The application of the labels "

cults In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This ...

" or "

sects A sect is a subgroup of a religious, political, or philosophical belief system, usually an offshoot of a larger group. Although the term was originally a classification for religious separated groups, it can now refer to any organization that b ...

" to (for example) religious movements in government documents usually signifies the popular and negative use of the term "cult" in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and a functionally similar use of words translated as "sect" in several European languages. Government reports which have used these words include ones from Austria, International Religious Freedom Report 2006 - Austria, released by the

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs (DRL) is a bureau within the United States Department of State. The bureau is under the purview of the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. DRL's resp ...

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other n ...

.
"The vast majority of groups termed "sects" by the Government were small organizations with fewer than 100 members. Among the larger groups was the Church of Scientology, with between 5,000 and 6,000 members, and the Unification Church, with approximately 700 adherents throughout the country. Other groups found in the country included Divine Light Mission, Eckankar, Hare Krishna, the Holosophic community, the Osho movement, Sahaja Yoga, Sai Baba, Sri Chinmoy, Transcendental Meditation, Landmark Education, the Center for Experimental Society Formation, Fiat Lux, Universal Life, and The Family." Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, and Russia. While these documents utilize similar terminology they do not necessarily include the same groups nor is their assessment of these groups based on agreed criteria. Other governments and world bodies also report on new religious movements but do not use these terms to describe them.

Austria

The Austrian government does not always distinguish sects in Austria as a separate group. Rather, religious groups are divided into three legal categories: officially recognized religious societies, religious confessional communities, and associations. In 2010, the most recent year for which sects were officially distinguished in Austria, the groups included the

Church of Scientology The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a scientology as a business, bu ...

, the

Divine Light Mission The Divine Light Mission (''Divya Sandesh Parishad''; DLM) was an organization founded in 1960 by guru Hans Ji Maharaj for his following in northern India. During the 1970s, the DLM gained prominence in the West under the leadership of his fourth a ...

Eckankar Eckankar is a new religious movement founded by Paul Twitchell in 1965. Its membership today is primarily in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The spiritual home is the Temple of ECK in Chanhassen, Minnesota. Eckankar is not affiliated ...

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna may refer to: * International Society for Krishna Consciousness The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), known Colloquialism, colloquially as the Hare Krishna movement or Hare Krishnas, is a Gaudiya Vaishnav ...

, Osho movement,

Sahaja Yoga Sahaja Yoga (सहज योग) is a religion founded in 1970 by Nirmala Srivastava (1923–2011). Nirmala Srivastava is known as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi (trans: ''Revered Immaculate Mother'') or, simply, as "Mother" by her followers, who a ...

Sai Baba Sai Baba or Saibaba ( hi, साईं , "Swami", and , " Baba") is an honorific term for ascetics in India. It may refer in particular to: People * Sai Baba of Shirdi (–1918), Indian guru * Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011), born Sathya Narayana Ra ...

Sri Chinmoy Chinmoy Kumar Ghose (27 August 1931 – 11 October 2007), better known as Sri Chinmoy, was an Indian spiritual leader who taught meditation in the West after moving to New York City in 1964.Transcendental Meditation Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a form of silent mantra meditation advocated by the Transcendental Meditation movement. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi created the technique in India in the mid-1950s. Advocates of TM claim that the technique promotes a ...

Fiat Lux Fiat Automobiles S.p.A. (, , ; originally FIAT, it, Fabbrica Italiana Automobili di Torino, lit=Italian Automobiles Factory of Turin) is an Italian automobile manufacturer, formerly part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and since 2021 a subsidiar ...

Universal Life Universal Life (german: Universelles Leben, unofficially abbreviated UL) is the name of a controversialhttp://members.aol.com/bbsaktuell/weristue.htm and http://members.aol.com/bbswerth/weristue.htm new religious movement based in Würzburg, Germ ...

, and

The Family International The Family International (TFI) is a Christian New Religious Movement founded in Huntington Beach, California, USA, in 1968 by David Berg that has been criticized as an authoritarian cult. Originally named Teens for Christ, it has gone under ...

