New religious movements: terminology, typology, and characteristics

1
New religious movements terminology, typology,
and characteristics

• continued

2
Roy Wallis

• The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life
  (1984)
• Tripartite classification
• 1) world-rejecting new religions
• 2) world-affirming new religions
• 3) world-accommodating new religions

3
Bryan Wilson I

• Religious Sects A Sociological Study (1970)
• 1) World-denying cults
• The world system is evil
• gt separate, communal lifestyle
• Eg. the Children of God, the Hare Krishna
  movement
• 2) World-indifferent cults
• tolerate the secular society
• encourage seeking a purer, more spiritual life
  within this world
• E.g. The Unification Church
• 3) World-enhancing cults
• quasi-religious
• seeking to improve the skills and well-being of
  their members
• self-transformation and self-improvement as
  ultimate goals
• Eg. the Church of Scientology, TM, est

4
Bryan Wilson II

• How to gain salvation?
• 1) Conversionist sects
• Humans are evil/take the wrong way
• Salvation
• change of hearts
• Preaching and proselytizing
• emotional involvement
• Religious feeling
• Otto numinous experience
• Examples
• evangelical Protestantism of 18/19 c.
• Pentecostalism
• Glossolalia (speaking in tongues)

5
Bryan Wilson III

• 2) Revolutionist/transformative sects
• The world is evil
• Salvation
• The world must change or be changed
• Strategies
• to anticipate the change (Apocalypse)
• initiate the change itself
• Examples
• Aum Shinrikyo

6
Bryan Wilson IV

• 3) Introversionist sects
• The world is evil
• Salvation
• withdrawal
• in the religious community
• Examples
• pietist movements

7
Bryan Wilson V

• 4) Manipulationist sects
• Monopoly of special secret knowledge
• Salvation
• Success, including in this world
• Through the use/manipulation of
• Esoteric knowledge / occult means
• Examples
• Christian Science, Scientology

8
Bryan Wilson VI

• 5) Thaumaturgical sects
• Relief from
• physical or mental problems
• Salvation
• miracles
• Performed by supernatural agencies
• Examples
• spiritualist sects

9
Bryan Wilson VII

• 6) Reformist sects
• The world is evil
• Salvation
• Overcoming the evil
• By reforming the world
• By communicating the ethic
• Examples
• Quakerism

10
Bryan Wilson VIII

• 7) Utopian sects
• The world is evil
• Salvation
• Withdrawal
• Not to abandon the world
• But a social experiment
• to rediscover the model for the way of life for
  all men
• Eventual returning to Gods way of life
• Examples
• Bruderhof community founded by Eberhardt Arnold
  (1920)

11
New religious movements and social change

• 5.2.2004

12
Readings

• Hunter The New Religions Demodernization and
  The Protest Against Modernity (in Wilson 1981)
• Wallace Revitalization Movements (in Lessa and
  Vogt 1979)

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Discussion topics

• I Issues on social change / NRM covered sofar
• II Religion and status quo
• religion as ideology
• III Religion and social change
• NRMs as a cause of social change
• Weber
• Wallace
• Hobsbawm
• NRMs as a reaction against social change
• Wilson
• Hunter
• NRMs as a result of social change
• IV Evangelical Protestantism in Mexico
• Cause or result of modernization?

14
Recap I

• various waves of religious activity (Europe, US,
  Japan)
• Troeltsch
• Political orientation
• Church
• agency of social control
• integrated into the world
• Sect
• reaction against control
• in tension with the world

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Recap II

• David Aberle
• social movements - two dimensions
• the locus of the change sought
• the amount of change sought
• Four types of movements
• transformative movements
• reformative movements
• redemptive movements
• alternative movements

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Recap III

• Stark Bainbridge / Johnson
• Church
• a religious group that accepts the social
  environment in which it exists
• Sects and cults
• in tension with the surrounding sociocultural
  environment
• A continuum
• Tension ------------------------------------------
  -Acceptance
• ideal sect ideal church
• religious movement religious institution
• social change social structure
• gt Religion can promote (passively or actively)
• Status quo
• Social change

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Religion and status quo I

• Religion as a form of ideology
• Justification / legitimation of social structure
• Religion as false consciousness (Marx)
• Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's
  Philosophy of Right (1844)
• religion
• opium of the people
• illusory happiness
• the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of
  a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
  conditions

