Constance Cumbey

Last updated

Constance Cumbey (born February 29, 1944) is an American lawyer, Christian activist, and writer.

Contents

Views

Cumbey offered the first major criticism of the New Age movement from a Christian perspective in The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and Our Coming Age of Barbarism (1983), but quickly lost academic credibility due to her promotion of conspiracy theories linking the New Age movement to Benjamin Creme, Theosophy and Nazism. [1] Scholar of New Age religion James R. Lewis describes this book as containing "a few few insightful criticisms with many accusations of the least responsible sort", and that she is "simply lumping together anything that departs from a rather strict interpretation of Christianity." Cumbey's accusations include that the New Age movement has "infiltrated all of Christianity, as well as Judaism", and that it is the motivating force behind ecumenism, holistic health centers, New Thought, humanistic psychology, Montessori schools, modernism, secular humanism, and zero population growth. She states that Unitarian churches and health food stores become "New Age recruiting centers", that the Guardian Angels become one of the New Age movement's paramilitary organizations and that "the New Age Movement has complete identity with the programs of Hitler". [2] Her contention is that the New Age movement is not simply expressing a naive or unscriptural interest in metaphysics, but that it is an organized conspiracy to overthrow the United States and replace it with a Nazi-like regime. [3]

Cumbey is harshly critical of all religions other than Christianity and Judaism, and those who take an interest in them. [4]

While there are certain superficial similarities among most religions, orthodox Judaism and Christianity stand in direct opposition to every other belief system. It is safe to say, however, that nearly all non-Judeo-Christian religions are extremely similar because, as the Bible indicates, they come from one source, the 'god of this world'—Satan himself. [4]

Constance Cumbey, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow

Publications

Related Research Articles

The Christian countercult movement or the Christian anti-cult movement is a social movement among certain Protestant evangelical and fundamentalist and other Christian ministries and individual activists who oppose religious sects that they consider cults.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judaism</span> Ethnic religion of the Jewish people

Judaism is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion. It comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people, having originated as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Contemporary Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the cultic religious movement of ancient Israel and Judah, around the 6th/5th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which was established between God and the Israelites, their ancestors. Along with Samaritanism, to which it is closely related, Judaism is one of the two oldest Abrahamic religions.

The term Judeo-Christian is used to group Christianity and Judaism together, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, Christianity's recognition of Jewish scripture to constitute the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, or values supposed to be shared by the two religions. The term Judæo Christian first appeared in the 19th century as a word for Jewish converts to Christianity. The term has received much criticism, largely from Jewish thinkers, as relying on and perpetuating inherently antisemitic notions of supersessionism, as well as glossing over fundamental differences between Jewish and Christian thought, theology, culture and practice.

Millennialism or chiliasm is a belief which is advanced by some religious denominations. According to this belief, a Golden Age will occur or a Paradise will be established on Earth prior to the Last Judgment and the future eternal state of the "world to come".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Age</span> Range of new religious beliefs and practices

New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as unifying Mind-Body-Spirit, and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist.

Demonization or demonisation is the reinterpretation of polytheistic deities as evil, lying demons by other religions, generally by the monotheistic and henotheistic ones. The term has since been expanded to refer to any characterization of individuals, groups, or political bodies as evil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New religious movement</span> Religious community or spiritual group of modern origin

A new religious movement (NRM), also known as alternative spirituality or a new religion, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin or they can be part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges that the modernizing world poses to them by embracing individualism, while other NRMs deal with them by embracing tightly knit collective means. Scholars have estimated that NRMs number in the tens of thousands worldwide. Most NRMs only have a few members, some of them have thousands of members, and a few of them have more than a million members.

In the study of religion, orthopraxy is correct conduct, both ethical and liturgical, as opposed to faith or grace. Orthopraxy is in contrast with orthodoxy, which emphasizes correct belief. The word is a neoclassical compound—ὀρθοπραξία meaning 'right practice'.

<i>The Antichrist</i> (book) 1895 book by Friedrich Nietzsche

The Antichrist is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1895.

