About the Author

J. Gordon Melton is the director in Santa Barbara, California, of the Institute for the Study of American Religion. He is the author of the influential Encyclopedia of American Religions and some twenty other works, co-author of the award-winning Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, and a frequent contributor to scholarly books and journals on the subject of new religions. His previous book in this series, Scientology, was praised in the Journal of Church and State as a "crisp, cogent study" by one of the "foremost experts on new and unconventional religions," noting that "few books pack as much information into so little space" or in such an "insightful, objective, and scholarly" way.