Jean-Francois Mayer (born 25 April 1957 in Fribourg, Switzerland) is a Swiss religious historian, translator, and Director of the Institute Religioscope. His writing focuses on religion and new religious movements, the Unification Church, the Church of Scientology, the Order of the Solar Temple and the Pilgrims of Arès. He has also published works about aliens and links between religion and the Internet.

Life and career

He has a doctorate degree in History at the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 (1984). ^[1] From 1991 to 1998, he worked as an analyst on international affairs and policy for the Swiss federal government. ^{[2] [3]: 197} In 1999, he founded a firm of strategic researches named JFM Recherches et Analyses, and taught at the University of Freiburg from 1999 to 2007. ^[2] In 2007, Mayer founded the Institute Religioscope and became the director. ^[4]

Works

Mayer's writing focuses on religion and new religious movements, including Islam, ^[4] the Unification Church, the Church of Scientology, the Order of the Solar Temple and the Pilgrims of Arès. He has also published works about aliens and links between religion and the Internet. ^{[5] [6] [7] [8]}

Mayer's book Les mythes du Temple Solaire, about the Order of the Solar Temple, was positively reviewed by sociologist Françoise Champion [ fr], who called it a "valuable work" and praised Mayer's understanding of the people involved. In the book, Mayer regularly quoted the OTS's own writings, arguing that ignoring what he views as inseperable from the decline of the OTS would lessen understanding. ^[9] Mayer personally participated in the investigation of the OTS, being consulted by the Swiss police, ^{[9] [3]: 197, 203} after he was mailed the group's suicide note by its leaders. ^[10]

Mayer had studied the organization prior, and published the only academic writing on the OTS before the violence occurred, Templars for the Age of Aquarius: The Archedia Clubs (1984–1991) and the International Chivalric Order of the Solar Tradition, ^{[11]: 3–4} published in the French newsletter Mouvements Religieux in January 1993. ^[11]: 7 Mayer had personally attended OTS meanings as far back as 1987. ^[3]: 203 Mayer's later article on the OTS, Our Terrestrial Journey is Coming to an End, was analyzed by Jean E. Rosenfeld writing for Nova Religio, who praised Mayer's scholarship as "admirably restrained", ^[3]: 197and concurred with Mayer on applying Colin Campbell's "cultic mileau" concept to the OTS. ^[3]: 201

Selected bibliography

This is a partial list of Mayer's works: ^[12]

• La Nouvelle Église de Lausanne et le mouvement swedenborgien en Suisse romande des origines à 1948, Zürich, Swedenborg Verlag, 1984. ISBN  3-85927-402-3
• Sectes nouvelles. Un regard neuf ; preface by Émile Poulat, Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 1985. ISBN  978-2204024587
• Les sectes. Non-conformismes chrétiens et nouvelles religions, 2nd edition, Paris, Éditions du Cerf/Saint Laurent (Québec), Fides, 1988. ISBN  9782204028110
• L'Évêque Bugnion ou les Voyages extraordinaires d'un aventurier ecclésiastique vaudois, Lausanne, Éditions 24 heures, 1989. ISBN  2826510630
• Les mythes du Temple solaire, Genève. Georg, 1996. ISBN  978-2-8257-0554-4
• Confessions d'un chasseur de sectes, Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 1990. ISBN  2-204-04060-6
• Les fondamentalismes, Genève, Georg, 2001. ISBN  2825707678
• La naissance des nouvelles religions, with Reender Kranenborg, Georg Editeur, Geneva, 2004, ISBN  2-8257-0877-1
• Internet et religion, Gollion, Infolio, 2008 ISBN  978-2884740968

References