Religious Cults

God Bless America lifts the veil on strange and unusual religious beliefs and practices in the modern-day United States. Do Satanists really sacrifice babies? Do exorcisms involve swearing and spinning heads? Are the Amish allowed to drive cars and use computers? Offering a close look at snake handling, new age spirituality, Santeria spells, and satanic rituals, this book offers more than mere armchair research.

The United States has never had a shortage of cults based on religious teachings and charismatic leaders, but perhaps none are as infamous as Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, which remain notorious for the mass murder-suicide event in Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978, during which nearly 900 people drank cyanide-laced Flavor Aid, including nearly 300 children.

As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe - to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile - but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond 'The Family'. Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next.

Stephen Mansfield, the acclaimed New York Times best-selling author, has highlighted the growing popularity of Mormonism—a belief system with cultic roots—and the implications of its critical rise. Mormons are moving into the spotlight in pop culture, politics, sports, and entertainment via presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, media personality Glenn Beck, mega-bestselling Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, and The Book of Mormon, the hottest show on Broadway.

When Lily Dunn was six years old, her father left for India to join the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. She grew up enthralled by the myth of him—a brilliant, charismatic writer and entrepreneur who would appear with gifts from faraway places. Yet he was also a compulsive liar whose pursuit of transcendence took him from sex addiction, via the Rajneesh cult, to a relentless chase of money, which ended in ruin and finally addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs.

This book discusses women's role in the Mormon church historically as well as today. It discusses the unfairness of the Mormon plan of salvation and godhood as well as everyday marriage, children, and living under the modern-day Mormon church. This book will give you the true picture and will have you laughing out loud.

The pandemic has receded and life in the United States has returned to normal—or that’s what the government insists. So what is causing residents in a remote religious compound in Idaho to drop dead in a grisly fashion? And why are prominent virologists meeting with untimely ends? Something—or someone—is killing the religious followers and scientists, and Newshound reporter Nik Byron is determined to find out what’s behind the deaths. Could Xion Labs’ top-secret vaccine program be connected? Nik suspects so, but he’s being stonewalled at every turn. As he inches closer to the ...

The strange and sinister world of cults is a source of endless fascination. Their secrets, rituals and shadowy hierarchies make for some of the most disturbing and shocking revelations in history. Most chilling of all is the fact that many of their followers forfeit all independence in order to carry out the often sadistic bidding of a mysterious master manipulator - and continue to defend their leader to this day.

Florence Mary Bennett (1883-1968) was a writer and professor of Greek and Latin. This book (1912) explores the legends and beliefs of the Amazons, and the goddess cults of the ancient world.

Martin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portrayed in his own times and ours, painting a unique portrait of the man who set in motion a revolution that sundered Western Christendom.

One of the first books ever published to objectively study the life and work of Franklin Jones, also known as Bubba Free John, Da Free John, Adi Da, an infamous cult leader who attracted both devotees and detractors. Contains original essays by Professor Scott Lowe (University of Wisconsin) and Professor David Lane (Mt. San Antonio College).

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.

This small book offers a critical presentation of meme theory as developed by Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore, which helps in understanding why some new religious movements have become more popular over time. Ideas, or memes, survive by making copies of themselves in host environments–usually human brains. But with fewer hosts than ideas, competition exists for these scarce enclaves. Moreover, the strongest ideas are not necessarily the best but rather those that can survive and make copies of themselves.

Imagine a place where you are accepted and loved, where there is complete honesty and transparency, where you can be yourself and no longer have to strive to be someone else. Envision a safe haven where you could live in perfect peace and have everything you needed and wanted. That was the dream - the hope - that Trinity Foundation offered and that we naively believed. I Can’t Hear God Anymore is an inspiring and instructive example of how normal people caught in the skillful manipulations of an abusive cult can find their way back to spiritual and psychological health.

Tina's struggle continues in The Terrorist Maker. Surrounded by murderers her only chance to survive is to start using her gift. His gaze is stony, his eyelids at half-mast. And I can’t look at him at all, which is why I’m lying with my eyes closed. I’m afraid to see something frightening in these eyes. But I feel that I need to look. Otherwise, this ‘frightening thing’ inside him will suffocate me. I realize, that if I don’t do this, I’ll be left to die exactly like that man, about whom they later simply forgot. Therefore, however frightening and difficult it might be, I’m ...

Jim Jones convinced his 1000 followers they would all have to commit suicide since he was going to die. Shoko Asahara convinced his followers to release a weapon of mass destruction, the deadly sarin gas, on a Tokyo subway. These are a few of the doomsday cults examined in this audiobook by best-selling author Alan R. Warren. Its focus is on cults whose destructive behavior was due in large part to their apocalyptic beliefs or doomsday movements. This audiobook examines how a social movement grows into a full religion and when it does not.

One woman’s search for affirmation and significance trapped her and caused her to lose everything of value in her life. Deceived by Scientology, mysticism, and years in a toxic and restrictive cult, she lost her marriage, relationships, home, her publishing company, and her reputation. In this candid and heartfelt memoir, Athena’s Dean Holtz tells how her eyes were opened and how God restored all that had been lost, and gave her the desires of her heart, including a loving, godly husband.

"Time is that in which we live - it is horizontal. It is from A to B to C to D; it is in a line. Eternity is vertical. It is not from A to B and from B to C. It is from A to more A to still more A. It goes on upwards. The moment is rare because it happens only when meditation has reached ripening, maturity, when you have touched your innermost core." The vertical line opens a door to eternity.

This audiobook will document the rise to power of the most notorious cult leader of all time. Jim Jones was directly responsible for the deaths of over 900 of his followers. Many of them children. The story of the Jonestown is one of betrayed hope. Jones offered poor and needed people a promised land and in return for giving him their resources and trust, he took their lives.

Symbols have been used by secret societies since time immemorial; their power is used to control minds as they seek to transcend established laws and governments. The Illuminati is perhaps the largest secret organization in the world, and while many have yet to come to terms with the reality that they are introducing a New World Order, those who have embraced the truth have made positive steps to inform others of what could mark the start of yet another dark age.