Wotansvolk promulgates a white nationalist variant of Neo-Paganism—founded in the early 1990s by Ron McVan, Katja Lane and David Lane (1938–2007) while Lane was serving a 190-year prison sentence for his actions in connection with the white supremacist revolutionary domestic terrorist organization The Order. After the founding of 14 Word Press by David Lane and his wife Katja to disseminate her husband's writings, Ron McVan joined the press in 1995 and founded Temple of Wotan. 14 Word Press - Wotansvolk proceeded to publish several books for the practice of Wotanism before becoming defunct in the early 2000s.

The phrase "Earth Changes" was coined by the American psychic Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) to refer to the belief that the world would soon enter on a series of cataclysmic events causing major alterations in human life on the planet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dave Hunt (Christian apologist)</span> Christian apologist

David Charles Haddon Hunt was an American Christian apologist, speaker, radio commentator and author. He was in full-time ministry from 1973 until his death. The Berean Call, which highlights Hunt's material, was started in 1992. From 1999 to 2010, he also hosted Search the Scriptures Daily radio ministry alongside T.A. McMahon. Hunt traveled to the Near East, lived in Egypt, and wrote numerous books on theology, prophecy, cults, and other religions, including critiques of Catholicism, Islam, Mormonism, and Calvinism, among others. Hunt's Christian theology was evangelical dispensational and he was associated with the Plymouth Brethren movement.

Monotheism—the belief that there is only one deity—is the focus of the Abrahamic religions, which like-mindedly conceive God as the all-powerful and all-knowing deity from whom Abraham received a divine revelation, per these religions' traditions. The most prominent Abrahamic religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They, alongside Samaritanism, Druzism, the Baháʼí Faith, and Rastafari, all share a common core foundation in the form of worshipping Abraham's God, who is identified as Yahweh in Hebrew and called Allah in Arabic. Likewise, the Abrahamic religions share similar features distinguishing them from other categories of religions:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">God in Hinduism</span>

In Hinduism, the concept of God varies in its diverse religio-philosophical traditions. Hinduism comprises a wide range of beliefs about God and Divinity, such as henotheism, monotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, pandeism, monism, agnosticism, atheism, and nontheism.

The term Abrahamic religion groups three of the major religions together due to their historical coexistence and competition; it refers to Abraham, a figure mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, and the Quran, and is used to show similarities between these religions and put them in contrast to Indian religions, Iranian religions, and the East Asian religions. Furthermore, some religions categorized as "Abrahamic" also share elements from other categories, such as Indian religions, or for example, Islam with Eastern religions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Passantino</span>

Robert Passantino, was an American author and journalist who wrote on subjects related to Christian apologetics, philosophy, and the Christian countercult movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Share International</span>

Share International Foundation is a non-profit organization in London founded by Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) with sister organizations in Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Berkeley, California. From their 'about us' page, Share International describes the group as: "A worldwide network of individuals... whose purpose is to make known the fact that Maitreya ― the World Teacher for the coming age ― and his group, the Masters of Wisdom, are now among us..."

Postmodern religion is any type of religion that is influenced by postmodernism and postmodern philosophies. Examples of religions that may be interpreted using postmodern philosophy include Postmodern Christianity, Postmodern Neopaganism, and Postmodern Buddhism. Postmodern religion is not an attempt to banish religion from the public sphere; rather, it is a philosophical approach to religion that critically considers orthodox assumptions. Postmodern religious systems of thought view realities as plural, subjective, and dependent on the individual's worldview. Postmodern interpretations of religion acknowledge and value a multiplicity of diverse interpretations of truth, being, and ways of seeing. There is a rejection of sharp distinctions and global or dominant metanarratives in postmodern religion, and this reflects one of the core principles of postmodern philosophy. A postmodern interpretation of religion emphasises the key point that religious truth is highly individualistic, subjective, and resides within the individual.

Environmental theology pertains to "the God-environment relationship and divine expectations of human behavior in relation to the environment".

References

  1. Lewis, James R. (1992). Perspectives on the New Age. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 154–56. ISBN   978-0-7914-1213-8.
  2. Lewis, James R. (1996). Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. Albany: State University of New York Press. p. 344. ISBN   0-7914-2890-7.
  3. Fuller, Robert (1996). Naming the Antichrist. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 187–188. ISBN   0-19-510979-1.
  4. 1 2 Tamney, Joseph (1992). The Resilience of Christianity in the Modern World . Albany: State University of New York Press. p.  113. ISBN   0-7914-0821-3.

Further reading