=== 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

=== Books

38. Sects, death and the spirit of the age
Independent (England), Mar. 22, 2001
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The New Believers: sects, `cults' and alternative religions
by David V Barrett (Cassell, pounds 20)

''Orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy is another man's doxy.'' The truth of William Warburton's witticism is fully borne out in this encyclopaedic survey of new religious movements. David V Barrett has adopted a carefully agnostic position, which his thorough and fair- minded results amply justify, even if they also entail a certain pedestrianism. As a read, this is sometimes less gripping than its colourful subject matter: from Wicca and flying- saucer cults to various gurus, deviant Buddhism and the Liberal Catholic Church with its wandering bishops.

In his introduction, Barrett demonstrates just how contingent are the lines drawn between ''sect'' (relatively neutral), ''cult'' (a sect we don't like) and a ''religion'' (a sect that has made it into the mainstream). He also introduces useful distinctions between anti- cultists, counter- cult movements - which try to enforce a return to religious rectitude - and academic observers: pre-eminently, in Britain, Inform (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements). He discusses cultic ''brain-washing'' and the now largely-discredited practice of ''deprogramming''. Barrett's analysis will be as useful to concerned parents and teachers as to disinterested students of the subject.

Different religious phenomena will strike observers differently. For this one, belief in the expected events of the so-called End Times, surrounding the long-awaited return of Christ itself, proved unbelievable. True believers rising up into the sky and Christ intervening in the Battle of Armageddon to establish a thousand-year reign (haven't we heard that somewhere else?) stir heretical thoughts of Peter Cook's millenarian sermon on the mount and a strong desire to add flying pigs to the list of signs. A chapter devoted to the Worldwide Church of God and its fantastically schismatic offshoots doesn't help.

But my absurdities are someone else's orthodoxy. They often originate as attempted solutions to difficult circumstances, as with the apocalyptic author of the Book of Revelation. They can also have very serious consequences. President Reagan, as a one-time believer in the rapture, came terrifyingly close to turning us all into pure spirit. And the list of modern religious disasters with lethal consequences is sobering: Jonestown in 1978 (913 dead); the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, in 1993 (over 80); Order of the Solar Temple in 1994 (various suicides and murders); Aum Shinrikyo in 1995 (12 members of the public); and Heaven's Gate (39).
(...)

One of this book's implications is that no religion is immune from the effects of personal and collective power. Another, however, is that even in the most distorted cult there is a spark of the will to meaning that is integral to human life. It is also clear that those who denounce all religion and proclaim the truth on behalf of pure (usually ''scientific'') reason are engaged in essentially the same pursuit.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


39. Mainstream Publishers Get Religion for Christian Audience
Inside, Mar. 17, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Christian literature was once considered a backwater of book publishing. After all, the genre's titles are written, published, sold and read by a devout community outside the mainstream, secular-oriented book industry. Then the Left Behind books -- a series of novels that imagine the Rapture as part apocalypse, part MacGyver -- exploded onto the market, selling 25.5 million copies since 1995 and putting Tyndale House -- a Christian publisher -- on the industry's map.

Now, mainstream publishers and bookstores are taking quiet but steady steps into the Christian market, reenacting the oldest parable in the New Economy, David vs. Goliath, by threatening to flood what has traditionally been a mom-and-pop market. Time Warner Trade Publishing recently opened a separate office devoted to Christian literature, and last year Random House acquired a Christian publisher to add to its spiritual book imprint, Water Brook. ''I think the feeling was that over time there was a good chance (that Random House) could have a commanding presence in the Christian book market,'' says Water Brook president and publisher Dan Rich.

While these developments may be great for spreading the Word, it's worrying for Christian houses, whose top people are being lured away by mainstream publishers. Last year Rolf Zettersten -- a publisher at Thomas Nelson, one of the biggest and oldest names in Christian publishing -- stepped down from his post to launch Time Warner's Christian line. Jerry Jenkins, one of the authors of the Left Behind series, has signed with Warner Books for a novel, as has T. D. Jakes, another top-shelf Christian author. Other big-name writers have followed suit. Brock and Bodie Thoene, a husband-and-wife team responsible for 32 Christian titles, have a series of books on Penguin Putnam's Viking Press imprint. ''We got into the Christian market because it's a really thriving, vital market. It's as simple as that,'' says Jamie Raab, senior vice president and publisher of Warner Books.

According to a report prepared for the Book Industry Study Group, the religious book market is indeed both thriving and vital: It's expected to top $1.4 billion by 2004, and it's growing at a faster rate than the general adult-trade market. That's a big number, but Dan Balow, director of marketing at Tyndale House, suggests that the sudden attention being paid to Christian literature is hardly proportionate to its actual economic impact. ''It's like a stock market that's being driven by one stock (the Left Behind books). It's really a result of (secular companies) recognizing that the Christian market is not a bizarre, strange cult that doesn't spend money.''

But while mainstream houses could provide serious competition to Christian publishers, Christian retailers are most threatened by the nascent mainstreaming of Christian fiction.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


40. Take a Web site test on religion
Scripps Howard News Service, Mar. 17, 2001
http://www.courierpress.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
When it comes to answering life's big questions, the World Wide Web offers more research options than you can wiggle a mouse at.
(...)

Perhaps you wake up in the middle of the night wondering if you need a new god or a fresh creed. Are you a liberal Protestant kind of person or a Hindu person, a Baptist or a Scientologist, a Reform Jew or a Neo-Pagan?

Want to find out? Then go to http://www.SelectSmart.com/RELIGION and click your way through Curt and Lorie Anderson's new and improved ''Belief System Selector'' site that covers two dozen world religions. Then you can tell them how happy or furious you are about the results. But don't ask about their religious ties. You
can ask, but they won't tell.

''People have accused us of being part of every imaginable religious group in the world,'' said Curt Anderson. ''A lot of people accuse us of being members of their religion, only they think that we've totally messed it up. Or they feel really threatened and they think that what we believe must be the total opposite of what they believe.''
(...)

The Andersons created SelectSmart.com three years ago, combining her social work and psychology skills with his experience in marketing and advertising. Their Ashland, Ore., home base is near the California border, which means they live in one of America's most complex regions, when it comes to religion and, of course, technology.

So far, they have written or endorsed 200 ''selector'' programs to help people make choices affecting everything from hobbies to careers, from vacation spots to romance. The site includes links to nearly 2,000 other tests written by volunteers. At the peak of the campaign season, their presidential-candidate selector was receiving 80,000 visitors a day.

Since making its debut last August, the religion selector has been attracting 7,000 users a day and the site now includes advanced quizzes to help Fundamentalists, Jews, Gnostics, agnostics, pagans, Muslims and others further refine their options. The site includes scores of links to official Web sites representing the various churches, movements and traditions.
(...)

The test still isn't perfect. In particular, the Andersons have struggled to break the Christian doctrine of the Trinity down into bites of computer data. Is God a ''corporeal spirit (has a body)'' or an ''incorporeal spirit''? ''That's a tough one,'' said Curt Anderson. ''Christians believe that Jesus had a body, yet God the Father does not. Yet they're both in the Trinity. ...We're still working on that one.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]
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