Richard Abanes is a bestselling, award-winning journalist who has authored/co-authored twenty books on religions, cults, the occult, pop culture, and the entertainment world. In 1997, he received The Gustavus Myers Center award for the Study of Human Rights in North America for his “outstanding work on intolerance in North America” (in appreciation of American Militias: Rebellion, Racism, and Religion). That same year, he also won the Evangelical Press Association’s “Higher Goals In Christian Journalism” award for his article on various non-Christian faiths that appeared in Moody Magazine.