Doomsday Cult : a study of conversion, proselytization, and maintenance of faith
In the years since Doomsday Cult was first published, much has happened to the movement. This enlarged edition brings us up to the present. Doomsday Cult analyzes the first five years in America (1959-1964) of an obscure end-of-the-world religion that went on to become nationally and internationally famous in the 1970s. The movement went from identification as a small and laughable bunch of kooks to public definition as a powerful and nefarious social force that had to be countered. Such a truly dramatic change in the status of a movement (and the activities of the movement itself) demands the question: Why and how did it happen? The change provides an important opportunity, moreover, to increase our understanding of the dynamics of social movements more generally: their resource mobilization, internal organization, strategies, citizen responses to them and the like. These topics are discussed in the Epilogue to the Enlarged Edition, added since the original edition was published. - Preface to the enlarged edition
Print Book, English, ©1977
Enlarged ed View all formats and editions
Irvington Publishers : Distributed by Halsted Press, New York, ©1977
xii, 362 pages ; 22 cm
9780470992494, 0470992492
3089844
Preface to the enlarged edition
List of central characters
1. Introduction
2. The cult world view
Part one : Conversion. 3. Dispositions
4. Situations
Part two : Proselytization. 5. Disembodied access
6. Embodied access
7. Promotion vehicles
8. Prospect alignments
9. Promotion tactics
Part three : Faith and hope. 10. Faith and the encompassing culture
11. Faith and cult events
12. Mechanics of hope
Postscript
Appendix : How the data were collected
Epilogue to the enlarged edition : The boom and bust of a Millenarian cult : Doomsday Cult revisited
"This investigation was supported in part by a Public Health Service Fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health." - Acknowledgments