4 - Documents and Data

Summary

STATISTICS

General estimates of the extent of the New Religions phenomenon vary considerably. The two basic quantitative questions in this area are: How many groups? And, How many people? These questions are not as simple as they might at first appear. A more fundamental question involves classification: Where does one draw the line between alternative and non-alternative religions? What one finds when one actually tries to determine where to draw such a line is that the difference between “mainstream” and “alternative” is a matter of degree rather than a sharply defined distinction.

The indeterminacy of this dividing line allows anti-cultists like the late Margaret Singer to assert, without fear of direct contradiction, that as many as 20 million people have been involved in three to five thousand cults in the United States (Singer and Lalich 1995). In contrast, Gordon Melton estimates five to six hundred alternative religions in the United States (Melton 1992). Similarly, Peter Clarke estimates four to five hundred new religions in the United Kingdom (Clarke 1984). The situation is rather different in Japan, where New Religions have been thriving since the end of the Second World War. Japanese sociologists estimate anywhere from eight hundred to several thousand (Arweck 2001) such groups. And finally, Eileen Barker puts forward a figure of two thousand or more New Religions in the West, and a figure in the lower tens of thousands worldwide (Barker 1999).