ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a characterisation of the three types of new religion, illustrating the characteristics of each type from actual movements which appear to approximate them particularly closely, or to embody features of the type in a sharply visible form. The world-rejecting movement, no matter what religious tradition it draws upon, is much more recognisably religious than the world-affirming type. The style of the world-affirming movement lacks most of the features traditionally associated with religion. It may have no 'church', no collective ritual of worship, it may lack any developed theology or ethics. In world-affirming movements, the social order is not viewed as entirely and irredeemably unjust, nor society as having departed from God as in the world-rejecting case. The world-accommodating new religion draws a distinction between the spiritual and the worldly in a way quite uncharacteristic of the other two types.
