Shupe was a professor of sociology at the Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne campus at Fort Wayne, Indiana. He completed his doctorate in political sociology at Indiana University in 1975 and held office in various professional associations, including the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the . Shupe often collaborated with other scholars, notably David G. Bromley and Jeffrey K. Hadden. An advocate for religious freedom, Shupe conducted fieldwork on the Unification Church and other new religious movements, as well as their opponents. Together with David G. Bromley, Shupe was considered one of the foremost social science authorities on the anti-cult movement, based on a series of books and articles on the topic he coauthored with Bromley. Other areas Shupe researched included the New Christian Right, religious broadcasting, and the political impact of fundamentalism; he also wrote about family violence and clergy misconduct, i.e. violent or exploitative behaviour on the part of pastors, ministers or gurus. He frequently acted as a consultant to attorneys in lawsuits involving issues of religious freedom or clergy abuse.
Publications
"Moonies" in America: Cult. Church. and Crusade. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publications, 1979.. Introduction by John Lofland. 269 pp.
The New Vigilantes: Anti-Cultists, Deprogrammers and the New Religions. Beverly Hills, SAGE Publications, 1980. 267 pp.
Six Perspectives on New Religions: A Case Study Approach. Lewiston and Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1981. 235 pp.
Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon, 1981. 249 pp.
The Anti-Cult Movement in America: A Bibliography and Historical Survey. New York: Garland Press, 1984. i-xiii + 169 pp.
A Documentary History of the Anti-Cult Movement. Arlington, TX, University of Texas Center for Social Research Press, 1986. 376 pp.
The Mormon Corporate Empire. Boston: Beacon, 1986.
The Darker Side of Virtue: Corruption, Scandal, and the Mormon Empire, Prometheus Books, 168pp.
Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective: Revival of Religious Fundamentalism in East and West, Bronislaw Misztal & Anson Shupe, Praeger Publishers, 240pp.
Anti-Cult Movements in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1994..
The Violent Couple. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers . 182 pp.
"Religion, Mobilization, and Social Action". Bronislaw Misztal & Anson Shupe, Praeger Publishers, 260pp.
Bad Pastors: Clergy Misconduct in Modern America New York: New York University Press, 2000, Edited by Anson Shupe, William A. Stacey, Susan E. Darnell;
"The North American Anti-cult Movement: Vicissitudes of Success and Failure." in The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, ed. by James R. Lewis. NY: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 184-205.
"Anticult Movements" entry in Lindsay Jones, editor-in-chief, Encyclopedia of Religion. 2nd edition. Vol. 1 Thomson/Macmillan 2005, pp. 395-7.
"Deprogramming" entry in Lindsay Jones, editor-in-chief, Encyclopedia of Religion. 2nd edition Vol. 4 Thomson/Macmillan 2005, pp. 2291–3.
Agents of Discord: The Cult Awareness Network, Deprogramming and Bad Science. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2006.
A.J. Pavlos, Review of Six Perspectives on New Religions, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22 : 95-96.
Stephen A. Kent and Theresa Krebs, "When Scholars Know Sin: Alternative Religions and Their Academic Supporters," Skeptic, 6/3 : 36-44. Also see J. Gordon Melton, Anson D. Shupe and James R. Lewis, "When Scholars Know Sin" Forum Reply to Kent and Krebs, Skeptic, 7/1 : 14-21.
