Books by "Robert W Balch"
7 books found
This text explores the major new or unconventional religions and spiritual movements in America that exist outside the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Mutilated animals. Defaced tombstones. Sexual abuse in daycare centers. Is America threatened by a satanic conspiracy? In this book, Robert D. Hicks exposes law enforcement''s obsessive preoccupation with satanism as a model for criminal behavior. While satanic belief has played a part in crimes ranging from petty vandalism to serial murders, Hicks avows that there is no substantial evidence for the existence of a nationwide satanic crime continuum.Hicks points out that the satanic criminal model is expedient largely due to its simplicity and economy, reducing to simple formulas such complex problems as drug abuse, teen suicide, and sexual molestation. His research utilizes a unique blend of law-enforcement methodology, anthropology, folklore, history, sociology, psychology and psychiatry. He attributes the cult conspiracy theory to beliefs fueled by Christian fundamentalist sects and to the ungovernable mechanisms of rumor-panics, subversive mythology, and urban legend.In Pursuit of Satan documents examples of rumor-panics in which the police have fomented fear by attributing crimes to satanists, indulging in sheer speculation and promulgating misinformation through the sensationalist news media. Hicks examines the construction of the satanic ideology among law enforcement officials, focusing on the exploitation of satanism as a new scapegoat for public fears and addressing the phenomenon of credulity among police forces and allied professionals in social work, psychiatry, and psychology.
National Book Award winner and renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton reveals a world at risk from millennial cults intent on ending it all. Since the earliest moments of recorded history, prophets and gurus have foretold the world's end, but only in the nuclear age has it been possible for a megalomaniac guru with a world-ending vision to bring his prophecy to pass. Now Robert Jay Lifton offers a vivid and disturbing case in point in this chilling exploration of Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult that released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subways. With unprecedented access to former Aum members, Lifton has produced a pathbreaking study of the inner life of a modern millennial cult. He shows how Aum's guru Shoko Asahara (charismatic spiritual leader, con man, madman) created a religion from a global stew of New Age thinking, ancient rituals, and apocalyptic science fiction, then recruited scientists as disciples and set them to producing weapons of mass destruction. Taking stock as well of Charles Manson, Heaven's Gate, and the Oklahoma City bombers, Lifton confronts the frightening possibility of a twenty-first century in which cults and terrorists may be able to bring about their own holocausts. Bold and compelling, Destroying the World to Save It charts the emergence of a new global threat of urgent concern to us all.
From Cape Charles to Cape Fear
by Robert M. Browning Jr., Robert M. Browning
2003 · University of Alabama Press
Examines naval logistics, tactics, and strategy employed by the Union blockade off the Atlantic coast of the Confederacy.