New Religious Movements in the Long Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
Lydia Willsky-Ciollo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
New Religions ◽  
The Impact

This introduction provides a brief overview of the period known as the “long nineteenth century,” which played host to and helped to shape numerous new religious movements. Highlighting the impact and occasional convergence of various political, social, and religious movements and events in both the United States and globally, this essay seeks to show that the examination of new religious movements in the nineteenth century offers a means of applying scholarship in new religious movements to religions that may be defined as “old,” while simultaneously opening new ways of understanding new religions more broadly. In the process, this overview provides background for the articles included in this special issue of Nova Religio, which explore subjects including religious utopianism; gender, politics, and Pentecostalism; Mormonism and foreign missions; and the relationships of new religious movements to visual art.

Mid-Nineteenth Century New England Women in Evangelical Foreign Missions: Seraphina Haynes Everett, A Missionary Wife in The Ottoman Mission Field

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Melike Tokay-Ünal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Women’S Perceptions ◽  
Islam And Christianity ◽  
Mission Field ◽  
Journal Entries

This article illustrates American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ support of the “missionary matrimony”, mid-nineteenth-century New England women’s perceptions of the missionary career obtained through matrimony, and their impressions of the Oriental mission fields and non-Christian or non-Protestant women, who were depicted as victims to be saved. A brief introduction to New England women’s involvement in foreign missions will continue with the driving force that led these women to leave the United States for far mission fields in the second part of the paper. This context will be exemplified with the story of a New England missionary wife. The analysis consists of the journal entries and letters of Seraphina Haynes Everett of Ottoman mission field. The writings of this woman from New England give detailed information about the spiritual voyage she was taking in the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman lands. In her letters to the United States, Everett described two Ottoman cities, Izmir (Smyrna) and Istanbul (Constantinople), and wrote about her impressions of Islam and Christianity as practiced in the Ottoman empire. Everett’s opinions of the Ottoman empire, which encouraged more American women to devote themselves to the education and to the evangelization of Armenian women of the Ottoman empire in the middle of the nineteenth century, conclude the paper.

The American Reception of Hegel (1830–1930)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kaag ◽  
Kipton E. Jensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Human Effects ◽  
The Impact

This chapter outlines the reception of Hegel in the United States in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Hegel dramatically influenced the formation of American transcendentalism and American pragmatism, despite often being described as simply antithetical to these American philosophies. While pragmatists such as Peirce and James often criticized a certain interoperation of Hegel, their readings of the Phenomenology and Logic helped them articulate a philosophy, inherited from Emerson, that was geared toward experience and to exploring the practical, deeply human, effects of philosophy. Care is taken to describe the impact that the study of Hegel had on American institutions of culture and politics in the nineteenth century.

“Groaning for the Latter Day”

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-246
Author(s):  
John Howard Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Inequities ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Two new religious movements, Mormonism and Millerism, established a foundation upon which a heretofore invisible, gloomy eschatology that had long occupied the margins of American Protestantism stepped out into the limelight in the late nineteenth century. Gaining popularity during and after the Civil War, dispensationalist premillennialism posited that the world is fundamentally fallen, and that only Christ’s personal intervention could bring on the Millennium. To some among this growing band of radical evangelicals, the United States’ spiritual failings, political corruption, and social inequities meant that it was beyond redemption. Others still clung to the belief in America’s millennial destiny, arguing that only the United States may stand against the Antichrist at the latter day, joining with Christ and his angels in the final assault against Satan in the inevitable Battle of Armageddon.

New Religious Movements and Science

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin E. Zeller
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Scientific Systems

The notion or idea of science, quite aside from actual scientific enterprises, has achieved tremendous cultural power and prestige in modern society. The four studies in this special issue of Nova Religio on science and new religious movements indicate not only this newfound power, but also the contentious nature of its definition as well as its limits. The four articles reveal how founders, leaders and practitioners of new religious movements seek the authoritative mantle of science, and with it a perceived legitimacy, as well as challenge normative (Western) approaches to science assumed in much of modern society. In fact, these new religions generally seek to supplant normative Western science with the alternative religious-scientific systems they champion.

New Religious Movements in the United States: a Review

1983 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
James T. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements

Cet article synthétise la littérature sociologique et psychologi que concernant les nouveaux mouvements religieux aux États- Unis. Il accorde une attention particulière aux études basées sur des enquêtes et ayant fait usage d'une procédure standardisée dans la collecte des données.

scholarly journals Reframing the History of New Religious Movements

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Michael Driedger ◽  
Johannes C. Wolfart
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Disciplinary Practice ◽  
History Of

In this special issue of Nova Religio four historians of medieval and early modern Christianities offer perspectives on basic conceptual frameworks widely employed in new religions studies, including modernization and secularization, radicalism/violent radicalization, and diversity/diversification. Together with a response essay by J. Gordon Melton, these articles suggest strong possibilities for renewed and ongoing conversation between scholars of “old” and “new” religions. Unlike some early discussions, ours is not aimed simply at questioning the distinction between old and new religions itself. Rather, we think such conversation between scholarly fields holds the prospect of productive scholarly surprise and perspectival shifts, especially via the disciplinary practice of historiographical criticism.

Shamanism in Motion, Pentecostalism on Hold, and Maya Mormonism

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
C. James MacKenzie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Community Attachments

This article examines how religion, including new religious movements as well as older options in new contexts, combines with ethnic and community attachments in shaping the identity of Guatemalan economic migrants in southern California. While the literature on transnationalism tends to view religion and ethnicity as different though sometimes overlapping means by which migrants seek incorporation into new social and political contexts, the ethnographic evidence presented here suggests more complicated dynamics. These are reflected in the experiences of three migrants from a single indigenous community in Guatemala, each with different backgrounds of faith and ethnic identity: a nominal Catholic in his early 20s who is sympathetic to Mesoamerican shamanism though ambivalent about Maya ethnic identity; a middle-aged Pentecostal Christian who is ambivalent about religious practice and belief in the United States and rejects the Maya ethnic label; and a convert to Mormonism in his 30s who has attenuated his ties to his home community while adopting a broader Maya ethnic identity. To interpret these experiences, I develop an analytical framework which draws upon some of Thomas Csordas’ ideas about religion in globalization but stresses a renewed attention to community as a persistent, if ambivalent and perhaps inherently conflictive, site for identity formation, especially in the context of migration.

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