About the author
John Gordon Melton (born September 19, 1942) is an American religious scholar who was the founding director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and was the Distinguished Professor of American Religious History with the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas where he resides. He is also an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. Melton is the author of more than forty-five books, including several encyclopedias, handbooks, and scholarly textbooks on American religious history, Methodism, world religions, and new religious movements (NRMs). His areas of research include major religious traditions, American Methodism, new and alternative religions, Western Esotericism and occultism, and parapsychology, New Age, and Dracula and vampire studies. == Early life and education == Melton was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the son of Burnum Edgar Melton and Inez Parker. During his senior year in high school, he came across The Small Sects in America by Elmer T. Clark; he became interested in reading as much as possible on alternative religions. In 1964, he graduated from Birmingham Southern College with an A.B. degree in geology.