Canada

Canadian Security Intelligence Service The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS, ; french: Service canadien du renseignement de sécurité, ''SCRS'') is Canada's primary national intelligence agency. It is responsible for collecting, analysing, reporting and disseminating int ...

report of 1999 discussed "Doomsday Religious Movements espousing hostile beliefs and having the potential to be violent.." Groups classified as " Doomsday Religious Movements" included: * the

Branch Davidians The Branch Davidians (or the General Association of Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists) were an apocalyptic new religious movement founded in 1955 by Benjamin Roden. They regard themselves as a continuation of the General Association of ...

* Canada's

Order of the Solar Temple The Order of the Solar Temple (french: Ordre du Temple solaire, OTS) and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition, or simply The Solar Temple, is a cult and religious sect that claims to be based upon the ideals of the K ...

Aum Shinrikyo , formerly , is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year. The group says tha ...

(called the "Aum cult")"Doomsday Religious Movements", ''PERSPECTIVES'', * the Eather Legion a

publication, Report # 2000/03, December 18, 1999
available online
last updated November 1, 2000. In 2005, the Hate Crimes Unit of the Edmonton Police Service confiscated anti-

Falun Gong Falun Gong (, ) or Falun Dafa (; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a new religious movement.Junker, Andrew. 2019. ''Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora'', pp. 23–24, 33, 119 ...

materials distributed at the annual conference of the

American Family Association The American Family Association (AFA) is a Christian fundamentalist 501(c)(3) organization based in the United States.

by staff members of the Calgary Chinese Consulate (Province of Alberta, Canada). The materials, including the calling of Falun Gong a "cult," were identified as having breached the Criminal Code, which bans the wilful promotion of hatred against identifiable religious groups. In January of 2021, an online community founded by an unknown Canadian citizen emerged on the platform

Discord Discord is a VoIP and instant messaging social platform. Users have the ability to communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called "servers".The developer documenta ...

named "cult of the dead rabbit." Developed as a tongue-in-cheek community of adult voice users, online cults have become more entertainment than realism.

China

The General Office of

Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China The Ministry of Public Security () is a government ministry of the People's Republic of China responsible for public and political security. It oversees more than 1.9 million of the country's law enforcement officers and as such the vast ma ...

maintains a list of "heterodox teachings," (邪教) entitled "Information Regarding Organizations Identified as Cults e.g. the

White Lotus Sect The White Lotus () is a syncretic religious and political movement which forecasts the imminent advent of the "King of Light" (), i.e., the future Buddha Maitreya. As White Lotus sects developed, they appealed to many Han Chinese who found sola ...

and the Red Lantern Sect." *

Eastern Lightning The Church of Almighty God (), also known as Eastern Lightning (), is a monotheistic new religious movement which was established in China in 1991. Government sources estimate the group has three to four million members. The group's core tenet i ...

. * Offshoots of Korean Christian new religious movements: The Unification Church of Rev. Moon,

Dami Evangelism Association The Dami Mission (Korean language, Korean: 다미선교회) was a Christian religious movement founded in South Korea by Lee Jang Rim (Korean language, Korean: 이장림; Hanja: 李長林). It received worldwide attention after Lee predicted that th ...

, and the World Elijah Association. Buddhist-based proscribed sects include Lu Shengyan's Taiwan-based Lingxian Zhenfozong (灵仙真佛宗,

True Buddha School The True Buddha School () is a relatively new (Vajrayana oriented) Buddhist sect, that includes practices and deities from Taoism, and thus could arguably be defined as a new religious movement. Its headquarters are in Redmond, WA, USA, and the ...

), Ching Hai's Guanyin Famen, and Yuandun Famen.

France

French parliamentary commission report (1995)

In 1995, a parliamentary commission of the

National Assembly of France The National Assembly (french: link=no, italics=set, Assemblée nationale; ) is the lower house of the bicameral French Parliament under the Fifth Republic, the upper house being the Senate (). The National Assembly's legislators are known a ...

on cults produced it
report
ref name="france1995
French report, 1995
,

, Parliamentary Commission report. (in French: compare a
unofficial English translation
. The report included a list of purported cults based upon information which may have been provided by former members, the general information division of the

French National Police The National Police (french: Police nationale), formerly known as the , is one of two national police forces of France, the other being the National Gendarmerie. The National Police is the country's main civil law enforcement agency, with primar ...

