ABSTRACT
The previous chapters examined and reviewed institutional responses to NRMs and the way in which they have interacted with one another. Although I have dealt with a selection of institutional responses, my objective has been to place these in the contexts in which they unfolded and to show how academic, ‘anti-cult’, and theological responses have evolved as the NRM debate progressed over time. The chronology of the institutions is bound up with a sequence of events which developed from the interaction of the different parties involved, but is also bound up with the sheer accident of particular people and institutions being present in a particular place at a particular time. The element of ‘accident’ has also been present in the course which my own research has taken, with the discovery of contacts and material at times contingent on particular moments in time and place.
