Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Publications
  3. Cambridge Elements
  4. New Religious Movements
  5. Content Listing

Refine listing

Refine listing

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

39 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 1 of 2

Slavic Native Faith

Slavic Native Faith
  • Kaarina Aitamurto, Scott Simpson
  • Published online:
    31 March 2026
    Print publication:
    23 April 2026
    • Element
      • You have access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Since the fall of communist systems across Central and Eastern Europe in the late twentieth century, Slavic Native Faith has matured as a religious movement across the region. This diverse movement is comprised of many local and national forms bearing a variety of names, including Rodnoverie and Ridnovirstvo. They all share a primary emphasis on Slavic identity and cherish nativeness as a sacred value. This Element examines who the adherents of Slavic Native Faith are and what they believe. It looks at why these groups continue to grow, evolve, and develop in the twenty-first century, with communities generally becoming more representative of the population at large. Increasingly they find themselves as significant participants in the societies they inhabit, still marginal and small, but visible in the arts and popular culture. Case studies from a dozen different nations demonstrate both differences and similarities within this expanding movement.
QAnon

QAnon
  • Communication Complexity and New Religious Movements
  • Matthew Zaro Fisher
  • Published online:
    09 March 2026
    Print publication:
    02 April 2026
  • This Element examines the history, beliefs, and practices of the QAnon movement, described by supporters as a military intelligence operation meant to restore 'American greatness,' and by opponents as a threat to American democracy. Although it began as a fringe conspiracy theory when it emerged on anonymous internet image boards in the fall of 2017, the lockdown measures of the COVID-19 pandemic sent most people online for social participation, facilitating greater awareness of the movement amidst an environment of rising social tension and personal anxiety. QAnon's emergence online offers an observable and real-time record of the way communities of meaning-making and identity develop through the consumption, construction, and circulation of ideas in a digital communication medium. By studying QAnon, this Element provides a better understanding of the relationship between conspiracy theory and religion and demonstrates how new religious movements emerge and evolve today in relation to consumerism and communication complexity.
New Religious Movements and the Romantic Spirit of Modernity

New Religious Movements and the Romantic Spirit of Modernity
  • Stef Aupers, Dick Houtman, Galen Watts
  • Published online:
    16 December 2025
    Print publication:
    22 January 2026
  • Although new religious movements (NRMs) are characterized as diverse and unique, this Element analyzes the cultural logic underlying this apparent diversity from a sociological approach. Section 1 demonstrates that NRMs are substantially shaped by the Romantic counterculture emerging around the 1960s and its critique of churched religion, modern industries, science, and capitalism. Section 2 shows how these Romantic NRMs shaped the Western mainstream in the twenty-first century. Subsequent sections discuss the institutionalization of New Age spirituality in health care and business; the mediatization of modern paganism in film, television series, and online games; and the emergence of new NRMs in Silicon Valley that are formed around technologies of salvation (virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology). The Element concludes that the Romantic spirit of the NRMs – once distinctly countercultural – has paradoxically developed into a driving ideological force that now consolidates and strengthens the machineries of late-modern institutions.
Youth Culture and Religion in Twenty-First Century Japan

Youth Culture and Religion in Twenty-First Century Japan
  • From Hyper-real to 2.5-Dimensional Religion
  • Satoko Fujiwara, Hiroki Miura
  • Published online:
    11 December 2025
    Print publication:
    08 January 2026
  • This Element explores emerging forms of religiosity among Japanese young adults. It argues that existing frameworks are insufficient to capture the nuances of youth religiosity in the Era of Virtuality. It introduces the concepts of “2.5-dimensional religion” and “subjective ritualization” to explain how young people engage with digital, fictional, and embodied practices that blur the boundaries between reality and imagination. Drawing from examples such as oshi-katsu (fandom-based devotional practices), 2.5-D musicals, tulpa creation, and anime pilgrimage, it identifies a shift from narrative-based subjective myths to embodied and participatory subjective rituals. It demonstrates the ways that contemporary Japanese youth express their religiosity through affective ties, performative engagements, and layered identities in both physical and digital environments. The Element contributes a new theoretical lens for understanding religion across cultures in an age defined by fragmented identities, technological mediation, and the search for connection through affectively charged, often playful, quasi-religious practices.
Minority Religions, the Law, and the Courts

Minority Religions, the Law, and the Courts
  • Cases and Consequences
  • James T. Richardson
  • Published online:
    17 November 2025
    Print publication:
    11 December 2025
  • This Element examines the complex intersections between minority religions, legal protections and restrictions, and the role of courts in securing, or inhibiting, religious freedom. It considers the legal status of minority religions in selected countries from a comparative perspective, using sociology of law theories to explain how legal systems treat such religious groups. Relevant actions of the European Court of Human Rights are examined as is how minority religions are dealt with in selected societies where authoritarian or theocratic systems of governance prevail. The Element then examines how interactions with law and the courts have led to changes, or 'deformations,' in selected well-known and controversial new and other minority religions. The Element concludes by observing how courts in Europe and North America have used cases involving minority faiths to promote their own agendas and authority, as well as accomplish other important considerations, including religious freedom.
Early Twentieth Century New Black Religious Movements in the United States

