Websites and Webpages
Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR)
The Center for Studies on New Religions was established in 1988 by a group of religious
scholars from leading universities in Europe and the Americas. Its original aim was to
offer a professional association to scholars specialized in religious minorities, new
religious movements, contemporary esoteric, spiritual and gnostic schools, and the new
religious consciousness in general. In the 1990s it became more pro-active and started
supplying information on a regular basis, opening public centers and organising
conferences and seminars for the general public in a variety of countries. Today
CESNUR is a network of independent but related organizations of scholars in various
countries, devoted to promoting scholarly research in the field of new religious
consciousness, to spreading reliable and responsible information, and to exposing the
very real problems associated with some movements, while at the same time defending
the principles of religious liberty. It is independent from any Church, denomination or
religious movement.
Its website has information in four different languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish),
including a virtual library, various texts and documents on new religious movements,
information on past and upcoming conferences, and book reviews. Of particular interest
are the Cyberproceedings of the international conference "The Spiritual Supermarket:
Religious Pluralism in the 21st Century", which CESNUR organised on 19-21 April 2001
in London. It includes over fifty papers that were presented at the conference; mostly on
non-extremist religions and cults.