A modern classic, Modern Religious Cults and Movements has continued to garner citations even after further investigation has continued to add to the literature on the subject. Atkins begins with the forms and backgrounds of what he considered the inevitable Catholic and Protestant traditions. The more recent developments in Christianity led to a belief in faith healing in general that grew into Christian Science. Clearly this is the modern religion that concerned him most as Atkins gives an approach to Mary Baker Eddy and her tradition, examines Christian Science as a philosophy and as a theology, and also as a system of healing and a religion. The universal and loosely defined “new thought” led to a renewed interest in the East and consequently Theosophy and related “cults”. Atkins addresses the Spiritualism that was a well attested phenomenon in the decades after the turn of the twentieth century, and concludes with a discussion of minor cults. This portrayal of non-traditional religions in its own day is a period piece that will be of interest to students of American religion and historians of religion in general.

Gaius Glenn Atkins (1868-1956) was educated at Ohio State, Cincinnati Law School, and Yale Divinity School. He was a Congregationalist minister and served parishes in Greenfield, Massachusetts, Burlington, Vermont, Detroit, Michigan, and Providence, Rhode Island.