ABSTRACT
Buddhism is gaining an increasing profile in Western popular culture. Its adherents (including a significant number of converts) have developed new religious movements (NRMs) in the West (Wallis 1976; Barker 1990, 1998). ‘NRM’ is the more academic definition of what are some-times popularly and pejoratively labelled ‘cults’. Murray Rubinstein, Professor of History at Baruch College, defines them in the Encyclopaedia Britannica concisely as follows:
[NRM]s offer innovative religious responses to the conditions of the modern world, despite the fact that most NRMs represent themselves as rooted in ancient traditions. NRMs are also usually regarded as ‘counter-cultural’; that is, they are perceived (by others and by themselves) to be alternatives to the mainstream religions of Western society, especially Christianity in its normative forms. These movements are often highly eclectic, pluralistic, and syncretistic; they freely combine doctrines and practices from diverse sources within their belief systems.
(Rubinstein 2011)