Including both leading scholars and new voices from around the world, this Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the study of new religious movements in the contemporary global context. A burgeoning field within religious studies, chapters revised and expand upon The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements (2014), bringing together a wide range of experts in the field to offer methodological, theoretical, and topical consideration of new and alternative religions.

The contributors cover various approaches to the study of new religious movements, such as fieldwork and media studies. George D. Chryssides and Benjamin E. Zeller also provide a new detailed introduction explaining the history and major questions of the field, and situating readers new to the topic within the current significant research.

The book provides fresh insights into the background of debates on problematic matters such as brainwashing and violence, as well as fundamental themes such as millennialism, prophecy, and the engagement with science. Contributors move beyond more limited studies that focus only on Europe and North America, by including regional coverage of movements in Asia and Africa.

George D. Chryssides is a Visiting Research Fellow at York St John University, UK, and was formerly Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He has authored and co-edited numerous books, the most recent being Fieldwork in New Religious Movements (2024).

Benjamin E. Zeller is the Irvin L. & Fern D. Young Presidential Professor and Chair of Religion at Lake Forest College, Chicago, USA. He is the author or editor of six books, including Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion (2014).