Douglas E Cowan
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 281967 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Douglas E Cowan |
| PRENOMES | Douglas E |
| SOBRENOME | Cowan |
| ASSINATURA | COWAN D E |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Missouri–Kansas City |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 25 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 14 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 25 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1990 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
The Christian Countercult Movement
Many seemingly strange questions on yoga, salvation, religious pluralism, and so forth have been actively debated among members of a small but influential group of evangelical apologists known as the Christian countercult movement. This Element explores the history of this movement from its origins in the anti-heresy writings of the early church to its modern development as a reaction to religious pluralism in North America. It contrasts the apol…
“So we’re just going to ignore the bear”
Review of the movie Midsommar by Douglas Cowan
Science Fiction and the Imitation of the Sacred
One wonders if the title of Richard Grigg’s book does not give too much of the game away—that the human imagination as exemplified in science fiction can never do anything more than ‘imitate’ the (
Existential Threats
Existential Threats: American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era." Journal of Contemporary Religion, 33(2), pp. 347–348
The Christian Countercult Movement
This chapter discusses the Christian countercult movement, which, along with the secular anticult, is one of two major oppositional forces to the emergence of new religious movements in modern society. Following a few concrete examples, it considers the Christian countercult in terms of (a) its fundamental differences from the secular anticult; (b) the constituencies of the Christian countercult; and (c) the sociological importance of the counter…
The Crack in the World
Seeing the Saviour in the Stars
This article uses Robert Wise’s 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still to interrogate the process by which particular cultural hegemonies become sedimented in commentarial and interpretive traditions. That is, since the late 1970s Wise’s film has been all but consistently interpreted as a Christian allegory, something for which there is surprisingly little evidence in the story itself. After discussing this interpretive trajectory, the paper pre…
Esalen
Esalen. For those familiar with new and alternative spiritual and psychological practices in North America, the word has an almost mythic resonance. Founded in 1962 by Michael Murphy and Richard (Dick) Price, located near Big Sur on the rugged California coast 45 miles south of Monterey, the Esalen Institute was the epicenter of the human potential movement, the place from which thousands of men and women charted the centrifugal and centripetal f…
The First International Symposium on Cultic Studies, Shenzhen, China
This article describes the First International Symposium on Cultic Studies, sponsored by the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Two North American participants narrate their encounter with Chinese scholars, whose views about new religions diverge markedly from those in the West. The symposium revealed the various attempts by which "cults" are defined and understood by Asian scholars, and demonstrate…
Nikki Bado-Fralick, Coming to the Edge of the Circle
Nikki Bado-Fralick, Coming to the Edge of the Circle: A Wiccan Initiation Ritual (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), xii + 181 pp. $35.00 (cloth)
Carol Barner-Barry, Contemporary Paganism
Carol Barner-Barry, Contemporary Paganism: Minority Religions in a Majoritarian America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), xii + 242 pp., $55 (cloth)
Book Excerpt
Since its popular inception in the mid-1990s, the World Wide Web has been subject to a set of interrelated mythologies about its potential as a social technology. Virtual reality has been confused with online activity, the question of computer-mediated community has been debated, and researchers have begun to explore the Internet’s impact on religious belief and practice. This excerpt addresses some of these concerns in terms of the Internet more…
Cyberhenge
Book Review| February 01 2006 Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet Douglas E. Cowan Douglas E. Cowan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2006) 9 (3): 119–120. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2006.9.3.119 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Se…
Episode 712
Using a recent episode of the adult cartoon South Park, this essay explores the function of ridicule in the cultural construction of religious rivalry. Principally, this essay argues that ridicule is not a product of derision, but of the social relationships that make derision meaningful. Functionally, ridicule serves two purposes: (1) stabilization, that is, it preempts or reduces deviance within both the aggressor group and the aggressor audien…
Book Excerpt
The Church Universal and Triumphant
"The Church Universal and Triumphant: Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s Apocalyptic Movement, by Bradley C. Whitsel." Canadian Journal of History, 40(2), pp. 378–379
Online U-Topia
God, Guns, and Grist for the Media's Mill
It is axiomatic that what North American mass media present as "news" represents only a fraction of what occurs on any given day. Because what is represented as news will be for the vast majority of news consumers the only information they receive on specific events, the manner by which newsworthiness is determined is of some importance. This is especially so in terms of new religious movements, which already suffer from a degree of cultural marg…
