Talk:New religious movement

Article's subject unclear, rewriting for coherency seems appropriate.
If, as is stated, "There is no single, agreed-upon criterion for defining a new religious movement", and indeed no single agreed-upon name for one "new religious movement (NRM), also known as a new religion or an alternative spirituality", it would seem the article is neither sure what it is describing or even what that thing is to be called. The nature of this website means articles have the potential to be schizophrenic in this manner, but this is something that ought to be amended when it occurs. Compounding this is an ambiguity as to whether the subject of the article is primarily the phenomenon of the "new religious movement", or the development and use of the term itself; it is likewise no good beginning by saying "There is debate as to how the term "new" should be interpreted in this context" and then having the article immediately proceed to matter-of-factly list religious movements since 1830.

Consider such paragraphs as: "As noted by Barker, NRMs cannot all be "lumped together" and differ from one another on many issues. Virtually no generalisation can be made about NRMs that applies to every single group, with Barrett noting that "generalizations tend not to be very helpful" when studying NRMs. Melton expressed the view that there is "no single characteristic or set of characteristics" that all new religions share, "not even their newness." Bryan Wilson wrote, "Chief among the miss-directed assertions has been the tendency to speak of new religious movements as if they differed very little, if at all, one from another. The tendency has been to lump them altogether and indiscriminately to attribute to all of them characteristics which are, in fact, valid for only one or two." NRMs themselves often claim that they exist at a crucial place in time and space." - how can we know what NRMs claim without knowing what is and is not a NRM? The article reads as a sort of darkly comedic parody as a result of being presented in this way.

This sort of near-nonsense where an article is arguing with itself is not, I think, what this website is aiming for. I suggest the article be rewritten to focus primarily on the use and development of the idea of the new religious movement as a descriptive term in sociology, which seems ultimately to be the real focus of the article, and which would then also allow the information concerning the religious movements in question to be contextually presented in a coherent manner ancillary to the sociological debates about them. Alternatively, the confusing interjections to the tune of no one being sure what exactly a new religious movement is and that the people claiming to study them are in disagreement on more-or-less everything could be removed, or at least confined to one specific section, with one approach to the field being made primary and not constantly being gainsaid.

Unfortunately I do not feel qualified for the task, but I'll leave this out there in the hope someone will pick up the torch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.19.57 (talk) 15:59, 5 October 2020 (UTC)