Modern Religious Cults and Movements

Modern Religious Cults and
Movements, by

Gaius Glenn Atkins This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at
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Title: Modern Religious Cults and Movements
Author: Gaius Glenn Atkins
Release Date: August 15, 2006 [EBook #19051]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Modern Religious Cults and Movements

Works by

Gaius Glenn Atkins
Modern Religious Cults and Movements
Dr. Atkins has written a noteworthy and valuable book dealing with the
new cults some of which have been much to the fore for a couple of
decades past, such as: Faith Healing; Christian Science; New Thought;
Theosophy and Spiritualism, etc. $2.50
The Undiscovered Country
Dr. Atkins' work, throughout, is marked by clarity of presentation,
polished diction and forceful phrasing. A firm grasp of the elemental
truths of Christian belief together with an unusual ability to interpret
mundane experiences in terms of spiritual reality. $1.50
Jerusalem: Past and Present
"One of the books that will help to relieve us of the restless craving for
excitement, and to make clear that we can read history truly only as we
read it as 'His Story'--and that we attain our best only as the hope of the
soul is realized by citizenship in 'the City of God.'"--Baptist World.
$1.25
Pilgrims of the Lonely Road
"A very unusual group of studies of the great mystics, and shows real
insight into the deeper experience of the religious life."--Christian
Work. $2.00
A Rendezvous with Life
"Life is represented as a journey, with various 'inns' along the way such
as Day's End, Week's End, Month's End, Year's End--all suggestive of
certain experiences and duties." Paper, 25 cts.

Modern Religious Cults and Movements

By
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D., L.H.D.
Minister of the First Congregational Church, Detroit, Mich.
Author of "Pilgrims of the Lonely Road," "The Undiscovered Country,"
etc.
New York Chicago
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh
Copyright, 1923, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London:
21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
To E.M.C.
Whose constant friendship through changing years has been like the
fire upon his hearthstone, a glowing gift and a grateful memory

Introduction
The last thirty years, though as dates go this is only an approximation,
have witnessed a marked development of religious cults and
movements largely outside the lines of historic Catholicism and
Protestantism. One of these cults is strongly organized and has for
twenty years grown more rapidly in proportion than most of the
Christian communions. The influence of others, more loosely organized,
is far reaching. Some of them attempt to give a religious content to the
present trend of science and philosophy, and, generally, they represent
the free movement of what one may call the creative religious
consciousness of our time.

There is, of course, a great and constantly growing literature dealing
with particular cults, but there has been as yet apparently no attempt to
inquire whether there may not be a few unexpectedly simple centers
around which, in spite of their superficial differences, they really
organize themselves.
What follows is an endeavour in these directions. It is really a very
great task and can at the best be only tentatively done. Whoever
undertakes it may well begin by confessing his own limitations.
Contemporaneous appraisals of movements upon whose tides we
ourselves are borne are subject to constant revision. One's own
prejudices, no matter how strongly one may deal with them, colour
one's conclusions, particularly in the region of religion. The really vast
subject matter also imposes its own limitations upon even the most
sincere student unless he has specialized for a lifetime in his theme;
even then he would need to ask the charity of his readers.
Ground has been broken for such an endeavour in many different
directions. Broadly considered, William James' "Varieties of Religious
Experience" was perhaps the pioneer work. Professor James' suggestive
analyses recognize the greatly divergent forms religious experience
may take and establish their right to be taken seriously as valid facts for
the investigator. The whole tendency of organized Christianity--and
Protestantism more largely than Catholicism--has been to narrow
religious experience to accepted forms, but religion itself is impatient
of forms. It has its border-lands, shadowy regions which lie between
the acceptance of what Sabatier calls "the religions of authority" on the
one hand and the conventional types of piety or practical goodness on
the other. Those who find their religion in such regions--one might
perhaps call them