Religious Cults

When Charlie Dodge gets a phone call from a frantic woman stating her daughter has been kidnapped by her ex-husband and taken into a cult called Fourth Dimension, he takes the case without hesitation. The cult’s rumored purpose is to gather men with psychic abilities with the goal of breeding a race of people who have supernatural powers. Once accepted into the cult, men are given a young girl to marry in exchange for one of their own daughters.

Out of The Cocoon, which has earned 5 stars on Amazon, is a heart-wrenching, yet inspirational tale about the author's escape from a religious cult after enduring decades of dysfunction. Take the incredible journey with her as she survives stifling oppression as a child, physical and emotional abuse as a teenager, and the ultimate tragedy: the loss of her family once she becomes an adult. See how, like a butterfly, she changes the world within her, as her external world becomes increasingly unyielding.

The Latter Rain Movement of the late 1940s and 1950s created a new breed of Pentecostalism that dramatically impacted Christianity in the United States, as well as many other countries around the world. Initially viewed as a movement by God, a number of well-respected men and women participated in the movement during its early years.

Many young African Americans are disinterested in Christianity and others are leaving the church in search of what these false religious ideas appear to offer, a spirituality more indigenous to their history and ethnicity. Edited by Dr. Eric Mason and featuring a top-notch lineup of contributors, Urban Apologetics is the first book focused entirely on cults, religious groups, and ethnocentric ideologies prevalent in the black community.

In Wyoming for a medical conference, Boston medical examiner Maura Isles joins a group of friends on a spur-of-the-moment ski trip. Days later, Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli is determined to learn what happened to her friend. The investigation plunges Jane into the twisted history of Kingdom Come, where a gruesome discovery lies buried beneath the snow.

The shocking news of polygamous cults has sparked a national dialogue on religious sects. Splintered from and repudiated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these secretive families exist in an insular world far removed from reality. Yet for Brian Mackert, life inside this world was all too real. As a son in a family of one father, four mothers, and thirty-one children, Brian experienced firsthand the devastating reality of the polygamous lifestyle: a reality that leaves thousands of children feeling hopeless and struggling to belong.

Documenting the life of wandering spirits and their impact on vulnerable human targets, Susan Martinez offers a radical departure from the standard psychological explanations for a host of pathological behaviors - including multiple personality, autism, epilepsy, migraines, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, PTSD, self-destructive urges, and strange outbursts - and reveals that hallucinations are often true impressions of spirit input.

In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill became available and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from societal norms, and the revolution needed to begin at home.

Osho responds here to a question relating to meditation, a space of "no-mind": "...meditation covers a very long pilgrimage. When I say 'meditation is witnessing', it is the beginning of meditation. And when I say 'meditation is no-mind', it is the completion of the pilgrimage. Witnessing is the beginning, and no-mind is the fulfillment. Witnessing is the method to reach the no-mind. Naturally you will feel witnessing is easier. It is close to you. But witnessing is only like seeds, and then is the long waiting period."

In A Thousand Lives, the New York Times best-selling memoirist Julia Scheeres traces the fates of five individuals who followed Jim Jones to South America as they struggled to first build their paradise, and then survive it. Each went for different reasons - some were drawn to Jones for his progressive attitudes towards racial equality, others were dazzled by his claims to be a faith healer. But once in Guyana, Jones' drug addiction, mental decay, and sexual depredations quickly eroded the idealistic community.

A street preacher decked out in denim robes and running shoes, Julius is a source of inspiration for a community that knows nothing of his scandalous origins. But when a nearby mental hospital releases its patients to run amok in his neighborhood, his trusted if bedraggled flock turns expectantly to Julius to find out what's going on.

Christianity believes every religion, faith and religious organization — aside from Christianity - is a cult. In actuality, by its very definition, every religion is a cult, including the religion — the cult - of Christianity. In his bold, yet controversial new book, The Cult of Christianity, Mike Williams takes on the religious dogmas, oral traditions, borrowed myths and outright lies that make up so much of what Christians believe, and from which they need to be freed.

Teenager Lucas Leonard made shocking admissions in front of the altar - he'd practiced witchcraft, conspired to murder his parents, and committed unspeakable crimes. The confessions earned him a brutal beating by a gang of angry church members, including his parents and sister. Lucas was brought to the hospital dead, awakening the sleepy community of Chadwicks, New York, to the horror that had been lurking next door. Nine members of Lucas' church would eventually find themselves facing murder-related charges. But how did they get to that point? And what made Lucas confess?

John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) was a Scottish evangelist and “faith healer” who migrated to the United States from Australia in the late 1800s. Dowie was referred to by critics of his time as a “confidence man”, a person who appealed to the confidence of victims using deception to convince or persuade them out of money or into submission. In the case of Dowie’s Christian Catholic Church cult following, commonly referred to as “Zionites” or “Dowieites”, both money and power were gained.

Follow me in this guide to the Wiccan faith and ideals, where you'll find out that we believe in tolerance and acceptance above everything else. Let me shake off the mystery and the seriousness that plagues Wiccan people this day and age. I'm here to give you the straight answers you're looking for.

When Claire Hoffman's alcoholic father abandons his family, his desperate wife, Liz, tells five-year-old Claire and her seven-year-old brother, Stacey, that they are going to heaven - Iowa - to live in Maharishi's national headquarters for Heaven on Earth. For Claire's mother, Transcendental Meditation - the Maharishi's method of meditation and his approach to living the fullest possible life - was a salvo that promised world peace and enlightenment just as their family fell apart.

An incidental and shocking discovery of a cave with tiny unmarked graves shatters the peace of Exton, a small town in upstate N.Y. More horrifying is the forensic analysis that reveals that these young children died needlessly as the result of neglect and abuse at the hands of a religious fundamentalist cult that disavows medical care. Evangelicals and their political action groups come to the defense of the cult and the parents of the dead children setting the stage for the final courtroom clash to come.

Osho speaks in response to a question about the right way to help children to grow without interfering in their natural potentiality.

Belief and Cult argues that belief isn't uniquely Christian but was central to ancient Roman religion. Drawing on cognitive theory, Jacob Mackey shows that despite having nothing to do with salvation or faith, belief underlay every aspect of Roman religious practices—emotions, individual and collective cult action, ritual norms, social reality, and social power. In doing so, he also offers a thorough argument for the importance of belief to other non-Christian religions.

A lo largo de los años, miles de devotos han experimentado la poderosa presencia de la Santa Muerte en sus vidas, recibiendo su guía, protección y milagros en momentos de necesidad. En este libro, se recopilan impactantes testimonios de fieles que han sido testigos de su intercesión en temas de salud, amor, justicia, dinero y protección. Relatos recopilados por Juan Ambrosio, asesor de la Red de la Santa Muerte en México, con la colaboración de la escritora Laila Pita.