jehovah's witness
Saturday Morning google goodie Proselytize or metastasize? Just add followers
Dallas Morning News (subscription), TX - 13 hours ago
... Four were born in the last 175 years: Bahá'í, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists. ... [ Excerpt:Perhaps 5 million people follow these faiths in the United States, less than 2 percent of the population. But experts say they're more interesting and more important than their numbers suggest.
"They become important because they revivify the whole tradition," said Gordon Melton, an authority on new religious movements. So church renewal movements like Vineyard and Calvary Chapel put a charge into Christianity, he said.
They can affect international relations. The Falun Gong, for instance, make sure their claim of persecution at the hands of the Chinese government is heard in many other nations.
And new religious movements challenge the faithful in other traditions. "They make me consider questions I never would have asked," said the Rev. John Saliba, a Jesuit priest and professor at the University of Detroit Mercy.They're spiritual "experiments" that can be studied to figure out how religion works. Sociologists track these movements the way genetic biologists focus on fruit flies.
And once in a while, they make the big time. ....
