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-American new religions by scholars of Africana studies, and Native American new religions by scholars of Native American studies.^[10]