New Religious Movements: current research in Australia

Abstract

New Religious Movements (NRMs) have now become a familiar part of the religious landscape and incorporated into the comparative study of religion in most Departments of Religion at university level. A substantial amount has been written on NRMs - from general accounts of what they are, theories about their emergence, their membership, conversion processes, their strengths and weaknesses, to specific, detailed ethnographies of particular religious groups. There is also a rapidly burgeoning literature on New Age, Nature Religions and Neopaganism as categories in themselves. Research on NRMS covers as diverse a range of approaches as the beliefs and practices of the groups themselves. This paper will discuss theoretical approaches to NRMs in general, and then outline current research on NRMs by Australian academics.