Modern societies cultivate a lot of stereotypes and prejudices regarding the new religious movements (NRM), which emerged in the Western countries in the second half of 20th Century. The discriminatory public attitude toward NRM is already seen in terminology, used in everyday laic speech, since the word "cult" has a pejorative tone. For this reason, the scientific analysis of NRM for many years now includes a value neutral term "new religious movements", although there are some problems with it as well. The author shortly introduces extremely heterogeneous and complex field of NRM, presents various theoretical definitions of types of religious communities (churches, denominations, sects, cults), and further analyses processes, which create a negative public image of NRM, and exposes anti-sect movements and mass media as key generators of this negative image.
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