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Abbreviation | EMNR |
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Formation | 1982 |
Founder | Gordon Lewis, Walter Martin, James Bjornstad, Ronald Enroth |
Type | Christian countercult group |
Purpose | Evangelize to members of new religious movements (NRMs) |
President | L.L. (Don) Veinot, Jr |
Subsidiaries |
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Website | www |
Formerly called | Evangelical Ministries to Cultists |
Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR) is a coalition of Christian countercult organizations. It was founded by Gordon Lewis, James Bjornstad, Ronald Enroth, and Walter Ralston Martin in 1982. [1] [2]
The organization brings together groups and individuals who evangelize to members of new religious movements (NRMs) and seeks legitimacy and accountability for the countercult movement. Gordon Lewis, one of the group's founders, defines a cult as a "religious group which claims authorization by Christ and the Bible, but neglects or distorts the gospel". [3] EMNR aims to consolidate much of the scattered countercult movement and establish a ubiquitous mission strategy for movements they see as non-Christian or threatening to traditional Protestant Christianity. [4]
EMNR holds conferences about pertinent issues, publishes relevant materials, encourages networking between member groups, and makes recommendations of helpful agencies and materials that meet its standards. [4]
James Lopez currently serves as EMNR’s Executive Director. [5] A full list of the organization's current members can be found here.
The countercult movement has long been divided over its goals and the tactics it should use to achieve those goals, which left the movement lacking cohesiveness. The participants in a 1982 Christian conference on cults and new religious movements voted to form a permanent anticult coalition, which they named Evangelical Ministries to Cultists. [6] This coalition was coordinated by Gordon Lewis, a well-known figure within the countercult community. Other founders include Walter Martin, James Bjornstad, and Ronald Enroth. [2]
The group was designed to carry out the directives established by the 1974 Lausanne Covenant, a Christian manifesto adopted by the International Congress on World Evangelization that explains and promotes active global evangelism. [2] [7]
In late 1984, the group's name was officially changed to Evangelical Ministries to New Religions, after the founders realized that the original name was likely to be seen as offensive to members of new religious movements. [2]
In 1997, EMNR's Committee on Ethics (which at the time consisted of Eric Pement and Craig Branch) drafted the Manual of Ethical and Doctrinal Standards (MEDS). This document spells out the guidelines for EMNR members' expected practices in evangelism. It represents a major step in bringing cohesion to the countercult movement through the clarification of doctrine and goals, the articulation of ethical standards of conduct, and the approval of countercult material. [2]
MEDS also represents an attempt to professionalize EMNR's sector of the countercult movement, a trend in the broader movement as well. Its warnings against falsifying credentials and embellishing pertinent stories demonstrate a desire for legitimacy and respect from serious parties on all sides. [2]
MEDS does not explicitly define the doctrine its members should express, but the Lausanne Covenant and its sibling document the Manila Manifesto of 1989 provide a basis for the expected religious beliefs and values of EMNR's members. These documents call for public faith, fervent evangelism, and firm belief in the absolute authority of the Old and New Testaments. [7]
Although EMNR is meant to unify groups within the Christian countercult movement, it does not attempt to or claim to include all those that exist. The coalition's structured standards and emphasis on accountability deter some related groups from joining, even though submitting to the EMNR's authority is essentially voluntary. Tensions between groups also contribute to a less than uniform wave to join. On a broader level, there is no consensus within the Christian community as to whether evangelism is even the right approach to take for those opposed to new religious movements. [2]
Some analysts are critical of EMNR’s attitude toward the people it attempts to reach. Douglas Cowan, a sociologist of religion at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, points out the discrepancies between its demands for countercult activists to respect non-Christians and the loaded language with which it sometimes describes non-Christians. [2]
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.
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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 which 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, with most of their members living in Asia and Africa. 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.
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The Lausanne Covenant is a July 1974 religious manifesto promoting active worldwide Christian evangelism. One of the most influential documents in modern evangelicalism, it was written at the First International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland, where it was adopted by 2,300 evangelicals in attendance.
The First International Congress on World Evangelization (ICOWE), also sometimes called the Lausanne Congress or Lausanne '74, was a Christian conference held from 16 to 25 July 1974 in Switzerland.
The anti-cult movement consists of various governmental and non-governmental organizations and individuals that seek to raise awareness of cults, uncover coercive practices used to attract and retain members, and help those who have become involved with harmful cult practices.
Walter Ralston Martin was an American Baptist Christian minister and author who founded the Christian Research Institute in 1960 as a parachurch ministry specializing as a clearing-house of information in both general Christian apologetics and in countercult apologetics. As the author of the influential The Kingdom of the Cults (1965), he has been dubbed by the conservative Christian columnist Michael J. McManusthe "godfather of the anti-cult movement".
The Christian Research Institute (CRI) is an evangelical Christian apologetics ministry. It was established in October 1960 in the state of New Jersey by Walter Martin (1928–1989). In 1974, Martin relocated the ministry to San Juan Capistrano, California. The ministry's office was relocated in the 1990s near Rancho Santa Margarita. In 2005, the organization moved to its present location in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Ronald M. Enroth was an American professor of sociology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and an evangelical Christian author of books concerning what he defined as "cults" and "new religious movements" and important figure in the Christian countercult movement.
Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement is a non-fiction book discussing new religious movements and the New Age movement, written by Ruth A. Tucker. The book was published in 1989 by Zondervan, a Christian publishing house. Another edition was released by the same publisher in 2004.
The Challenge of the Cults and New Religions: The Essential Guide to Their History, Their Doctrine, and Our Response is a Christian countercult non-fiction book about cults and new religious movements by Ron Rhodes. The book was published by Zondervan on September 1, 2001. The book defines cults and new religions by examining case studies of twelve groups chosen by Rhodes. The book includes a foreword by Lee Strobel, author of the book The Case for Christ.
The Watchman Fellowship is, according to its website, an independent, non-denominational Christian research and apologetics ministry focusing on new religious movements, cults, the occult and the New Age. It was founded in 1979 and is based in Arlington, Texas, with offices in six states and one in Romania. It was founded in 1978 by David Henke.
Robert Passantino, was an American author and journalist who wrote on subjects related to Christian apologetics, philosophy, and the Christian countercult movement.
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Personal Freedom Outreach (PFO) is an evangelical countercult organization that serves to "educate Christians about the dangers and heretical doctrines of religious cults, to use the Gospel of Jesus Christ to reach members of those cults and to warn Christians of unbiblical teachings within the church itself."
The Kingdom of the Cults, first published in 1965, is a reference book of the Christian countercult movement in the United States, written by Baptist minister and counter-cultist Walter Ralston Martin. As of 2019, the book is in its sixth updated edition.