Shifting Paradigms and Mediating Media: Redefining a New Religion as "Rational" in Contemporary Society

2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 54-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christal Whelan
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Politics Of Representation ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Past Life ◽  
New Religion ◽  
Mediated Representation

Japanese new religions sometimes undergo a radical alteration in doctrine or orientation during the course of their development. This article focuses on the politics of representation within the deliberate transformation of a Japanese new religious movement known as GLA or God Light Association from a popular shamanistic neo-Buddhist form of religiosity to an increasingly "rational" and psychological religion. This paradigm shift revolved around the contested practice of past-life glossolalia promoted by the religion's founder as proof of reincarnation. Direct or mediated representation of this phenomenon, serving initially as a locus of power, came to be viewed negatively as expressive of GLA's roots with Japan's folk religious past. Unsuitable for the new secularized target clientele in an age of globalization, representations of this behavior and the man who fostered it were gradually suppressed and history was re-inscribed.

V. Western Manichæism and the Turfan Discoveries

1913 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-94
Author(s):  
F. Legge
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
New Religions ◽  
New Religion

About the year 300 it became plain that a new religion was spreading through the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. This was the faith taught by one Manes or Mânî, a native of Babylonia, who was put to death by order of the Shah Bahram or Varanes I in 275. One story is that he began to teach when 13 years old, another when he was 24. We know with fair certainty that he was 60 when he died; so that if we take the more probable date his missionary activity must have lasted for thirty-five years— a longer period than has generally been allowed to founders of new religions. His teaching must also have started in the reign of Ardeshîr, the restorer of the Zoroastrian religion, by whose orders were collected the books known as the Avesta. Ardeshîr's religious restoration was avowedly made for political reasons, and with the view of binding together the newly-founded empire of the Sassanides by a common faith. It seems to have given a good deal of offence to the older Persian nobles, and it was very likely among these that Mânî found his first converts. The later Manichæans boasted that he converted to his doctrines Ardeshîr's successor, Shâpûr or Sapor, the conqueror of the Emperor Valerian, and also the next king, Hormuz or Hormidas, who reigned only a few months.

scholarly journals The Individualist Power and Adaptive New Religious Movement: Scientology Individual as an Ethical Subject

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Ofer Parchev
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Description ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Liberal Society ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Practical Operation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
New Religion

New religion movements are one of the most interesting social phenomena in recent decades. As an alternative communal and individualist way of life, these movements offer a transcendental, non-secular way of life that challenges the values of liberal society while remaining within its legal and normative boundaries. In the course of this paper, and by using an analytical description of Foucault’s assumptions, I will examine the discursive and practical operation of the Scientology Church as a new religion movement that transcends the individual subject. I will describe the themes of Scientology as pastoral techniques, and its neo-liberal subjective constitution as a part of the conservative, normative mechanism of modern Western society, while arguing that they pose, at the same time, a potential ethical alternative that subverts the epistemological boundaries of Western liberal society.

A “Greek God” in a Japanese New Religion: On Hermes in Kōfuku-no-Kagaku

Numen ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 420-446
Author(s):  
Franz Winter
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
New Age ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Theoretical Question ◽  
New Religion

Abstract The article deals with the presence of the “Greek god” Hermes in the Japanese new religious movement Kōfuku-no-Kagaku, which was founded in 1986. The various references are interpreted in light of the history and development of the movement and with regard to its setting in present-day Japanese religious culture. In addition to the importance of several aspects of the reception of the Euro-American New Age tradition and the prophecies of Nostradamus, the fact that the figure of Hermes is presented as the hero of several manga and anime productions of Kōfuku-no-Kagaku is also taken into consideration. This leads to the theoretical question of the importance of the new media of representation of religious content and the effect this approach has on the development of the various groups.

