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Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is an international Nichiren Buddhist organization founded in 1975 by Daisaku Ikeda, as an umbrella organization of Soka Gakkai. It is run by two vice-presidents, including Hiromasa Ikeda, son of the founder.
Strand, Clark: Waking the Buddha – how the most dynamic and empowering buddhist movement in history is changing our concept of religion. Strand examines how the Soka Gakkai, based on the insight that "Buddha is life", has evolved a model in which religion serves the needs of its practitioners, rather than the practitioners adhering to dogma ...
He served as the third president and then honorary president of the Soka Gakkai, which is considered among the largest of Japan's new religious movements. [2]: 5 , but has also been described as a cult by medias ("Soka Gakkai has many of the markings of a cult" [3]) and politicians (the French parliamentary commission in 1995).
The application of the labels "cults" or "sects" to (for example) religious movements in government documents usually signifies the popular and negative use of the term "cult" in English and a functionally similar use of words translated as "sect" in several European languages.
However, these criticisms are unfounded, as the definition of "cult" is, strictly, any religious organization that regards itself as the sole means of salvation. The SGI makes no such claim; moreover, it maintains that human harmony through dialogue with those who engage in other religious practices is the highest priority and the key to peace.'
In the 1950s, Japanese wives of American servicemen introduced the Soka Gakkai to the United States, which in the 1970s developed into the Soka Gakkai International (SGI). The SGI has steadily gained members while avoiding much of the controversy encountered by some other new religious movements in the US.
The academic study of new religious movements has been noted to be unusually hostile, with scholars holding strong opinions as to the influence of cults on society. [1] [2] A 1998 article in the magazine Lingua Franca reported on the acrimony of the scholarly debate on the topic; in the "cult-anticult debate", [3] scholars have been described as exhibiting a "toxic level" of suspicion toward ...
[4] [11] [7] Benton Johnson simplified the definition of sect and church and based it on a single variable: the degree of acceptance of the social environment. A church is a religious group that accepts the social environment in which it exists, a sect is a religious group that rejects it. [6] [2]