Irving Hexham

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Irving Hexham (April 14, 1943) is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is married to Dr. Karla Poewe who is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Calgary, and is the father of two children, Jeremy and Janet. He holds dual British and Canadian citizenship.

Contents 1 Education 2 Career 3 Personal Faith 4 Selected Essays 5 Bibliography 6 External links 7 See also

[edit] Education

Hexham was born in Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. After leaving school at the age of fifteen he spent six years (1958-1964) as an apprentice gas fitter with the North Western Gas Board, and obtained his City and Guilds and advanced diplomas in Gas Technology. After the completion of his apprenticeship he was offered a management position with the Gas Board. During his industrial career he also served as a union representative.

Hexham qualified for university matriculation by correspondence study and entered the University of Lancaster in 1967 where he majored in Religious Studies with minors in History and Philosophy. He graduated with a B.A.(Hons) in 1970.

He then proceeded to post-graduate studies with obtaining his M.A. "with commendation" in religious studies and theology from the Bristol University in 1972. His M.A. was based on anthropological methods and theories and involved a short dissertation on Glastonbury. He obtained a Ph.D. in History from the University of Bristol in 1975. His Ph.D. thesis was on Afrikaner Calvinism and the origins of apartheid as an ideology. In the course of his studies he lived in the Republic of South Africa and studied the languages of German and Afrikaans. His M.A. supervisor was F.B. Welbourn while his Ph.D. supervisor was Kenneth Ingham. When he was in South Africa Elaine Botha at Potchefstroom University was appointed his local supervisor by the University of Bristol.

[edit] Career

Hexham has held a number of posts in various tertiary institutions of higher learning. He was an assistant professor at Bishop Lonsdale College, University of Derby, England from 1974-1977. He also served as a course tutor in the Open University at Derby (1975-77). Hexham then relocated to Canada and assumed the post of assistant professor at Regent College, Vancouver (1977-80). He then became an assistant professor in religious studies at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg (1980-84), and then an assistant professor in religious studies at the University of Calgary (1984-88). He was promoted to being an associate professor at Calgary (1988-92), and then in 1992 assumed the post of Full Professor in religious studies.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and has been a member of various professional organizations including the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, American Academy of Religion, Association for the Sociology of Religion, South African Institute of Race Relations, South African Society for Mission Studies, and the Berliner Gesellschaft fuer Missionsgeschichte of which he was a founding member with Ulrich van der Heyden. Recently he was elected a Fellow of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

Hexham has lectured in undergraduate and post-graduate programs covering topics such as cults, sects and new religious movements, history of religion, sociology of religion, African history and religions, religion and society in South Africa, millenarian movements, theology and politics, Christianity and culture, missions and society, religion and ethics, fundamentalism and charismatic religion, methods in the study of religion, and the philosophy of religion.

His academic interests are listed as Political Religions; Nationalism and Religion; Afrikaner Nationalism; National Socialism; New Religious Movements, World Religions in Modern Society; World Christianity and Christian Missions, African Initiated/Independent Churches; Modern Religious Thought; while his research interests are said to be Ancestral neo-Paganism, the New Right, and political religions in Germany.

He served as a contributing editor to the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa (1981-93), and is on the Editorial Board for the journals Studies in Religion and Religion.

Hexham has written or co-edited a number of works treating various facets of religion in South Africa including African independent churches, Afrikaner Calvinism, and Zulu religion. He has also compiled reference works such as the Concise Dictionary of Religion and Pocket Dictionary of New Religious Movements. He has also co-written two analytic works on the phenomenon of new religions and cults, and co-edited a pioneering work on the development of Christian contextual missions and new religious movements. Currently he is working on issues related to Germany as can be seen from his recent publications.

Among his graduate students are Dr. Douglas Cowan of the University of Waterloo, Professor Mark Mullins of Sophia University in Tokyo, and Kurt Widmar of the University of Lethbridge.

