Editing New religious movement (section)

===Definitions and terminology===
[[File:Rainbow Gathering Bosnia 2007.JPG|thumb|right|A [[Rainbow Gathering]] in Bosnia, 2007]]
[[J. Gordon Melton]] argued that "new religious movements" should be defined by the way dominant religious and secular forces within a given society treat them. According to him, NRMs constituted "those religious groups that have been found, from the perspective of the dominant religious community (and in the West that is almost always a form of Christianity), to be not just different, but unacceptably different."{{sfn|Melton|2004|p=79}} Barker cautioned against Melton's approach, arguing that negating the "newness" of "new religious movements" raises problems, for it is "the very fact that NRMs are new that explains many of the key characteristics they display".{{sfn|Barker|2004|p=89}}

[[George Chryssides]] favors "simple" definition; for him, NRM is an organization founded within the past 150 or so years, which cannot be easily classified within one of the world's main religious traditions.{{sfn|Driedger|Wolfart|2018|pp=5–12}}

Scholars of religion [[Olav Hammer]] and [[Mikael Rothstein]] argued that "new religions are just young religions" and as a result, they are "not inherently different" from mainstream and established religious movements, with the differences between the two having been greatly exaggerated by the media and popular perceptions.{{sfn|Hammer|Rothstein|2012|p=3}} Melton has stated that those NRMs that "were offshoots of older religious groups... tended to resemble their parent groups far more than they resembled each other."{{sfn|Melton|2004|p=76}}

One question that faces scholars of religion is when a new religious movement ceases to be "new".{{sfn|Barker|2004|p=99}} As noted by Barker, "In the first century, Christianity was new, in the seventh century Islam was new, in the eighteenth century Methodism was new, in the nineteenth century the Seventh-day Adventists, Christadelphians, and Jehovah's Witnesses were new; in the twenty-first century the Unification Church, the ISKCON, and Scientology are beginning to look old."{{sfn|Barker|2004|p=99}}

The [[Roman Catholic Church]] has observed that the growth of sects and new religious movements is one of the "most noticeable" and "highly complex" developments in recent years, and in relation to the [[Ecumenism|ecumenical movement]], their "desire for peaceful relations with the Catholic Church may be weak or non-existent".<ref>{{cite book|author=Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity|date=1993-03-25|title=Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism|url=https://www.odwphiladelphia.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1993Directory-Application-of-Principles-Norms-of-Ecumenism.pdf|page=12|via=Office of Divine Worship, [[Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia|Diocese of Philadelphia]]|access-date=16 November 2022|archive-date=2022-12-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221218021244/https://www.odwphiladelphia.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1993Directory-Application-of-Principles-Norms-of-Ecumenism.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

Some NRMs are strongly counter-cultural and 'alternative' in the society where they appear, while others are far more similar to a society's established traditional religions.{{sfn|Oliver|2012|p=5}} Generally, Christian denominations are not seen as new religious movements; nevertheless, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, and the Shakers have been studied as NRMs.{{sfn|Rubinstein|2023}}<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite journal |last1=Olson |first1=Paul J. |title=The Public Perception of 'Cults' and 'New Religious Movements' |journal=Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion |date=2006 |volume=45 |issue=1 |pages=97–106 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-5906.2006.00008.x}}</ref> The same situation with [[Jewish religious movements]], when [[Reform Judaism]] and newer divisions have been named among NRM.{{sfn|Clarke|2006b|pp=525–526|loc=Reform Judaism}}

There are also problems in the use of "religion" within the term "new religious movements".{{sfn|Oliver|2012|pp=14–15}} This is because various groups, particularly active within the New Age milieu, have many traits in common with different NRMs but emphasise [[personal development]] and [[humanistic psychology]], and are not clearly  "religious" in nature.{{sfn|Oliver|2012|p=15}}

