ABSTRACT
Two distinct tendencies may be readily discerned in the reaction of the settled traditional institutions of Western society to the many new religious movements that have sprung up in recent decades. Those two tendencies are evident within both religious and secular agencies-in the law courts, the media and politics as well as in the mainline churches and among the general public.1 One of these dispositions is the re-awakening of a longpersisting disposition of intolerance which, although today officially excoriated, has been part of a stock Christian response to new religions over centuries. The second tendency is for commentators to ignore the intrinsic character of each movement, their differences one from another, and to lump them all together as if, collectively, they constituted one common genre. It might be supposed that the various authoritative resolutions promulgated since World War II by international agencies, affirming freedom for all creeds of belief, practice, teaching and proselytising, would by this time have led to the suppression of both the sentiments and the expression of intolerance in religious matters. It has not been so.2
