Watching Movies in Jonestown: A Cultural Interlocutor Approach to Visual Media and New Religions

This article argues that new religious movements (NRMs) develop as cultural interlocutors. As emergent social bodies that respond to extant norms, structures, and values, NRMs can deploy cultural products as a shared vocabulary and grammar in their response to surrounding society. To demonstrate this approach’s ability to parse NRMs’ relations to popular culture while highlighting organizationally distinctive dimensions of such interactions, this article examines Jim Jones’s references to visual media shown in Jonestown in 1978. Jones critiqued movies and television as tools of social control, repurposed documentaries and films as evidence to support his proffered doctrine, and creatively presented movies as analogues of the commune’s perceived challenges. This threefold hermeneutic shaped the Peoples Temple’s beliefs and behavior, as well as its own media productions.

STRATIFIKASI SOSIAL, Kepemimpinan Tradisional Toraja dalam Dinamika Demokrasi Modern

Social stratification is part of Aluk in Torajan culture. The Aluk (as a religion) that is going to be described is Aluk Todolo; the name for the traditional religion before Christianity, Islam, and other new religions came to Toraja. According to the myth of Toraja, the whole of matter in this world originally began in the sky, including all the ancestors of creatures. This profane world is the image or the duplicate of the transcendent world. Leadership and social life also had been regulated above and downloaded through aluk to the human beings.In Torajanese myth, aluk was determined in the sky, consequently, aluk is divine. Puang Matua and all gods submit to aluk as a higher authority. Actually, Aluk Todolo is exceedingly greater than religion. That’s why (in this topic) social research has to be seen as a part of aluk.

Monism and the Religion of Science

Monism was not just a philosophical outlook, but also an early twentieth-century new religious movement. Founded by the internationally renowned evolutionary theorist Ernst Haeckel, it was supposed to be a “Religion of Science” that repudiated matter-mind dualism in favor of reverence for a divinized Mother Nature. This article traces the genesis of the German Monist League and how it was transplanted to the United States by the publisher, Paul Carus. Although readers of this journal are likely to know about new religions that embrace “pseudoscience,” the surprise is that Monism had followers with significant scientific renown including multiple Nobel Prize-winning scientists, famous philosophers of science, and even a celebrated sociologist. Scholars of secularism or science and religion will want to know about how Haeckel and his followers constructed a hybrid Scientific Faith or Secular Church that this article demonstrates went on to provide the foundation for professionalizing American philosophy.

My First Steps in Religious Fieldwork: Exploring Aum Shinrikyō in 1995

This paper is an homage to professor Massimo Raveri and the vivid impact he had on my research more than thirty years ago. After a brief introduction about how I developed my interest in New-new religions in Japan, I present the English translation of my first publication on the subject “Asahara Shōkō and the Aum Shinrikyō: The Teaching of the Supreme Truth” published in 1995 soon after the Sarin attack.

Means of communication of new religious movements in the Republic of Belarus

This article is devoted to the analysis of the means of communication of new religious movements in the Republic of Belarus. Due to the high level of closeness of the overwhelming number of new religions for questioning, interviews, observation and experiment, their means of communication with society are the most accessible documentary source of primary sociological information for research. As part of the monitoring of the confessional space of the country, conducted since 1997, information was collected on 1113 new religious movements. The means of communication used by them to broadcast religious ideas and teachings, including in the public space of the Republic of Belarus, are documented. A number of methodological problems related to the analysis of the means of communication of new religious movements are identified. The frequency of appeals of new religions to print media, the Internet, leaflets, books and specialised periodicals has been established. The entire set of means, depending on the target audience, is divided into internal, external and universal. The degree of informativeness of external and universal means of communication for scientific analysis, is analysed. It is noted that the openness of the new religious movements to society, which implies the disclosure of a significant part of their internal information, does not automatically mean recognition and acceptance of society, readiness for a constructive dialogue with it. The connection between the type of structure of the new religious movements and the number of different means of communication used by them is revealed. The minimum provable number of new religious movements working in the public space through means of communication accessible to the general population has been established.

Symbolic meanings of Holy Temple in Cao Dai Tay Ninh Holy See

Dai Dao Tam Ky Pho Do [The Great Way of The Third Amnesty Era] (shortly Caodaism) is an indigenous religion established in southern Vietnam in the early 20th century. Being one of the new religions in the region, Caodaism has been constantly developing and attracting quite a great number of followers of over three million. The doctrine of Caodaism is a synthesis of the Three Religions, e.g. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism together with elements from some other religions. The doctrine is not only shown in scriptures, religious structure, but also expressed through symbols in architecture, rituals and costumes. To a certain extent, it is thus essential to understand the symbolism of the Holy Temple – the most important one of the symbolism system so that we can fully comprehend Caodaism. The Temple is the most solemn and sacred place in Cao Dai Tay Ninh Holy See. It carries both philosophical and esoteric meanings as an emblem of cultural syncretism. The study of the Holy Temple symbol will elaborate further Caodaist doctrines in a relationship with the cultural context of the Southern region.

Francie jako laický stát, vývoj a aktuální stav

This article is part of my dissertation on The Czech Republic as a Secular State. Its purpose is to explain what a secular state is, how it originated, how it has developed, and how it can be defined. Since the model of the laic state was primarily created in the gradually developing process of secularization in France and is linked to the local constitutional principle of laïcité, the article focuses primarily on this country. The article is divided into three interrelated parts. The first part discusses the constitutional principle of laïcité, unique to France, and its development up to 1958; the second part examines the process of the separation of the state from the church and the process of the formation of the secular state, taking into account the legal and constitutional aspects of this process; and the third, the most extensive part, examines the development of both legal secularism and laïcité from 1958 to the present. Moreover, it puts the whole development in the context of the state’s, gradually escalating, reaction to the growing influence of the “new” religions, especially Islam.