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Big House Family/Wild Branch Ministries (c. 2000)
Wild Branch Christian Ministries, which is better known as the “Big House Family,” is a Christian group founded by Michael Galeotti out of a Los Angeles Bible study group. It is best known for the former involvement of television actor Bethany Joy Lenz, who was part of the group for about a decade. Lenz joined Continue reading
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Bhakti Marga (2005)
Mahadeosingh Komalram was born into a Hindu Brahmin family in Mauritius in 1978. He later claimed to have experienced an apparition of a holy man who he identified as his personal guru at the age of five. At 14, he is said to have entered a state of samadhi, a state of profound meditative union Continue reading
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Beta Dominion Xenophilia (c. 1985)
Beta Dominion Xenophilia was a small group based in Carroll County, Maryland, from the mid-1980s until the turn of the century. Founder Scott Caruthers began fabulating stories about his life as early as high school. By the time he dropped out, he was telling people that he was being pursued by extraterrestrials. Over the next Continue reading
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Bergholz Community (1995)
The Bergholz Community, also known as the Bergholz Clan or Bergholz Amish, was founded by Samuel Mullet Sr. in Bergholz, Ohio, in 1995 with the aim of creating a more conservative Amish settlement than the one Mullet was previously affiliated with. In 1997, Mullet was ordained as a minister for the new settlement. Four years Continue reading
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Bene Gesserit Sisterhood (c. 2010)
The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood is an Internet-based group inspired by the fictional sisterhood of the same name in Frank Herbert’s Dune series. In the novels, the Bene Gesserit is a centuries-old religious sisterhood with immense political power. Its members go through years of mental and physical training starting in adolescence in order to move into Continue reading
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Colin Batley (c. 1990)
Colin Batley was the head of a small and secretive Satanic sect known to its members as “The Church.” Born in London, he claimed to have been sexually abused by his father as a child and worked a series of odd jobs including a stint as a night security guard at a grocery store before Continue reading
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Baptist Foundation of Arizona (1948)
The Baptist Foundation of Arizona (BFA) was a Southern Baptist-affiliated charitable organization founded in 1948 with the dual purpose of generating investment income for participants and funding Christian causes. Closely tied to the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention and the national Southern Baptist Convention, the BFA presented itself as a faith-based investment ministry. Through investor brochures Continue reading
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Baha’i Faith (1863)
The Baháʼí Faith is a monotheistic religion that emerged in 19th century Persia, with a focus on the fundamental worth of all religions and the essential unity of humanity. Since its founding by Baháʼu’lláh in 1863, it has grown to approximately eight million adherents worldwide, and is the only religion to have grown faster in Continue reading
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Bábism (1844)
Bábism is a monotheistic religion founded in Persia by Siyyid ‘Alí Muhammad Shírází. Known to his followers as the Báb, meaning “gate,” his title reflects his role as a divinely inspired intermediary, one who opened the way to a new spiritual era. Born in 1819 in the city of Shiraz into a family of merchants, Continue reading
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Awaiting Christ Church (c. 1990)
Awaiting Christ Church, also known as Silinde u-Yesu, was a millenarian Christian church in South Africa led by Nokulunga Fiphaza. The movement was characterized by its apocalyptic predictions and its fervent belief in the imminent return of Jesus Christ. The church originated in the village of Corhana. In 1995, the congregants, who initially worked as Continue reading
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Avatar (1986)
Avatar, also called the “Avatar Course,” is a self-development program founded by Harry Palmer in 1986, operated through his company Star’s Edge. Since its inception, Avatar has expanded globally, with its materials translated into over 30 languages and reportedly reaching over 100,000 participants in more than 150 countries. Palmer was born in 1944 and after Continue reading
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Ausar Auset Society (1973)
Rogelio Straughn was born in Panama in 1944 and was exposed to the arts and philosophy early in life. He began studying piano and music theory at age six, and read regularly to his grandfather, a surgeon who had gone blind in old age. This introduced Straughn to Plato and other great thinkers. In adolescence, Continue reading
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Aumism (1969)
Gilbert Bourdin was born in Martinique in 1923 and spent his early career in the French Civil Service. His early life is otherwise mostly obscure. When he was 33, he moved to France and studied law, economics, and politics. He also developed an interest in esoteric studies and got involved with several Rosicrucian and Martinist Continue reading
