Contents; Acknowledgments; Contributors; Overview; 1. An Introduction to new religions; Part I. Modernization and New Religions; 2. Alternative Spiritualities, New Religions, and The Reenchantment of the West, Christopher Partridge; 3. The Sociocultural Significance of Modern New Religious Movements, Lorne L. Dawson; 4. Science and Religion in the New Religions Mikael Rothstein; 5. Virtually Religious: New Religious Movements and the World Wide Web Douglas E. Cowan and Jeffrey K. Hadden; Part II Social Conflict; 6. Violence and New Religious Movements, David G. Bromley; 7. Legal Dimensions of New Religions, James T. Richardson; 8. The North American Anti-Cult Movement: Vicissitudes of Success and Failure Anson Shupe, David G. Bromley, and Susan E. Darnell; 9. Something Peculiar about France: Anti-Cult Campaigns in Western Europe and French Religious Exceptionalism, Massimo Introvigne;10. Satanism and Ritual Abuse, Philip Jenkins; 11. Conversion and “Brainwashing” in New Religious Movements, Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins; 12. Leaving the Fold: Disaffiliating from New Religious Movements, David G. Bromley; Part III Social and Psychological Dimensions; 13. Psychology and the New Religious Movements, John A. Saliba 14. Millennialism, Richard Landes; 15. The Mythic Dimensions of New Religious Movements: Function, Reality Construction, and Process, Diana G. Tumminia and R. George Kirkpatrick; 16. Women in New Religious Movements, Susan J. Palmer; 17. Children in New Religious Movements, Charlotte E. Hardman; Part IV Neo-Pagans, UFOS, and Other Heterodoxies; 18. Waiting for the “Big Beam”: UFO Religions and “Ufological” Themes in New Religious Movements, Andreas Grünschloß; 19. Esotericism in New Religious Movements, Olav Hammer; 20. The Dynamics of Alternative Spirituality: Seekers, Networks, and “New Age”, Steven J. Sutcliffe; 21. New Religions in East Asia, Michael Pye; 22. Witches, Wiccans, and Neo-Pagans: A Review of Current Academic Treatments of Neo-Paganism, Síân Lee Reid and Shelley Tsivia Rabinovitch; End Matter; Index