Études des NMR sur fond des cult wars

This article offers a critical review of the scientific literature devoted to new religious movements (NRMs) during the period known as the “cult wars”, which spanned from the 1970s to the late 1990s in several Western societies, notably the United States, Great Britain, France, and Canada. Marked by intensified public, media, and legal controversies surrounding NRMs, this period profoundly influenced scientific production itself, placing many researchers at the center of polarized debates on mind control, religious freedom, and state intervention. Using the periodization of cult wars as an analytical framework, the article highlights the tensions between scientific expertise, anti-cult mobilization, and state regulation of religion. It shows that public responses to NRMs depend less on their empirical characteristics than on the interpretive frameworks used to think about religion, identity, and pluralism. Finally, the article suggests that the experience of cult wars offers heuristic lessons for understanding certain contemporary controversies surrounding secularism in Quebec, particularly those raised by the Law on the “renforcement de la laïcité de l’État”, adopted on April 2, 2026.