Encyclopedia of new religious movements edited by Peter B. Clarke provides a truly engaging and authentic view of the emerging religious movements on a background of the universe. This encyclopedia, containing 428 articles from leading academics, studies the remarkable examples of religious movements emerging in each continent. Clarke as an editor has written a higher income as "New Religions as a global phenomenon", a "Resource guide of NRM" and a useful article entitled "Typology of new religions" in this encyclopedia. This encyclopedia is a leading, research, updating, important, and valuable reference for academic libraries. However, the encyclopedia suffers from some disadvantages, among which we can refer to apparent contradictions in Index, the incidence of historical errors, print, etc., in its context and putting NRM identified with the Cults, sects, and counter-culture groups

The present article is an attempt to provide a new and comprehensive definition for “new religious movements” based on the previous definitions. The assumption is that the requirements of such a definitions have their own limitations; however, the author has managed to propose two different definitions based on his investigation of the two previous approaches to define “new religious movements”; that is, “definitions by analyzing the purports” and “definitions by referring to instances”. The author demonstrates that the first approach provides an exact definition of a certain religious movement as an instance and the second provides a general and universal definition by focusing on the common elements of new religious movements. The conclusion is that the first approach lack comprehensiveness as a prerequisite for its application to all sects. The second approach should be preferred as it manages to overcome the limitations of the first approach.

India is reputed as one of the most religious countries and possesses a vast spectrum of different kinds of religiosity, all of them interconnected by clear and latent threads which have shaped the beliefs and customs of this land. It’s a fact that in India, social rites and folk customs are completely intermingled with religious beliefs as much as no one can distinguish between religion and custom in individual or social life. Therefore, religious tendencies determine most of the social transactions. However, since the 19th century, the culture and religions of India have encountered the values of the west, and rationality has been applied as the scale of all the rites and ceremonies. Thereupon, many evolutions happened and religious men were intended to find a new path for preserving this ancient heritage. In this article, two more significant religious movements are discussed: Arya Samaj and Brahma Samaj which have adhered to their religious originality and ancient sacred texts and have reinterpreted some orders and views reflected in sacred books, especially those more connected to social aspects. The present paper has attempted to review these two movements through content analysis and by using the historical and phenomenological method.

Tendency towards New Religious Movements (NRMs) amongst the young university students in Iran, in spite of sovereignty of religious government, is a new phenomenon which deserves an exact study. The present study seeks to describe the tendency rate towards NRMs among university students, as well as to explore some social correlates of it. Survey method is used for conducting the study. By means of multi-stage sampling procedure, 400 students of all state universities located in the Tehran city have been selected randomly, to fill up the self-administered questionnaire which consists to some scales regarding tendency towards NMRs, religiosity, and ethnic identity. The results of the study show that 9.4 percent of university students reported high tendency towards NRMs, as compared with 41.7 percent of them who had declared low tendency. The analyses of data indicate that the highest tendency towards NMRs has reported by those students who were unmarried, were studying in the faculties of Fine Arts and Humanities.belonged to Lor, Turk, and Kurd ethnic groups, engaged in a part-time job, and their parents were originated from higher social class. Furthermore, a non-significant gender difference i! l tendency towards NMRs is found, namely; female as compared with male students, had reported higher tendency towards NMRs. Finally, results of correlation coefficients showed that there were significant, reverse correlations between tendency towards NMRs with the degree of religiosity as well as tendency of students towards ethnic identity.These findings emphasize on more attention to NRMs and its dimensions in Iran, particularly by scholars, researchers, and policy makers.

Contemporary societies are inadvertently exposed to the conditions that have emerged through the complex process of globalization, and their various areas such as economics, culture and politics are influenced by it. As glocal phenomena, New Religious Movements (NRMs) use opportunities arising from globalization to advance their goals, and are subject to the transformation of their teachings through global interactions. Thus, there is no way to talk about NRMs without considering global perspective. Many of the NRMs in Japan, in the context of IT Revolution and exposure to global information exchanges in the globalized world, have adapted themselves to globalization requirements, and even if in some cases (such as Aum Shinrikyō ) have taken steps against it, they have used its capacities at the same time. Some of the emerging NRMs in the post-Aum era (such as Kagamikyō ), seeking a combination of the global identity and local identity, have emerged as global super-religions, adapted to the demands of globalization. They also have focused on both the religious and the secular in both local and global arenas.

