Description
Book SynopsisExplains how and why this religious group, founded on principles of enforced community, explicit authoritative relationships, and therapeutic ideals, attracted so many individuals. Tracing the rise and fall of this fast-growing religious movement, this study offers insight into the difficulties that revivalist movements have in sustaining growth.
Trade ReviewA masterful work. This book is a must-read. It artfully weaves engaging ethnography with social theory to take the reader on a learning adventure. Through this study of family life, gender relations, and culture in a fast-rising and then falling 'therapeutic religious movement,' we learn about life in the modern world. Given that the conditions that led to this movement's appeal and growth remain, similar groups will continue to appear. As they do, we will want to turn to Awesome Families to understand their meaning. -- Michael O. Emerson * author of Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in Amer *
Awesome Families is an excellent study of a Christain based religious movement that offered the promise of healing and family to over one thousand members throughout the world. Jenkins's work is well researched, well written and presents new and exciting insights into religious conversion and disillusionment. Her book is at the cutting edge of the new scholarship on commitment to religious movements, providing a much needed understanding of the complex ways in which alternative religions function in contemporary society. -- Janet Jacobs * author of Hidden Heritage the Legacy of the Crypto-Jews *
"This work is a valuable resource for the sociologist of religion as well as a fine exemplar of, and introduction to, the cultural turn in sociology for the scholar of religion in general" -- Brad Nabors * Sociology of Religion *
A masterful work. This book is a must-read. It artfully weaves engaging ethnography with social theory to take the reader on a learning adventure. Through this study of family life, gender relations, and culture in a fast-rising and then falling 'therapeutic religious movement,' we learn about life in the modern world. Given that the conditions that led to this movement's appeal and growth remain, similar groups will continue to appear. As they do, we will want to turn to Awesome Families to understand their meaning. -- Michael O. Emerson * author of Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in Amer *
Awesome Families is an excellent study of a Christain based religious movement that offered the promise of healing and family to over one thousand members throughout the world. Jenkins's work is well researched, well written and presents new and exciting insights into religious conversion and disillusionment. Her book is at the cutting edge of the new scholarship on commitment to religious movements, providing a much needed understanding of the complex ways in which alternative religions function in contemporary society. -- Janet Jacobs * author of Hidden Heritage the Legacy of the Crypto-Jews *
"This work is a valuable resource for the sociologist of religion as well as a fine exemplar of, and introduction to, the cultural turn in sociology for the scholar of religion in general" -- Brad Nabors * Sociology of Religion *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: "It's Like Free Counseling All the Time"
1. Sacred Counsel: "Ambassadors for God"
2. An Unsinkable Raft in a Foreboding Divorce Culture
3. Collective Performances of Healing
4. In with the Old and the New
5. Awesome Kids
6. Brothers and Sisters for the Kingdom of God
7. A Kingdom That Promised Too Much
Notes
Bibliography
Index
