The Fragmentation of a Sect: Schism in the Worldwide Church of God. By David V. Barrett. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xviii + 283 pp. $58.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Fragmentation of a Sect: Schism in the Worldwide Church of God . By David V. Barrett . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. xviii + 283 pp. $58.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesTracking the trajectory of schismatic groups and New Religious Movements (NRMs) is the closest thing to physics in the study of religion. There is a sense that scientific inquiry can answer the questions that arise: who assumes positions of leadership; who stays and who strays; and which group--the original or the various schismatic groups that emerge--are likely to survive, and why.Barrett takes readers through all of these questions with the Worldwide Church of God, an America-based Adventist-related religious organization founded by Herbert W. Armstrong in the 1930s with roots that dig deep into the nineteenth century. The work is half history of the organization and half analysis of how that organization (and its adherents) experienced changes--doctrinal and organizational--as they were introduced in the last few decades of the twentieth-century. After a cursory history of the group and its main ideological positions, Barrett explores the results of his own (admittedly limited) survey conducted among members of the various splinter groups created when Armstrong began modifying church doctrine in the years before his death (in 1986), and after Armstrong's successor (Joseph Tkach) transformed the ideology (and affiliation) of the organization from Adventist to more traditional evangelical orientation in the years after.There is no shortage of interesting detail in the history of this group, but doctrinal shifts, personality clashes, prodigal sons and treacherous friends, and sexual escapades provide only some of the energy fueling the shattering of the Worldwide Church of God, which incorporated more than most Adventist groups a strong self-identification with non-rabbinic Judaism and Old Testament practice, including observance of the "seven major annual festivals of Judaism: Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread [also part of the Jewish observance of Passover], the Feast of Pentecost [known in Judaism as Shavu'ot], the Feast of Trumpets [Rosh HaShanah], the Day of Atonement [Yom Kippur], the Feast of Tabernacles [known in Judaism as Sukkot], and the Last Great Day [possibly the Jewish holiday of Simhat Torah]" (Barrett, 33). It seems that, with a critical mass of what sociologists of religion would identify as Worldwide Church of God "tension" with the rest of American society--that is, the sense of being out of step with (or even opposed to) the dominant culture--it took very little of the other factors listed above not only to fuel the break-up of the organization, but as Barrett calls it in his title, to fragment it into almost countless bits.While the historical portion of the work is not weak, it is clearly present in the service of the second, sociological section of the work. This is not meant as a critique; like many schismatic groups and NRMs, the Worldwide Church of God--and more so its various post-Armstrong splinter groups--was small, and remains generally unfamiliar to most readers. …