American Cults

Student Learning Outcomes, Goals, Objectives:

Students successfully completing this course will be able to:

• Analyze written texts to understand how they relate to particular audiences, purposes, and contexts as a way to inform one's own writing.
• Create and revise written texts for particular audiences, purposes, and contexts.
• Through oral or written reflection demonstrate awareness of one's writing choices as well as how one's own writing contributes to ongoing conversations in the relevant discipline.
• Examine religious movements in the United States that have been associated with the word cult.
• Identify the key characteristics associated with the words cult, sect, and new religious movement.
• Analyze the development of normative assessments of religion in American history.

Course Grading Information:

Activity/Performance Measure	Percentage/Points
Test – Democratization, Sects, NRMs, Polygamy	10%
Attendence	15%
Final paper draft, including prep materials	10%
Final paper, 5-8 pages – This paper asks you to reflect on the arguments of authors we have read and how they have changed your thinking (See instructions on Canvas)	15%
Reading Tickets	20%
Participation in class discussions	30%

Course Grade Scale: A 94-100% / A- 90-93% / B+ 87-89% / B 84-86% / B- 80-83% / C+ 77-79% / C 74-76% / C- 73-70% / D+ 67-69% / D 64-66% / D- 60-63% / F 59% and below.

Attendance/Participation:

Miss more than three classes and your grade will drop.

Course Materials Purchased by the Students:

James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher, Why Waco: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).