ABSTRACT
This essay focuses on a class of religious phenomena that self-consciously place themselves on the frontier between the sacred and the secular, and that may therefore be appropriately referred to as “ quasireligions.’’ In the first section, we attempt to define the term “ quasi religion” and to justify our interpretation of the proper use of the term. In the second section, we provide examples of some of the organizations which we think are appropriately classified as quasi-religions. We then go on to delineate some common features of these organizations and to employ these features as clues explaining why these organizations might position themselves on the border between the religious and the nonreli gious. We conclude with a brief attempt to assess the significance of these quasi-religions and to summarize what the study of quasi-religion seems to be telling us about changes in the understanding of religion in contempo rary America.
