These "eruptions" talked about by Finke and Stark are not what they seem. Classified as eruptions, only one was actually shown to be indeed an eruption. The four religious eruptions talked about are: one, "Consciousness Reformation" which is described as cult formations during the sixties and seventies; two, describes the Indian religions that are erupting within the cult formations in the sixties and seventies; three, the transformation of European teachings in the late sixties and early seventies into the New Age Movement; and four, the "explosion" of evangelical Protestantism and the decline of other denominations over the last few decades. .
The next part of the article is called "The Mystical Sixties". Because of the many movements in the late sixties, one for example is the Vietnam War movement, helped bring about a boom of cult religions. Finke and Stark's argument is that there are not an unusual number of cults and that the Indian influence has no major matter over cultural matters. From using many references including a table they show numbers of cults formed from the fifties till the late eighties. Also they show in the table, percentages of those cults that are of Eastern distinct. Through this table they show that their in fact was no extraordinary explosion of cult formations during the sixties and seventies. Many cults during the fifties were so small and innate that most records have fallen out of history, but the numbers in the table should be very similar to that of the sixties and seventies, and they use a quote for this argument; other wise it would not matter what they think. From this section Finke and Stark use some great sources that include a great survey with a huge number of 113,000, which I think is very useful in their argument. They also use examples of some cults and populations that are involved in that cult, one example they use are the Mormon's.
