III. THE ''NEW RELIGIONS'' AND THE STUDY OF RELIGION(...)

A smaller number of the "new religions" have their origins in the recovery of forgotten or neglected aspects of older religious traditions, often the mystical and meditative dimensions of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faiths. For example, Canada's first "deprogramming" case involved a young woman, a graduate of the University of Waterloo, who had joined a Catholic charismatic community in Orangeville, Ontario.

Many of the "new religions" have emerged from the encounter of missionary Christianity or missionary Islam with indigenous traditions in Africa and Asia. When these groups have come to propagate their faith in North America, this has been viewed with alarm since many of the beliefs of the newer communities are considered "heretical" to the older denominations. Some of these synthetic movements, like the Unification Church, have their origins in the Christian missionary world but incorporate elements of the indigenous or traditional religions as well as "new revelations." An analogous case is the Bahai tradition which emerges out of the Islamic tradition but incorporates a "new revelation."