Jehovah's Witnesses Portrait of a Contemporary Religious Movement (Hardcover)

From the Publisher: This is the first major study of this enigmatic religious society. By examining the Jehovah's Witnesses' dramatic recent expansion, Andrew Holden reveals the dependency of this quasi-totalitarian movement on the very physical and cultural resources which have brought about the privatization of religion, the erosion of community and the separation of "fact" from supernatural faith. Asking vital questions about the ambivalent relationship of spiritual meaning to modern secular materialism, Jehovah's Witnesses reconsiders the Witnesses' ascetic faith at once as an inverted form of psuedo-corporate "branding" and as an anti-modern quest for certainty in a hostile world of relativism and risk. This is the first major study of this enigmatic religious society. By examining the Jehovah's Witnesses' dramatic recent expansion, Andrew Holden reveals the dependency of this quasi-totalitarian movement on the very physical and cultural resources which have brought about the privatization of religion, the erosion of community and the separation of "fact" from supernatural faith. Asking vital questions about the ambivalent relationship of spiritual meaning to modern secular materialism, Jehova's Witnesses reconsiders the Witnesses' ascetic faith at once as an inverted form of pseudo-corporate "branding," and as an anti-modern quest for certainty in a hostile world of relativism and risk.