Stephen A. Kent, Ph. D.

Professor Stephen A. Kent researches new and alternative religions, combining perspectives from sociology with religious studies.

Associated with the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta, he teaches teaches undergraduate and graduate courses that explore religion and deviance.

Kent is a cult expert who has written extensively about Scientology, polygamy as practised by Mormon fundamentalists, the Children of God/The Family, and other issues surrounding new and alternative religions.

His writings on Scientology have made him a target for that cult‘s hate-inspired dead agenting practices.

Stephen Kent also exposes academics who are co-opted by new religious movements (e.g. CESNUR‘s J. Gordon Melton). This is one reason why cult apologists like CESNUR’s Massimo Introvigne malign him.

Stephen A. Kent, Ph. D. – Screenshot from a report by CBC News, Canada on Landmark Education

Resources by Stephen A. Kent

Articles

• Contemporary Uses of the Brainwashing Concept 2000 to Mid-2007, Stephen A. Kent, Cultic Studies Review, 7.2, 2008 (99-128)
• The creation of religious Scientology, Stephen Kent. Paper Presented at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1992. Religious Studies and Theology 18 No. 2 (December 1999): 97-126. p. 97
• The French and German Versus American Debate Over ‘New Religions’, Scientology, And Human Rights by Stephen Kent, in the Marburg Journal of Religion, Volume 6, No. 1
• Harm, Human Rights, and the Continued Criminalization of Fundamentalist Mormon Polygamy. Stephen A. Kent, Ph.D. Chapter 8 in Fundamentalism, Politics, and the Law. Edited by Marci Hamilton and Mark Rozell. New York: Palgrave: 2011: 161-192.
• The Globalization of Scientology : Influence, Control, and Opposition in Transnational Markets by Stephen A. Kent. Revised Version of a Paper Presented at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, November, 1991; Subsequent version published in Religion 29 (1999): 147-169.
• House of Judah, the Northeast Kingdom Community, and “the Jonestown Problem, Stephen A. Kent, International Journal of Cultic Studies, 1, 2010, 27-48
• Lustful Prophet: A Psychosexual Historical Study of the Children of God’s Leader, David Berg, Stephen A. Kent, Ph.D. CSJ, 11.2, 1994(135-188)
• Malignant narcissism, L. Ron Hubbad, and Scientology’s policies of narcissistic rage, Stephen A. Kent, Ph.D. Translated from the French version published as “Politiques de rage et narcissisme malin,” Criminologie 41 No. 2 (2008): 117-155.
• A Matter of Principle: Fundamentalist Mormon Polygamy, Children, and Human Rights Debates Stephen Kent, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 10 Issue 1 (2006): 7-29.
• Scientology and the European Human Rights Debate: A Reply to Leisa Goodman, J. Gordon Melton, and the European Rehabilitation Project Force Study by Stephen A. Kent
• A War Over Mental Health Professionalism: Scientology Versus Psychiatry Stephen A. Kent & Terra A. Manca, Mental Health, Religion & Culture ifirst (2012): 1-23.
• When Scholars Know Sin: Alternative Religions and Their Academic Supporters by Stephen Kent, Skeptic Magazine (Vol. 6, No. 3, 1998)

Books

• From Slogans to Mantras by Stephen Kent
  

  In this lucid and economical study, sociologist Kent examines a little-noted confluence: the same years that saw American youth delving into radical politics and protesting war also saw them turn to unusual, sometimes cultish, spiritual traditions. Kent challenges traditional scholarship by arguing that such conversions to alternative religious traditions marked “a crisis of means,” not a “a crisis of meaning,” as has often been assumed. Political activism, says Kent, was meant to accomplish something: above all, to end the Vietnam War. When it became increasingly apparent that countercultural politics were not, in fact, achieving the desired ends, activists discovered other methods in new religious groups. That a disaffected generation should turn to spirituality is not surprising; that it should do so for political reasons is indeed interesting. Just as useful as Kent’s provocative (if overly functionalist) argument is his descriptive ethnography of many of the religious paths that became prominent during the 1970s the Hare Krishnas, Transcendental Meditation, Scientology, the Unification Church and the Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization. This book’s import goes far beyond the seemingly narrow scope of its subject; when coupled with the recent work of Christian Smith (Divided by Faith and Disruptive Religion), Kent’s study promises to reshape and reinvigorate the very language we use to discuss the nexus between religion and politics in America. – Publishers Weekly, as posted at Amazon.com

Websites

• Stephen A. Kent, Ph. D. Stephen Kent’s web site at the University of Alberta. See also.

Wikipedia

• Wikipedia: Stephen A. Kent

About this update: This post was first published on Apr. 24, 2006. As time and energy permit we update entries throughout Apologetics Index.