New Social Movements: A Case Study of Emerging Environmental Movements Abstract The term modern social movements is used to describe movements that were active in France in the late 1960s through collective action in the social sphere. The most important new social movements are the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the peace movement and the environmental movement. The rapid growth of industrial and capitalist societies, regardless of environmental degradation, has created many problems. The most important problems are soil erosion, resource reduction, ozone depletion, greenhouse effects, extinction of animal and plant species and various types of soil and climate pollution. The combination of these factors has provided the basis for the formation and activation of environmental movements. The present paper tries to answer the question of how emerging environmental movements can be analyzed in the form of new social movements? And what are their effects on new social movements? Therefore, with the qualitative interpretive method, and the method of case studies, it examines the nature and why of emerging environmental movements. The research findings show that environmental crises and the need to solve environmental problems that have become a pervasive and global crisis, have provided the basis for the formation, activity and impact of emerging environmental movements. Therefore, in order to deal with the existing crises, emerging environmental movements first informed and increased public awareness, and then created pro-environmental organizations and groups, and finally, by entering In the field of politics, and using new tools and methods, they have expressed their demands and protests in a peaceful and non-violent way, in order to force governments to respond and finally enter directly into The field of politics as influential groups and political parties in the field of public policy. As a result, the volume and scope of social power and the political influence of emerging environmental movements have led to the revitalization and enrichment of new social movements; in a way that today they can be identified and analyzed as powerful social forces and influential actors in the field of political sociology. Keywords: New Social Movements, Emerging Environmental Movements, Social Forces, Methods of Action, Political Nature.

During the struggle against the Qajar tyranny, struggling leaders went to the Shah Abdul Azim Shrine to hold a sit-in against the Shah Mosque Case and foot whipping of Tehran sugar merchants. The demonstrators in Paragraph 4 of their demands, as mentioned by Nazem al-Islam Kermani, the initial demands of refugees, called for the establishment of a justice system. According to this report, and many other evidences, justice, always has been a lasting and permanent matter for the Iranian society. Recent surveys show that justice should still be considered as one of the main demands of the Iranian society. The debate about justice and social movements is constantly changing, and thinkers in this area are constantly revising their ideas. The aim of this study is to elaborate these changes and to discuss the place of justice in new social movements that refers to a range of collective actions with purpose of changing in one or all of the institutions. The emergence of new social movements brought about new ways of expressing demands and protests, and a wide range of collective behavior forms, which, in terms of goals, nature and method of struggle, had a fundamental difference with earlier movements. In fact, with the advent of modernity, the calculations of traditional society were collapsed and, with the advent of postmodernity, new demands were created largely due to development of higher education and autonomy of individuals. Accordingly, new social movements emerged in a broader context of discourses, subcultures, ideological straggle, and identity diversity, and were spread in the form of new discourses.

In recent decades, new quasi-religious movements have been a serious threat to the foundations of society and people’ beliefs, especially those of the youth. Hence, this study was undertaken to examine students' tendency towards new quasi-religious movements and its correlates. The current work was a survey-based quantitative research. The statistical population of the study comprised high school students from East Azerbaijan out of whom 570 individuals were selected via random stratified sampling. The data gathering tools were questionnaires with established face validity and reliability indices of higher than 0. 8. For the purpose of data analysis, SPSS 24 and LISREL 8. 8 were utilized. Descriptive results indicated that 25 out of every 100 students have shown inclination to new quasi-religious movements. Students showed the highest tendency to Sai Baba and Eckankar and the lowest tendency rates were observed for Paulo Coelho and Castañ eda. The results showed that level of religiosity, the extent of familiarity with the movements, quality of leisure activities, and the extent of belief in magic and witchcraft have significant effects on students' inclination to such movements. More specifically, level of religiosity and quality of leisure activities play a hindering role and the level of familiarity with the movements as well as belief in magic and witchcraft play a promoting role in the tendency towards new quasi-religious movements.

New spiritualism is a worldwide phenomenon influenced by religious, political, and cultural developments across the globe. Existing studies on the origins of this phenomenon often examine factors such as advancements in communication technology, the impact of modernity, intellectual and doctrinal challenges faced by established religions, and collective demands for the protection of freedom of belief and religion. However, these analyses typically operate on a macro level, overlooking the individual agents themselves. In this article, we present a micro-level analysis, focusing on a specific facet of the new religious movement—the inclination towards Eckankar in Tehran. Our approach draws on deprivation theory as we delve into the minds of the agents to gain a nuanced understanding of why there is a leaning towards this particular movement. Unlike previous studies, we concentrate on the individual experiences of those drawn to Eckankar, conducting in-depth interviews and exploring available sources. The data reveals that these agents perceived a gap and a sense of deprivation in at least one aspect of their individual and social lives. Consequently, their conversion to Eckankar can be seen as an attempt to address and compensate for this feeling of deprivation.