The State and New Religious Movements

Abstract

The chapter will discuss the attitudes the State of Israel maintains toward New Religious Movements (NRMs) through the actions of the legislative, executive and judicial branches. It will show that, governmental attempts to control the activity of NRMs notwithstanding, under the current legal framework NRMs are not seen as a threatening phenomenon that is worthy of the state's special treatment.

The chapter begins by outlining governmental attempts to control the activity of NRMs by inter-ministerial reports. It then examines existing legislation and proposed Bills involving NRMs or their members. Finally, the chapter describes the judiciary’s approach toward NRMs, as reflected in selected constitutional and criminal law cases from the last ten years.

Ph.D. Candidate, Zvi Meitar Center for Advanced Legal Studies, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University. LL.B. (Law & Political Science), Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law. LL.M., Columbia University School of Law. E-mail: masuasagiv@post.tau.ac.il. This chapter is part of a research held at the MEIDA Center for contemporary religious groups in Israel. I wish to thank Boaz Huss, Adam Klin-Oron and Rachel Werczberger, for introducing me to this area of research and the MEIDA Center. I would also like to extend my gratitude to James T. Richardson, Eileen Barker, Shai Feraro and James R. Lewis, for their helpful comments.