Since at least the early 2000s, most sociologists of religion have used the term "new religious movement" in order to avoid the pejorative undertones of terms like "[[cult]]" and "[[sect]]".{{sfn|Barrett|2001|p=24}} These are words that have been used in different ways by different groups.{{sfn|Barrett|2001|p=19}} For instance, from the nineteenth century onward a number of sociologists used the terms "cult" and "sect" in very specific ways.{{sfn|Barrett|2001|p=23}} The sociologist [[Ernst Troeltsch]] for instance differentiated "churches" from "sect" by claiming that the former term should apply to groups that stretch across social strata while "sects" typically contain converts from socially disadvantaged sectors of society.{{sfn|Barrett|2001|p=23}}

The term "cult" is used in reference to devotion or dedication to a particular person or place.{{sfn|Barrett|2001|p=21}} For instance, within the Roman Catholic Church, devotion to [[Mary, mother of Jesus]] may be termed the "[[Cult of Mary]]".{{sfn|Barrett|2001|pp=21–22}} It is also used in non-religious contexts to refer to [[fandom]]s [[cult following#Television|devoted to television shows]] like ''[[The Prisoner]]'', ''[[The X-Files]]'', and ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''.{{sfn|Barrett|2001|p=22}} In the United States, people began to use "cult" in a pejorative manner, to refer to Spiritualism and Christian Science during the 1890s.{{sfn|Melton|2004b|p=17}} As commonly used, for instance in sensationalist tabloid articles, the term "cult" continues to have pejorative associations.{{sfn|Barrett|2001|p=20}}

The term "new religions" is a [[calque]] of {{nihongo||新宗教|shinshūkyō}}, a Japanese term developed to describe the proliferation of [[Japanese new religions]] in the years following the Second World War.{{sfnm|1a1=Lewis|1y=2004|1p=3|2a1=Melton|2y=2004b|2p=19}} From Japan this term was translated and used by several American authors, including [[Jacob Needleman]], to describe the range of groups that appeared in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s.{{sfn|Melton|2004b|p=19}} This term, amongst others, was adopted by Western scholars as an alternative to "cult".<ref name="Gallagher, Eugene V 2007">{{cite journal |last1=Gallagher |first1=Eugene V. |title=Compared to What? 'Cults' and 'New Religious Movements' |journal=History of Religions |date=2007 |volume=47 |issue=2–3 |pages=205–220 |doi=10.1086/524210|s2cid=161448414 }}</ref> However, "new religious movements" has failed to gain widespread public usage in the manner that "cult" has.{{sfn|Oliver|2012|p=6}} Other terms that have been employed for many NRMs are "alternative religion" and "alternative spirituality", something used to convey the difference between these groups and established or mainstream religious movements while at the same time evading the problem posed by groups that are not particularly new.{{sfnm|1a1=Barrett|1y=2001|1p=24|2a1=Oliver|2y=2012|2p=13}}

The 1970s was the era of the so-called "[[cult]] wars", led by "cult-watching groups".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Barker |first1=Eileen |title=Stepping out of the Ivory Tower: A Sociological Engagement in 'The Cult Wars' |journal=Methodological Innovations Online |date=2011 |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=18–39 |doi=10.4256/mio.2010.0026|s2cid=145184989 |doi-access=free }}</ref> The efforts of the anti-cult movement condensed a [[moral panic]] around the concept of cults. Public fears around [[Satanism]], in particular, came to be known as a distinct phenomenon, the "[[Satanic ritual abuse|Satanic Panic]]".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Petersen |first=Jesper Aagaard |title=Controversial New Religions |title-link=Controversial New Religions |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-19-515682-9 |editor-last=Lewis |editor-first=James R. |editor-link=James R. Lewis (scholar) |edition=1st |location=New York |language=en |chapter=Modern Satanism: Dark Doctrines and Black Flames |editor-last2=Petersen |editor-first2=Jesper Aagaard}}</ref> Consequently, scholars such as Eileen Barker, [[James T. Richardson]], [[Timothy Miller]] and [[Catherine Wessinger]] argued that the term "cult" had become too laden with negative connotations, and "advocated dropping its use in academia". A number of alternatives to the term "new religious movement" are used by some scholars. These include "alternative religious movements" (Miller), "emergent religions" (Ellwood) and "marginal religious movements" (Harper and Le Beau).<ref name="ReferenceA" />