Early Twentieth Century New Black Religious Movements in the United States
  • Darrius D. Hills
  • Published online:
    17 November 2025
    Print publication:
    11 December 2025
  • African American religions include faith orientations that incorporate and deviate from Afro-Protestantism. Yet, contemporary scholarship in religious studies is always bolstered by any supplementary work that examines the plethora of 'extrachurch' orientations that Black communities adopt in their varied pursuits of truth, transcendence, and ultimacy. In this vein, it is necessary to recognize the emergence of powerful alternative religious movements that provided spiritual and theological sustenance for the expression of Black faith. This Element offers an historical overview of four of these traditions: Conjure and Spiritualism, the Nation of Islam, the Moorish Science Temple of America, and African American varieties of New Thought. It explores the social and cultural factors in American society and American race relations that bolstered their emergence and considers the impact such movements had and continue to have on ideas about Black selfhood, Black religious authority, and the sacrality of Black bodies.
Abuse in New Religious Movements

Abuse in New Religious Movements
  • Sarah Harvey
  • Published online:
    14 November 2025
    Print publication:
    11 December 2025
    • Element
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • This Element analyses issues of abuse in new religious movements (NRMs). It argues that abuse in NRMs is not unique but that certain factors can be intensified in NRM contexts – propensities for separation from wider society, teachings on unique legitimacy and exclusivity, and charismatic authority. First, a historical overview addresses how abuse in NRMs has been approached and understood, linking this to the development of NRM and cultic studies and their preferred terminology. Second, a theoretical framework allows consideration of the ways in which the interlinked structural and cultural factors of religious movements can contribute to the perpetration, legitimisation or concealment of abuse. Finally, the Element presents an applied case study analysing the interplay of these factors in the Jesus Fellowship Church, a UK-based NRM which closed in 2019, partly in recognition of abuses that had occurred. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The Revelation Spiritual Home

The Revelation Spiritual Home
  • The Revival of African Indigenous Spirituality
  • Massimo Introvigne, Rosita Šorytė
  • Published online:
    02 September 2025
    Print publication:
    23 October 2025
  • Africa hosts thousands of new religious organizations, yet those that have attracted academic attention are mainly derived from Christianity. Less studied is the phenomenon of African Indigenous Spirituality (AIS), including new groups whose program is restoring forms of pre-Christian and pre-Islamic spirituality. After a general introduction to AIS and some historical and contemporary examples, this Element presents an ethnography of what may well be the largest pan-African AIS group, The Revelation Spiritual Home (TRSH). Founded in Johannesburg by Samuel Radebe in 2009, it now has more than seventy branches in southern Africa. Based on fieldwork in TRSH centers and interviews with both Radebe and other leaders and members, as well as with participants in other AIS activities and groups, this Element examines the history, ideas, rituals, and business and educational activities of TRSH, and discusses the reasons for both its success and the opposition it has encountered.
Korean New Religions

Korean New Religions
  • Don Baker
  • Published online:
    27 August 2025
    Print publication:
    25 September 2025
  • Korea has an unusually diverse religious culture. In the north, Juche, which has taken on religious overtones, monopolizes articulations of beliefs and values as well as ritual practice. In the south, no single religion dominates, with over half saying that they have no specific religious affiliation. The remainder report being Protestant, Buddhist, and Catholic. Smaller in number but nonetheless noticeable are members of Korea's many home-grown new religious movements. Reflecting South Korea's religious diversity, some of those new religions have Buddhist roots, some have Christian origins, some draw on Confucian beliefs and practices, and some have emerged from Indigenous religious traditions such as shamanism. This Element examines the most noticeable of Korea's new religions to discover what they can tell us about distinctive traits of religion in Korea, and how Koreans have responded to the challenge posed by modernity to their traditional beliefs and values.
Making Places Sacred

Making Places Sacred
  • New Articulations of Place and Power
  • Matt Tomlinson, Yujie Zhu
  • Published online:
    14 March 2025
    Print publication:
    10 April 2025
  • Although claims to sacredness are often linked to the power of a distant past, the work of making places sacred is creative, novel, renewable, and reversible. This Element highlights how sacred space is newly made. It is often associated with blood, death, and geographic anomalies, yet no single feature determines sacred associations. People make space sacred by connecting with 'extrahuman' figures – the ancestors, spirits, and gods that people attempt to interact with in every society. These connections can be concentrated in people's bodies, yet bodies are particularly vulnerable to loss. The Element also examines the multidimensional and multisensory dimensions of sacred space, which can be made almost anywhere, including online, but can also be unmade. Unmaking sacred space can entail new sacralization. New and minority religions in particular provide excellent sites for studying sacredness as a value, raising the reliably productive question: sacred for whom?
J. Krishnamurti

