ABSTRACT

The emergence of new religions throughout the second half of the twentieth century predicating alternative lifestyles and values, challenging the status quo and operating outside the mainstream has been met over time with a range of reactions from curiosity and tolerance to consternation and disapprobation. Throughout the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s, a social milieu of intolerance developed; the convergence of pressures brought to bear by countermovements, former member crusaders, and stigmatizing media culminated in some extreme attempts at social control through incidents of government intervention. These interventions were conducted on the grounds that the belief system and practices of the minority religion posed a danger to members and their children, as well as to the larger society. Consequentially, such interventions have placed the legal system in the precarious position of judging the beliefs and practices of new religions while weighing in the balance constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion.