Because new religious movements often generate suspicious or hostile reactions from representatives of the status quo, substantial scholarly attention has been devoted to their processes of leadership, recruitment, and conversion, as well as to other forms of interaction between new groups and their social environments. While such encounters do shape both the public images and self-understandings of new religious movements, they are not their only religious activities.

Many new religious movements have produced substantial bodies of literature that amplify their self-definitions, establish ritual practices and moral codes, elaborate their mythic visions of humanity and the cosmos, and reconstruct history. That literature is read, heard, studied, preached, debated, interpreted, enacted, and implemented in the daily lives of members. The texts derive their authority both from the claimed experiences of founders or other influential figures within the group and from members' acceptance...