PEDAGOGICAL, NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF SHAPING THE IDENTITY OF CULT GROUP FOLLOWERS

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-258
Author(s):  
Mariusz Gajewski
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Emotional Maturity ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The One ◽  
Individual Self

The rapidly changing world does not provide a man with a sense of stability; he intensifies confusion in fundamental matters related to everyday life. Evolving in directions that are difficult to predict, this is not conducive to the process of maturing into a responsible experience of humanity. Various “religious” organizations and societies take advantage of this situation, putting confusion in order (usually in an apparent way), thereby obtaining new adherents for their vision of a better world. Being under the influence of charismatic leaders, the members of new religious movements change their behaviour diametrically, as well as their way of thinking about themselves and the world. Any former model of life is replaced by a new, i.e., collective, model of thinking, estimating and behaving. Important things lose their value. The hitherto prevailing existence, perceived as “bad”, “unenlightened”, “materialistic” or “not soulful”, is left for a new and “better” life, for purposes that are attainable only thanks to contact with the new group. The acquisition of self-identity and identification with the group requires considerable effort. Going over from one world to another brings with it numerous consequences of a psychological and social nature. Hence an immense complexity of factors forming the identity of a religious man appear. On the one hand, this is influenced by personality factors, the level of inner integration, psychical and emotional maturity, and on the other hand – a number of social conditions, i.e., the specificity of the cult group, its structure, doctrine, history and social relations. All the above makes it impossible to create a universal model of the follower’s identity within cult groups. It is only possible to indicate the conditions for the creation of the new individual, self leading to a manifestation of their participation within a definite cultic group.

scholarly journals Anastasians of Altai krai. The history of the family estates settlements and their current realities

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 56-59
Author(s):  
I. V. Oktyabrskaya ◽  
◽  
Z. M. Chirkina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Main Concept ◽  
Altai Region ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reading Clubs ◽  
The One

The Anastasia movement (“Ringing Cedars of Russia”, the Anastasians) was born in Russia in the mid-1990s under the influence of the publication of V. Megre’s works. It developed from reading clubs and festivals to big projects of family estates and the form of political party. In the Altai region (Altai krai) we can registrate 12 settlements at different stages of formation. In religious studies, the anastasians are considered as the one of the new religious movements that is based on the ideology and practices related to Slavic neo-paganism. In Russian Ethnology/anthropology there are attempts to characterize the Anastasians in terms of subculture, as a community with a complex identity that includes a quasi-ethnic plane. Their culture is based on the natural peasant economy. The main concept of self-organization is the idea of family estates.

scholarly journals TOWARDS A JOINT FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY OF CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS IN AFRICA: RESPONSE TO J. D. Y. PEEL

Africa ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 628-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgit Meyer
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Islam And Christianity ◽  
The One ◽  
Critical Intervention

The main point of John Peel's intriguing critical intervention is to warn against what he sees as an overemphasis on similarities between Christianity and Islam. Making these religions look all too similar, he argues, may come at the expense of paying due attention to the distinctiveness of each of these religious traditions and hence to their intrinsic differences. He suggests an analogy between the stance taken by ‘somewhat left-wing and anti-establishment discourse’ to equalize Islam and Christianity under the label of fundamentalism on the one hand, and a strand of Africanist work on West Africa that pleads for the close similarities between these two religions to be acknowledged on the other. For the latter, he takes the article ‘Pentecostalism, Islam and culture: new religious movements in West Africa’ by Brian Larkin and myself (2006) as paradigmatic. For my part, it is difficult to see how the use of the notion of fundamentalism in current debates and the position ventured by us converge. I would certainly refrain from using the notion of fundamentalism (even if invoked to balance Huntington's equally problematic notion of the clash of civilizations) as a category that serves to draw out similarities between certain radical movements in Christianity and Islam both past and present – a use I view as highly problematic. The fact that Peel converges the levels of general public debate about political Islam and research regarding Christianity and Islam in African studies makes it quite difficult for me to grasp what his main concern is. Is it a worry about a – in his view – problematic, broader trend of denying actual intrinsic differences between Christianity and Islam, a trend that spills over from critical opinion into current Africanist scholarship, or vice versa? Is it the problem that foregrounding certain formal – and to him ultimately superficial – similarities favours an ahistorical stance with regard to these traditions? Or is it a concern – albeit not explicitly articulated – that the insistence on similarities with regard to Christianity might draw a too positive picture of Islam, pre-empting it from the critique that he considers necessary?

