[3][4][5] Countercult ministries often concern themselves with religious sects that consider themselves Christian but hold beliefs that are thought to contradict the teachings of the Bible.
[10][11] The movement publishes its views through a variety of media, including books, magazines, and newsletters, radio broadcasting, audio and video cassette production, direct-mail appeals, proactive evangelistic encounters, professional and avocational websites, as well as lecture series, training workshops and counter-cult conferences.
"[15] In fact, a good deal of the early Christian literature is devoted to the exposure and refutation of unorthodox theology, mystery religions and Gnostic groups.
[16][17] Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus of Rome were some of the early Christian apologists who engaged in critical analyses of unorthodox theology, Greco-Roman pagan religions, and Gnostic groups.
[18][19][20] In the Protestant tradition, some of the earliest writings opposing unorthodox groups (such as the Swedenborgians)[citation needed] can be traced back to John Wesley, Alexander Campbell and Princeton Theological Seminary theologians like Charles Hodge and B.
[24] Watson wrote a series of didactic novels like Escaped from the Snare: Christian Science,[25] Bewitched by Spiritualism,[26] and The Gilded Lie (Millennial Dawnism),[27] as warnings of the dangers posed by cultic groups.
[28][29] The early twentieth-century apologists generally applied the words heresy and sects to groups like the Christadelphians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Spiritualists, and Theosophists.
This was reflected in several chapters contributed to the multi-volume work released in 1915 The Fundamentals, where apologists criticized the teachings of Charles Taze Russell, Mary Baker Eddy, the Mormons and Spiritualists.
Some examples of sources (with published dates where known) that documented this approach are: One of the first prominent countercult apologists was Jan Karel van Baalen (1890–1968), an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America.
A cult may take many forms but it is basically a religious movement which distorts or warps orthodox faith to the point where truth becomes perverted into a lie.
[49] A mid-1980s debate about apologetic methodology between Ronald Enroth and J. Gordon Melton, led the latter to place more emphasis in his publications on differentiating the Christian countercult from the secular anti-cult.
[50] Eric Pement urged Melton to adopt the label "Christian countercult",[51] and since the early 1990s the terms has entered into popular usage and is recognized by sociologists such as Douglas Cowan.
[52] The only existing umbrella organization within the countercult movement in the United States is the Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR), founded in 1982 by Martin, Enroth, Gordon Lewis, and James Bjornstad.
[citation needed] A group of organizations that originated within the context of established religion is working in more general fields of "cult awareness," especially in Europe.
[66] The dominant method is the emphasis on detecting unorthodox or heretical doctrines and contrasting those with orthodox interpretations of the Bible and early creedal documents.
[68] Apologists like Dave Hunt in Peace, Prosperity and the Coming Holocaust and Hal Lindsey in The Terminal Generation have tended to interpret the phenomena of cults as part of the burgeoning evidence of signs that Christ's Second Advent is close at hand.
[69] Both Hunt and Constance Cumbey have applied a conspiracy model to interpreting the emergence of New Age spirituality and linking that to speculations about fulfilled prophecies heralding Christ's reappearance.