“New Religious Movements can best be distinguished by the degree of commitment they ask of their followers”. (Barker)

To what extent do sociological arguments and evidence support this view of NRMS.

A new religious movement (NRM) is a comprehensive term used to identify religious, ethical, and spiritual groups, communities and practices of relatively modern origins. NMRs have grown since the 1960s, such as the Moonies, Scientology and Krishna Consciousness. They have grown because of the marginality of marginality – Weber (1922) argued that sects appeal to disprivileged groups who are marginal to society; sects offer a solution to their lack of status by offering their members a theodicy of disprivilege – a religious explanation of their disadvantage and many sects and millenarian movements have recruited from the marginalized poor, relative deprivation – it is possible for someone who is quite privileged to feel deprived compared with others; e.g. some middle-class people may feel spiritually deprived and so people may turn to sects for a sense of community; Stark and Bainbridge argue that it is the relatively deprived who break away from churches to form sects and rapid social change – which Wilson argued undermined established norms, producing anomie (normlessness); those most affected may turn to sects, e.g. Methodism during the industrial revolution. Wallis distinguishes between three types of NRM depending on whether their attitudes to wider society are world-rejecting, world-accepting or world-accomodating.

This clear separation between NMRs outlines depicts the clear commitment and demand each type of NRM has on its members, which is usually tightly linked with the intensity or loose knitting of their belief system. World- rejecting new religious movements have most of the characteristics of a sect; their ideology is highly critical of the outside