Religious Cults

Tom Cruise and John Travolta say the Church of Scientology is a force for good. Others disagree. Award-winning journalist John Sweeney investigated the Church for more than half a decade. During that time he was intimidated, spied on, and followed, and the results were spectacular: Sweeney lost his temper with the Church's spokesman on camera, and his infamous 'exploding tomato' clip was seen by millions around the world.

An indispensable guide, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs, crepuscular cabals, and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiar - the Kennedy assassinations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate - and some surprising, like Oulipo, a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces, and the Chauffeurs, an 18th-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.

Something terrible has happened in the snowbound village of Kingdom Come, Wyoming, where 12 eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Meals remain untouched on dining room tables, cars are still in garages, and the town's residents have vanished into thin air. This is the disturbing setting where vacationing medical examiner Maura Isles and her traveling companions find themselves trapped during a ferocious snowstorm.

This is the story of a young man who was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, seemingly destined to spend the rest of his life following the instruction of God's "Spirit Directed Organization". He soon came to discover, however, that things were not as they had first seemed. Following a patch of doubt and subsequent in-depth investigation into the religion, the young man began to realize that the things he had previously accepted without question no longer made sense.

In the tradition of Educated and The Glass Castle, this shattering and poetic memoir from a brave new voice tells the story of the author’s experience in an apocalyptic cult, and how understanding the natural world was her key to escape—and survival.

Daniel Allen Cox grew up with firm lines around what his religion considered unacceptable: celebrating birthdays and holidays, voting in elections, pursuing higher education, and other forays into independent thought. Their opposition to blood transfusions would have consequences for his mother, just as their stance on homosexuality would for him. But even years after whispers of his sexual orientation reached his congregation’s presiding elder, catalyzing his disassociation, the distinction between “in” and “out” isn’t always clear.

William Branham was an influential Pentecostal minister of the mid-20th century who began a cult following known as The Message. This ground breaking book examines the history of The Message movement in the years after Branham's death.

At age 14, Wendy Gossard was drawn by the tranquil blue eyes and personal magnetism of a man known as Yahowah, leader of a spiritual group called the Source Family. Fleeing her own family and becoming a fugitive from justice in the state of California, Wendy followed the 1970s cult group across settlements in California and Hawaii on a quest for spiritual direction, communal harmony, and basic survival. Growing up, the teenager, called Mushroom by Yahowah, had questions about her pregnancy, relationships, and place in the universe.

In 1981, ambitious young Ma Anand Sheela transported the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to the United States to fulfill his dream of creating a utopia for his thousands of disciples. Four years later, the incendiary Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon collapsed under the weight of audacious criminal conspiracies hatched in its inner sanctum, including the largest bioterrorism attack in US history, an unprecedented election fraud scheme, and multiple attempted murders. Rajneeshpuram explores how this extraordinary spiritual community went so wrong.

In 1971 Paulette Cooper wrote a scathing book about the Church of Scientology. Desperate to shut the book down, Scientology unleashed on her one of the most sinister personal campaigns the free world has ever known. The onslaught, which lasted years, ruined her life and drove her to the brink of suicide. The story of Paulette's terrifying ordeal is told in full for the first time in The Unbreakable Miss Lovely.

For years, Michelle LeClair, former president of Scientology's international humanitarian organization, tried to reconcile her same-sex attraction with the anti-gay ideology of the church. Michelle finally ends her horrific marriage, finds the love of her life, a woman, and ultimately leaves the Church. But the split comes at a terrible price. In this tell-all memoir, Michelle offers an insider's perspective on Scientology's pervasive influence, secret rituals, and ruthless practices for keeping members in line.

Join Moss Matthey as he recounts his uplifting journey from the confines of a fundamentalist Christian cult to an empowering Pagan coven. Weaving his lived experiences with a gentle introduction to Witchcraft, Moss explores what differentiates Paganism from cults and high-control religions, inviting you to shed oppressive spiritual experiences and find support.

At the heart of being human is the desire to belong. It can make us unspeakably vulnerable to the manipulations of others. Cult leaders prey on this desire, but so do many unscrupulous operators hiding in plain sight. Sarah Steel, the creator of the popular 'Let's Talk About Sects' podcast, has researched the cults you've heard of—and dozens you haven't. What strikes her most are not the differences between bizarre cult behaviour and 'normal' behaviour but the depressing similarities. Her work reveals that we are all susceptible to the power of cult dynamics.

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.

What do we really know about modern practicing polygamists - not fictional ones like the Henrickson family on HBO’s Big Love? We’ve seen the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the news, the underage brides in pioneer dresses on a Texas ranch. But the FLDS is just one of many groups that have broken with mainstream Mormonism to follow those parts of Joseph Smith’s doctrine disavowed by the LDS Church. Gaining unprecedented access to these communities, journalist Sanjiv Bhattacharya reveals a shadow country....

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.

In the Shadow of Enlightenment is the gripping story of Carroll’s childhood inside the Osho Rajneesh cult—one of the most controversial spiritual movements of the 20th century. While in the commune, Sarito was submerged in a world where devotion and freedom clashed with manipulation, sexual misconduct, and neglect. This was the life she knew until the movement collapsed amid scandal and criminal charges in 1985, when sixteen-year-old Sarito was thrust into a society she knew little about.

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.

Three decades after leaving the Mormon faith, Latayne Colvett Scott looks back to her original journey out of Mormonism and the reasons why she left. Revised and updated, this third edition of The Mormon Mirage presents both a fascinating inside look at Mormonism and new and formidable evidence against its claims and teachings.

やさしく、やわらかく、面白く日本経済に警鐘を鳴らす本。ザイム真理教はいかにして生まれ、どう国民生活を破壊してきたのか？