=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Memorial held for sarin victims; bitterness lingers
2. Sarin gas victims press for state help
3. Group urges state to aid survivors of sarin gassing

=== Falun Gong
4. Sect ban pressure is denied by Tung

=== Falun Gong - China's Government-Controlled Media
5. Reports from China's government-controlled media
6. Religion, cult different terms

=== Scientology
7. Cruise Dogged by Scientology Split Rumors
8. Columbine Counselor's Teen Sex Abuse Prompts CCHR's New Website Tracking System of Mental Health Criminals

=== Islam
9. Call to spread Islam's message on tolerance
10. Taliban Bans New Year's Celebration

=== Catholicism
11. Report: Priests, Missionaries Sexually Abuse Nuns
12. Reports of abuse

=== Mormonism
13. Mormons' Long, Strange Trip to the Mainstream

=== Hate Groups
14. Judge Sentences Supremacist Pastor in Abduction of Grandchildren.
15. Racist church heads to court
16. Calif. Supremacist Pleads Guilty
17. Brown Students Steal Univ. Paper
18. Brown Protest Targets Ad
19. State House passes hate-crimes measure
20. Germany Won't Stop Yahoo! Auction

=== House of Prayer, Atlanta
21. Pastor, 5 followers arrested in child beatings
22. Defendants have criminal records
23. Church faces abuse probe over whipping of children

=== John and Carrie Davis
24. Jailed father found dead
25. Torture suspect 'upbeat' before his death

=== Recovered Memory Therapy
26. New trial ordered in recovered-memory case
27. Brain: Some choose to lose memory

=== Other News
28. End Near For Ex-Devil Church
29. Some in Egypt shun religious freedom panel
30. Three held for distributing Christian literature

=== Science
31. Skull may alter theory of human evolution

=== Death Penalty & Other Human Rights Violations
32. Convicted Killer is Freed After His Sister Finds DNA Evidence
33. Judge bans use of electric chair

=== Noted
34. Worshippers in Paris flock to Afro-Christian cults
35. Exorcism thriving in Australia
36. A Herd of Psychics on Larry King
37. When a body can be worth $220,000

=== Books
38. Sects, death and the spirit of the age
39. Mainstream Publishers Get Religion for Christian Audience
40. Take a Web site test on religion

=== Mormonism

13. Mormons' Long, Strange Trip to the Mainstream
Los Angeles Times, Mar. 17, 2001 (Book Review)
http://www.latimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
SOJOURNER IN THE PROMISED LAND Forty Years Among the Mormons; By Jan Shipps; University of Illinois Press; $34.95, 424 pages
(...)

One of the more prominent is Jan Shipps, whose name is on the Rolodexes of religion reporters around the country. A professor emeritus of history and religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Shipps is a recognized expert on what makes Mormons tick.

Her interest in church culture was piqued in 1960, when she moved to Logan, Utah, with her family for nine months. She experienced firsthand the dichotomy of life among Mormons, where the world is divided between ''Saints'' (church members who believe they are spiritually adopted Israelites) and ''Gentiles'' (everyone else). As an outsider looking in, Shipps, a lifelong Methodist, spent the next 40 years studying the church and public opinions about it.

''Sojourner in the Promised Land'' is a compilation of her essays, ranging from an evaluation of Mormonism's founding figures to explaining facets of its Byzantine theology. Her working thesis is that the church survived since its founding in 1830 because it is more than a belief system; it is a tribe, an ethnicity, a separate culture of ''peculiar people'' created through revelation, persecution and shared hardships. This ''otherness'' was sealed upon the early Mormons by their great trek to Utah, where they established their Mountain kingdom. Isolated, the Saints dedicated themselves to preserving their identity and the in-gathering of converts.

But a funny thing happened on the way to building Zion, and this is where Shipps' analysis is sharpest. Just as conquest changed Rome, spiritual growth changed Mormonism.
(...)

Meanwhile, there was a shift in public perception of the church. Once considered polygamous oddballs, Mormons emerged from the tumultuous 1960s as the media darlings of Middle America--''neat, modest, virtuous, family-loving, conservative and patriotic people.''

The convergence of these forces has had a big effect on Salt Lake City. Church authorities, while clinging to their spiritual heritage, are now de-emphasizing differences. In response to evangelicals who claim the church is an un-Christian cult, they've dropped the use of ''Mormon'' or ''LDS,'' an abbreviation for Latter-day Saints, as references to members in official communications. Mormons are increasingly calling themselves Christians, while their leaders have emphasized more Christian themes in the presentation of the church, Shipps writes. The church has also redesigned its logo to emphasize the words ''Jesus Christ'' in the name.

Shipps says these changes show that, after more than 125 years of holding to its separateness, the ever-expanding Mormon church now has enough self-confidence and sense of identity to stand shoulder to shoulder with other traditional Protestant denominations, whose congregations are dwindling. In short, the Mormons have become mainstream.

Unfortunately, the sometimes dry writing and random arrangement of chapters make her book a literary obstacle course to all but the more dedicated Mormonphiles. Shipps is also too forgiving of Mormonism's double-speak, social control and contradictions--some might say hypocrisies. It is one thing to morph, quite another to spin, and church authorities have long been accused of applying historical whitewash when it serves progress. They've also excommunicated Shipps' fellow intellectuals for raising embarrassing questions about the church's spiritual origins. Although personally agonized by this, Shipps seems all too willing to countenance these moves as a necessary institutional evolution. This too often comes off as ambivalence, especially in one of the last chapters, in which Shipps discusses whether Mormons are Christians. She chides the church's harsher critics and concludes: ''Mormonism is a legitimate way to be Christian; it is just not my way of being Christian.'' Shipps is clearly no ''gotcha!'' historian, and ''Sojourner in the Promised Land'' shows that, after 40 years, she has developed a strong sympathy, if not admiration, for this once peculiar people.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

Contrary to Ms. Shipps' assertion, Mormonism is not a Christian religion. Theologically, it is a cult of Christianity - one that denies essential doctrines of the Christian faith (those doctrines that make Christianity _Christian_ and not something else), and one that has created a ''Christ'' in its own image. A Christian is someone who follows Jesus Christ as presented in the Bible. Following a fantasy-Christ, on the other hand, does not make a religion Christian.

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