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Since the time of the Puritans, America has been a haven for dissenting religious traditions. "Alternative American Religions" explores the history of religious movements whose beliefs or practices set them outside the mainstream of American life. Stein begins by discussing the way debates over the role of alternative religious groups in American life have shaped the very terminology we use to discuss these groups; words like "cult" and "sect" have become equated with the weird, the bizarre, or the threatening. Reminding us that the pacifist Quakers generated as much controversy in the eighteenth century as the Branch Davidians created in ours, Stein attempts to give a more balanced perspective on alternative religions by placing their beliefs and practices in historical context. The book is organized chronologically, beginning with religious dissent in the Puritan community and tracing the emergence of new religious movements in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania was a haven for dissenting religious groups, most notably the Quakers and Amish. In the nineteenth century, short-lived experiments in communitarian living like Brook Farm were joined by more long-lived ventures such as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing (Shakers). The nineteenth century was also a period of great millennial expectation, giving rise to groups like the Millerites, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. For all of these groups (and many more), Stein sketches the origins, major founding figures, beliefs and distinctive practices of the religious tradition. He pays particular attention to the role of race and gender in alternative religious communities. One chapter explores the importance of female leadership in prominent nineteenth-century traditions such as spiritualism, theosophy, and Christian science. Another explores the importance of the African-American community in the development and spread of new varieties of Christianity like Pentecostalism. The latter chapter also looks at the emergence of movements such as the Nation of Islam and Father Divine's Peace Mission movement. Stein's last chapter, which focuses on twentieth-century alternative religions, begins with religions imported from Asia such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishnas) and the Unification Church, and ends with a discussion of the religious groups which have generated the most discussion in the past twenty years: the People's Temple, the Branch Davidians, and Heaven's Gate. Stein believes that media coverage of these tragedies has given most Americans a distorted picture of alternative religious traditions in America, one which he is anxious to correct. In his conclusion, he suggests that alternative religious traditions have strengthened the First Amendment protections for all religions in the United States. While his claim that events like Waco and Jonestown are not characteristic of alternative religions is a persuasive one, Stein might have provided a more compelling analysis of these events and the public perception of them. Public debates over the Branch Davidians, the People's Temple, and Heaven's Gate reveal a great deal about contemporary American expectations and fears about religion and religious leaders, and I wish Stein had delved a little further into this subject. Overall, this volume is a fair and balanced treatment of a wide range of alternative traditions in America. The prose is very readable and the vocabulary is well within the range of junior or senior high school students, who will undoubtedly be interested in some of the more controversial teachings of the religious groups discussed in the book. review ©2000 by Patricia M. Lennon and RSiSS Patricia M. Lennon
Religion in American Life Return to Oxford's Religion in American Life Series
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