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Aum Shinrikyo/Aleph (1984)
Aum Shinrikyo, renamed “Aleph” in 2000, is best known for orchestrating the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, which resulted in 13 deaths and thousands of injuries. The sect’s theology is an amalgam of Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu elements with millenarian overtones and the expectation of an impending apocalypse. Chizuo Matsumoto Continue reading
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Attleboro Sect (c. 1980)
The group commonly called the “Attleboro Sect,” but known to its members as “The Body of Christ” or simply “The Body,” emerged through a Bible study group in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, in the late 1970s. Its origins traced back to Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, originally the Radio Church of God, an offshoot Continue reading
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Astral Doorway (2021)
Astral Doorway is an online community focused on astral projection that was founded by Gene Hart, who claims to have been astrally projecting for more than a decade. Hart says he has achieved out-of-body experiences and astral travel that has enhanced his spiritual understanding, and that these experiences motivated him to teach others how to Continue reading
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Association for Research and Enlightenment (1931)
Edgar Cayce was born into a farming family in Kentucky in 1877 and was raised within the Disciples of Christ, a church that sought to restore original Christian teachings. He would later state that a winged woman visited him in his childhood, and that he could memorize his schoolbooks by sleeping on them. Cayce’s purported Continue reading
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Assembly of Man (1928)
Franklin Wolff was raised as a Methodist in California but abandoned Christianity in his youth as he began to explore philosophy. He studied mathematics at Stanford and Harvard, and briefly taught at Harvard before giving up on academia to focus on his own philosophical explorations. In 1920, he married Sarah Merrell Briggs and they combined Continue reading
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Asiaworks (1993)
American Chris Gentry founded Asiaworks in Hong Kong in 1993, basing it on other Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT) programs such as Erhard Seminar Training, Landmark Education, and Lifespring. Gentry’s aim was to adapt the LGAT model for the Asian market, with increased focus on societal status, reputation, and education. Asiaworks is presented as a Continue reading
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Ascensionism (c. 2006)
On July 22, 2013, a role-playing game called “Kanye Quest 3030” was released for the Windows PC platform. The game, developed with the RPG Maker engine, was published by a creator named “Phenix,” who would later be revealed to be Australian designer Clara Hope. The game, which was not authorized by West, involved the rapper Continue reading
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Asatru Folk Assembly (1995)
The Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) is the largest organization in the “Neo-Völkisch” movement. A subset of the larger Germanic Neopaganism “Ásatrú” movement that seeks to revive pre-Christian belief systems of the Germanic peoples through reverence for nature, ancestor veneration, and worship of Norse gods, Neo-Völkism promotes a romanticized Viking mythos that has been used to Continue reading
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Asaram (c. 1970)
Asumal Thaumal Harpalani was born in British India in 1941 in a town that was located in Pakistan after the partition of 1947. After partition, his family migrated to Ahmedabad, India, where his father opened a coal and wood business. Harpalani dropped out of school in third grade and briefly managed the family business after Continue reading
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Arya Samaj (1875)
The Arya Samaj is a Hindu modernization and reform movement founded in 1875 by Dayananda Saraswati, and it was the first significant Hindu organization to actively seek converts to Hinduism. Saraswati, born Mool Shankar Tiwari, was born in 1824 into a Brahmin family. At age eight, he was initiated into religious study in the Saivite Continue reading
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Art of Living Foundation (1981)
Ravi Shankar was born in Tamil Nadu, India, in 1956 and became a student of Hindu Vedic philosophy at a young age. After completing college, he became involved with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation movement, first travelling with the Maharishi and then setting out on his own to establish TM training centers. In 1981, after Continue reading
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Army of Mary (1971)
Marie-Paule Giguère, born Roman Catholic in Quebec in 1921, reported hearing celestial voices when she was 12 years old. She considered becoming a nun but was advised against it by her local church, and in 1944 she married Georges Cliché. They had five children, but the marriage was an unhappy one, and they divorced after Continue reading
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Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religious Movements 