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Religion and status quo II

• Ideology
• Mystification
• Worldly reality presented in heavenly terms
• celestialization (Marx)
• Divinity of aristocracy
• Hawaii, Egypt, Aztecs, Mayas, Incas
• Naturalization
• presenting existing social relations as
  self-evident
• time factor
• biology
• Free market / competition (social darwinism)
• Gender roles
• Generalization
• the ideas of the elite - the ideas of the society
• caste system in India
• European Union, NATO

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Religion and status quo III

• Durkheim
• The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912)
• ritual/religion leads to political stability in
  society
• Kertzer
• Ritual, Politics and Power (1988)
• Religious symbols gt national symbols
• Virgin of Guadalupe (Mexico)
• E Pluribus Unum gt In God We Trust (US)
• 1864 (coins if sufficient space, 2c coin)
• 1955/57
• In Gods we Trust (Robbins Anthony, 1983)

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Religion and social change

• NRMs and social change
• NRMs as a cause of change
• NRMs as a reaction against change
• NRMs as result of change
• Religious change
• Secularization or increase of religious zeal?
• Wilson vs Stark/Bainbridge

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NRMs as a cause of change (Weber) I

• Max Weber
• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
  (1905)
• Why capitalism in Europe?
• Condition for capitalism
• Rationalization
• gt Diligent / devoted workers
• gt Reinvestment of capital
• Condition for rationalization?
• Protestantism (Calvinism)

22
NRMs as a cause of change (Weber) II

• Protestantism
• gt necessary value system
• Individualism
• No mediator between believer and God
• solitude
• Durkheim Suicide (1897)
• Diligence
• Predestination (Clavinism)
• Economic success as a proof of being chosen
• Asceticism/puritanism
• reinvestment of profit instead of consumption

23
Criticism of Weber

• 1) Capitalism before
• 15 c. Venice, Florence, Germany, Holland
• 2) Early Protestantism vs capitalism
• Luther and Calvin conservatives
• No clear link between Protestantismi and
  modernization (Troeltsch)
• 3) Other factors rather than religious change
• economic pressures
• long-distance trade
• Development of science
• Colonialism
• 4) Reverse relationship between Protestantism and
  capitalism (Tawney)
• Capitalist ethic/rationality gt Protestantism

24
NRMs as cause of social change (Wallace) I

• Revitalization Movements (1956)
• deliberate, organized, conscious effort by
  members of a society to construct a more
  satisfying culture.
• Universal structure
• I Steady State
• II Period of increased Individual Stress
• III Period of Cultural Distortion
• IV Period of Revitalization
• 1. Mazeway Reformulation
• 2. Communication
• 3. Organization
• 4. Adaptation
• 5. Cultural Transformation
• 6. Routinization
• V New Steady State

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NRMs as cause of social change (Wallace) II

• Nativistic movements
• Elimination of alien persons and values
• eg. Ghost Dance
• Revivalistic movements
• Revival of customs and values of previous
  generations
• eg. Neoshamanism in Siberia
• Cargo cults
• importation of alien elements/materials
  (ship/cargo)
• eg. Vailala Madness, Jon Frum cult
• Vitalistic movements
• importation of alien elements/materials
• Millenarian movements
• apocalyptic world transformation
• Messianic movements

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Millenarianism (Hobsbawm) I

• Eric Hobsbawm
• Primitive Rebels (1959)
• Millenarianism /Millennialism
• hope of a complete and radical change in the
  world
• JudeoChristian messianism
• Christian doctrine revealed in the Book of
  Revelations
• Christ's return and his rule on earth for a
  thousand years
• Two types of millenarian movements
• old fashioned / pure millenarian movements
• modern revolutionary movements
• similarities
• millenarianism
• utopianism or "impossibilism

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Millenarianism (Hobsbawm) II

• Differences
• pure millenarian movements
• vagueness about the actual way in which social
  change will be brought about.
• followers are not makers of revolution
• Gathering, preparing, looking for signs,
  listening to prophets, undertaking rituals,
  purify themselves
• revolutionary movements
• an explicit political ideology, organization,
  strategy, tactics, and social program
• eg. dictatorship of the proletariat
• pure millenarian movement gt revolutionary
  movement

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NRMs as a cause of social change (various) I

• Benton Johnson (1981)
• Most NRMs - no "adequate theory of society
• social changes caused unintentionally
• The source of impact on culture at large
• not in their novel theologies
• but in increased demands on broader value choices
  
• gt individualism
• gt ideological / value pluralism
• Greatest social impact (Hammond)
• On relations within family (US)
• Anti-cult movements parents / not mainstream
  churches

