Category:New religious movements

A new religious movement (NRM), or alternative religious movement, is a faith-based community, or ethical, spiritual, or philosophical group originating in the modern age. NRMs may be novel in origin or they may be part of a wider religion, such as Christianity, in which case they will be distinct from pre-existing denominations.

There is no one criterion or set of criteria for describing a group as a "new religious movement". NRMs are diverse in their beliefs, practices, organization, and societal acceptance. Generally, denominations of world faiths that are considered part of the mainstream of their religion are not seen as new religious movements.

Movements, groups, and organizations that are commonly described in reliable sources as new religious movements, alternative religious movements, cults, marginal religious movements, or equivalent labels should be added to this category.

Some authors use World War II as the dividing line after which anything is "new", whereas others define as "new" everything after the advent of the Bahá'í Faith (mid-19th century) or even everything after Sikhism (17th century). The New Thought originated in the 1890s, so the label "new" has been used actively for more than a hundred years.