[edit] Personal Faith

Hexham initially rejected Christianity as a teenager before converting through an evangelistic outreach organized by Cheadle Parish Church where he was influenced by Val Grieve and Peter Hayman, who later became Professor of the Hebrew Bible at the University of Edinburgh. He became familiar with the Plymouth Brethren though an aunt who lived in Whitehaven, Cumbria, and through friendship with Ward Gasque one of the founders of Regent College. He identifies as an evangelical Anglican who frequently attends a German speaking Roman Catholic Church.

In September 1962, one year after the building of the Berlin Wall, he visited Berlin on an apprentice exchange organized by the Manchester Industrial Chaplaincy and the Evangelical Church in Berlin. This visit made a profound impact upon him brining him face to face with questions about Christianity and Communism.

Following this visit he met Trevor Watts who introduced him to Clark Pinnock then pursuing graduate studies with Professor F.F. Bruce at the University of Manchester in England. In 1964 Pinnock suggested that Hexham should visit Francis Schaeffer and the L'Abri Fellowship Study Center in Switzerland. Encouraged by Pinnock, Schaeffer, and Gillian White, the wife of the Opera Singer Sir Willard White, he decided to abandon his management career and entered the newly created Religious Studies program at the University of Lancaster in 1967. At Lancaster he studied with Ninian Smart and Edward Conze among others. Before entering university he spent three months during the summer of 1967 at L'Abri.

Hexham regularly speaks in churches and at community events, he has contributed journalistic articles to publications such as Christian Century,Christianity Today, and Christian Research Journal, and regularly appears on various radio and TV stations in Canada.

He is a keen advocate of Christians discovering their intellectual and cultural heritage. To this end he edited the Zondervan Christian Travelers Guides series to which he contributed two books. It was designed to introduce Christian tourists to important sites in church history throughout England and Western Europe. Unfortunately, the series was withdrawn from publication after the events of 9/11.

Hexham has also maintained a strong interest in Christian missions both in history and in contemporary practice. He has highlighted the role of Nineteenth Century African Christian influences in the early development of Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions in Protestantism.

He has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new religions pose to the church. In this capacity is a critic of many popular books by writers in the Christian countercult movement, and has faulted these works for weak arguments and dubious interpretations of data, poor scholarship, and factual inaccuracies (see his essay "The Evangelical Response to the New Age"). He has questioned the manner in which some apologists rely heavily on a confrontational approach to devotees in new religions (see his essay "Witnessing to the Cults"). Hexham's criticisms have not always been well-received by those Christian apologists who have been the object to them. He prefers the pursuit of a rigorous form of primary research into new religions as a preparation for undertaking a Christian missions approach grounded in the disciplines of anthropology, history, theology, missions, communications theory, and so on (see Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach).

Consequently, he rejects the brainwashing theory of religious conversion and indoctrination, and also repudiates deprogramming as a method for responding to cult adherents. Critics accuse Hexham of being a cult apologist.

[edit] Selected Essays

Published Reports

• Religious Extremism in Africa, for UNHCR Emergency & Security Service, Geneva, September 2002, pp. 37. Available on the Internet at:

http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rsd/rsddocview.pdf?CATEGORY=RSDCOI&id=3daec69d4. Accessed October 2002.

• A Review of the Current State of Religious Magazines and Newspapers in Canada,” Ottawa, Department of Canadian Heritage, Ottawa, October 2002, pp. 55, assisted by Joanne Emond-McCullum who worked on the French Canadian publications section.

Refereed Academic Articles:

