http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/1994/10/03#cults A cult is a socially marginal religious movement. Successful cults move up to being denominations or, if embedded in larger religions, orthodox. <P><em>See also</em>: <a href="conspiracy-theories.html">Conspiracy Theories</a>, <a href="millenarian.html">Millenarianism</a>, <a href="shamanism.html">Shamamism</a>, <a href="superstition.html">Superstition</a> <ul>To read: <li>Appel, <cite>Cults in America</cite> <li>Dennis Covington, <cite>Salvation on Sand Mountain</cite> [snake-handling, speaking in tongues, etc.] <li>Harvey Cox, <cite>Fire From Heaven</cite> [Pentecostalism] <li>Michael Cueno, <cite>The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism</cite> [Long <a href="http://www.nyrev.com/nyrev/WWWfeatdisplay.cgi?1998021920F">review</a> by Garry Wills] <li>Galanter, <cite>Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion</cite> <li>John Hall, <cite>Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Culture</cite> <li>John R. Hall, <cite>Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan</cite> <li>Jeffrey Kaplan and Helene Low (eds.), <cite>The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization</cite> <li>R. Knox, <cite>Enthusiasm</cite> <li>I. M. Lewis, <cite>Religion in Context: Cults and Charisma</cite> </ul>