Cults, spirituality, and new religious movements

Submissions are now open for articles which look at one or all of the above.

These categories can be open to interpretation and we encourage a critical engagement with each term, particularly when it comes to cults.*

Nonetheless, cults are regularly intertwined with spiritual and religious elements, often using the language of healing, salvation, and submission, with an often too thin veil between cults and spiritual abuse.

Perhaps as a result of this, stories about cults, spirituality, and new religious movements capture a lot of popular attention. With the posthumous exposure of T.B. Joshua, the ongoing Twin Flames Universe scandal, the mother god getting kicked out of Hawaii and turning blue(!), we are collectively and understandably fascinated. So we’d like to highlight the research and theoretical analysis behind the popular cult stories.

At the same time, statistics in the US are showing a rise in those who are more likely to self-define as ‘spiritual’ than ‘religious’, and in the UK around half of the population now declare themselves ‘nones’ (those with no religion), although many of whom do believe in things like prayer, a higher power, and the supernatural. As people move away from more established, historic religious institutions, we want to take a closer look at emerging trends in spirituality and new religious movements, whether for groups or individuals.

Here are some more of our suggested topics:

• Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) policy responses, state regulation, and policing of cults, spirituality, and/or new religious movements
• Cybersectarianism and the digital spread of new religious movements (particularly during or since the pandemic)
• Religion and financial coercion; where spirituality meets multi-level marketing schemes, personal brands, business development
• The persistence and increasing popularity of astrology and magic
• Different practices and interpretations of healing

And due to personal interests of our current editor, we are particularly interested in any analysis which looks at:

• Mary Cosby from Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
• The Rajneesh movement
• Shamanism, witchcraft, and magic vs. Vladimir Putin

These lists are by no means exhaustive and we’d love to hear your ideas.

How to contribute

To contribute to the blog, please contact Flora Rustamova at f.d.rustamova@lse.ac.uk or tweet us @LSE_RGS. You can send a draft piece, a finished article, or just pitch us your thoughts.

For our full guidelines and the other current series’, please click here.

* We do have to remain within the remit of “religion and global society”, so if you’re researching cultlike football fans, whether or not improv is a cult, and so on, it’ll be fascinating but this might not be the place to publish it.