• “Just like another Israel”, Religion (London), 1977, 7/1, pp. 1-7.
• “Religious Conviction or Political Tool: The Problem of Christian National Education” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa (Cape Town), No. 26, March 1979, pp. 13-23.
• “Cracking the Moonie Code”, CRUX (Vancouver), September 1979, pp. 25-28.
• “Calvinism and Culture”, CRUX (Vancouver), December 1979, pp. 14-19.
• “Dutch Calvinism and the Origins of Afrikaner Nationalism”, African Affairs (London), Spring, 1980, pp. 195-208.
• “Christianity and Apartheid: An Introductory Bibliography”, Reformed Journal (Grand Rapids), April 1980, pp. S1-S11.
• Calvinism and the Stigma of Apartheid” Third Way (London), July 1979, pp.-20-21.
• “Witnessing to the Cults”, CRUX (Vancouver), March 1980, pp. 12-14.
• “Deprogramming: Should Christians Support the Practice?” written with Rudy Dirks, CRUX (Vancouver), March 1981, pp. 15-20.
• “Abraham Kuyper and Christian Politics”, CRUX (Vancouver), Vol. XIX, No. 1, March 1983, pp. 2-7.
• “Lord of the Sky-King of the Earth: Zulu Traditional Religion and Belief in the Sky God”, Studies in Religion (Waterloo), Vol. 10, 3, 1981, pp. 273-285.
• “Conversion and Consolidation in an English Town: The Freaks of Glastonbury: 1967-1982”, Update (Aarhus), March 1983, pp. 3-12.
• “A Short History of Black Theology in South Africa”, Revue Africaine de Theologie (Kinshasa), Vol. 6, No. 12, October 1983, pp. 189-203.
• “Science Fiction, Christianity and Technic Civilization”, Word and World (St. Paul), Vol. IV. No 1, Winter, 1984, pp. 35-42.
• “Religion in Southern Africa”, Religious Studies Review, (Waterloo), June 1985, Vol. II, No.4, pp. 370-378.
• “The Soul of the New Age”, with Karla Poewe-Hexham, Christianity Today (Chicago), September 2, 1988, pp. 17-21.
• “The ‘Evidence’ for Atlantis”, with Karla Poewe-Hexham, Christian Research Journal (San Juan Capistrano), Vol.12, No.1, Summer, 1988, pp.16-19.
• “Charismatic Christianity and Change in South Africa”, with Karla Poewe-Hexham, The Christian Century (Chicago), August, 7-24, 1988, pp. 738-740.
• “African Religions: Recent & Lesser Known Works”, Religion, (Lancaster), Vol. 20; 1990, pp. 361-372.
• “On Plagiarism and Integrity in Scholarly Activity”, Humanist: Humanities Computing, 5:4, 3 April 1992, received electronically via humanist@brownvm.bitnet, 5.0814. This article was published electronically and was later cited in Lingua Franca, September/October 1992, pp. 18-20, and College & Research Libraries, Vol.53, No. 5, September 1992, p. 455.
• “Isaiah Shembe: Zulu Religious Leader”, Religion, 27:4, October 1997, pp. 361-373, this is a revised English version of 33.

“Verfassungsfeindlich: Church, State and New Religions in Germany”, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. Vol. 2, No. 2, 1999, pp. 208-227.

• “Suicide or Murder in Uganda?” Religion in the News, August, 2000:7-9 + 24.
• “New Religions and the Anti-Cult Movement in Canada”, Nova Religio, 2 April, 2001, Vol. 4, No.2, pp. 281-288.
• “Jakob Wilhelm Hauer’s New Religion and National Socialism,” with Karla Poewe, in the Journal of Contemporary Religion, London, Vol. 20, No. 2, May 2005, pp. 195-215.
• " Inventing ‘Paganists’: a Close Reading of Richard Steigmann-Gall's the Holy Reich,” the Journal of Contemporary History, January 2007 pp. 59-78.

Chapters in Books:

