In a marginal direction, generally employed in particular in relation to the ancient or Eastern religious traditions, the word sect is a simple synonym of doctrinal school or particular line inside a vaster religious unit: it is in the sense that one speaks about the sects of the Hinduism, the taoism, Japanese Buddhism, the Shinto, etc In all these religious traditions, it does not exist dominant Church asserting an orthodoxe character: consequently, all the sects profit from the same legitimacy.  

It goes from there differently in the Christian tradition, which, right from the start, connoted in an extremely negative way the term of sect: for it, is sectarian any group who separated by themselves a schism from the Large Church, only with being at the same time fully orthodoxe and fully catholic (i.e., etymologically, “universal”). The sect (of Latin sequi, “to follow”) is thus in the order of the organization what is the heresy in the order of the doctrines: a body the faithful ones which separated from the principal body of the Church to follow one (false) prophet who professes doctrines heretic. This polemical point of view compares all the Christian nonconformisms to sects: so until a recent date, the Protestant Churches were a long time qualified sects in the countries of tradition catholic. But if the sect, in this direction, it is always the different one, one hardly should be astonished by what the term was turned over against the Roman Catholic Church by certain Protestant groups for which the sect par excellence, it is the Church of the Rome, for them most inaccurate with the message of the Writings.  

The concept of sect for the sociologists
At the end of the XIXe century, incipient sociology tried to analyze the Christian institutions by giving a scientific direction, nonpolemical, under the terms of sect and Church. One must to Max Weber and to the German historian (in addition theologist Lutheran) Ernst Troeltsch this conceptualization. For these two authors, the sect expresses to some extent the principle extremist or intransigent in religion while the Church testifies to the realistic principle of compromise in the world and the profane institutions.  

The sect gathers people linked by the choice of the same religious ideal which is generally in rupture with the beliefs and the values moreover of the company. It expresses a more or less strong protest thus social, possibly forces, which causes in return the hostility of the company towards it. It is incarnated in an organization of believers who seek the religious perfection and who want to achieve a utopian project immediately, for example the realization of the Kingdom of God on ground.  

On the contrary, the religion of the Eglise type expresses a more realistic vision, which takes account of the resistance of the world with the religious project and the unequal sensitivity of the men to the religious prospect that she proposes. It has thus vocation to gather the whole of a human community to which it claims to bring the keys of the hello. Consequently, to last at the level of the centuries, it must pass from the compromises with the profane company and the State, with which it enters a relation of more or less narrow symbiosis.  
 

Indeed, the current religious field is characterized by a generalized pluralism of the practices and beliefs inside of which there is no more regulating authority which has a sufficient authority to give the religious standard of a company. Unlike the traditional sects which opposed the great Christian confessions (catholic, orthodoxe, Anglican, Eglises of the Reform), the current groups seldom seem movements protesters against the Church, would be this only because this one lost its character dominating in most Western countries and because many are the movements of exotic source, Eastern and Far-Eastern. To qualify these contemporary religious effervescences, the sociologists of the religion usually speak about “new religious movements” (NMR), expression which was essential in the scientific speech in the absence of a more precise term.  

These NMR are of an extreme variety of doctrines, values, types of organization and action:

Concerning the doctrines, they can be claimed of an existing religious tradition that they reinterpret in a direction revivalist (neopentecotists groups, International association for the conscience of Krishna , for example), or constitute syncretisms between various religions (many groups, in particular those which fall under the mobility of “New Old”), or to be based on a revelation of a new kind (Church “moonist”); some upset the traditional borders between monk and not-monk by transforming a psychotherapeutic practice of style into new religion (Church of Scientology);  

Concerning the report with the values, one can classify them according to two poles: those which are opposed to the individualistic values of the modern society (AICK, “moonists”, etc); those which, on the contrary, assert the modern values and claim to give their followers of better weapons to make a success of their life within this company (Scientology, Soka gakkaï); in this case, the possible conflict with the company is not due to their posted ideology but to their concrete operation.  

This brings to consider another aspect, the mode of organization: a NMR can be limited at a small community of purely local establishment or constitute a true multinational of the hello managed by means of the most modern techniques.  

According to whether one chooses such criterion rather than such other, one will lead to different classifications, no typology not being able to give an account of the whole of the factors.  
 

An example of NMR to the values anti-individualists is the Church of the Unification of World Christianity (AUCM), rested by the reverend Moon in 1954. Born in Korea in 1920, this one declares that at the sixteen years age God revealed to him that he was the new Messiah chosen to complete the mission that Jesus, the first Messiah, had not known to achieve. South Korea is the country where this mission will be achieved and around whose the religions and the nations will be linked to establish the kingdom of God on Earth. The AUCM sends missionaries in Occident and is its first successes with the beginning of the year 1970, in particular in the United States.

She recommends the community life of completely engaged members, but admits now also associated members who share the sights of Moon without changing state of life. The movement is known for its collective marriages in stages; Moon indeed develops the marriage, which it describes as “second birth”, and chooses itself the couple. The AUCM is also announced, until 1990, by a virulent anticommunism, since then moderate by a bringing together with the North Korea.

In the years 1975-1980, the “moonists” were the main target of the movements opposed to the sects, which showed them of fallacious methods of proselytism and political intentions twisted. During the decade 1990, on the other hand, the hostility moved towards another movement, the Church of Scientology. 

