For undergraduate courses in New Religious Movements (NRMs) or Religious Cults.

Taking the approach that new religious movements are neither new nor inherently evil or dangerous, New Religious Movements takes a more historical and cultural perspective than other books on the market.

Elijah Siegler wrote this book to counter the common misconception that NRMs first appeared suddenly in North America and Western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.  He argues that this is a myopic perspective that derives from the fear that "cults" were seducing a young and naïve generation into leaving their comfortable lives and shows that NRMs have been developing across the globe over the last few centuries.  Most books about NRMs also begin from the question as to why anyone would join them but Elijah Siegler argues that this is not the most important question for students in classes on NRMs and his text assumes that people join NRMs for all sorts of psychological, theological, or cultural reasons.