new religious movement

plural new religious movements

1. lifestyle(abbreviated NRM) Any religious community or spiritual group of modern origins, having a peripheral place within a state's dominant religious culture.

   TM, Erhard Seminars Training (est), and the Rajneesh Foundation are currently the most visible NRMs offering a release service to clients in Western Europe, but a large number of smaller groups are also in operation.

   1987, James A. Beckford, New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change, SAGE Publications Ltd, →ISBN, page 44

   5 more examples

   To illustrate rather than to define: among the better-known NRMs are the Brahma Kumaris, the Church of Scientology, the Divine Light Mission (now known as Elan Vital), est (erhard Seminar Training, now known as the Landmark Forum), the Family (originally known as the Children of God), ISKCON (the Hare Krishna), Rajneeshism (now know as Osho International), Sahaja Yoga, the Soka Gakkai, Trandscendental Mediations, the Unification Church (known as the Moonies) and the Way International. One might also include Neo-Paganism, Occultism, Wicca (or witchcraft) and several movements that are within mainstream traditions, such as part of the House Church (Restoration) movement from within Protestant traditions, and Folkolare, the Neo-Catechumenates, Communione e Liberazione and perhaps even Opus Dei from within the Roman Catholic traditions.

   1996, Eileen Barker, “New Religions and Mental Health”, in Dinesh Bhugra, editor, Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies, London and New York: Routledge, →ISBN, page 126

   ...the human potential and psychotherapy movements, as well as the more 'life-affirming' New Religious Movements and religions of the self. This was the complex world of the Californian 'psychobabble', of Scientology and est (Erhard Seminars Training, later called Forums Network), of Encounter Groups, meditation techniques and self-help manuals designed to assist individuals 'realise their potential'.

   1999, Jamie Cresswell, Bryan Wilson, editors, New Religious Movements, Routledge, →ISBN, page 35

   The prospect of a new global order is also central to many variants of the Human Potential and New Age movements and Scientology. All these very different kinds of NRM nevertheless share a conviction that human beings have, perhaps for the first time, come into possession of the knowledge required to free them from traditional structures of thought and action. Hence, the confidence of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Transcendental Meditation, and of Werner Erhard, the founder of est (now largely reconfigured as the Landmark Trust), that the state of the entire world would improve if a sufficient number of people became sufficiently energetic and disciplined about their spiritual practice.

   2004, James A. Beckford, “New Religious Movements and Globalization”, in Phillip Charles Lucas, Thomas Robbins, editors, New Religious Movements in the 21st Century, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, →ISBN, page 208

   These two opposing strategies of new religious movements for delivering compensators I will term 'compensation delivery systems' (CDS). The gradual CDS can best be described as religion as a multi-level marketing (MLM) tactic - a term I take from the business world. ... Exemplars of new religious movements with a gradual CDS are Scientology and Erhard Seminar Training in its various manifestations.

   2004, James R. Lewis, The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of New Age Religions, Prometheus Books, →ISBN, page 187

   The majority of NRMs are, however, not indigenous to Europe. Many can be traced to the United States (frequently to California), including offshoots of the Jesus Movement (such as the Children of God, later known as the Family); the Way International; International Churches of Christ; the Church Universal and Triumphant (known as Summit Lighthouse in England); and much of the human potential movement (such as est, which gave rise to the Landmark Forum, and various practices developed through the Esalen Institute).

   2005, Eileen Barker, “New Religious Movements in Europe”, in Lindsay Jones, editor, Encyclopedia of Religion, Detroit: Macmillan Reference, →ISBN, page 6568