Sacro-Egoism: The Rise of Religious Individualism in the West discusses the relationship between secularization, participation in religious practices and belief, and the emergence of radical individualized expressions of faith in the West. Using McMinnville, Oregon, as a case study, it presents the data collected and analyzed from several churches, denominations, and spiritual settings in that unassuming town, and compares it to the results of Heelas and Woodhead's "Spiritual Revolution" project, arriving at a provocative conclusion. Rather than abandoning Christianity for alternative spirituality practices, McMinnville citizens still feel strongly about their Christian faith, taking their spiritual walk to a more personal level than ever before in church history. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative research, along with personal stories of faith and exploration from McMinnville residents themselves, Sacro-Egoism: The Rise of Religious Individualism in the West tells a story of radical individualists who have become the highest religious authority in their lives--even over the church, the Bible, and traditional Christian society.

Is the modern Christian church losing the battle against postmodern society and the current hate culture? Deconverted reflects research gathered from interviews with once self-professed Christians who have now walked away from the church and their previously deeply-held religious beliefs. With so much at risk in the lives of postmodern seekers, who is being misled and what apologetical truths can the church learn from this phenomenon?

This book explores the inter-relationship between religious groups and wider society and examines the way religious groups change in relation to societal norms, potentially to the point of undergoing processes of ‘internal secularisation’ within secular and secularist cultures. Received sociological wisdom suggests that over time religious groups moderate their claims. This comes with the potential loss of new adherents, for theorists of secularisation suggest unique or universal, rather than moderate, truth claims appear attractive to would-be recruits. At the same time, religious groups need to appear equivalent, in terms of harmlessness, to state-sanctioned religious expression in order to secure rights. Thus, religious organisations face a perpetual conundrum. Using British Quakers as a case study as they moved from a counter-cultural group to an accepted and accepting part of twentieth- and twenty-first-century society, the author builds on models of religion and non-religion in terms of flows and explores the consequences of religious assimilation when the process of constructing both distinctive appeal and ‘harmlessness’ in pursuit of rights is played out in a secular culture. A major contribution to the sociology of religion, The Cultivation of Conformity presents a new theory of internal secularisation as the ultimate stage of the cultivation of conformity, and a model of the way sects and society inter-relate.

1. The Aim of This Essay Ethical Egoism, the doctrine that, roughly speaking, one should promote one's own good, has been a live issue since the very beginnings of moral philosophy. Historically, it is the most widely held normative theory, and, next to Utilitarianism, it is the most intensely debated one. What is at stake in this debate is a fundamental question of ethics: 'Is there any reason, except self-interest, for considering the interests of other people?' The ethical egoist answers No to this question, thus rejecting the received conception of morality. Is Ethical Egoism an acceptable position? There are many forms of Ethical Egoism, and each may be interpreted in several different ways. So the relevant question is rather, 'Is there an acceptable version of Ethical It is the main aim of this essay to answer this question. This Egoism?' means that I will be confronted with many other controversial questions, for example, 'What is a moral principle?', 'Is value objective or subjec tive?', 'What is the nature of the self?' For the acceptability of most ver sions of Ethical Egoism, it has been alleged, depends on what answers are given to questions such as these. (I will show that in some of these cases there is in fact no such dependence. ) It is, of course, impossible to ad equately discuss all these questions within the compass of my essay.

Modern Christian apologists and evangelists employ a variety of tools designed to aid communities in their understanding of God and salvation via Christ's atonement. One of the ways that defenders of the faith add to their field is in discerning the real significance of the treasures found in Christ. This work begins by dissecting the true meaning of freedom in Christ from a Judeo-Christian viewpoint. Building on that foundation, it then evaluates the sociological phenomenon of postmodernism in many of its characteristics and approaches--both positive and negative. The goal is to find pathways through which the apologist can respond to postmoderns in pointing them to Christ. Finally, the work closes by discussing how a newfound understanding of freedom in Christ adds to the three main branches of apologetics: classical, reformed, and presuppositionalism.