• “Afrikaner Nationalism and the South African War”, in The South African War, edited by Peter Warwick, London, Longmans, 1980, pp. 386-403.
• “Some Aspects of Religion and Spiritual Healing in Cultsville: a Contemporary North American City”, in Studies in Church History, ed., W. Sheils, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp.415-429.
• “Christian Neo-Fascism: A Possible Cultural Future?”, in Canadian Cultural Futures, edited by G. Spraakman, T. Becher & K. Wilde, Montreal, Canadian Futures Association, 1984, pp. 41-46.
• “New Religions in Canada”, with Raymond Currie and Joan Townsend, in The New Canadian Encyclopaedia, edited by James Ogilvy, Edmonton, Hurtig, 1985, Vol.2, pp. 1241-1243.
• “Attitudes to Law of the New Christian Right in America”, in Law in a Cynical Society? Opinion and Law in the 1980’s, eds., D. Gibson and J.K. Baldwin, Calgary, Carswell, 1985, pp.358-363
• “Christian Social Thought in the Dutch Neo-Calvinist Tradition: A Comment on Bob Goudzwaard’s Views”, in Religion, Economics and Social Thought, eds., Walter Block and Irving Hexham, Vancouver, The Fraser Institute, 1986, pp.265-275.
• “African Religions and the Nature of Religious Studies”, Religious Studies: Issues, Prospects and Proposals, eds., K.K. Klostermaier and L.W. Hurtado, Atlanta, Scholars Press, 1991, pp. 361-379.
• “The Evangelical Response to the New Age”, in Perspectives on the New Age, edited by James R. Lewis and Gordon Melton (New York, SUNY, 1992), pp. 152-163.
• “Canadian Evangelicals”, in The Sociology of Religion: A Canadian Focus, edited by Ted Hewitt, Toronto, Macmillan, 1993, pp. 289-302.
• “Evolution: The Central Mythology of the New Age Movement”, in RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL ORDER. Between Sacred and Secular: Research and Theory on Quasi-Religion, edited by Arthur L. Greil and Thomas Robbins, Greenwich, JAI Press, 1994, pp. 303-321.
• “Charismatic Churches in South Africa: A Critique of Criticisms and Problems of Bias”, with Karla Poewe, in Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture, edited by Karla Poewe, Columbia, South Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, 1994, pp 50-69.
• “Henry Callaway: Religion and Rationalism in Nineteenth Century Mission History,” in Missionsgeschichte-Kirchengeschichte-Weltgeschichte (Mission History, Church History, World History) edited by Ulrich van der Heyden, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996, pp. 439-449.
• “Christianity in Transorangia prior to 1910”, with Karla Poewe, in Christianity in South Africa, edited by Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997, pp. 121-134, and 421-427.
• “Violating Missionary Culture: The Tyranny of Theory and the Ethics of Historical Research”, in Mission und Gewalt (Mission and the State), edited by Ulrich van der Heyden, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000, pp. 193-206.
• “Evangelical Illusions: Postmodern Christianity and the Growth of Muslim Communities in Europe and North America,” in No Other Gods Before Me? Evangelicals and the Challenge of Religious Studies, edited by John Stackhouse, Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2001, pp. 137-160.
• “Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches in South Africa”, with Karla Poewe, Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2002, pp. 227-238.
• “New Religions of African Origin” in Dictionary of Contemporary Religion in the Western World, edited by Christopher Partridge, Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press, 2002, pp. 290-294.
• “New Religions and the Anti-Cult Movement in Canada”, with Karla Poewe, in New Religious Movements in the 21st Century, edited by Phillip Charles Lucas and Thomas Robbins, New York and London, Routledge, 2004, pp. 241.250.
• "Forget about academic fraud? Were you sexually harassed?”, in Kenneth Westhues, ed., Workplace Mobbing in Academe: Reports from Twenty Universities, Lewistion, Edwin Mellen Press, 2004, pp. 218-237.
• "Weber, Troeltsch, and the Maintenance of Hegemony", in Ecumenical and Eclectic: The Unity of the Church in the Contemporary World Essays in Honour of Alan P.F. Sell, edited by Anna M Robbins, Carlisle, Paternoster, 2007
• "Trashing Evangelical Christians: The legacy of James Barr's Fundamentalism" in the Festschrift for John Warwick Montgomery, Bonn, forthcoming
• “Plagiarism,” in Contemporary Issues Database, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2006. This involved a series of articles discussing the issues and various high profile cases. They contained around 8,000 words. The database is an online resource available to schools and institutions of higher education.
• "Broederbond, The", pp. 105-106; "Gleichschaltung", pp. 279-280; "Ossawabrandweg", p. 493;"Protestantism and Nazism", pp 539-540; "South Africa", pp 616-618; "Terra'Blanche, Eugene", p. 657. In "World Fascism a Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Cyprian Blamiers, Los Angeles, ABC-CLIO, 2006

[edit] Bibliography

Books:

