scholarly journals New Religious Movements: A Bibliographic Introduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Zeller
Keyword(s):  
Religious Movement ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Online Resources ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Book Series ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Academic Study

This article provides a map to the bibliographic landscape for the academic study of new religious movements (NRMs). The article first considers the development of the scholarly subfield, including debates over the nature of the concept of ‘new religious movement’ and recent scholarship on the nature of this key term, as well as the most salient research areas and concepts. Next, the article introduces the most important bibliographic materials in the subfield: journals focusing on the study of NRMs, textbooks and reference volumes, book series and monographic literature, online resources, and primary sources.

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.

“What if it is actually true?”

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 74-100
Author(s):  
Joanna Urbańczyk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Spiritual Development ◽  
General Characteristic ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Common Elements ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Generational Shift ◽  
Former Soviet Republics

The Siberian community of Vissarion (Last Testament Church) is a new religious movement established at the beginning of 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Among its members (estimated at several thousand), who come mainly from Russia and former Soviet republics, there is also a large group of Vissarion’s followers from Eastern Europe. In this article, I present a general characteristic of the movement and four stories from adherents. I indicate common elements in their narratives of coming to and living in the community, such as belief in continuing spiritual development, the importance of living close to nature, the focus on feelings, and concern for future generations. I also point out a “generational shift” among members of the importance of the breakup of the Soviet Union and suggest the need for scholarly consideration of its decreasing significance for adherents of new religious movements in the post-socialist region.

Significance and Purpose of the “Anti-Cult Movement” in Facilitating Disaffiliation From a New Religious Movement

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-244
Author(s):  
Dominiek Coates
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Self ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Symbolic Interactionist ◽  
Identity Function ◽  
Study Report ◽  
The Way

The current study investigates the experiences of 23 former members of New Religious Movements (NRMs) or cults with anti-cult practices and discourses in Australia. All the participants in this study report some involvement with anti-cult practices and/or engagement with brainwashing explanations of NRM affiliations; however, they describe the significance of these anti-cult resources for their sense of self in different ways. The findings suggests that for some former members anti-cult resources, in particular the brainwashing discourses, merely served as a convenient account through which to explain or justify their former NRM affiliation and manage embarrassment or possible stigmatisation, while for others these resources served an important identity function at a time of loss and uncertainty. These participants describe their involvement with anti-cult practices as a much needed identity resource in which they could anchor their sense of self following the dramatic loss of identity associated with NRM disaffiliation. To make sense of the variations in the way in which anti-cult practices and discourses informed the participants” sense of self Symbolic Interactionist understandings of the self are applied.

scholarly journals The Unificationist Funerary Tradition

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 258
Author(s):  
Lukas Pokorny
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
South Korean

This paper explores the distinctive funerary tradition of the Unification Movement, a globally active South Korean new religious movement founded in 1954. Its funerary tradition centres on the so-called Seonghwa (formerly Seunghwa) Ceremony, which was introduced in January 1984. The paper traces the doctrinal context and the origin narrative before delineating the ceremony itself in its Korean expression, including its preparatory and follow-up stages, as well as its short-lived adaptation for non-members. Notably, with more and more first-generation adherents passing away—most visibly in respect to the leadership culminating in the Seonghwa Ceremony of the founder himself in 2012—the funerary tradition has become an increasingly conspicuous property of the Unificationist lifeworld. This paper adds to a largely uncharted area in the study of East Asian new religious movements, namely the examination of their distinctive deathscapes, as spelled out in theory and practice.

New Religious Movements

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Cowan
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Abuse ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Shame And Guilt ◽  
Emotion And Affect

New religious movements (NRMs), which are often popularly and pejoratively labeled “cults,” frequently become the sites for a multitude of conflicting emotions; they are cultural lightning rods as much for anger, shame, and guilt as for joy, excitement, and a sense of release and relief. Throughout NRM narratives, however, whether primary sources or secondary, whether affirmative accounts of one's affiliation and conversion or post-affiliation critiques of the group in question, two principal affective aspects emerge: emotional fulfillment and emotional abuse. As a heuristic framework to consider these more specific aspects of emotion in NRMs, this article uses the trajectory of participation suggested by David Bromley's affiliation-disaffiliation model. In particular, it examines the roles played by emotion and affect in the recruitment processes of different groups, focusing on affective enticement, affective coercion, and affective bonding. It also explores the link between affect and religious practices, the confirmation of religious beliefs, disaffiliation, and post-affiliation.

scholarly journals A Joke, Mockery, or Something More? The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – an Invented Religion or a New Movement?

