This course aims to analyze the historical, social, and theological aspects of New Religious Movements that have emerged in the modern era. It provides a theoretical framework for the movements' emergence, their founding leadership typologies, their production of sacred texts, their organizational models, and their membership dynamics. Students are expected to evaluate the diversity of modern religious phenomena through sociological, psychological, and theological approaches.

Definition, classification, and historical development of new religious movements. The impact of modernization, urbanization, identity crisis, individualization, and globalization on religious formations. Charismatic leadership models, claims of revelation, the production of new sacred texts, and the construction of religious authority. Eastern-based movements, Western-centered esoteric and occult traditions, Christian-based new communities, syncretic structures, and meditation-centered movements. Criticisms of social control, marginality, traumatic communities, closed groups, rupture processes, and anti-cult debates. Sociological, psychological, and theological approaches to new religious movements. Global networks, digital religious movements, and contemporary transformations.