The Remnant Spirit
Over the past few decades, mainline Protestant denominations in North America have been experiencing a significant decline in membership, active participation, and financial contributions. In the midst of this decline, these denominations have been caught up in a variety of controversial religious, ecclesiastical, and social issues—a shift from neo-orthodox to liberal theology, the advent of inclusive liturgical and biblical language, denominatio…
Confronting the Failed Failure
If the Y2K "bug" entered the collective consciousness of evangelical Christians, two principal patterns of response emerged: either evangelicals acknowledged Y2K as a problem that required the readiness and reply of Christians, but rejected it as a component of prophetic fulfillment; or they interpreted it in some measure as a fulfillment of prophecy and a part of God'splan to facilitate the endtime. For those who believed Y2K to be a part of the…
Exits and Migrations
Most of the scholarly work on the anti-cult movement (ACM), to the extent that it has considered the Christian counter-cult movement (CCM) at all, has subsumed it as a subtle variant of a larger phenomenon. This is problematic in that at many levels, the CCM differs substantially from the ACM. This paper examines some of the conceptual differences in order to elucidate the nature of the tension between established religions in the dominant cultur…
Christian Responses to the New Age Movement
Douglas E. Cowan; Christian Responses to the New Age Movement: A Critical Assessment, by John A. Saliba. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999, 245pp. $30.99 (Cdn
Religion on the Internet
Too Narrow and Too Close
At the beginning of her moving account of anthropological field work in Africa, Karla Poewe asks, What did fieldwork mean to you? How did it affect you?(Cesara 1982: 1). For Poewe, these questions represent description about the impact of research and a foreign culture on the researcher (1982: 1). However much they may have thought themselves so in the past, researchers are not immune to effects of their own research. As transpersonal theorist Ke…
The parson and the landlord
Online U-Topia
Episode 712
Using a recent episode of the adult cartoon South Park, this essay explores the function of ridicule in the cultural construction of religious rivalry. Principally, this essay argues that ridicule is not a product of derision, but of the social relationships that make derision meaningful. Functionally, ridicule serves two purposes: (1) stabilization, that is, it preempts or reduces deviance within both the aggressor group and the aggressor audien…
Seeing the Saviour in the Stars
This article uses Robert Wise’s 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still to interrogate the process by which particular cultural hegemonies become sedimented in commentarial and interpretive traditions. That is, since the late 1970s Wise’s film has been all but consistently interpreted as a Christian allegory, something for which there is surprisingly little evidence in the story itself. After discussing this interpretive trajectory, the paper pre…
Exits and Migrations
Most of the scholarly work on the anti-cult movement (ACM), to the extent that it has considered the Christian counter-cult movement (CCM) at all, has subsumed it as a subtle variant of a larger phenomenon. This is problematic in that at many levels, the CCM differs substantially from the ACM. This paper examines some of the conceptual differences in order to elucidate the nature of the tension between established religions in the dominant cultur…
Religion on the Internet
The parson and the landlord
Too Narrow and Too Close
At the beginning of her moving account of anthropological field work in Africa, Karla Poewe asks, What did fieldwork mean to you? How did it affect you?(Cesara 1982: 1). For Poewe, these questions represent description about the impact of research and a foreign culture on the researcher (1982: 1). However much they may have thought themselves so in the past, researchers are not immune to effects of their own research. As transpersonal theorist Ke…
Religion on the Internet
Christian Responses to the New Age Movement
Douglas E. Cowan; Christian Responses to the New Age Movement: A Critical Assessment, by John A. Saliba. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999, 245pp. $30.99 (Cdn
Exits and Migrations
Most of the scholarly work on the anti-cult movement (ACM), to the extent that it has considered the Christian counter-cult movement (CCM) at all, has subsumed it as a subtle variant of a larger phenomenon. This is problematic in that at many levels, the CCM differs substantially from the ACM. This paper examines some of the conceptual differences in order to elucidate the nature of the tension between established religions in the dominant cultur…
The Remnant Spirit
Over the past few decades, mainline Protestant denominations in North America have been experiencing a significant decline in membership, active participation, and financial contributions. In the midst of this decline, these denominations have been caught up in a variety of controversial religious, ecclesiastical, and social issues—a shift from neo-orthodox to liberal theology, the advent of inclusive liturgical and biblical language, denominatio…
Confronting the Failed Failure
If the Y2K "bug" entered the collective consciousness of evangelical Christians, two principal patterns of response emerged: either evangelicals acknowledged Y2K as a problem that required the readiness and reply of Christians, but rejected it as a component of prophetic fulfillment; or they interpreted it in some measure as a fulfillment of prophecy and a part of God'splan to facilitate the endtime. For those who believed Y2K to be a part of the…
