In the Name of God: Examining how religious belief and practice influences violent behaviours within NRMs through the study of politically violent gro

Despite an interest for New Religious Movements (NRMs) within the sociology of religion, the occurrence of violence and its causes has been under-theorised. There is therefore a need to research how combined aspects of religious belief and practice, forms of organisation and authority, interactions with the social environment and perhaps other factors, may contribute towards instances of group violence. Similarly to religion itself, these groups do not exist in isolation from their social environment, but rather as a differing aspect of it and, as such, violent behaviours which these groups engage in must be examined within the context of criminological theory.