Extraterrestrial Exegesis: The Raëëlian Movement as a Biblical Religion

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene V. Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Bible Study ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
The Bible ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Biblical Religion

Interpretation of the Bible has played a central role in the origins and development of the Raëëlian movement. Claude Vorilhon's first encounter with the "Elohim" was immediately followed by an intensive week of Bible study that gave him a new identity as the messianic prophet "Raëël," a new direction for his life as the earthly ambassador of the Elohim, and a new doctrine that would serve as the intellectual foundation of a new religious movement. The Raëëlian movement and other new religions in which interpretation of the Bible figure prominently do not originate one-sidedly in a "cultic milieu" or "occulture" that is divorced from the broad biblical tradition. Rather, they represent creative blendings of biblical and other sources. Part of the attractiveness of the Bible for new religions is that it contains and legitimizes multiple examples of successful religious innovation.

scholarly journals You may be the right one? New religions and the alternative religious concepts

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-182
Author(s):  
Danijel Sinani
Keyword(s):  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
New Religions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Concept ◽  
The Right ◽  
New Religion

This paper discuses the attempts of redefining the basic notions and determining the study subject of the new religions studies. The advantages and disadvantages of using the term "new religious movements" are pointed, and a retrospect is given on the basic conceptualizations supported by the most influential authors in the field of new religion studies, but the new terminology and a new approach to the problem are given as well. This paper promotes the use of phrase "alternative religious concept" and arguments are given to support the advantages of such defining of the subject we are engaging in.

scholarly journals ФОРМИ И МЕТОДИ НА ГЛОБАЛНО СЪПЕРНИЧЕСТВО В СЪВРЕМЕННИЯ СВЕТОВЕН РЕД

2021 ◽  
Vol XXХII A (1) ◽  
pp. 245-255
Author(s):  
Владислав Лазаров ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
National Security ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Strategic Analysis ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Global Age ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Way

Modern dynamics in society necessitates a new understanding of the concept of security, achieved as a result of a comprehensive strategic analysis. Creating an adequate vision of national security in the global age requires a paradigm shift in the way people think. Contemporary society and realities demand the formation of a new type of personality – a citizen of the 21st century who is informed, competent, educated, a democrat, a patriot, accountable to the country and to himself, while being a cosmopolitan at the same time. The article addresses issues of national security as part of cultural identity

DISORDERLY DOCTRINES: RELIGION, RACE, AND THE FOUNTAINGROVE SEX SCANDAL OF 1891–1892

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-502
Author(s):  
Joshua Paddison
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
White Female ◽  
Public Response ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Race And Sexuality

In 1891, a moral reformer named Alzire Chevaillier launched an aggressive crusade to destroy Fountaingrove, a spiritualist utopian colony in Northern California with white and Japanese members. Chevaillier accused the colony's leader, Thomas Lake Harris, of promoting “disorderly doctrines” with sexual practices “worse than those of Mormonism.” This essay uses the little-known Fountaingrove scandal to examine the interrelationship of religion, race, and sexuality in California. As a mixed-race new religious movement accused of sexual immorality, Fountaingrove transgressed prevailing norms in multiple ways. The colony became Orientalized in the public imagination, showing how new religions and non-normative sexual practices were coded as racially other. Yet media representations of Fountaingrove reflected more than straightforward “yellow peril.” The Japanese members of Fountaingrove inhabited several unstable categories at once, viewed as neither “heathen” nor Christian, neither adults nor children, neither white nor Chinese, shedding light on the uncertain religio-racial status of early Japanese immigrants to the United States. The scandal also reveals the racist dimensions of white female reformers' attacks on male dominance. The wide range of public response to Chevaillier's campaign, from moral disgust to amusement to apathy, gives evidence of the cultural fissures beginning to break open in fin de siècle America.

Is it true? Is it new? Does it matter? Towards a paradigm shift in translation and interpreting studies

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 147-164
Author(s):  
Delia Chiaro
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
User Perception ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
End User ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
The Status

Despite the widespread emergence of translations and diverse types of language mediation in contemporary society, our knowledge of the processes and operators involved in the "translation industry" is still very sketchy. With most translation scholars working within the liberal arts paradigm, research to date has tended to adopt methodologies pertaining to the humanities while overlooking more practical approaches typical of the more ‘scientific’ disciplines. This paper outlines the necessity for empirical methods that aim at gathering information regarding basic aspects of translation, ranging from typologies of translations to the operators involved in their production as well as aspects regarding end user perception. Such maps and atlases delineating the status quo of translation and interpreting would provide information for fresh insights.

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