From Hare Krishna to the Latter-Day Saints, and from Jehovah's Witnesses to the New Age, religious pluralism in North American presents evangelical Protestantism with significant challenges. Declaring newer religious groups cults, aberrant sects, and heretical religions, the Christian countercult movement has warned that these groups represent a threat to society. In ^IBearing False Witness?^R Cowan considers the Christian countercult as a whole, locating it in sociological perspective as an entity distinct from the secular anti-cult. Through his analysis, the author argues that the primary purpose of the countercult movement is to reinforce and repair the Christian worldview when it appears threatened by the advent of alternative religious traditions. This unique analysis of the Christian countercult helps explain why conservative Christian responses to competing religious movements have taken the form that they have in addition to how those responses are carried out. Unlike the anti-cult movement, which is concerned with removing individuals from cults and returning them to their families, the Christian countercult movement, according to the author, attempts not only to remove cultists from the negative influences of the cults to which they belong, but also to insure that they will join the particular version of Christianity adhered to by the countercultists themselves. Beginning with the countercult's early history, the author provides an historical account of the movement and its present activities. Since the rise of new religious movements, the growing interest in religions imported from outside North America, and the broadening of the religious marketplace continues to grow, understanding the Christian countercult and its presence as a countervailing pressure to these increasingly socioreligious dynamics becomes ever more important.

The following historical statements all appear in well-established textbooks, and have become part of our common culture. Which of them would you say are true? * The Catholic Church incited and actively colluded in nearly two millennia of anti-Semitic violence, and Pope Pius XII is still rightfully known as ‘Hitler’s Pope’. * Only recently have we become aware of ancient and remarkably enlightened Christian gospels, which narrow-minded Catholic authorities tried to suppress. * Once in power as the official Church of Rome, Christians quickly and brutally persecuted paganism out of existence. * The fall of Rome and the ascendancy of the Church precipitated Europe’s decline into a millennium of ignorance and backwardness, which lasted until the Renaissance. * Initiated by the pope, the Crusades were but the first bloody chapter in the history of unprovoked and brutal Christian colonialism. * The Spanish Inquisition tortured and murdered huge numbers of innocent people for ‘imaginary’ crimes, such as witchcraft and blasphemy. * The Catholic Church persecuted and tried to suppress scientists such as Galileo, and the Scientific ‘Revolution’ therefore occurred mainly in more tolerant Protestant societies. * Being entirely comfortable with slavery, the Catholic Church did nothing to oppose its introduction in the New World, or to make it more humane. * Until very recently, Catholicism’s hierarchical view of the ideal state has resulted in its bitter resistance to all efforts to establish more liberal governments and its eager support for right-wing dictators. * It was the Protestant Reformation that broke the repressive Catholic grip on progress and ushered in capitalism, religious freedom and the modern world. In this powerful and persuasive book Rodney Stark subjects these and other widely-held beliefs to a rigorous historical assessment. He gives a compelling account of how each of them became accepted as the conventional wisdom, how egotism and ideology often worked together to create false or highly distorted pictures of people and events, and how we need to work hard to recover the truth if we’re to undo the cultural damage that centuries of anti-Catholic history has done. Contents: 1. Sins of Anti- Semitism 2. The Suppressed Gospels 3. Persecuting the Tolerant Pagans 4. Imposing the Dark Ages 5. Crusading for Land, Loot, and Converts 6. Monsters of the Inquisition 7. Scientific Heresies 8. Blessed Be Slavery 9. Holy Authoritarianism 10. Protestant Modernity

Gary Dale Cearley's ground breaking book straightens out the myths concerning one of the biggest religious hoaxes of all time. Gary Dale's arguments are grounded on the only thing that matter. The facts. Just when you thought you knew your history... A must read.

Hare defends himself against accusations, made in the English review, that his writings participate in the "subversion of the faith".

Reprint of the original, first published in 1838.

Many will argue that the Bible, if it is to be taken seriously, is all about how its read and interpretation. With that in mind, there are many who subscribe to the ancient astronaut theory in particular, who believe the Bible to be filled with accounts of UFO encounters and interactions between human beings and extraterrestrials. What Ezekiel saw is one of the most seized upon accounts. What if I told you that this was all simply an allegory about a form of ancient Hebrew yoga known as Merkabah Mysticism, its psychology and that the events never really, actually happened, except of course inside of YOU. Psychology it self has roots stretching all the way back to ancient India and Egypt. Learn the mysteries behind the fables that can be applied to every day life that are in synch with natural laws. Learn to resonate with the universe through these teachings.