In 1954, the dianétique one, rejected by traditional psychology, are transformed into religion (Scientology) while obtaining its own theology which reactualizes in fact the gnostic myth of the divine spark immersed in the matter and which must reconquer its original freedom through a self-knowledge brought by introspection. For the scientologists, the man is basically a “thétan”, i.e. a forgetful divine being of his nature; to find it, it must “clarify” its mental and go up in the hierarchy of the conscience thanks to meetings of “hearing” where it faces its emotions and its driven back memories of former lives. This technological gnosis which was spread in the Western countries beats to be seen recognizing the statute of religion which is denied to him in certain countries which show it to confuse its marketing activities and pertaining to worship.

New religions in Japan

The considerable success of the “new religions” since the Second world war constitutes an outstanding phenomenon in contemporary Japan. In 1945, the abandonment of the imperial worship, bases civil religion called “Shinto of State” to which all the Japanese were to subscribe, provides the foundations of a complete religious liberty while a legislation which exonerates tax any religious association supports the proliferation of the new groupings. From a sociological point of view, one allots the rapid growth of the new religions during the years 1950 and 1960 to the modernization and the urbanization which distend rural solidarity of the past and which push the individual to be incorporated with new groups made up on a affinitaire basis, devotion with the religious leader replacing fidelity with the patriarch of the village community.  

Contrary to the NMR of Occident which are often of foreign source, most new Japanese religions root in the national religious compost, with references which mingle Buddhism and Shinto with a substrate chamanic even older. However, the syncretism with monotheistic ideas, even with the Western occultism testifies to a diffuse external influence. In addition, these movements borrow from modernity its techniques of diffusion, publicity and management put at the service of the charismatic radiation of a prophet founder often considered as an alive god. The success of these movements is unquestionably due to their capacity to bring up to date the report with crowned traditional in Japan, where the search for a plenitude of life relates to the material field as much as the spiritual field.  

An example: Soka gakkaï
Among these new religions, most powerful without question Soka gakkaï is (or “Company for the creation of values”), which counts 7 million members and has a political prolongation with the Buddhist party Komei, currently the second political clout of Japan since its alliance in 1994 with other components to form the party of the New Border. The principles of Soka gakkaï are the diffusion of “orthodoxe Buddhism” centered on the person of Nichiren (Japanese monk of the XIII E century which preached the exclusive faith in will sutra lotus) and the recitation of one will mantra to arrive at the Awakening in the daily life and to support peace between the men.

The search for concrete benefits is by no means discouraged: she is seen like a way of putting her faith proof against realities. Following the example of other Japanese movements, Soka gakkaï started to be established out of Japan, in the Western countries and of the third world. She is also known for her cultural activities and educational by which she gives herself an addition of legitimacy but which can, out of Japan, to scramble the perception of its properly religious objectives.  
Associated topics

The sect in the social debate

If the term of NMR seems held to the specialists in the religious fact, the current social debate recovered the word sect (Anglo-Saxons speaking about cult in the same disqualifying direction) to give him a new meaning of illegitimate religious movement, even sometimes of totalitarian group of structure, including out of the religious field. The sect thus described is seen like an organization with strong influence, centered on a charismatic personality dominating an opaque hierarchy and which constitutes a potential threat for the moral integrity, psychological, in rarer physical cases, of its members.  

The entirely negative image of the sect, representing a public menace, was consolidated in the last quarter of the twentieth century following several fatal “explosions”: the suicide-massacre of Jonstown to Guyana in 1978 (923 members deaths of the Temple of the People); the attack given against the seat of the sect of David Koresh, in Waco, Texas in 1993, the massacres organized on two continents and in two times (dead Quebec and French-speaking Switzerland in 1994:53; France in 1995:16 dead) by the leaders about the solar Temple; or the attack with the gas sarin perpetrated in 1995 in the subway of Tokyo by the group Aum Shinri-kyo.

These extreme cases, so spectacular are, cannot be used as analyzer with the whole of the sectarian phenomenon.  

• The usual description of the sect or the “sectarian drift” in the social speech in fact a demonstration of collective deviance which would be characterized by a certain number of features:
• the use of particular techniques to weaken the will of a potential convert (insulation, various deprivations or on the contrary “bombardment of love” intended to create an atmosphere of cordial envelopment);  
• standardization and depersonalization of the behavior;  
• exploitation of the followers through the intentional dissimulation of the true objectives of the institution;  
• power without division of the leader, usually qualified of “guru”;  
• the rupture supplements with the past of the follower and its family and friendly entourage;  
• the fact of imposing to the children a socialization in rupture with the values common and harming their blooming.  

Such an approach escapes the categories of the right (the sect does not exist for the lawyers) and of sociology (because the sect with the direction wébérien is not obligatorily sectarian with the direction running). It refers in fact with a vision psychologisante centered on the concepts of influence groupale, of mental handling, even of “washing of brain” (an image borrowed from the speech of the cold war but given up by the psychologists). These processes, moreover insufficiently validated, are not clean religious movements: they must question, beyond the groups pointed like illegitimate or dangerous, on the meeting between psychological requests for fusion in a group to obtain from it safety, recognition of oneself or discovered direction and economic or political strategies of domination.  

Beyond, they announce also the increasing difficulty to locate the monk in the contemporary companies increasingly characterized by a deregulated operation of the market of the goods symbolic systems where any contractor equipped with a charismatic personality can create a new product, with the requirement by using the most sophisticated communications tools. Whenever these religious products are put at the service of a logic of company, this one can sometimes seem dominating at the point to reveal as secondary the religious objectives which are posted. This perverse consequence of religious pluralism can only place the NMR or the sects in the center of an at the same time scientific and ideological debate.