God, Guns, and Grist for the Media's Mill
It is axiomatic that what North American mass media present as "news" represents only a fraction of what occurs on any given day. Because what is represented as news will be for the vast majority of news consumers the only information they receive on specific events, the manner by which newsworthiness is determined is of some importance. This is especially so in terms of new religious movements, which already suffer from a degree of cultural marg…
Episode 712
Using a recent episode of the adult cartoon South Park, this essay explores the function of ridicule in the cultural construction of religious rivalry. Principally, this essay argues that ridicule is not a product of derision, but of the social relationships that make derision meaningful. Functionally, ridicule serves two purposes: (1) stabilization, that is, it preempts or reduces deviance within both the aggressor group and the aggressor audien…
Book Excerpt
The Church Universal and Triumphant
"The Church Universal and Triumphant: Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s Apocalyptic Movement, by Bradley C. Whitsel." Canadian Journal of History, 40(2), pp. 378–379
Online U-Topia
Cyberhenge
Book Review| February 01 2006 Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet Douglas E. Cowan Douglas E. Cowan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2006) 9 (3): 119–120. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2006.9.3.119 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Se…
Nikki Bado-Fralick, Coming to the Edge of the Circle
Nikki Bado-Fralick, Coming to the Edge of the Circle: A Wiccan Initiation Ritual (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), xii + 181 pp. $35.00 (cloth)
Carol Barner-Barry, Contemporary Paganism
Carol Barner-Barry, Contemporary Paganism: Minority Religions in a Majoritarian America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), xii + 242 pp., $55 (cloth)
Book Excerpt
Since its popular inception in the mid-1990s, the World Wide Web has been subject to a set of interrelated mythologies about its potential as a social technology. Virtual reality has been confused with online activity, the question of computer-mediated community has been debated, and researchers have begun to explore the Internet’s impact on religious belief and practice. This excerpt addresses some of these concerns in terms of the Internet more…
The First International Symposium on Cultic Studies, Shenzhen, China
This article describes the First International Symposium on Cultic Studies, sponsored by the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Two North American participants narrate their encounter with Chinese scholars, whose views about new religions diverge markedly from those in the West. The symposium revealed the various attempts by which "cults" are defined and understood by Asian scholars, and demonstrate…
Seeing the Saviour in the Stars
This article uses Robert Wise’s 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still to interrogate the process by which particular cultural hegemonies become sedimented in commentarial and interpretive traditions. That is, since the late 1970s Wise’s film has been all but consistently interpreted as a Christian allegory, something for which there is surprisingly little evidence in the story itself. After discussing this interpretive trajectory, the paper pre…
Esalen
Esalen. For those familiar with new and alternative spiritual and psychological practices in North America, the word has an almost mythic resonance. Founded in 1962 by Michael Murphy and Richard (Dick) Price, located near Big Sur on the rugged California coast 45 miles south of Monterey, the Esalen Institute was the epicenter of the human potential movement, the place from which thousands of men and women charted the centrifugal and centripetal f…
The Crack in the World
The Christian Countercult Movement
This chapter discusses the Christian countercult movement, which, along with the secular anticult, is one of two major oppositional forces to the emergence of new religious movements in modern society. Following a few concrete examples, it considers the Christian countercult in terms of (a) its fundamental differences from the secular anticult; (b) the constituencies of the Christian countercult; and (c) the sociological importance of the counter…
Existential Threats
Existential Threats: American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era." Journal of Contemporary Religion, 33(2), pp. 347–348
Science Fiction and the Imitation of the Sacred
One wonders if the title of Richard Grigg’s book does not give too much of the game away—that the human imagination as exemplified in science fiction can never do anything more than ‘imitate’ the (
“So we’re just going to ignore the bear”
Review of the movie Midsommar by Douglas Cowan
The Christian Countercult Movement
Many seemingly strange questions on yoga, salvation, religious pluralism, and so forth have been actively debated among members of a small but influential group of evangelical apologists known as the Christian countercult movement. This Element explores the history of this movement from its origins in the anti-heresy writings of the early church to its modern development as a reaction to religious pluralism in North America. It contrasts the apol…
Sociology (20 obras) · Philosophy (16 obras) · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices (12 obras) · Religion and Society Interactions (11 obras) · Art (10 obras) · History (10 obras) · Aesthetics (8 obras) · Epistemology (8 obras) · Media, Religion, Digital Communication (8 obras) · Philosophy (8 obras)