New religious movements in the context of "World religions"

Religion in Bulgaria has been dominated by Christianity since its adoption as the state religion in 864. The dominant form of the religion is Eastern Orthodox Christianity within the fold of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. During the Ottoman rule of the Balkans, Islam spread to the territories of Bulgaria, and it remains a significant minority today. The Catholic Church has roots in the country since the Middle Ages, and Protestantism arrived in the 19th century; both of them remain very small minorities. Today, a significant part of the Bulgarians are not religious, or believers who do not identify with any specific religion, and Bulgaria has been the cradle of some new religions, notably the Neo-Theosophical movement of Dunovism.

World religions is a socially-constructed category in the study of religion that demarcates religions deemed to have been especially large, internationally widespread, or influential in the development of human societies. It typically consists of the "big five" religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. These are often juxtaposed against categories such as folk religions, Indigenous religions, and new religious movements (NRMs).

The "world religions" paradigm was developed in the United Kingdom during the 1960s, pioneered by scholars of religion such as Ninian Smart. It was intended to broaden the study of religion beyond its focus on Christianity by including other large religious traditions. The paradigm is often used for undergraduate study of religion. The emphasis on viewing these religious movements as distinct and mutually exclusive has also had a wider impact on the categorisation of religion—for instance in censuses.

Indigenous religion or native religion is a category used in the study of religion to demarcate the religious belief systems of communities described as being "indigenous". This category is often juxtaposed against others such as the "world religions" and "new religious movements". The term is commonly applied to a range of different belief systems across the Americas, Australasia, Asia, Africa, and Northern Europe, particularly to those practiced by communities living under the impact of colonialism.

The term "indigenous religions" is usually applied to the localised belief systems of small-scale societies. These belief systems do not typically engage in proselytization, thus distinguishing them from movements like Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism that all seek converts and which are typically classified as "world religions". They are also often characterised as being distinct from the "world religions" because they are orally transmitted, intertwined with traditional lifestyles, and pluralist. Numerically, most of the world's religions could be classed as "indigenous", although the number of "indigenous religionists" is significantly smaller than the number of individuals who practice one of the "world religions".

Spiritual Christianity (Russian: духовное христианство, romanized: dukhovnoye khristianstvo) is the group of belief systems held by so-called folk Protestants (narodnye protestanty), including non-Eastern Orthodox indigenous faith tribes and new religious movements that emerged in the Russian Empire. Their origins are varied: some come from Protestant movements imported from Europe to Russia by missionaries, travelers and workers; others from dissatisfaction with the perceived misbehavior (absenteeism, alcoholism, profiteering) of Orthodox priests, still others from the Bezpopovtsy Raskolniks. Those influences, mixed with folk traditions, resulted in communities that are collectively called sektanty (sectarians). Such communities were typically documented by Russian Orthodox clergy with a label that described their heresy such as not fasting, meeting on Saturday (sabbatarians), rejecting the spirit (spirit wrestlers), body mutilation (castigators), self-flagellation, or suicide.

These heterodox (non-orthodox) groups "rejected ritual and outward observances and believe instead in the direct revelation of God to the inner man". Adherents are called Spiritual Christians (Russian: духовные христиане) or, less accurately, malakan in the former Soviet Union, and "Molokans" in the United States, often confused with "Doukhobors" in Canada. Molokane proper constituted the largest and most organized of many Spiritual Christian groups in the Russian Empire.