• The Irony of Apartheid: The Struggle for National Independence of Afrikaner Calvinism against Imperialism (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1981). ISBN 0-88946-904-0
• New Religions as Global Cultures: Making The Human Sacred (with Karla Poewe) (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997). ISBN 0-8133-2508-0
• Pocket Dictionary of New Religious Movements (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002). ISBN 0-8308-1466-3
• Understanding Cults and New Religions (with Karla Poewe)(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1986). ISBN 0-8028-0170-6
• Concise Dictionary of Religion (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993). ISBN 0-8308-1404-3
• The Christian Traveler's Guide to Germany (with Lothar Henry Kope) (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001). ISBN 0-310-22539-6
• The Christian Traveler's Guide to Great Britain (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001). ISBN 0-310-22552-3

Edited Books:

• Religion, Economics, and Social Thought, with Walter Block, Vancouver, The Fraser Institute, 1986, pp. 573. ISBN 0-88975-076-9
• Afro-Christian Religion and Healing in Southern Africa, with G.C. Oosthuizen, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen, 1989, pp. 432. ISBN 0-88946-226-7
• The Twentieth Century Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge, editor J.D. Douglas, consulting editor, with Robert G. Clouse, et al., Grand Rapids, Baker, 1991, pp. 896.
• Afro-Christianity at the Grassroots in Southern Africa, edited, with G.C. Oosthuizen, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen, 1991, pp. 412.
• Empirical Studies of African Independent/Indigenous Churches, with G. C. Oosthuizen, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen, 1992, pp. 345. ISBN 0-7734-9588-6
• Christian Travelers Guide to Italy, by David Bershad and Carolina Mangone, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, April, 2001, pp. 235.
• Christian Travelers Guide to France, by Mark Konnert and Peter Barrs, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, April, 2001, pp. 222.
• Encountering New Religious Movements, with John Moorhead and Steve Rost, Grand Rapids, Kregel, 2004, pp.352. ISBN 0-8254-2893-9

Edited Religious Texts:

• Zulu Religion: Texts and Interpretations. Vol. I: Traditional Zulu Ideas about God, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen, 1987, pp. 455. ISBN 0-88946-181-3
• The Scriptures of the amaNazaretha of Ekuphakameni, translated from the Zulu by the Rt. Rev. Londa Shembe and Hans-Jürgen Becken, with introductory essays by Irving Hexham and G.C. Oosthuizen, Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 1994, pp. xlix + 144.
• The Story of Isaiah Shembe - History and Traditions Centered on Ekuphakameni and Mount Nhlangakazi: Volume One of the Sacred History and Traditions of the amaNazaretha, translated from the Zulu by Hans-Jürgen Becken, edited with G.C. Oosthuizen, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press, 1996, pp. 258. ISBN 0-7734-8773-5
• The Story of Isaiah Shembe - Early Regional Traditions of the Acts of the Nazarites: Volume Two of the Sacred History and Traditions of the amaNazaretha, translated from the Zulu by Hans-Jürgen Becken, edited with G.C. Oosthuizen, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press, 1999, pp. 317.
• The Story of Isaiah Shembe - The Continuing Story of the Sun and the Moon, Oral Testimony and the Sacred History of the amaNazarites Under the Leadership of Bishops Johannes Galilee Shembe and Amos Shembe: Volume Three of the Sacred History and Traditions of the amaNazaretha, translated from the Zulu by Hans-Jürgen Becken, edited with G.C. Oosthuizen, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press, 2001, pp. 335. ISBN 0-7734-7335-1
• The Catechism of the Nazarites and Related Writings: Volume Four of the Sacred History and Traditions of the amaNazaretha, translated from the Zulu by Hans-Jrgen Becken, edited with Robert Papini, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press, 2002, pp. 246. ISBN 0-7734-7291-6
• The Hymns of the amaNazarites, edited with Adreas Hauser, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press, 2005. ISBN 0-7734-6058-6

[edit] External links

• Irving Hexham's Home Page at the University of Calgary [1]
• Biographical profile at InterVarsity Press [2]
• Concise Dictionary of Religion as an e-text [3]

[edit] See also

• Apologetics
• Christian apologetics
• Christian countercult movement
• Cult apologist
• New religious movements
• Opposition to cults and new religious movements
• Francis Schaeffer