Anson D. Shupe American sociologist who studies religious groups and the anti-cult movement. He is a Professor of Sociology at the joint campus of Indiana State University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. ... Book published by the International Cultic Studies Association (a. ... Indiana State University Indiana State University located in Terre Haute, Indiana, was created by an Indiana statute on December 20,1865. ... See also Purdue University System. ... Nickname: The Summit City Motto: {{{motto}}} Official website: City of Fort Wayne Location Location in the state of Indiana Government County Allen Mayor Graham Richard (D) Geographical characteristics Area 127 km² Land 126. ...

Biography

Shupe completed his doctorate in political sociology at Indiana University in 1975 under the direction of Lawrence E. Hazelrigg. During the late 1970s, he began combining his interests in religion, politics, and deviance, publishing several books and numerous articles in professional journals, analyzing new religious movements and the anti-cult movement counter-movements that arose in opposition to them. 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ... A new religious movement or NRM appears as a religious, ethical or spiritual grouping that has not (yet) become recognised as a standard denomination, church, or body, especially when it has a novel belief system and when it is not a sect. ... Book published by the International Cultic Studies Association (a. ...

Shupe diversified his research to include religious groups and movements in the New Christian Right, religious broadcasting, and the role of fundamentalist religious traditions in politics. Christian Right is a term collectively referring to a spectrum of conservative Christian political and social movements and organizations characterized by their strong support of social values they deem traditional in the United States and other western countries. ... Religious broadcasting is broadcasting religious organizations, usually with a religious message. ...

Shupe also produced another body of research on violent and abusive practices within families, combining his research interest in family violence and his prior work on religion in a new line on violation of trust by clergy, most notably In the Name of All That's Holy: A Theory of Clergy Malfeasance (Praeger 1995).

Shupe collaborates in his research with a number of other scholars in the sociology of religion, including David G. Bromley and Jeffrey K. Hadden. Shupe was elected to office in several professional associations, including the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Association for the Sociology of Religion. He also became an articulate advocate, through his writing for both popular and professional audiences, for religious libertarianism. David G. Bromley is a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. Education and Career Bromley received his B.A. in sociology (1963) from Colby College. ... Jeffrey K. Hadden (1937 - 2003) was a Professor of Sociology who began teaching at the University of Virginia in 1972. ...

Criticism

Due to his testimonies for Scientology, Shupe has been criticized as a cult apologist by sociologist Prof. Stephen A. Kent, and members of the anti-cult movement Tilman Hausherr and Christian countercult movement Anton Hein as being too close to Scientology for neutrality. During the lawsuit of Jason Scott against Rick Ross and the Cult Awareness Network, Shupe gave a deposition, worked closely together with Scientology lawyer Kendrick Moxon, whom he calls "my friend and colleague" [1], and testified at the trial. In the article "When Scholars Know Sin", published in The Skeptic, Prof. Stephen Kent and Theresa Krebs detail his role. [2]. In the deposition, Shupe admitted that he had never attended a CAN meeting, didn't know the names of its officers and that he had not conducted formal research on the organization since 1987 or formally interviewed anyone on the "countercult" movement since 1979. A cult apologist is a term (which some find pejorative) used by anti-cult activists to describe a scholar of cults and/or new religious movements perceived as responding to the movements they study with advocacy instead of with neutral scholarship. ... Stephen A. Kent, Ph. ... Book published by the International Cultic Studies Association (a. ... Tilman Hausherr is a german citizen living in Berlin, Germany. ... The Christian countercult movement, also known as discernment ministries is the collective designation for many mostly unrelated ministries and individual Christians who oppose non-mainstream Christian and non-Christian religious groups, which they often call cults. ... Jason Scott is a former member of a controversial religious group whose lawsuits over his attempted deprogramming bankrupted the anti-cult activist Rick Ross and led to the bankruptcy of the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), at that time one of the worlds largest cult-monitoring organizations. ... Rick Alan Ross (born November 1952 in Cleveland, Ohio) is a private consultant and lecturer in the area of cults who maintains a website with an extensive listing of articles about destructive cults, controversial groups and movements, and related research about mind control theories. ... Cult Awareness Network - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Deposition is a word used in many fields to describe different processes: In law, deposition is the taking of testimony outside of court. ... Scientology is a system of beliefs, teachings and rituals, originally established as a secular philosophy in 1952 by author L. Ron Hubbard, then recharacterized by him in 1953 as an applied religious philosophy. Hubbard defined the word Scientology to mean a study of knowledge. ... The Skeptic is a United Kingdom magazine which aims to invalidate and discredit claims of the paranormal and pseudoscience. ...

