This is a study of the Heaven's Gate religious group. The research is supported under the Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER) rubric, having severe urgency with regard to availability of data. Heaven's Gate illustrates an extreme level of member commitment, and one research theme will be the social processes that built up this high degree of social control and organization over time. Related themes are conversion, defection, and charismatic leadership. The primary data collection method will be in-depth interviews with members who left the group in the last ten years. Other sources of data will include archives, recordings of group activities, and interviews with relatives of members. This research will help develop an emerging research area: the sociology of high-tension religious movements that exist outside the standard cultural traditions. At the same time, it will provide a fundamental basis of knowledge concerning deviant religious groups that will help government officials and policy makers deal with the many challenges that these group increasingly present in modern society.
