Contemporary religious Satanism

Contemporary Religious Satanism, edited by Jesper Aagaard Petersen, emerged from the burgeoning academic field of New Religious Movements. Published in 2008 by Routledge, the volume serves as a comprehensive anthology designed to move beyond the moral panics and sensationalist portrayals that historically dominated the study of Satanic groups. The collection was born out of a need for rigorous, evidence-based scholarship that treats these modern organizations as legitimate objects of sociological and historical inquiry.

The text features contributions from leading scholars in the study of Western esotericism and contemporary occultism. Petersen intended the collection to categorize the diverse and often conflicting manifestations of Satanism, distinguishing between the atheistic individualism of groups like the Church of Satan and the theistic or esoteric practices found elsewhere. Upon release, the book was received by the academic community as a foundational reference point for neutralizing the stigma associated with the subject matter and grounding the discourse in empirical reality.