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 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.