Organisations, Movements and Members

• At various points so far in the chapter, we have touched on different religious groups and organisations while we were examining other issues such as the role of religion or the secularisation debate. In this Topic, we make these organisations and movements the focus of our attention. We examine the main types of religious organisation, such as churches, sects, denominations and cults, and how they develop.
• In recent years, there has been a growth in the number of different religious organisations and spiritual movements such as the New Age, and we examine the reasons for this growth. Membership and participation in different religious organisations and movements varies by social class, ethnicity, gender and age. In this Topic, we examine some of the explanations for these patterns.