2021 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Siarhei A. Anoshka ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Short History ◽  
Main Subject ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This article attempts to analyse a contemporary phenomenon from the sphere of alternative religiosity in the form of joke religions. The main subject of the analysis is a new religious movement called the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (CFSM), founded in the USA in 2005. By referring to the theory of carnival fun, joining the sacrum and profanum, and passing through the various doctrinal threads of this religious movement, the author attempts to answer the question of whether the CFSM can be considered a genuine religion or only a joke. The article begins with a short reflection on the possibility of joking about religion and faith, and the response to religious humour by people of faith, which may range from anger to disgust and sometimes even to aggression. Then, after a short history of this new (pseudo-)religious movement, a perspective is developed. It emerges that the whole structure of the so-called doctrine of this (quasi-)religion refers to other known religions and beliefs, including other new religious movements.

scholarly journals Pentecostal Forms across Religious Divides: Media, Publicity, and the Limits of an Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marleen de Witte
Keyword(s):  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Representation ◽  
Mega Church ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Being Religious

Scholars of Pentecostalism have usually studied people who embrace it, but rarely those who do not. I suggest that the study of global Pentecostalism should not limit itself to Pentecostal churches and movements and people who consider themselves Pentecostal. It should include the repercussions of Pentecostal ideas and forms outside Pentecostalism: on non-Pentecostal and non-Christian religions, on popular cultural forms, and on what counts as ‘religion’ or ‘being religious’. Based on my ethnographic study of a charismatic-Pentecostal mega-church and a neo-traditional African religious movement in Ghana, I argue that neo-Pentecostalism, due to its strong and mass-mediated public presence, provides a powerful model for the public representation of religion in general, and some of its forms are being adopted by non-Pentecostal and non-Christian groups, including the militantly anti-Pentecostal Afrikania Mission. Instead of treating neo-Pentecostal and neo-traditionalist revival as distinct religious phenomena, I propose to take seriously their intertwinement in a single religious field and argue that one cannot sufficiently understand the rise of new religious movements without understanding how they influence each other, borrow from each other, and define themselves vis-à-vis each other. This has consequences for how we conceive of the study of Pentecostalism and how we define its object.

scholarly journals cult of Glykon as a 'New Religious Movement'

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Sarefield
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Lucian Of Samosata ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
False Prophet

This essay explores the integration of eastern religions into the Roman world during the early Empire by examining one particularly successful example, the Cult of Glykon, which became popular during the later second century and following. Drawing on the characteristics that social scientists have identified as most significant in contributing to the success of New Religious Movements (NRMs) in the recent past, the presence of these features in the Cult of Glykon is considered from the surviving evidence, including the satire Alexander or the False Prophet, which was written by Lucian of Samosata. As this discussion makes clear, the Cult of Glykon appears to have achieved some measure of success as a New Religious Movement in the Roman world because it possessed many of the same characteristics. They are, therefore, a useful starting point for exploring the integration of other religious groups in the Roman world.

scholarly journals New religious movement responses to COVID

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-81
Author(s):  
Benjamin Zeller
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Single Model ◽  
Frame Alignment

New religious movements (NRMs) have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in diverse ways, ranging from closely following mainstream public health recommendations to explicit rejection of such guidance. This article considers the manner in which NRMs have responded to the pandemic through analysis of groups’ ideological alignment with their host societies’ cultural and social frames. Extending the Bromley–Melton (2012) model of social alignment and the Rochford (2018) approach of frame alignment, the response of these NRMs must be contextualized in regard to alignment with broader social frames. The article considers specific cases of NRMs in South Korea, India, and the United States and posits that no single model can encompass NRM responses to the pandemic, but that multiple social factors provide guidance for understanding why and how NRMs responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early Christianity in Light of New Religious Movements

Numen ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 483-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eyal Regev
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Soka Gakkai ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
Social Separation

Comparing early Christian groups with modern new religious movements (nrms) and cults enables us to identify and analyze indicative social and religious attributes that defined the self-identity of the early Christians (as reflected in the letters of Paul, Acts, and the Gospel of John), made them stand out as different, and, ultimately, led to their rejection by outside society.The devotion to Jesus as Christ and the inclusion of Gentiles among these early Christian groups were novel features that, by definition, created a new religious movement rejected by both Jews and Romans. The intense recruitment of converts by early Christians, also a characteristic ofnrms, was seen as a direct threat by their contemporaries. Early Christian groups lacked social separation from mainstream society, strong demands on their members along with sanctions against deviant ones, and systematic organization — all characteristics which are particular to certain cults, such as Scientology in its early years and the Sōka Gakkai. Taken together, these three social features demonstrate that early Christianity was not a segregated sect but, rather, a cult that aimed to penetrate mainstream society, gain legitimacy, and recruit converts.

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