J. Krishnamurti
  • Self-Inquiry, Awakening, and Transformation
  • Constance A. Jones
  • Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    27 February 2025
  • This Element explores the life, teaching, and legacy of philosopher and spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti. From an obscure childhood in south India, he was 'discovered' at age fourteen by the Theosophical Society as the vehicle for the prophesied World Teacher of this cosmic age. At age 34, he disaffiliated from the Society, became an independent teacher, and, for sixty years, traveled widely and addressed thousands of audiences on the need to develop awareness and attention for transformation of consciousness. His teaching defines the human condition as perilous, dominated almost completely by cultural and personal conditioning, fear, and negative emotions. Freedom from these perils, his teaching states, occurs through rigorous self-observation and inquiry in the search for truth. While extremely popular, Krishnamurti rejected the mantle of authority invariably attributed to spiritual masters and teachers. He created schools in his name to implement his pedagogy of non-authoritarianism and freedom from conditioning.
Santa Muerte Devotion

Santa Muerte Devotion
  • Vulnerability, Protection, Intimacy
  • Wil G. Pansters
  • Published online:
    24 February 2025
    Print publication:
    27 March 2025
  • In recent decades the cult of Santa Muerte has become a remarkable phenomenon in Mexico's popular religious landscape, from where it has migrated abroad. Due to the uncommon iconography of the robed skeleton and the association with criminality, the Santa Muerte cult has been the object of public controversy. This Element deconstructs mainstream views of Santa Muerte devotion by privileging the voices and practices of devotees. Counterintuitively, Santa Muerte devotion is about assuring a good life in health, work, love, justice, and security. Notwithstanding the cult's rapid growth and public visibility since 2000, it is deeply embedded in Mexico's religious and cultural history. The analysis of material culture, theology, and ritual demonstrates the importance of devotional intimacy. This Element also studies how gender, family, leadership, and political relations intersect with the cult. Santa Muerte popular religiosity is examined in terms of socioeconomic vulnerabilities, ineffective social protections, exclusion, and existential insecurities.
Wearing Their Faith

Wearing Their Faith
  • New Religious Movements, Dress, and Fashion in America
  • Lynn S. Neal
  • Published online:
    10 February 2025
    Print publication:
    13 February 2025
  • New Religious Movements (NRMs) have a long, interconnected history with distinct forms of dress and clothing. However, research on NRMs has not focused sufficiently on the clothing and material culture of these groups. In response, this Element examines the central role that dress plays in the creation of charismatic leaders and the formation of faithful followers. Through a variety of case studies – ranging from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to Father Divine, from the Children of God to the Nation of Islam – we see how dress and fashion practices provide people with a powerful way to live and wear their faith. In addition, the fashion industry takes note and incorporates ideas about cults and clothing into their trends and styles. In doing so, it fuels the cult stereotype and fosters normative understandings of what constitutes good religion.
Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses
  • Jolene Chu, Ollimatti Peltonen
  • Published online:
    18 December 2024
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
    • Element
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
  • Jehovah's Witnesses began as an informal Bible study group in the 1870s that sought to recover first-century Christian beliefs and practices. They disseminated literature announcing the expected reign of God's Kingdom and called themselves Bible Students. In 1931, they adopted the name Jehovah's Witnesses, epitomizing their belief in the Christian obligation to preach the gospel worldwide. Known for their ethic of nonviolence and their evangelizing work, and despite worshipping freely in most countries, Witnesses are subject to controversy, particularly vis-à-vis mainstream Christianity, the State, and secularized societies. The authors are practicing Jehovah's Witnesses who present this work as neither apologia nor official account, but as an emic description of the history, beliefs, identity, and organizational structure of Witnesses, and their societal interactions. While briefly covering main controversies, this Element focuses on the culture and lived experience of the millions comprising the Witness community. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Mormonism

Mormonism
  • Matthew Bowman
  • Published online:
    05 December 2024
    Print publication:
    16 January 2025
  • This Element will focus on the various denominations in the Mormon tradition, collectively sometimes referred to as 'Mormonism.' They include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as the several sects of Mormon fundamentalism and multiple other denominations. Often described as the quintessential new religious movement, Mormonism is useful for studying the dynamics of new religious formation, evolution, schism, and adaptation to American culture more broadly. It emerged in the heat of the Second Great Awakening, the flourishing of religious creativity and innovation that followed American disestablishment, inspired by the visionary ideas of Joseph Smith, Jr., a New York farmer who adopted a particular style of restorationism, a form of Christianity popular in the period. Since that time, the various branches of Mormonism have embraced different relationships with the broader stream of American culture. Some have sought integration with America's Protestant majority; others have emphasized sectarian distinctiveness.
The Sacred Force of Star Wars Jedi

