Modern Religious Cults and Movements

Gaius Glenn Atkins

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• Publié par: thiom
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 29
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern Religious Cults and Movements, by
Gaius Glenn Atkins
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Title: Modern Religious Cults and Movements
Author: Gaius Glenn Atkins
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Language: English
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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 Christianbelief 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 StreetTo 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 the
border-land people—discover the authority for their faith in philosophies which,
for the most part, have not the sanction of the schools and the demonstration of
the reality of their faith in personal experience for which there is very little proof
except their own testimony—and their testimony itself is often confused
enough.
But James made no attempt to relate his governing conceptions to particular
organizations and movements save in the most general way. His fundamentals,
the distinction he draws between the "once-born" and the "twice-born,"between the religion of healthy-mindedness and the need of the sick soul, the
psychological bases which he supplies for conversation and the rarer religious
experiences are immensely illuminating, but all this is only the nebulæ out of
which religions are organized into systems; the systems still remain to be
considered.
There has been of late a new interest in Mysticism, itself a border-land word,
strangely difficult of definition yet meaning generally the persuasion that
through certain spiritual disciplines—commonly called the mystic way—we
may come into a first-hand knowledge of God and the spiritual order, in no
sense dependent upon reason or sense testimony. Some modern movements
are akin to mysticism but they cannot all be fairly included in any history of
mysticism. Neither can they be included in any history of Christianity; some of
them completely ignore the Christian religion; some of them press less central
aspects of it out of all proportion; one of them undertakes to recast Christianity
in its own moulds but certainly gives it a quality in so dealing with it which
cannot be supported by any critical examination of the Gospels or considered
as the logical development of Christian dogma. Here are really new adventures
in religion with new gospels, new prophets and new creeds. They need to be
twice approached, once through an examination of those things which are
fundamental in religion itself, for they have behind them the power of what one
may call the religious urge, and they will ultimately stand as they meet, with a
measure of finality, those needs of the soul of which religion has always been
the expression, or fall as they fail to meet them. But since some limitation or
other in the types of Christianity which are dominant amongst us has given
them their opportunity they must also be approached through some
consideration of the Christianity against which they have reacted. Unsatisfied
needs of the inner life have unlocked the doors through which they have made
their abundant entry. Since they also reflect, as religion always reflects,
contemporaneous movements in Philosophy, Science, Ethics and Social
Relationship, they cannot be understood without some consideration of the
forces under whose strong impact inherited faiths have, during the last half
century, been slowly breaking down, and in answer to whose suggestions faith
has been taking a new form.
A rewarding approach, then, to Modern Religious Cults and Movements must
necessarily move along a wide front, and a certain amount of patience and faith
is asked of the reader in the opening chapters of this book: patience enough to
follow through the discussion of general principles, and faith enough to believe
that such a discussion will in the end contribute to the practical understanding
of movements with which we are all more or less familiar, and by which we are
all more or less affected.
G.G.A.
Detroit, Michigan.
Contents
I. Forms and Backgrounds of Inherited Christianity
Certain Qualities Common to All Religions—Christianity Historically Organized
Around a
Transcendent God and a Fallen Humanity—The Incarnation; the Cross the
Supreme Symbol ofWestern Theology—The Catholic Belief in the Authority of an Inerrant Church
—The
Protestant Church Made Faith the Key to Salvation—Protestantism and an
Infallibly Inspired
Bible—The Strength and Weakness of This Position—Evangelical
Protestan