John Gordon Melton is an American religious scholar who was the founding director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and is currently 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 . His areas of research include major religious traditions, American Methodism, new and alternative religions, Western Esotericism and parapsychology, New Age, and Dracula and vampire studies. He has been an advocate of religious freedom and was involved in the scholarly debates on the legitimacy of some NRMs and in establishing the field of new religion studies in academia.
As quoted in Finding Enlightenment : Ramtha's School of Ancient Wisdom (1998), ISBN 1-885223-61-7, Beyond Words Publishing, p. 164