scholarly journals Islamic Activism in Trans-Kama Region: History and Modernity

Islamovedenie ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 42-56
Author(s):  
Roza Vagizovna Nurullina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Movements ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
New Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
In Trans ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The One ◽  
Post Soviet Period

The article examines the development of Islam in the Trans-Kama (Zakamsky) region of the Republic of Tatarstan. The region is characterized by the natural and geographical isolation from the center, economic uniqueness, specificity of the historical process and the formation of a distinct socio-cultural environment. On the one hand, this is an area of traditional agriculture with a sus-tained history of Islam development in а different confessional surrounding. On the other hand, new cities and monotowns with their marginality, the lack of spirituality and cultural bonds create a fa-vorable environment for the spread of new religious movements. The empirical basis of the article are the results of monitoring publications in the media and social networks of recent years (1,171 messages, 2016-2020) that refute the prevailing idea that the activity of Muslims in Trans-Kama region of Tatarstan in the post-Soviet period has an overall extremist orientation. The author con-cludes that, as a whole, the Muslim community of Trans-Kama region is capable to adequately per-ceive the reality, adapt to it and move to a new development level.

scholarly journals “Human beings are first and foremost resonant beings”

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-129
Author(s):  
Diogo Silva Corrêa ◽  
Gabriel Peters ◽  
João Lucas Tziminadis
Keyword(s):  
Critical Element ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
The University ◽  
Existential Sociology

Hartmut Rosa is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Jena, and one of the most original and prolific critical social theorists of our time. The connections between the theoretical and substantive concerns of Rosa’s work, on the one hand, and the analytical purposes of this issue of Civitas dedicated to “existential sociology”, on the other, are manifold. Rosa’s arguments on how acceleration as a social-structural trend of late modernity throws light upon intimate dilemmas of individual self-identity, for instance, could certainly be interpreted as (existential) sociological imagination at its best. The same goes for Rosa’s subtlety and ingenuity in capturing human modes of relating to the world in his theory of resonance, which apprehends the intermingling of bodily, affective, evaluative and cognitive dimensions in a manner that could be deemed “existential” - in a broad and original sense of the word - as broad and original is also the conception of the “critical” element in his “critical theory” of late modernity. For these reasons, we are very pleased to include the following interview in this issue of Civitas.

Quelques aspects du phénomène des nouveaux mouvements religieux en République Fédérale d'Allemagne

1983 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Hardin
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
German Government ◽  
Governmental Agencies ◽  
New Religions ◽  
The Family ◽  
The One

This article was conceived as a supplement to an empirical study of new religious movements which was conducted in the Federal Republic of Germany. The empirical study as well as the "national" reports were undertaken because of the concern about the new groups which has arisen in some of the governmental agencies. The controversy about the new religions presents a delimma for the German government. On the one hand there is a constitutional guarantee for religions freedom and on the other there are similar obligations to protect youth and the institution of the family.

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.

Religious Experiences in New Religious Movements

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olav Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Mystical Union ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
The One

Among the basic elements found in older and more recent religions alike are striking experiences such as visions, out-of-body experiences, and mystical union. On the one hand, such experiences as psychological phenomena. On the other, they are also social facts; something as intangible as a personal experience is somehow transformed into the bedrock of a religious movement. The present chapter argues that the “religious” element of an experience is an effect of the way these experiences are categorized and interpreted. Quite a few people have had striking experiences, far fewer insist that their experiences have any validity for others, and fewer yet manage to convince other people of the supernatural origin and of these experiences and derive authority from them. A new religious movement will derive legitimacy from such experiences if they are presented in a narrative that frames them as “religious,” and if others are willing to accept this narrative.

Das Ende der Postdemokratie, den Pessimismus überwinden.

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 487-494
Author(s):  
Daniel Mullis
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Windows Of Opportunity ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The One

In recent years, political and social conditions have changed dramatically. Many analyses help to capture these dynamics. However, they produce political pessimism: on the one hand there is the image of regression and on the other, a direct link is made between socio-economic decline and the rise of the far-right. To counter these aspects, this article argues that current political events are to be understood less as ‘regression’ but rather as a moment of movement and the return of deep political struggles. Referring to Jacques Ranciere’s political thought, the current conditions can be captured as the ‘end of post-democracy’. This approach changes the perspective on current social dynamics in a productive way. It allows for an emphasis on movement and the recognition of the windows of opportunity for emancipatory struggles.

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