Summary
Title: New Religions: A Guide - New Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative Spiritualities
Author: edited by Christopher Partridge
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195220420
Pro:
• Short articles eschew criticism or value judgments - focus mainly on description
• Covers an incredible array of religious groups and traditions
• Includes slightly longer pieces on general themes and issues
Con:
• Might be nicer if the articles had been a bit longer
Description:
• Encyclopedia resource of new religions, organized by religious tradition
• All short descriptions of history and doctrine
• Large number of illustrations and photographs
Book Review
There are any number of encyclopedic guides to religious groups out there, and newly added to the mix is New Religions: A Guide - New Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative Spiritualities, edited by Christopher Partridge. A professor of Contemporary Religion and senior lecturer in theology at University College in Chester, England, Partridge has focused on the study of new religions in his own research, and in this extensive volume he along with other scholars offer summary introductions to the beliefs of over 200 different religious movements.
Among the groups covered are Christian organizations like Jehovah's Witnesses and The Jesus Movement, Muslim groups such as the Nation of Islam and Dervishes, East Asian groups like Soka Gaakkai and Falun Gong, and of course many controversial groups such as Heaven's Gate, the Branch Davidians and Aum Shinrikyo. Each of these articles is short - shorter than some readers may want, but they are also fair.
The sixty-three scholars whose contributions make up this book have no personal connection to the groups they write about and they make every effort to avoid criticism or value judgments - they write merely to describe the groups' history, beliefs, doctrines, and their status both in society and in relationship to other groups in the same religious tradition.
There is, however, something unique about this book which makes it different from all the others: it organizes the religious groups not alphabetically as in a typical encyclopedia, but rather by the religious traditions they grew out of. That's why it is described as a "Guide" instead of an encyclopedia - not unlike a field guide one might use when studying birds.
Christian groups are presented together, Islamic groups are presented together, and so forth. Within each tradition, the groups are also organized chronologically with the older groups explained first. Because of this structure it is easier to relate similar groups to one another and better understand how each developed out of their respective traditions as well as the groups that came before.
The definition of "new religion" that Partridge uses is also rather unique.
Religious resources tend to define a religion as "new" as at least one which developed during the 20th century, and most are likely to define a religion as new only if it developed some time after World War II. In this book, however, we can find religious groups that go all the way back to the 17th century, like Rosicruscianism, and to the 13th century, like Quan Zhen.
Why the difference? Regardless of when a religious group is technically founded, its roots can invariably be traced further and further back. Thus it seemed to the editors wisest to "cast the net wider" and include not only groups which were created recently but those which rose to prominence recently, even if their origins go back several hundred years.
I have a number of general resources for religions and new religious movements, some better and some worse than this one. It is, however, one which I think that I will refer back to repeatedly whenever writing about modern religious groups. I think that this book will not only be useful for students and scholars, but also anyone else who would like to have a reference on new religions. It's certainly not suited for casual reading, but there is quite a lot of good information here.
