Tenrikyo: A Pilgrimage Faith: The Structure and Meanings of a Modern Japanese Religion

Robert S. Ellwood was an American scholar of religion, not a Tenrikyo adherent, and this study of Tenrikyo's structure and meaning is treated across religious studies literature as the standard English-language academic account by an outside author. It was nonetheless published by Tenri University Press, an institution the tradition itself operates, a fact this record states plainly rather than leaving a reader to discover it; the arrangement gave Ellwood direct access to Tenrikyo's own institutions and personnel that a fully independent publisher might not have secured, at the cost of the book carrying the tradition's own imprint rather than a disinterested university press. This record has not independently traced a documented history of scholarly disagreement with Ellwood's specific readings, though its age, now over four decades, means it predates Tenrikyo's more recent global expansion. Use it for the structure, doctrine and lived meaning of Tenrikyo as academically described; a claim about the movement's present day numbers needs a more current source alongside it.