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"This book focuses on how 'cult rhetoric' affects our perceptions of new religious movements (NRMs). 'Cult' Rhetoric in the 21st Century explores contemporary understandings of the term 'cult' by bringing together a range of scholars from multiple disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, and religious studies. The book provides a renewed discussion of 'new religious movements', whilst also considering recent approaches toward a nuanced study of contemporary religion. Topics explored include online religions, political 'cults', 'apostate' testimony and the current 'othered' position of the study of minority religions"--
Examining contemporary understandings of the term 'cult', this book brings together scholars from multiple disciplines, including sociology, anthropology and religious studies. Focusing on how 'cult rhetoric' affects our perceptions of new religious movements, the contributors explore how these minority groups have developed and deconstruct the language we use to describe them. Ranging from the 'Cult of Trump' and 'Cult of COVID', to the campaigns of mass media, this book recognises that contemporary 'cult rhetoric' has become hybridised and suggests a more nuanced study of contemporary religion. Topics include online religions, political 'cults', 'apostate' testimony and the current 'othered' position of the study of minority religions.
First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The Rhetoric of Religious Cults takes as its departure point the notion that 'cults' have a distinctive language and way of recruiting members. First outlining a rhetorical framework, which encompasses contemporary discourse analysis, the persuasive texts of three movements - Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses and Children of God - are analysed in detail and their discourse compared with other kinds of recruitment literature. Cults' distinctive negative profile in society is not matched by a linguistic typology. Indeed, this negative profile seems to rest on the semantics and application of the term 'cult' itself.
Subscribing to the view that language is for humans much like water is for fish, this text underscores the importance of implicit understandings language users have of how language works. The work of Kenneth Burke focuses maximum attention on the problem of scapegoating and its deeply embedded motivational resources in language--resources Burke finds sufficiently potent and pervasive to disseminate across cultures what he refers to as a "Cult of the Kill." Burke's concerns with the problem of scapegoating and its links with "the negative" as an essential feature of language are found to overlap and contrast in significant ways with the work of Martin Heidegger and with postmodern, especially deconstructive, insights. By way of conclusion, the text addresses criticisms of deconstruction and sets forth, through a comparison of the views of Jacques Derrida and rhetorical theorist John Macksoud, a concise account of the "laws" and parameters of a postmodern understanding of language offering an inclusive strategy of evaluation.
A valuable resource for students and general audiences, this book provides a unique global perspective on the history, beliefs, and practices of emergent faith communities; new religious traditions; and religious movements worldwide, from the 19th century to the present. New Religions: Emerging Faiths and Religious Cultures in the Modern World provides insightful global perspectives on the emergent faith communities and new traditions and movements of the last two centuries. Readers will gain access to the information necessary to explore the significance, complexities, and challenges that modern religious traditions have faced throughout their history and that continue to impact society today. The work identifies the themes and issues that have often brought new religions into conflict with the larger societies of which they are a part. Coverage includes new religious groups that emerged in America, such as the Seventh-day Adventists, the Latter-day Saints, and the Jehovah's Witnesses; alternative communities around the globe that emerged from the major Western and Eastern traditions, such as Aum Shinrikyo and Al-Qaeda; and marginalized groups that came to a sudden end, such as the Peoples Temple, Heaven's Gate, and the Branch Davidians. The entries highlight thematic and broader issues that run across the individual religious traditions, and will also help students analyze and assess the common difficulties faced by emergent religious communities.
Cults are a unique aspect of modern and past society, and their study is driven by questions of persuasion and communication. One of the key critiques against cults is their use of coercion and persuasive messaging to recruit new members. This study examines the rhetorical methods used by two groups labeled as cults, the Twelve Tribes and Full Circle, and the Cult Information Centre, an anti-cult group, on their public website domains. These specific groups were chosen because they are understudied and lesser-known with few publications about their practices. This study uses a traditional Burkean analysis of rhetorical methods through an ethical lens. The study found that groups often share the same goal, but their motivation, ethical usage, and implementation of ethical strategies vary greatly. The implications of this study show that in ethical rhetorical methods must be motivated by good intentions, untarnished by coercion and groupthink, and based on sound logic and clarity of thought.
The nations of the global north find themselves in a post-secular or post-Christian period, one in which the practice, expression, and effects of religion are undergoing massive shifts. In Persuasions of God, Paul Lynch pursues a project of “theorhetoric,” a radical new approach to speaking about the divine. Searching for new religious forms amid the lingering influence of Christianity, Lynch turns to René Girard, the most important twentieth-century thinker on the sacred and its expression within the Christian tradition. Lynch repurposes Girard’s mimetic theory to invent a post-Christian way of speaking to, for, and especially about God. Girard theorized the sacred as the nexus of violence, order, and sacralization that lies at the heart of religion. What Lynch advocates in our current moment of religious kairos is a paradoxically meek rhetoric that conscientiously refuses rivalry, actively exploits tradition through complicit invention, and boldly seeks a holiness free of exclusionary violence. The project of theorhetoric is to reinvent God through the reimagined themes of meekness, sacrifice, atonement, and holiness. From these, Persuasions of God offers religion reimagined for our post-secular age. An interdisciplinary mix of philosophy, sociology, rhetorical studies, and theology, this book draws on mimetic theory to answer the question of where religion goes next. It will be valued by religious studies and communications scholars as well as anyone interested in the future of Christianity in our modern world.
Classical Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: The Medieval Rhetors and Their Art 400-1300, with Manuscript Survey to 1500 CE is a completely updated version of John Ward’s much-used doctoral thesis of 1972, and is the definitive treatment of this fundamental aspect of medieval and rhetorical culture. It is commonly believed that medieval writers were interested only in Christian truth, not in Graeco-Roman methods of ‘persuasion’ to whatever viewpoint the speaker / writer wanted. Dr Ward, however, investigates the content of well over one thousand medieval manuscripts and shows that medieval writers were fully conscious of and much dependent upon Graeco-Roman rhetorical methods of persuasion. The volume then demonstrates why and to what purpose this use of classical rhetoric took place.