('' Renseignements généraux'' — the French secret police service) and cult-watching groups. The criteria chosen by the French Renseignements généraux to establish the potential dangers of a movement were criticized since they were considered vague and may include many organizations, religious or not. One of the first criticisms came from bishop

Jean Vernette Fr. Jean Vernette (26 February 1929, Port-Vendres, Pyrénées-Orientales - 16 September 2002) was a French priest of the diocese of Montauban. He was considered a specialist by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1973, Vernette was appointed national s ...

, the national secretary of the French episcopate to the study of cults and new religious movements, who stressed that these criteria can be applied to almost all religions. Moreover, sociologists such as

Bruno Étienne Bruno Étienne (born in 1937 in La Tronche, Isère, died in Aix-en-Provence on 4 March 2009 after a cancer) was a French sociologist, freemason and a political analyst. He was a specialist of Algeria, Islam and anthropology of the religious and m ...

emphasized that the mental manipulation should not be defined by the policemen of the Renseignements généraux. The list of cults was based on the criteria defined by the Renseignements généraux, but without specifying which of their practices are specifically criticized. In addition, the secrecy of the work made by the RG led to questions about the presence or absence of certain organizations in the list. Étienne questioned the presence of the CEDIPAC SA company, formerly known as

European Grouping of Marketing Professionals The European Grouping of Marketing Professionals, widely named, GEPM, then renamed CEDIPAC SA, was a multi-level marketing company founded in the U.S. in 1988 by Jean Godzich, a former member of Amway. In France, its headquarters were in Fleury- ...

(GEPM), as its activity is not in the religious field. The absence of

Opus Dei Opus Dei, formally known as the Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei ( la, Praelatura Sanctae Crucis et Operis Dei), is an institution of the Catholic Church whose members seek personal Christian holiness and strive to imbue their work an ...

or the Freemasons also raised questions. In 2007, Yves Bertrand, General Director of the Renseignements généraux from 1992 to 2003, spoke about his collaborative work with the parliamentary reports on cults, and said: "Alongside genuine and dangerous cults practicing removal of school, abuse of weakness or pedophilia, some groups have been a bit quickly dress up of the word cult". Furthermore, on 27 May 2005, the 1995 list of cults of the French report was officially cancelled and invalidated by

Jean-Pierre Raffarin Jean-Pierre Raffarin (; born 3 August 1948) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 6 May 2002 to 31 May 2005. He resigned after France's rejection of the referendum on the European Union draft constitution. Howeve ...

's circulaire. In France,

Antoinism Antoinism is a healing and Christian-oriented new religious movement founded in 1910 by Louis-Joseph Antoine (1846–1912) in Jemeppe-sur-Meuse, Seraing in Belgium. With a total of 64 temples, over forty reading rooms across the world and tho ...

was classified as a cult in the 1995 parliamentary reports which considered it one of the oldest healer groups. However, in a 1984 letter, the French

Minister of the Interior An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...

wrote that the movement was considered, from an administrative point of view, as having for exclusive purpose the exercise of a religion, thus complying with the 18th and 19th Articles of the

1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State ( French: ) was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1905. Enacted during the Third Republic, it established state secularism in France. France was then governed by the '' ...

