Academic study of new religious movements

The academic study of new religious movements is known as new religions studies (NRS).^[2] The study draws from the disciplines of anthropology, psychiatry, history, psychology, sociology, religious studies, and theology.^[3] Eileen Barker noted that there are five sources of information on new religious movements (NRMs): the information provided by such groups themselves, that provided by ex-members as well as the friends and relatives of members, organizations that collect information on NRMs, the mainstream media, and academics studying such phenomena.^[4]

The study of new religions is unified by its topic of interest, rather than by its methodology, and is therefore interdisciplinary in nature.^[5] A sizeable body of scholarly literature on new religions has been published, most of it produced by social scientists.^[6] Among the disciplines that NRS uses are anthropology, history, psychology, religious studies, and sociology.^[7] Of these approaches, sociology played a particularly prominent role in the development of the field,^[7] resulting in it being initially confined largely to a narrow array of sociological questions.^[8] This came to change in later scholarship, which began to apply theories and methods initially developed for examining more mainstream religions to the study of new ones.^[8]

The majority of research has been directed toward those new religions which have attracted a greater deal of public controversy; less controversial NRMs have tended to be the subject of less scholarly research.^[9] It has also been noted that scholars of new religions have often avoided researching certain movements which tend instead to be studied by scholars from other backgrounds; the feminist spirituality movement is usually examined by scholars of women's studies, African diaspora new religions by scholars of Africana studies, and Native American new religions by scholars of Native American studies.^[10]