New Spiritualities in Western Society

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Possamai
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
New Age ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Western Society ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Western World ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Late Modern

Various social and cultural changes from modernity to late modernity have been key to the appearance and development of new spiritualities in Western society. The often-contested term of “new spiritualities” is often liked with other no less contested ones such as “mysticism,” “popular religion,” “the New Age,” and “new religious” movements. Further, if the expression new spiritualities or alternative spiritualities took off outside of institutionalized religions in the Western world, this term is now re-used by these institutions within their specific theology. As new spiritualities are becoming mainstream in the first quarter of the 21st century, they are having a low-key impact on post-secularism (i.e., a specific type of secularism characteristic of late modern societies).

New Religious Movements in Brazil

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Selka
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Religious Landscape ◽  
Late Modern

This article provides an overview of the Brazilian religious landscape and an introduction to this special issue on new religious movements in Brazil. I stress how the Brazilian religious landscape, although often imagined as a place of religious syncretism and cultural mixture, is crosscut by an array of boundaries, tensions and antagonisms, including ones grounded in race and class. The article outlines the major topics and problems taken up by the contributors to this issue, including appropriation across lines of race, ethnicity and class; the growing influence of evangelical Christianity in Latin America and beyond; esoteric religious practice in the late modern era; and questions of purity and authenticity, syncretism and anti-syncretism. Through their engagement with these themes, the articles in this issue contribute to a number of important discussions that relate not only to the study of religion in Brazil but to the study of new religious movements in general.

scholarly journals The Closed Religious Community: the Strategy of Forming аnd the Principles of Functioning

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-100
Author(s):  
Svetlana V. Riazanova
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
World View ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Total Community

The point of the author’s research interest is mechanisms for the formation of a private religious community on the example of the Intersession brotherhood. A group of believers was emerged as part of the revival of the Orthodox life of the Kama region, but transformed into specific organization with features of popular religion, new religious movements and so-called “historical sects.” Author reconstructs the history of the community involving elements of the biographical method. The study is based on interviews and correspondence with former members of the community, close people of the residents of the commune, as well as analysis of the materials of the closed group on the social network, some audio of the groups’ seminars, photocopies of the working notebooks of the group and a series of photographs made by the believers. The investigation is based on the theoretical constructions of E. Goffman and the concept of total community. Intersession brotherhood appears as a community with the features of totality – territorial and communication closure of the residents, their employment in internal jobs, perception of the group as a family. Lack of privacy is combined with the presence of “mother-child” connection to the leader. The practice of naming for adults, the creation of new marriages, participation in gender-oriented councils create a special micro-environment with the unification of the world view. The system of privileges for advanced residents is supplemented by a developed system of fines. It makes possible to speak about special tools that lead to a change of values, a narrowing of the set of social roles and a reduction of critical thinking.

scholarly journals The articulation between evolutionism and creationism in New Religious Movements: Two South American case studies

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Vitor Campanha
Keyword(s):  
Biological Evolution ◽  
New Age ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
The Internet ◽  
South American ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Religious Perspectives ◽  
American Case

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how certain religious perspectives present nuances between the concepts of creation and evolution. Although public debate characterizes them as polarized concepts, it is important to understand how contemporary religious expressions resignify them and create arrangements in which biological evolution and creation by the intervention of higher beings are presented in a continuum. It begins with a brief introduction on the relations and reframing of Science concepts in the New Religious Movements along with New Age thinking. Then we have two examples which allows us to analyze this evolution-creation synthesis. First, I will present a South American New Religious Movement that promotes bricolage between the New Age, Roman Catholicism and contacts with extraterrestrials. Then, I will analyze the thoughts of a Brazilian medium who disseminates lectures along with the channeling of ETs in videos on the internet, mixing the elements of ufology with cosmologies of Brazilian religions such as Kardecist spiritism and Umbanda. These two examples share the idea of ​​the intervention of extraterrestrial or superior beings in human evolution, thus, articulating the concepts of evolution and creation. Therefore, in these arrangements it is possible to observe an inseparability between spiritual and material, evolution and creation or biological and spiritual evolution.

Secular Beats Spiritual

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Meditation ◽  
New Age ◽  
Exercise Programme ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
The West

The decline of Christianity in the West is undeniable but commentators differ in their understanding of what this represents. For some, it shows a decline in interest in religion; for others, religion has not declined, only changed shape. Possible candidates for Christianity’s replacement are the new religious movements of the late 1960s and what is variously called New Age, alternative, or contemporary spirituality. This detailed study of the religious and spiritual innovations since the 1970s assesses their popularity in Britain and concludes that the ‘not-decline-just-change’ view is unsustainable. Serious interest in spirituality has grown far less quickly than has the number of people with no religious or spiritual interest. The most popular and enduring movements have been the least religious ones; those that have survived have done so by becoming more ‘this-worldly’ and less patently religious or spiritual. Yoga is popular but as a secular exercise programme; Transcendental Meditation now markets its technique as a purely secular therapy; British Buddhists now offer the secular Mindfulness; the Findhorn Foundation (Europe’s oldest New Age centre) no longer promotes counter-cultural communalism but sells its expertise to major corporations. The book also demonstrates that, although eastern religious themes such as reincarnation and karma have gained popularity as the power of Christianity to stigmatize them as dangerous has declined, such themes have also been significantly altered so that what superficially looks like the easternization of the West might better be described as the westernization of the easternization of the West.

The Wider World of the 21st-Century Cowboy Christian

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie W. Dallam
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Jesus Movement ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Muscular Christianity ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 6 pulls away from the cowboy church specifically to examine aspects of the broader cultural context of cowboy Christians. Topics include media and entertainment that deliberately blend ideas of cowboy values with religion, and how they are packaged for consumption by cowboy Christians. Examples including racetrack chaplaincy, Christian horse whisperers, and television shows demonstrate cowboy Christian alignment with the trends of consumerism found in mainstream evangelicalism. The second half of the chapter revisits and concludes various thematic discussions raised throughout the book, comparing the cowboy church to the Jesus movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the recurring iterations of muscular Christianity, and schematically charting potential developments for the cowboy church on the basis of developmental patterns for other new religious movements.

The Siberian Village of Okunevo as a Place of Power and its Sacred Landscape

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Julia Senina
Keyword(s):  
New Age ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Sacred Landscape ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
Sacred Landscapes ◽  
Specific Interpretation ◽  
The Village

Abstract The paper deals with contemporary places of power and New Age sacred landscapes in Russia.* It focuses on the Siberian village of Okunevo, its sacred sites, and their worshippers. Formation of this place of power was a result of the activity of individuals (both academics and adherents of new religious movements), combined with the specific interpretation of archaeological sites and the natural landscape of the area. The landscape around the village of Okunevo affects the interaction of people with the sacred loci and the ways the signs, symbols and narratives about them are created.

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