The Sacred Force of Star Wars Jedi
  • William Sims Bainbridge
  • Published online:
    02 December 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024
  • As secularization threatens the stability of traditional religions, Star Wars provides a case study of how key functions of religion may transfer to innovative organizations and subcultures that challenge conventional definitions of faith, sacredness, and revival. This Element therefore examines the vast community of fans, especially gamers, who have turned Star Wars into a parareligion, providing them with a sense of the meaning of life and offering psychological compensators for human problems. The research methods include ethnography, participant observation, census of roles played by gaming participants, and recommender system statistics. The Element also shows the genetic connections between Star Wars and its predecessors in science fiction. Investigating the Star Wars fandom phenomenon – which involves hundreds of thousands of people – illustrates how audience cults and client cults evolve. Ultimately, Star Wars remains culturally and economically significant as we approach completion of its first half-century.
Children in New Religious Movements

Children in New Religious Movements
  • Sanja Nilsson
  • Published online:
    22 November 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024
  • New Religious Movements have arisen not only in the present but have also developed in the past. While they differ in ideology and practice, they generally seem to live in high tension with mainstream society, especially when it comes to child-rearing. This Element examines several aspects of children growing up in new religions. It relies upon literature from different groups concerning child upbringing, the function of children in the groups considering the religious ideologies, and parental perspectives and parental styles. It also utilizes accounts from young adults growing up in these groups, both those who chose to stay and who chose to leave their groups as adults. A range of topics, such as socialization, education, health care, and relations to surrounding society are explored. In addition, this Element considers issues of physical and emotional abuse, state interventions, and the impact of second- and third generations of children in new religions.
Managing Religion and Religious Changes in Iran

Managing Religion and Religious Changes in Iran
  • A Socio-Legal Analysis
  • Sajjad Adeliyan Tous, James T. Richardson
  • Published online:
    07 June 2024
    Print publication:
    13 June 2024
  • This Element offers a theoretically informed examination of the manner in which religion, especially alternative and emergent religious and spiritual movements, is managed by law and legal mechanisms in the authoritarian theocracy of Iran. It highlights how these phenomena have been affected by the intersection of law, politics, and Shiʿi theology in recent Iranian history. The growing interest of Iranian citizens in new religious movements and spiritual currents, fostered by the cultural diffusion of Western writings and ideas, is described. The development of religious diversity in Iran and a corresponding loss of commitment toward some Islamic doctrines and practices are of considerable concern to both the Iranian religious and political establishments. This has led to social control efforts over any religious and spiritual movement differing from the regime's view of Islam. Those efforts, supported in large part by Western anticult ideas, culminated in the passage of a piece of stringent legislation in 2021. The Element closes with applications of theorizing from the sociology of law and of religion.
The Production of Entheogenic Communities in the United States

The Production of Entheogenic Communities in the United States
  • Brad Stoddard
  • Published online:
    05 June 2024
    Print publication:
    27 June 2024
  • The rise of entheogenic religion – that is, religions that involve the use of psychoactive drugs – has captured the attention of scholars and journalists. These studies tend to advance the interests of practitioners who advocate for the legitimacy of entheogens and of entheogenic religion more broadly. This Element breaks with these approaches as it offers a historical and critical analysis of entheogenic communities. It examines the production of entheogenic groups in the United States and considers the historical factors that have contributed to the rise in psychedelics more broadly. It also explores legal considerations and the impact of the law as a curator of entheogenic communities. This Element recognizes that these communities – like all imagined communities – are culturally conditioned, socially constructed, and historically contingent. By exploring these contingencies, we learn more about the broader sociocultural, historical, and economic frameworks that underlie the burgeoning association of psychoactive substances and religion.
Anticultism in France

Anticultism in France
  • Scientology, Religious Freedom, and the Future of New and Minority Religions
  • Donald A. Westbrook
  • Published online:
    21 May 2024
    Print publication:
    13 June 2024
  • This Element introduces readers to the problem of anticultism and antireligious movements in France. The first section offers an overview of anticultism in France, including the paradoxical place of modern French secularism (laïcité) that has shaped a culture prejudiced against minority religions and new religions (sectes or 'cults') and impacted Europe more broadly. This includes state-sponsored expressions, in particular MIVILUDES, an organization funded by the French government to monitor cultic or sectarian deviances. The second section takes up the case of the American-born Church of Scientology, tracing its history in the country since the late 1950s and how it has become a major focus of anticultists in France. The Element concludes with reflections on the future of new and minority religions in France. A timeline provides major dates in the history of anticultism in modern French history, with a focus on items of relevance to Scientology in France.

Page 1 of 2