. He added that antoinism had always been allowed to receive bequests or donations, which meant that its religious nature was never challenged. In addition, many anti-cults activists, associations or watchers said they had not noticed cultic deviances in this group. For example, when heard by the Belgian commission on cults, philosopher Luc Nefontaine said that "the establishment of a directory of cult movements (...) seems to him dangerous, because it would also give a bad image of quite honourable organizations such as (...) Antoinism". Eric Brasseur, director of Centre for information and advice on harmful cultish organizations (Centre d'information et d'avis sur les organisations sectaires nuisibles, or CIAOSN) said: "This is a Belgian worship for which we have never had a complaint in 12 years, a rare case to report". Similarly, in 2013, the Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combatting Cultic Deviances (Mission interministérielle de vigilance et de lutte contre les dérives sectaires, or MIVILUDES) made this comment: "We have never received reporting from Antoinists. They heal through prayer, but as long as they do not prevent people from getting proper treatment by legal means..." In addition, the Renseignements généraux stopped monitoring the religion given the absence of any problem. In 2002, the national service "Pastoral, sects and new beliefs" ("Pastorale, sectes et nouvelles croyances"), which analyses new religious movements from a catholic point of view, wrote about Antoinism: "Although listed among the cults in the 1995 Parliamentary Report, it has no cultish feature." Similarly, the French sociologist Régis Dericquebourg, who deeply studied the religion, concluded that Antoinism is not a cult: it "has no totalitarian influence on its members, and do not dictate their behaviour to get in the world; it is not exclusive ndshows no hostility towards social systems". In France, the 1995 parliamentary report listed the

Shri Ram Chandra Mission Shri Ram Chandra Mission (SRCM) is a non-profit organization and a spiritual movement originating in India, which teaches the practice of " Sahaj Marg" or "Heartfulness Meditation". It was registered in 1945 by Ram Chandra of Shahjahanpur, U ...

. This has been criticized by lawyer Lawrence Hincker, who said that "this system of meditation, called Sahaj Marg, does not lead to a life away from the world. It integrates all aspects of man, whether physical, mental or spiritual, without charge or austerity or penance or self-negation". According to the sociologist

, an expert on religious issues, the SRCM publishes books as any other group but does not proselytize, and has never been convicted: "To us, it is fully a NMR (new religious movement), modern religious group, although based on an ancient tradition, and subject to serious arguments advanced by others more knowledgeable, we do not understand why it is criticized on the list of the damned".

Raphaël Liogier Raphaël Liogier (born in 1967) is a French sociologist and philosopher. He received his PhD in social sciences at the University Paul Cézanne (Aix-Marseille) in France, where he also received master's degrees in public law and in political sci ...

, Director of the Observatory of religious and university professor at the

Institut d'Études Politiques An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

Aix-en-Provence Aix-en-Provence (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Ais de Provença in classical norm, or in Mistralian norm, ; la, Aquae Sextiae), or simply Aix ( medieval Occitan: ''Aics''), is a city and commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. ...

, said he did not understand the inclusion on the cult list of an association that is fully recognized in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. In May 2005 the then

Prime Minister of France The prime minister of France (french: link=no, Premier ministre français), officially the prime minister of the French Republic, is the head of government of the French Republic and the leader of the Council of Ministers. The prime minister ...

, in a ''

circulaire In France, Italy, Belgium, and some other civil law countries, a circulaire ( French), circolare (Italian) or omzendbrief (Dutch) consists of a text intended for the members of a service, of an enterprise, or of an administration. Within the Frenc ...

'', which stressed that the government must exercise vigilance concerning the cult phenomenon, said that the list of movements attached to the Parliamentary Report of 1995 had become less pertinent, based on the observation that many small groups had formed: scattered, more mobile, and less-easily identifiable, and that the government needed to balance its concern with cults with respect for public freedoms and

laïcité (; 'secularism') is the constitutional principle of secularism in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution is commonly interpreted as discouraging religious involvement in government affairs, especially religious influence in the determin ...

(secularism).

French parliamentary commission report (1999)

The French Parliamentary report of 1999 on cults and money concentrated its attention on some 30 groups which it judged as major players in respect of their financial influence. It underlined the non-exhaustive character of its investigations, seeing them as a snapshot at a point in time and based on information available. The groups examined included: * Anthroposophie (

Anthroposophy Anthroposophy is a spiritualist movement founded in the early 20th century by the esotericist Rudolf Steiner that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world, accessible to human experience. Followers ...

) * Au Cœur de la Communication (At the Heart of Communication) * Contre-réforme catholique (

League for Catholic Counter-Reformation The League for Catholic Counter-Reformation (french: Ligue de la contre-réforme catholique, CRC) is a nationalist and ultramontane Ultramontanism is a clerical political conception within the Catholic Church that places strong emphasis on the ...

