Abstract: | After having given the phrase 'new religious movements' both a religious and an historical specification, the author offers a more definitive formal statement in the following terms: a new religious movement refers to a new development arising in the course of the interaction of a tribal or primal society and its religion with one of the more powerful and sophisticated cultures and its major religion. Involving some substantial departure from the classical religious traditions of both the cultures concerned, in order to find renewal by reworking the contributing traditions into a different religious system. After that the author gives a critical assessment of older typologies and the evolvement of new concepts in the following sections: Messianism and millennialism - Adjustment or crisis cults - Plurality of disciplines and classification systems - A classification for the sociology of religion - The importance of world comparative studies. Notes. |