifacts. This book describes their nature and development in England from around 1066 to 1540, focusing on those to be found in cathedrals, looking at the ways in which the shrine itself, the monument enclosing the saints body, underwent a transformation during the period, becoming more and more elaborate; the author demonstrates that the chapel around the shrine, usually in the most sacred and important area of the church behind the high altar, had an intimate connection with changes in church architecture. Dr Nilson also looks at the cathedral clergy who built the shrines, tended them, and managed the offerings that flowed into them; and the pilgrims who visited the shrines in an attempt to receive the blessing and miraculous power that the holy relics were believed to bestow. Many of the surviving cathedral records are financial in nature, and these are used to assess the amount of monetary offerings to shrines, and the rise and fall in the level of offering. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=92938 It is Scottsboro, Alabama, in the fall of 1991. A snake-handling preacher by the name of Glendel Buford Summerford has just tried to murder his wife, Darlene, by snakebite. At gunpoint, he forces her to stick her arm in a box of rattlesnakes. She is bitten twice and nearly dies. The trial, which becomes a sensation throughout southern Appalachia, echoes familiar themes from a troubled secular world - marital infidelity, spouse abuse, and alcoholism - but it also raises questions about faith, forgiveness, redemption, and, of course, snakes. Glenn Summerford is convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. When Dennis Covington covered the trial of Glenn Summerford for The New York Times, a world far beyond the trial opened up to him. Salvation on Sand Mountain begins with a crime and a trial and then becomes an extraordinary exploration of a place, a people, and an authors descent into himself. The place is southern Appalachia - a country deep and unsettled, where the past and its culture collide with the economic and social realities of the present, leaving a residue of rootlessness, anxiety, and lawlessness. All-night video stores and tanning salons stand next to collapsed chicken farms and fundamentalist churches. The people are poor southern whites. Peculiar and insular, they are hill people of Scotch-Irish descent: religious mystics who cast out demons, speak in tongues, drink strychnine, run blowtorches up their arms, and drape themselves with rattlesnakes. There is Charles McGlocklin, the End-Time Evangelist; Cecil Esslinder, the red headed guitar player with the perpetual grin; Aunt Daisy, the prophetess; Brother Carl Porter; Elvis Presley Saylor; Gracie McAllister; Dewey Chafin; and the legendary Punkin Brown, all of whose faith illuminates these pages. And then there is Dennis Covington, himself Scotch-Irish, whose own family came down off of Sand Mountain two generations ago to work in the steel mills of Birmingham, and who, in uncovering records of snake-handling Covingtons, decides to take up serpents himself. With grace and humor and exquisite writing, Dennis Covington explores a physical and spiritual geography few readers will be prepared for. Reminiscent of the best of Flannery OConnor, Carson McCullers, and James Agee, Salvation on Sand Mountain is southern literature at its best.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=209079 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=47282 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=23703 This updated and revised edition lists cults alphabetically for easy reference and contains cross-references to related cults and cult beliefs. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=164490