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Cyberhenge:
Modern Pagans on the Internet
(Routledge, 2005).
"In the process
of making a number of insightful comments on the modern Pagan community,
in itself one of the more interesting of the Western new religions,
in Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet, Douglas Cowan
opens a doorway on the still obscure and foreboding world of the Internet
as a new lens through which to observe contemporary religion and a resource
for research on different religious communities. Cyberhenge
is a more-then-helpful guide to the spiritualities now imbedded in and
continually reshaped by cyberspace, while heightening our self-consciousness
about the very malleable phenomena we find there."
- J. Gordon Melton, Institute
for the Study of American Religion
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Religion
Online: Finding Faith on the Internet,
edited with Lorne L. Dawson (Routledge, 2004).
After sex, religion
is one of the most popular and pervasive topics of interest online,
with over three million Americans turning to the internet each day for
religious information and spiritual guidance. Tens of thousands of elaborate
websites are dedicated to every manner of expression. Religion Online
provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to this burgeoning
new religious reality, from cyberpilgrimages to neo-pagan chatroom communities.
A substantial introduction by the editors presenting the main themes
and issues is followed by sixteen chapters addressing core issues of
concern such as youth, religion and the internet, new religious movements
and recruitment, propaganda and the countercult, and religious tradition
and innovation. The volume also includes the Pew Internet and American
Life Project Executive Summary, the most comprehensive and widely cited
study on how Americans pursue religion online, and Steven O'Leary's
field-defining Cyberspace as Sacred Space.
Click
here to see the Table of Contents. Click
here to read the Introduction.
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The Remnant
Spirit: Conservative Reform in Mainline Protestantism
(Praeger, 2003).
“In this work
of sociology of religion, Cowan explains the dynamics operating in the
formation and development of conservative reform and renewal groups
within four Protestant mainline denominations: the Presbyterian Church
(USA), the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church (USA), and
the United Church of Canada. He explores the legal, experiential, and
theological responses to some "precipitous moment" within
denominations that brings about the organization of renewal or reform
groups....Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and faculty.”
- Choice
Click
here to read the first two pages. Click
here for ordering information.
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Bearing
False Witness? An Introduction to the Christian Countercult
(Praeger, 2003).
“Surveys an
important but heretofore poorly documented movement within American
evangelicalism. Cowan has called upon a more theologically neutral discipline
of the sociology of knowledge to examine the worldview that informs
the countercult exponents and from which to offer some rather important
critique. He carefully distinguishes between the secular anti-cult movement
and the countercult movement on a variety of issues, inviting readers
into the variegated world of the movement.”
- J. Gordon Melton, Institute for the Study of American Religion
Click
here to read the first two pages. Click
here for ordering information.
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Religion
on the Internet: Research Prospects and Promises,
edited with Jeffrey K. Hadden (JAI/Elsevier, 2000).
Religion on the
Internet
is the first systematic inquiry into the nature, scope and content of
religion in cyberspace. Contributors to this volume include leading
social scientists engaged in systematic studies of how organizations
and individuals are presenting religion on the Internet. Their combined
efforts represent a conceptual mapping of religion in cyberspace. The
individual papers and collective insights found in this volume add up
to a valuable agenda of research that will enrich understanding of this
new phenomenon. Among the contributors are the founders of three of
the most important scholarly religion web sites on the Internet: American
Religion Data Archive, Religious
Tolerance, and the Religious
Movements Homepage.
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Teaching
the Sociology of Religion: Syllabi and Instructional Materials,
edited with Lutz Kaelber. 4th edition (American Sociological Association,
2004).
"This fourth
edition of Teaching the Sociology of Religion: Syllabi and Instructional
Materials includes materials to assist undergraduate and graduate
instructors in teaching the sociology of religion. It contains 17 syllabi,
a large number of exercises and activities, reviews of textbooks in
the field, and [Douglas Cowan's] essay on the seemingly ever-increasing
relevance of the Internet for this realm."
- from the Preface
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