Cult Rhetoric in the 21st Century: Deconstructing the Study of New Religious Movements

(Hardback)

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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. Ranging from the Cult of Trump and Cult of COVID, to the campaigns of mass media, contemporary cult rhetoric has become hybridised and is common vernacular for everyday people. The contributors explore these issues by analysing how NRMs have developed over the past decades and deconstructing the language we use to describe these movements. This 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.

Author Bio

Aled Thomas is a Teaching Fellow in the Study of Religion at the University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of Free Zone Scientology: Contesting the Boundaries of a New Religion (Bloomsbury, 2021). Edward Graham-Hyde is a research fellow at the University of Central Lancashire, UK.