Whether they arise from within a given culture or find their way into it by multiple means of importation, new religions take many different forms and play a variety of social, spiritual, economic, and political roles. They provide arenas of resistance to prevailing cultural and religious beliefs, practices, and values. They sometimes foster restoration, as members see it, of earlier, more authentic expressions of religious piety or offer visions of as-yet-unrealized possibilities for the future. New religions offer their members support, often communal, for developing and living out alternatives to established theological worldviews, dominant economic systems, and monogamous marriage. They are pivotal sites for the adjudication of cultural and religious tensions with the capacity to respond more quickly to those tensions than is often the case with long-established religious traditions. They hold together sometimes-conflicting manifestations of innovation and conservation, critique...