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NRMs as a cause of social change (various) II
Religious defection of the subsequent generation
Year of Birth Parental Religion 1931 or
earlier 1932-1946 1947 and since Catholic 13
17 22 Jewish 10 16 25 Protestant 35 37 33
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NRMs as a cause of social change (various) III

• counter-cult / anti-cult movements
• Late 1960s
• relatively understudied
• Cult Awareness Network (CAN), American Family
  Foundation (AFF), FREECOG
• Uskontojen uhrien tuki ry (http//www.uskontojenuh
  rientuki.fi)
• struggle between
• new forms of sacred vs secular (anti-cult)
• new forms of sacred vs old forms of sacred
  (counter-cult)
• pseudo-religions vs real religions
• Religious countermovements
• organized for opposition
• internally heterogeneous
• Stress the social impact of NRMs
• string of Jonestown-style mass suicides?
• Irish Catholic immigrants
• papal conspiracy to take over the U.S. government?

31
NRMs as a reaction against social change I

• Modernization
• Manifested in various social changes
• De-institutionalization (Hunter, Gehlen)
• of identity
• permanent identity crisis
• of community
• Decline of the role of family
• Ethical / moral relativism
• Normative breakdown
• Value dissensus
• Disintegration of traditional morality
• Moral ambiguity
• Modernity crisis of meaning (Hunter)
• spiritual homelessness (Camus)

32
NRMs as a reaction against social change II

• Disenchantment of the world (Weber)
• demythologization
• secularization
• the dilemma of modernity (Hunter)
• Well-developed public sphere
• Weak private sphere
• Neither provides stable/grounded social identity
• modernity
• gt conditions that are anthropologically
  intolerable

33
NRMs as a reaction against social change III

• NRMs
• the anthropological protest against modernity
  (Hunter)
• a demodernizing force
• Even world-affirming movements (Scientology)
• Re-establishment of absolutism
• 1) cognitive absolutism
• pure consciousness (TM)
• eternal bliss (Krishna)
• God Consciousness (3HO)
• oneness, cosmic awareness, transcendence etc.
• 2) organizational absolutism
• a total institutionalization
• communitarianism

34
NRMs as a result of social change

• Results of
• mass media
• migration
• change of political regime
• decline of the role of dominant churches
• against secularization thesis
• Eg. NRMs in Eastern Europe after the fall of the
  Berlin Wall
• 1989/90
• Similarities between Eastern Europe and Japan
• Filling in the religious vacuum created by
  communist governments
• The Children of God / Family (Mo)
• The crack's in the Wall, in fact the Wall is
  down! - It's time to really get in there and
  give'm the Gospel!... Eastern Europe is now
  opening up for the first time and it'll probably
  be the Last time! Let's reach it before the
  Antichrist gets it!
• 'missile teams'

35
Evangelical Protestantism in Mexico

• Protestantism in Latin America
• traditionalism gt modernity
• Stoll (1990) and Martin (1990)
• religious change as a social reform that would
  lead Latin America into modernity
• emergence of Protestant groups
• gt capitalist development in the rural areas
• social changes
• a collateral of the Protestant presence rather
  than an intended consequence

36
Social implications of Protestantism I

• Introduction of new cultural practices
• literacy (SIL)
• education
• apiculture
• herding
• blankets
• Recruitment of braceros
• changes in existing collective communal practices
• usos y costumbres

37
Social implications of Protestantism II

• separation of civil and religious cargos
• abolition of religious cargos
• mayordomías gt festival committees (comités de
  festejos)
• civil cargos
• Jehovahs Witnesses and political cargos
• decline of the role of Fiesta patronal
• the decline in material contributions
• sistema de cuotas
• alternative payments
• decline in participants
• idolatry
• burning money (la quema del dinero)
• Other practices
• tequio and Adeventists

38
Social implications of Protestantism III

• religious conflicts
• their resolution greatest social impact
• changes in traditional ways of communal
  decision-making
• communal assemblies
• external mediators
• consultants, advisers and human rights activists
• new values and discussion topics
• human rights vs communal rights
• the nature of the political system
• community and Catholicism
• tradition vs change
• religious identity
• gt liberalization of the monolithic mode of
  communal thinking
• gt ideological pluralism

39
Protestantization / modernization

• The relationship between protestantization and
  modernization
• Protestantization gt modernization?
• Modernization gt protestantization?
• Modernization vs portestantization?
• Protestantism vs capitalist spirit
• Conversion
• gt social/economic marginalization
• gt decreased social mobility
• gt decreased access to authority/power
• Protestantism vs ideological pluralism
• aim at monopoly of worldview
• against a free and secular civilization