Phillip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University
and the author of Hidden Gospels: How the Quest for Jesus Lost Its Way. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.
Review
"Jenkins,...has produced a scholarly and balanced book on this controversial and explosive topic....Mystics
and Messiahs is a much needed scholarly contribution to a topic that has for too long been the subject of public
hysteria and distortion. Highly Recommended."
--Multicultural Review
Submitted by Oxford University Press Web Site, September, 2001
Summary
The first full-length account of cults and anti-cult scares in American history
In Mystics and Messiahs--the first full account of cults and anti-cult scares in American history--Philip Jenkins
shows that, contrary to popular belief, cults were by no means an invention of the 1960s. In fact, most of the
frightening images and stereotypes surrounding fringe religious movements are traceable to the mid-nineteenth century
when Mormons, Freemasons, and even Catholics were denounced for supposed ritualistic violence, fraud, and sexual
depravity. But America has also been the home of an often hysterical anti-cult backlash. Jenkins provides an insightful
new analysis of why cults arouse such fear and hatred both in the secular world and in mainstream churches, many
of which were themselves originally regarded as cults. Jenkins argues that an accurate historical perspective is
urgently needed if we are to avoid the kind of catastrophic confrontation that occurred in Waco or the ruinous
prosecution of imagined Satanic cults in the 1980s.
