02/07/2026 17:20 - 19:30

HALL: Pola - A203

Contact: Nemes M.

Chair: Amore D.

This session examines Shincheonji as a rapidly expanding Korean Christian new religious movement whose global trajectory has generated both interest and controversy. The first paper introduces Shincheonji's history, millenarian theology, and the dynamics behind its rapid growth, situating recent Korean scandals—COVID-19 accusations and alleged political interference—within broader patterns of anti-cult mobilization in South Korea and abroad. The second paper analyzes the Victoria, Australia, Inquiry on "cults," highlighting how apostate narratives, media framings, and institutional anxieties converged to construct Shincheonji as a campus threat despite limited empirical evidence. The third paper turns to Latin America, focusing on Argentina, and explores Shincheonji's Bible courses as flexible spaces of graded participation while tracing how transnational anti-cult rhetoric is locally reactivated and judicialized. Paper 4 presents Shincheonji's missions in Europe, with particular attention to Central Europe, examining both the movement's strategies of implantation and the forms of opposition it encounters—opposition shaped simultaneously by global anti-cult campaigns and region-specific concerns. The session concludes with response papers by European representatives of Shincheonji, who offer an emic perspective on their interactions with society, the media, governmental agencies, and scholars, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the movement's lived realities and public reception.