Postgraduate Course: New Religious Movements in Global Perspective (REST11009)

Course Outline
School	School of Divinity	College	College of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	20	ECTS Credits	10
Summary	New religious movements (NRMs) have emerged all over the world, appearing among indigenous communities in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific and Oceania and First Nation Indians; or as modern cult movements in the northern hemisphere. How new are NRMs? The appropriation, understanding of NRMs is contextual, and varies from one milieu to another. In many geo-cultural contexts, i.e. Europe, NRMs engender much controversy and are perceived as synonymous with cults, sects, exotic and outlawed religions. Drawing case studies of NRMs from diverse geo-cultural contexts, this course explores terminological and typological issues of NRMs; contrasts their patterns of emergence, world-views, ritual dimension, and hierarchical/organisational structures. The course also deals with issues of identity and gender; and how they are negotiating modernity and globalization. Public responses to NRMs and their self-understanding have legal, political and social challenges for their future in local/global perspectives. The legal status of a NRM may vary or change from one context to another. For instance, the Church of Scientology is often considered illegal and dangerous in Germany and some other European countries but this is different in the USA.
Course description	Not entered

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations	Students MUST NOT also be taking New Indigenous Religious Movements 3/4 (REST10009)	Other requirements	None

Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will: - be acquainted, through an interdisciplinary approach, with the theoretical and methodological issues involved in the definition, typology of NRMs in global perspective. - be able to compare and contrast NRMs provenance, world-views, ritual systems, organization and polity in specific local contexts. - be able to demonstrate awareness of how NRMs negotiate identity in the face of modernity and globalization. - understand the public response of NRMs and their self-definition which have legal, political and social challenges for their future in local/global perspectives - through the exposure to fieldwork and participant-observation among NRMs in a specific local context, be able to develop fieldwork research techniques and methods.