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date: 09 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines violent outbursts perpetrated by New Religious Movements (NRMs) and considers the competing and complementary theories that have arisen to explain them. It argues that theories about cult violence change as new data become available. Public perceptions of cults and a shifting religious-political landscape also shape theoretical considerations of religion and violence. The chapter notes that prior to the mass murders-suicides in Jonestown, Guyana, and immediately following, theories of violence focused on inwardly-directed coercion and control. The demise of the Branch Davidians in 1993, along with other eruptions of violence in the 1990s, challenged this perspective, and a theory of interaction between external and internal forces arose. The events of September 11, 2001 internationalized considerations of religious violence, and returned attention to the influence of apocalyptic worldviews. A pressing problem that has emerged most recently is the violence perpetrated against NRMs, particularly state-sponsored repression.

Keywords: New Religious Movements, violence, Jonestown, Waco, Solar Temple, Heaven's Gate, Aum Shinrikyo, al-Qaeda, apocalyptic, religious intolerance

Rebecca Moore

Rebecca Moore is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. Her research has focused on Jewish and Christian dialogue and on the history of biblical interpretation. She has served as president of the Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages and on the steering committee for the History of Interpretation Section of the Society of Biblical Literature. She has published extensively on Hugh of St. Victor, a medieval Christian canon whose biblical commentaries reflected contemporary Jewish influences. She published a history of Christianity titled Voices of Christianity: A Global Introduction (2005). She also coauthored a book with Risa Levitt Kohn titled A Portable God: The Origin of Judaism and Christianity (2007), which shows how Judaism and Christianity emerge from the same religious tradition—that of ancient Israel—at the same time. She was co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions from 2000 to 2011 and has been an Associate Editor of Luther Digest since 2000.

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