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.

The Instructions of Melanesian Cargo Cults for the Asia-Pacific Future

So-called cargo cults are new religious movements best known among the indigenous population of Oceania, especially Melanesia. Their focus of attention is the mystery surrounding the new goods brought by light-skinned strangers in awe-striking ocean-going vessels and (later) in great flying ‘bird-like’ containers. Various socio-religious movements arose in response to these European-style wares (later internationally-marketed commodities), or “the Cargo” (pidgin: Kago), often in agitated collective expectation of an extraordinary arrival of new riches. The Melanesian outbursts have been typically inspired by prophet-type leaders, with their messages reflecting a transition between indigenous traditions and more settled islander Christianities. This paper moves on from describing and explaining southwest Pacific cargo-type movements to the issue of the ethos out of which they arose, and addresses the sociology of hope for Cargo (or modern commodities in plenty) as a global issue, best described as “Cargoism.” Sets of beliefs in the coming bounty and changing power of Cargo have much more than ‘provincial’ or local-indigenous implications. They point to a worldwide plethora of expectations wherein material items define the essential comforts of life and capture the individual, family and collective imaginations about the preferred human future. Exploring some of the ‘universally human’ implications within the logic of cargo-cult thinking in its Pacific context, this paper introduces Cargoism as a transoceanic and intercontinental issue that has enormous environmental and politico-economic ramifications. Presages of environmental stress lie with globalizing cargoist dreams and pressures, including hopes for progress and technological solutions offered by trade and commercial expansions (proffered by powerful nations, including China, for the Asia-Pacific future).

The Baltic Countries

The three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) have a varied religious history. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they were the last region of Europe to be Christianized. Today, they—and especially Estonia—are among the most secularized societies in the world. This is not only due to the Soviet past but also to Baltic German dominance at key moments in their history. While Lutheranism has dominated in the north (in Estonia and Latvia), the Roman Catholic Church is still the main religious player in the south (in Lithuania and parts of Latvia). Primarily due to Russian migration, the Orthodox Church also plays a significant role in Baltic affairs. There is, finally, a small but vibrant cluster of new religious movements, notably neo-pagan groups.

The Siberian Village of Okunevo as a Place of Power and its Sacred Landscape

The paper deals with contemporary places of power and New Age sacred landscapes in Russia.* It focuses on the Siberian village of Okunevo, its sacred sites, and their worshippers. Formation of this place of power was a result of the activity of individuals (both academics and adherents of new religious movements), combined with the specific interpretation of archaeological sites and the natural landscape of the area. The landscape around the village of Okunevo affects the interaction of people with the sacred loci and the ways the signs, symbols and narratives about them are created.

The problem of religious unity in modern Kazakhstan

The respect for religious diversity that Kazakhstan promotes appears to be under strain at home. Kazakhstan’s legislation guarantees equal treatment of all religions, but acknowledges the historical role of Hanafi Islam and the Russian Orthodox Church. The purpose of the article is to highlight the results of an analytical and comparative study of religious communities operating in the territory of modern Kazakhstan. A comparative method is used as the main method in the classification, typology, assessment and generalisation of religious communities. In general, the presented analytical data should be related to comparative religious studies. Both are so-called traditional religions that have been present in the Kazakh territory for many centuries. Authorities seem unwelcoming of ‘new’ religious movements that have gained followers in Kazakhstan in recent years. However, due to the rise of religious extremism and terrorism around the world, religious tensions were found here. The study concluded that since gaining independence, religious activity in Kazakhstan has increased. Keywords: Religious and ethnic tolerance, SAMK, ROC, religious expectations, terrorism.

New religious movement responses to COVID

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.

Islamic Activism in Trans-Kama Region: History and Modernity

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.