Our final unit in this course

is on emerging religions, religions that are coming into popularity or have arisen in the last century or so. "New" in religious terms
basically covers about two hundred years.

The word "cult" has often been applied to small religious groups as they emerge. And we'll talk about what cult actually means in religious studies as opposed to what it means in common usage. Other scholars have proposed other terminologies, such as "new religious movements".
I use "emerging religions".

Another question will deal with is when is religion clearly dangerous?
Are all new religions dangerous? Of course not!
So we need to have some guidelines as to which ones might be trouble.

First of all: what is a cult?
Here are a couple of interesting quotes: "One person's cult is another's religion. All religions begin life as cults."
An alternative definition is that "a cult is a religion which you happen to dislike.
It's easy to tell the difference: a cult is someone else's religion." And a corollary "a fanatic is someone who believes something more strongly than you do." In both of these usages, it talks about how the word "cult" is used to disparage or bring down another group. To say something about what you think about their truth or their methods or their practices.

But that's not actually the usage of the word hold in religious studies and in classical usage.
The word "cult" actually means a religious practice, particularly worship.
So you will hear "the cult of Isis", for example. It just means the way Isis was
revered and worshipped, the practices associated with the worship of Isis. It doesn't mean that this was some weird fringe group.
It is a neutral term, and its root is related to the work cultivation,
culture and agriculture.
The problem is that in current popular usage it's come to mean things like a "false religion".
It's a pejorative or negative term, usually used only by strong adherents to a particular religion about what they see as deviant groups.
It's used to designate a fanatic marginal religious group, especially when they're suspected of manipulation of their members or being disruptive or engaging in illegal activities, including terrorism.
And I want to reiterate that this is not the way the word cult is used in religious studies.

Another word that has often been applied to small groups is "sect". Classically that is a splinter group, one that's split off from a well established parent tradition.
And it's used by people of that parent tradition for that small group.
Often in the name of returning to a pristine purity from which the parent tradition in its organizational abolition was held by the splinter group to have departed.
This is also controversial designation. Why? Because most small groups don't consider themselves sects. Many scholars and people in more traditional religions
have looked at Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Church of Latter-day Saints or the Mormons as sects, but would they consider themselves splinter groups?
Of course not!
They consider themselves the true expression of what every tradition they have a relationship with.

"New religious movement" is a more neutral term that has been gaining strength in scholarly studies of religion. It is not intentionally pejorative term; it's simply descriptive. These are relatively new, and they are religious movements. It is also more inclusive. It includes groups there not fitting "cult" or "sect" or "church" definitions. And we'll see some of those groups, and you're researching some of those groups for our e merging religions fair.

There are disadvantages to this term, however. It is not readily understood; as I mentioned "new" can mean anything within the last two hundred years, when scholars attacked about it. It also covers too wide a range.
You group a whole bunch of religions together that would not want to be associated with one another: the Church of latter-day Saints and the Raelians, Scientology and Seventh Day Adventists. There doesn't seem to be a lot of common ground. That, however, would be problematic for whatever term you're trying to apply.

There's also no distinction of those that may be genuinely distracted from others so you lose that
that feeling of the pejorative term in common usage of "cult". There are

a variety of new religious movements and it's helpful sometimes when you have such a sprawling group to put them into categories that are related to one another.