) * Dianova (Ex-Le Patriarche) (Dianova (formerly: the Patriarch)) * Église du Christ ( Boston Church of Christ) * Église Néo-apostolique (

New Apostolic Church The New Apostolic Church (NAC) is a Christian denomination, Christian church that split from the Catholic Apostolic Church during an 1863 schism in Hamburg, Germany. The church has existed since 1863 in Germany and since 1897 in the Ne ...

) * Énergo-Chromo-Kinèse (ECK) * Fédération d'agrément des réseaux (ex-Groupement européen des professionnels du marketing) (Federation of the networks of agreement (formerly: European Grouping of Marketing Professionals (GEPM)) * Fraternité blanche universelle (

Universal White Brotherhood The Universal White Brotherhood (UWB) is a religious movement founded in Bulgaria in 1897 by Peter Deunov. It was later established in France in 1937 by Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov, one of Deunov's followers. Their teachings are also known as "Dun ...

) * Invitation à la Vie ( Invitation to Life) * Innergy (

Insight Seminars Insight Seminars is an international non-profit organization headquartered in Santa Monica, California. The first seminar was led in 1978 by founders John-Roger and Russell Bishop under the name Insight Training Seminars. Insight has held seminars ...

) * Krishna (

Hare Krishna movement The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), known colloquially as the Hare Krishna movement or Hare Krishnas, is a Gaudiya Vaishnava Hindu religious organization. ISKCON was founded in 1966 in New York City by A. C. Bhaktiv ...

) * Landmark (

Landmark Education Landmark Worldwide (known as Landmark Education before 2013), or simply Landmark, is a company, headquartered in San Francisco, that offers personal-development programs. Landmark Education started in 1991 with the licensing of rights to use i ...

) * Mahikari ( Sûkyô Mahikari) * Mandarom * Méthode Avatar ( Avatar Method) * Moon (

Unification Church The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, widely known as the Unification Church, is a new religious movement, whose members are called Unificationists, or "Moonies". It was officially founded on 1 May 1954 under the name Holy Spi ...

) * Mouvement du Graal ( Grail Movement) * Mouvement Raëlien ( Raelian Movement) * Nouvelle Acropole (

New Acropolis New Acropolis (NA; es, Organización Internacional Nueva Acrópolis; OINA; french: Organisation Internationale Nouvelle Acropole, association internationale sans but lucratif) is a non-profit organisation originally founded in 1957 by Jorge Áng ...

) * Office culturel de Cluny ( Cultural office of Cluny – National Federation of Total Animation) * Ogyen Kunzang Chöling * Orkos (Anopsology) * Pentecôte de Besançon ( Evangelical Pentecostal Church of Besançon) * Prima Verba * Rose-Croix - AMORC ( Rosicrucian Order) * Rose-Croix d'Or ( Gold Rosicrucian Brotherhood) * Scientologie (

Scientology Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. The most recent published census data indi ...

) * Soka Gakkaï (

Sōka Gakkai is a Japanese Buddhist religious movement based on the teachings of the 13th-century Japanese priest Nichiren as taught by its first three presidents Tsunesaburō Makiguchi, Jōsei Toda, and Daisaku Ikeda. It is the largest of the Japanes ...

) * La méthode Silva (The

Silva Method The Silva Method is a self-help and meditation program developed by José Silva. It claims to increase an individual's abilities through relaxation, development of higher brain functions, and psychic abilities such as clairvoyance. It has been va ...

) * Témoins de Jéhovah (

Jehovah's Witnesses Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...

