Word: sects
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...possible. Last year scholars combing a graveyard at the Qumran site in the West Bank, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, turned up an elaborate burial mound and some bones, which they theorized belonged to the Teacher of Righteousness--the leader of the Essene sect thought to have assembled the scrolls. The Teacher has long been felt by some scholars to be John the Baptist, since John's Messianic Judaism and stress on immersion were strikingly similar to Essene beliefs...
...access a blocked Chinese news site, using a proxy server that cloaks his online movements. Next to him, a friend uses the same technique to get to a porn site. Four seats down, a thirtysomething woman takes a covert look at the teachings of Falun Gong, the outlawed meditation sect...
Followers of the Chinese spiritual practice Falun Gong often use high-tech tools to spread their message in China, where the sect is banned. But the group's latest tactic--overriding Chinese satellite Sinosat 1 and replacing its regular programming for 10 minutes last week with fuzzy text reading "Falun Dafa Is Good"--stunned government officials with its sophistication. (Falun Dafa is the name given to the group's beliefs.) To pull off the feat, the activists needed a nearly 30-ft. satellite dish plus about $1 million worth of equipment that would fire a perfectly tuned beam at Sinosat...
...still exists, but another movement has eclipsed it. Asai's Nichiren Kenshokai sect, which drew throngs to the Kawaguchi civic center, claims to have 881,865 followers. "Kenshokai is the biggest of the new religions," says Taro Takimoto, a lawyer who helped in 1995 to organize a group comprising family members trying to rescue relatives from cults. "There are many high school students quitting school, people quitting their jobs, to join Kenshokai." Kenshokai's nationalistic appeal is particularly popular among young men, including members of Japan's Self-Defense Force. The cult claims to have attracted 11,000 new adherents...
...group and does agree to meet?the first time, he says, he has given an interview to a journalist. A serious man in a business suit, he explains how the movement was started by his grandfather in 1957, when he and his acolytes splintered from the centuries-old Nichiren sect of Buddhism. Kenshokai differs from other Nichiren sects?especially the politically powerful Soka Gakkai?in that its practitioners see it as destined to become the national religion of Japan. "We still believe that," says Katsue Asai...