{"product_id":"from-mother-divine-to-the-corner-swami-religious-cults-in-philadelphia-9781634992633","title":"From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia","description":"Religious cults have marked every society since the beginning of time. Some have an audacious presence, like Anton Szandor LaVey's Church of the Process, whose black-caped missionaries used to walk streets of Philadelphia. Other cults seem to be the very soul of respectability, like Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement, a name that does justice to the group's well intentioned beginnings and the good the Peace Mission went on to accomplish, but which nevertheless hides a history of skullduggery and intrigue. Father Divine, to his believers, was God, placing him in an already overcrowded cosmos inhabited by pop-up gurus, false shamans, embodiment of divinity leaders, and assorted New Age marketers like Philadelphia's own Swami Nostradamus Virato, publisher of \u003ci\u003eNew Frontier Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, once the toast of the city's New Age community. Some cults, like Scientology, began as a fringe movement that mushroomed into Hollywood-centric empires, while other cults, like Madame Blavatsky and her 19th Century Theosophical Society, swept the world before ending up as a small lecture society just off Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square. In the post-modern era, the death of religion has transformed political and social causes into doctrinaire factions that might as well be religious cults that advocate the most severe forms of orthodoxy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e America Through Time\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/26\/2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781634992633\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 192\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.70lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.70d","brand":"Thom Nickels","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":38019739648181,"sku":"9781634992633","price":21.24,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_d59f2c36-21b5-403c-8861-a6d71ede83ea.jpg?v=1609173328","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/from-mother-divine-to-the-corner-swami-religious-cults-in-philadelphia-9781634992633","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}