Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1991, Page 21
9. Charles W. Conn, Like a Mighty Army (Cleveland: Pathways, 1977) 47-88.
10. A.J. Tomlinson, dynamic and controversial preacher and leader, brought the Church of
God (a Pentecostal sect) its first great prominence. He was involved in a financial
scandal and forced to resign in 1923 yet that sect has become a large denomination.
Mickey Crews, The Church of God, A Social History (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1990)
1-37.
11. B. Zablocki and A. Aidala, "The Varieties of Communitarian Ideology," in B. Zablocki (ed.),
Alienation and Charisma: A Study of Contemporary American Communes (New York:
Free Press, 1980) 189-246 R.M. Kanter, Commitment and Community: Communes and
Utopias in Sociological Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1972) 8-10.
12. Paul K. Conkin, Two Paths to Utopia, The Hutterites and the Llano Colony (Lincoln: U of
Nebraska P, 1964) 76-100.
13. Ibid, 148-153 John F.C. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World, Robert Owen and the
Owenites in Britain and America (New York: Scribner‟s, 1969).
14. Henri Desroche, The American Shakers, trans. John K. Savacool (Amherst: U of
Massachusetts P, 1971) Diane Sasson, The Shaker Spiritual Narrative (Knoxville: U of
Tennessee P, 1983) is a collection of autobiographical essays which illustrates how
Shakers (years after conversion and communal life) adapted their past experiences to
Shaker philosophy and values.
15. Kanter, 87.
16. Billy Hargis of the Christian Crusade is the best known of present-day millenarians. He
stresses that the Anti-Christ and Satan is personified by the communists and predicted
the final Armageddon will appear in the Middle East. Edwin Scott Gaustad, Dissent in
American Religion (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1973) 102-3.
17. This was true of the Mormons, whose leading disciple William Clayton believed that the
Civil War was the beginning of the apocalypse but was able to adjust his prophecies
successfully. James B. Allen, Trials of Discipleship, The Story of William Clayton, A
Mormon (Urbana &Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987) 303-16.
18. Frederick William Evans, Anne Lee, A Biography with Memoirs (London &New York: J.
Burns, 4th edition, 1869).
19. The best study of the French Utopians is F.E. Manuel, The Prophets of Paris (Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1962).
20. cf. Rebecca B. Bateman, "Africans and Indians: A Comparative Study of the Black Carib
and Black Seminole," Ethnohistory 37 (Winter 1990): 1-24.
21. George Eaton Simpson, Black Religions in the New World (New York: Columbia UP, 1978)
143-50, 314-20 cf. H. Cantril and M. Sherif, "The Kingdom of Father Divine," Journal of
Abnormal Psychology 33 (1938): 147-67 S. Harris, The Incredible Father Divine
(London: W.W. Allen, 1954).
22. Christopher G. Ellison and David A. Gay, "Religion, Religious Commitment, and Life
Satisfaction Among Black Americans," Sociological Quarterly 31 (Spring 1990): 123-48.
23. Gaustad, Dissent, 85-92.
24. J. Milton Yinger, Sociology Looks at Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1961) 37-52 Charles
W. Bowser, Let the Bunker Burn, The Final Battle with Move (Philadelphia: Camino,
1989) M.E. Knerr, Suicide in Guyana (New York: Belmont Tower, 1978) Charles
Lindholm, Charisma (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990) 138-55.
25. Yinger, 37-52.
26. J.F.C. Harrison, The Second Coming, Millenarianism 1789-1850 (New Brunswick: Rutgers
UP, 1979).
27. Adrien Dansette, Religious History of Modern France, trans. John Dingle (New York:
Herder &Herder, 1961) I, 320.
28. Thomas A. Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth Century France (New
Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1983).
29. Ibid.

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1991, Page 22
30. Isser, "Protestants and Proselytization," 51-70.
31. Ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789-1914 (London: Routledge,
1989) c.f. Robert Ellwood, Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America
(Englewood: Prentice-Hall, 1973).
32. W.J. Schnell, Thirty Years a Watch Tower Slave (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1956)
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Visions of Glory, A History and Memory of Jehovah’s
Witnesses (New York: Simon &Schuster, 1976) describes missionary efforts in England
and other European countries J.A. Beckford, "Organization, Ideology, and Recruitment:
The Structure of the Watch Tower Movement," Sociological Review 23 (1976): 893-909
Eileen Barker, The Making of a Moonie, Choice or Brainwashing? (New York: Basil
Blackwell, 1984) though questioning whether Moonies are brainwashed discusses
increasing numbers of the Unification Church in England.
33. S.M. Tipton, "The Moral Logic of Alternative Religion," Daedalus 1 (1982): 185-214.
34. Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy, The Years of Discovery (New York: Holt, Rinehart, &
Winston, 1966).
35. Paul W. Pruyser, "The Seamy Side of Current Religious Beliefs," Bulletin of the Menninger
Clinic 41 (no. 4, 1977): 329-48 Maria I. Pereira de Queiroz, "Messianic Myth and
Movements," Diogenes 90 (1975): 78-99 Harriet S. Mostatche, Searching: Practices
and Beliefs of the Religious Cults and Human Potential Groups (New York: Stravon
Educational, 1984).
36. Conn, 225-334.
37. Isser &Schwartz, Hist of Conversion, 107-37.
38. Ibid.
39. Barker, 1-5. This resolution was directed especially to the activities of the Reverend Moon
and the Unification Church.
40. Isser &Schwartz, Hist of Conversion, 171.
41. New York Times, 21 July 1991, 14.
42. The Rastafarians are one of the fastest growing cults since 1983. Leonard E. Barrett, The
Rastafarians, Sounds of Cultural Dissonance (Boston: Beacon, 1988) 235-46.
43. Gaustad, Dissent, 152.
**************
Natalie Isser, Ph.D. is Professor of History at the Ogontz Campus of Pennsylvania State
University. She has written numerous books and articles on cults and conversion. This paper
was originally presented at the American Family Foundation annual meeting at Stony Point,
NY, in September 1990.
This article is an electronic version of an article originally published in Cultic Studies Journal, 1991, Volume 8,
Number 2, pages 104-121. Please keep in mind that the pagination of this electronic reprint differs from that of the
bound volume. This fact could affect how you enter bibliographic information in papers that you may write.