The House We Live In: Religio-Racial Theories and the Study of Religion

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 440-459
Author(s):  
Judith Weisenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
New World ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Race And Religion

Abstract This article reviews the origins and goals of the religio-racial framework that grounds the approach to early twentieth-century Black new religious movements in New World A-Coming. It discusses how the articles in the roundtable offer case studies that extend the framework of “religio-racial identity” to model approaches for locating the analysis of connections between race and religion as central to the work of religious studies.

Invention in “New New” Religions

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole M. Cusack
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Western Society ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Church

This chapter discusses the concept of invention and applies it to the study of New Religious Movements (NRMs). Invention plays a part in all religions and is linked to other conceptual lenses including syncretism and legitimation. Yet invention is more readily detected in contemporary phenomena (so-called “invented,” “hyper-real,” or “fiction-based” religions), which either eschew, or significantly modify, the appeals to authority, antiquity, and divine revelation that traditionally accompany the establishment of a new faith. The religions referred to in this chapter (including Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, and Jediism) are distinctively “new new” religions, appearing from the mid-twentieth century, and gaining momentum in the deregulated spiritual market of the twenty-first century West. Overt religious invention has mainstreamed in the Western society, as popular culture, individualism and consumerism combine to facilitate the cultivation of personal spiritualities, and the investment of ephemeral entertainments with ultimate significance and meaning.

What are the New Religious Movements Doing in a Secular Society?

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan R. Wilson ◽  
Eileen Barker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
New Jerusalem ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Secular Society

This chapter discusses one of the major social changes that have taken place in late twentieth-century Britain — secularisation — the process whereby religion loses its social significance. In the second half of the twentieth century there was a major decline in Britain in formal church membership and attendance, although the decline in religious belief is less well established. The chapter also discusses the emergence of new religions in the secular society. They derive from a wide variety of sources: some such as the Jesus Army from the Baptist tradition of Protestant Christianity, others such as the New Jerusalem claim to represent the true Orthodox tradition; many others have a non-Christian character, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and the Brahma Kumaris have their roots in Hinduism, while Buddhism has given rise to Soka Gakkai and Shinto to Konkokyo; and also Paganism, Wicca, Satanism and traditions deriving from science fiction. The most important point to be made about these new religious movements is that because of their diversity, any generalisation concerning them can almost certainly be shown to be untrue for one or another of their number.

scholarly journals (Re)Introducing “Secular Religion”: On the Study of Entangled Quests for Meaning in Modern Western Cultures

Numen ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 256-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Vliegenthart
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Logical Connection ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alternative Sources ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
Secular Religion ◽  
Metaphysical Religion

Abstract The disenchantment of reality has bankrupted conventional sources of meaning for many people in modern Western cultures. This has led a growing number of figures and groups to search for alternative sources of meaning. Typical of their quests for meaning is the entanglement of secular and religious discourses. Since the twentieth century, scholars have studied the social configurations of these figures and groups as “cults” or “new religious movements” and their ideologies as “New Age” or “spirituality,” which are seen as parts of a longer tradition of “Western esotericism” (Europe) or “metaphysical religion” (North America). Several leading scholars have also interpreted them as forms of “secular religion,” but this has yet to gain academic traction. This article argues that the former concepts are lacking or losing a logical connection with the socio-historical phenomena to which they pertain and reintroduces the latter concept as a more appropriate one.

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