With the collapse of the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) as an anti-cult organization, Shupe has in recent times co-written a paper about CAN based on an examination of its archives and papers. He has also explored this further in his book Agents of Discord.

Publications

• "Moonies" in America: Cult. Church. and Crusade. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publications, 1979. (with David G. Bromley). Introduction by John Lofland. 269 pp.
• The New Vigilantes: Anti-Cultists, Deprogrammers and the New Religions Beverly Hills, SAGE Publications, 1980. 267 pp.
• Six Perspectives on New Religions: A Case Study Approach. Lewiston and Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1981. 235 pp. ISBN 0889469830
• Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon, 1981. (with David G. Bromley) 249 pp. ISBN 0807032565
• The Anti-Cult Movement in America: A Bibliography and Historical Survey New York: Garland Press, 1984. (with David G. Bromley and Donna L. Oliver) i-xiii + 169 pp.
• A Documentary History of the Anti-Cult Movement. Arlington, TX, University of Texas Center for Social Research Press, 1986. (with David G. Bromley) 376 pp.
• The Mormon Corporate Empire. Boston: Beacon, 1986. (with John Heinerman) ISBN 0807004065
• Televangelism, Power and Politics on God's Frontier, Anson Shupe and Jeffrey Hadden, Henry Holt & Co; 1st ed edition (April 1, 1988), 325pp. ISBN: 0-805007-78-4
• The Darker Side of Virtue: Corruption, Scandal, and the Mormon Empire, Prometheus Books (May 1, 1991), 168pp. ISBN 0-879756-54-3
• Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective: Revival of Religious Fundamentalism in East and West, Bronislaw Misztal & Anson Shupe (Eds.), Praeger Publishers (November 30, 1992), 240pp. ISBN 0-275942-18-X
• Anti-Cult Movements in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1994. (edited with David G. Bromley). ISBN 0815314280
• Bad Pastors: Clergy Misconduct in Modern America New York: New York University Press, 2000, Edited by Anson Shupe, William A. Stacey, Susan E. Darnell; ISBN 0814781470
• "The Cult Awareness Network and the Anticult Movement: Implications for NRMs in America" (with Susan E. Darnell and Kendrick Moxon) in New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America. edited by Derek H. Davis and Barry Hankins. Waco: J.M.Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies and Baylor University Press, 2002. ISBN 929182642
• Agents of Discord: The Cult Awareness Network, Deprogramming and Bad Science. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2006. (with Susan E. Darnell) ISBN 0765803232

Assessment

• Jackson W. Carroll, Review of In The Name of All That's Holy, Review of Religious Research 38 (1996): 90-91.
• Hans A. Baer, Review of The Darker Side of Virtue, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 31 (1992): 242-243.
• A.J. Pavlos, Review of Six Perspectives on New Religions, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22 (1983): 95-96.
• Stephen A. Kent and Theresa Krebs, "When Scholars Know Sin: Alternative Religions and Their Academic Supporters," Skeptic, 6/3 (1988): 36-44. Also see J. Gordon Melton, Anson D. Shupe and James R. Lewis, "When Scholars Know Sin" Forum Reply to Kent and Krebs, Skeptic, 7/1 (1999): 14-21.

External links

• Curriculum Vitae
• The Reconstructionist Movement on the New Christian Right by Anson Shupe
• ApologeticsIndex site on Anson Shupe