ABSTRACT: This article analyzes how fashion functioned as a visual marker of alleged teenage deviance that helped fuel the "Satanic Panic" by examining over fifty American newspaper articles from 1981–1992. These newspapers identified specific teen fashion choices as evidence of Satanic experimentation, fostering the construction of the stereotypical teen "dabblers" as misguided and potentially dangerous, and endangered, youth. In response to this perceived threat, public schools attempted to prevent, control, and rescue alleged dabblers through dress codes that prohibited "Satanic" fashion. However, fashion history shows that participants in and those influenced by the emerging Goth subculture were identified as teen dabblers. These fashion choices amplified Panic fears, demonstrating how clothing and jewelry functioned as material evidence that helped people "make belief" in Satanic threats. This paper highlights fashion's central role in translating abstract anxieties into concrete social action during a moral panic.
ABSTRACT: Faith Church (Hit Gyülekezete) is a Pentecostal religious movement that emerged in Hungary as a semi-underground church in the latter years of the Cold War. Its roots are based on a series of contacts with foreign, primarily American, evangelical churches. The church combines elements of evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, but a central theme of the church is its philosemitism. It fits comfortably into the world of Christian Zionism, belief in the continuing covenantal role of the Jewish people. In this regard, Faith Church has been highly active in promoting its outlook in Hungary, including a deep connection to the Hungarian Jewish community, social and political activism to combat antisemitism in Hungary, and to encourage good relations with Israel. This Field Notes essay contributes to scholarship on Hit Gyülekezete by exploring its relationship to Jews, Zionism, and Israel.
ABSTRACT: New religious movements, syncretic practices, and the spiritual-but-not-religious identity have challenged sociologists of religion to reexamine the structure of religious communities. Following increased visibility and attention in the 1960s, researchers have characterized these movements through two broad approaches, what I term structural and movement-oriented approaches. The first emphasizes broad social transformations and deemphasizes institutions and organizations, while the latter focuses on the histories of religious movements and the actions of central actors within them. Each approach includes rich explanations, but both obscure important religious features. I argue that religious movements must be conceptualized through what I term a "semi-autonomous" approach that emphasizes how broad social changes are enacted or rejected within communities. I demonstrate the necessity of this approach through an examination of individuals who identify with both Judaism and Buddhism—colloquially known as "JewBus"—and argue that one must analyze contemporary religious movements as both embedded within and partially autonomous from broader religious changes.
ABSTRACT: This article examines the Scientological understanding of the self as a spiritual being, or "thetan," by looking closely at the origins of the doctrine that underlies both this term and the related mystical experience called "exteriorization," an out-of-body religious experience that, for many Scientologists, confirms the validity of belief in their spiritual existence as a thetan. The article also demonstrates that, in his creation of Scientology doctrine, L. Ron Hubbard was not only influenced by ideas from popular psychology, science-fiction, and various strains of twentieth-century esotericism, as is widely accepted, but also and substantially by early Information Age ideas popularized by the founding father of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener.