) * Tradition Famille Propriété ( Tradition, Family, Property)

Germany

Berlin Senate report (1997)

An official report of a

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

Committee of the city and state of Berlin in Germany listed and discussed cults (german: Sekten), emphasizing with its sub-title their categorization as "entities espousing a

world view A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural p ...

and new religions". The 1997 Berlin Senate report — entitled ''Cults: Risks and Side-effects: Information on selected new religious and world-view espousing Movements and Psycho-offerings'' — subdivided "selected suppliers" (''ausgewählte Anbieter'') of its objects of interest as: * 7.1: Groups with a Christian background (''Gruppen mit christlichem Hintergrund'') ** 7.1.1

** 7.1.2 Parish on the Road Evangelical Free Church (registered association) (''Gemeinde auf dem Weg Evangelische Freikirche e.V'') ** 7.1.3 Parish of Jesus Christ (registered association) Boston Church of Christ (''Gemeinde Jesu Christi e.V. (Boston Church of Christ)'') ** 7.1.4

(Re-gathering of Jesus Christ) (''Universelles Leben (Heimholungswerk Jesu Christi/HHW)'') ** 7.1.5

(

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

movement) (''Vereinigungskirche (Mond-Bewegung)'') * 7.2 Groups with a

pagan Paganism (from classical Latin ''pāgānus'' "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. ...

background (''Gruppen mit heidnischem Hintergrund'') ** 7.2.1 Teutonic Belief Association (registered association) (''Germanische Glaubengemeinschaft e.V. (GGG)'') ** 7.2.2 Pagan Association (registered association) (''Heidnische Gemeinschaft e.V. (HG)'') ** 7.3.2 OSHO-Movement (

Osho Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain; 11 December 193119 January 1990), also known as Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and later as Osho (), was an Indian godman, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement. He was viewed as a controv ...

) (''OSHO-Bewegung (Bhagwan)'') ** 7.3.3 Ruhani Satsang of Thakar Singh (''Ruhani Satsang des Thakar Singh'') ** 7.3.4

Transcendental Meditation Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a form of silent mantra meditation advocated by the Transcendental Meditation movement. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi created the technique in India in the mid-1950s. Advocates of TM claim that the technique promotes a ...

(TM) (''Transzendentale Meditation (TM)'') * 7.4 Suppliers of Life-Help (''Anbieter von Lebenshilfe'') ** commercial: (''kommerziell:'') ** 7.4.1 The Circle of Friends of

Bruno Gröning Bruno Bernhard Gröning (1906 in Gdańsk, Danzig – January 26, 1959 in Paris) was a German mystic who performed faith healings and lectured. He was active in Germany in the 1940s and 1950s after World War II. Early life Gröning was born in ...

(''Bruno Gröning-Freundeskreise'') ** 7.4.2 Context Seminar Company Limited (''Kontext Seminar GmbH'') ** 7.4.3

(LE) (''Landmark Education (LE)'') ** 7.4.4 Art Reade ** 7.4.5

** 7.4.6 The Natale Institute (TNI) ** non-commercial: (''nicht kommerziell:'') ** 7.4.7 Union for the Enhancement of the psychological Knowledge of Mankind (''Verein zur Förderung der psychologischen Menschenkenntnis (VPM)'') * 7.5

Occultism The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism an ...

Satanism Satanism is a group of ideological and philosophical beliefs based on Satan. Contemporary religious practice of Satanism began with the founding of the atheistic Church of Satan by Anton LaVey in the United States in 1966, although a few hi ...

(''Okkultismus/Satanismus'') * 7.6 So-called Multi-level Marketers (''Sogenannte Strukturvertriebe'')

Russia

In 2008 the

Russian Interior Ministry The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (MVD; russian: Министерство внутренних дел (МВД), ''Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del'') is the interior ministry of Russia. The MVD is responsible for law enfor ...

prepared a list of "extremist groups". At the top of the list appeared Islamic groups outside of "traditional Islam", which is supervised by the Russian government. Next listed were "Pagan cults". In 2009 the

Russian Ministry of Justice The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation (russian: Министе́рство юсти́ции Росси́йской Федера́ции, Миню́ст Росси́и) is a ministry of the Government of Russia responsible for the lega ...

set up a council which it named "Council of Experts Conducting State Religious Studies Expert Analysis". The new council listed 80 large sects which it considered potentially dangerous to Russian society, and mentioned that there were thousands of smaller ones. Compare: Large sects listed included:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...

, and what the council called "neo-Pentecostals".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Governmental lists of cults and sects * Religious policy