Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in evangelism and an annual Memorial attendance of over 21 million. Jehovah's Witnesses are directed by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, a group of elders in Warwick, New York, United States, which establishes all doctrines based on its interpretations of the Bible. They believe that the destruction of the present world system at Armageddon is imminent, and that the establishment of God's kingdom over the earth is the only solution for all problems faced by humanity.
The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) is a translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society; it is used and distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. The New Testament portion was released first, in 1950, as The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, with the complete New World Translation of the Bible released in 1961.
Landmark Worldwide, or simply Landmark, is a company, headquartered in San Francisco, that offers personal-development programs.
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.
Awake! is an illustrated religious magazine published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. It is considered to be a companion magazine of The Watchtower, and is distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. The Watch Tower Society reports worldwide circulation of about 31.5 million copies per issue in 216 languages.
CESNUR, is a non-profit organization based in Turin, Italy that studies new religious movements and opposes the anti-cult movement. It was established in 1988 by Massimo Introvigne, Jean-François Mayer and Ernesto Zucchini. Its first president was Giuseppe Casale. Later, Luigi Berzano became CESNUR's president.
Ron Geaves is a British scholar of religious studies who was professor of the comparative study of religion at Liverpool Hope University in England, retiring in December 2013. He was formerly Programme Leader and Chair in religious studies at the University of Chester in England (2001-2007) and Head of Department at the University of Chichester (1999-2001). He was chair of the Muslims in Britain Research Network (2007-2010) and instrumental in the creation of BRAIS, remaining on their advisory board.
The Dialog Center International (DCI) is a Christian counter-cult organization founded in 1973 by a Danish professor of missiology and ecumenical theology, Dr. Johannes Aagaard (1928–2007). Considered Christian apologetic and missionary minded, the Dialog Center, led by Aagaard, was for many years the main source of information in Denmark on cults, sects, and new religious movements (NRMs). The Dialog Center is firmly against religious beliefs of cults but promotes dialogue between cult members and their families. It rejects deprograming, believing that it is counterproductive and ineffective, and can harm the relationship between a cult member and concerned family members. It is active in 20 countries. In Asia it also tries to spread Christianity with Buddhists.
Rolf Johan Furuli was a lecturer in Semitic languages at the University of Oslo; he retired in 2011. Furuli has taught courses of Akkadian, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, Phoenician, Syriac, and Ugaritic at the University of Oslo and at The Norwegian Institute of Paleography and Historical Philology.
The academic study of new religious movements is known as new religions studies (NRS). The study draws from the disciplines of anthropology, psychiatry, history, psychology, sociology, religious studies, and theology. Eileen Barker noted that there are five sources of information on new religious movements (NRMs): the information provided by such groups themselves, that provided by ex-members as well as the friends and relatives of members, organizations that collect information on NRMs, the mainstream media, and academics studying such phenomena.
FECRIS – (in French)European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Sectarianism, a French non-profit association and anti-cult organization, serves as an umbrella organization for groups which investigate the activities of groups considered cults in Europe.
Revivals of the ancient Roman polytheistic religion have occurred in several forms in modern times. Seeking to revive traditional Roman cults and mores, they have been known under various names including cultus deorum Romanorum, religio Romana, the Roman way to the gods, Roman-Italic Religion and Gentile Roman Religion. A number of loosely related organizations have been created during the contemporary period.
A self religion is a religious or self-improvement group which has as one of its primary aims the improvement of the self. The term "self religion" was coined by Paul Heelas and other scholars of religion have adopted/adapted the description. King's College London scholar Peter Bernard Clarke builds on Heelas's concept of self religion to describe the class of "Religions of the True Self".
INFORM is an independent registered charity located in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College, London; from 1988-2018 it was based at the London School of Economics. It was founded by the sociologist of religion, Eileen Barker, with start-up funding from the British Home Office and Britain's mainstream churches. Its stated aims are to "prevent harm based on misinformation about minority religions and sects by bringing the insights and methods of academic research into the public domain" and to provide "information about minority religions and sects which is as accurate, up-to-date and as evidence-based as possible."
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.
Johannes Monrad Aagaard was a Danish theologian and evangelist. He was a professor of missiology at the University of Aarhus. He founded the Department of Missiology and Ecumenical Theology and the Center for New Religious Studies at the University of Aarhus. He was active in the Christian countercult movement as the founder of the Dialog Center International, an international educational organization concerned with groups it defines as cults and other new religious movements. He was a former president of the International Association for Mission Studies. He was a member of the Faith and Order Commission and was on the board of the Theological Educational Fund. He co-founded and chaired the Nordic Network for Missiology and Ecumenical Studies.
This is a bibliography of works on the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Suzanne Newcombe researches the modern history of yoga, new and minority religions and is particularly interested in "the interfaces between religion, health and healing." She is known in particular for her work on yoga for women and yoga in Britain.
