Religious cults today and salvation

Abstract

The phenomenon of new religious cults is so widespread today, that it can and should be considered as a significant element of contemporary culture. What renders these cults so attractive to many people today, especially youngsters, is substantially the same as that which has been offered for twenty centuries by Christianity, namely salvation and selffulfilment. And yet many people join these cults after having been members of one or other of the Christian Churches. What are then really these cults? What are their characteristics? What should our attitude towards them be? In this paper I shall try to answer these three questions, relying mostly on the research of scholars and theologians during the last decades or so.