Radical Religious Movements

Catalog description

This course focuses on religious movements that are deemed radical by their contemporaries. Topics will vary, though generally we will focus on the self-professed religious identity of these movements alongside their relationship to a broader religious culture. Do such movements consider themselves radical? How do they communicate with, or seek to influence, the mainstream? We begin with the period of the Protestant Reformation before moving on to the proliferation of communalist, utopian, and messianic movements. Later topics include religious socialism, terrorism, new religious movements and the anti-cult movement, and the recent appearance of so-called “invented religions” like Jediism and Matrixism. Offered regularly.