what are some of the new religious movements that have emerged

Over time new religious movements and breakaway sects emerged: Jainism and Buddhism from Hinduism, Confucianism and Daoism from indigenous Chinese religious beliefs. Recent religious movements of a more contemporary origin (post the 1500s CE) have also broken away from other religions. What makes a NRM

A new religious movement?

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What is considered a new religious movement?

A new religious movement (NRM) is a religious, ethical, or spiritual group or community with practices of relatively modern origins. NRMs may be novel in origin or they may exist on the fringes of a wider religion, in which case they will be distinct from pre-existing denominations.

What is the world's largest new religious movement?

In 1830 the Latter Day Saint movement was founded by Joseph Smith. It is one of the largest new religious movements in terms of membership.

What are new religious movements sociology?

New religious movements are those religious and spiritual organisations operating in contemporary society that do not fit into neat categories of Church, Sect or Denomination.

Who led the new religious movement?

The Rajneesh International Foundation is another highly controversial NRM that originated in India. The group was led by the flamboyant Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (1931–90), who taught a heavily revised form of Indian spirituality called Tantrism.

Which is the new religion in the world?

Baha'i: The world's newest religion, and why followers find it appealing.

What are the modern religious practices?

Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities and/or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.

What are the characteristics of new religious movements?

These movements are often highly eclectic, pluralistic, and syncretistic; they freely combine doctrines and practices from diverse sources within their belief systems. The new movement is usually founded by a charismatic and sometimes highly authoritarian leader who is thought to have extraordinary powers or insights.

What are the reasons for emergence of new religion?

Rise of New Religious Movements: 7 CausesCause # 1. Degradation of Vedic Religion:Cause # 2. Dominance of Priestly Class:Cause # 3. Sacrifices:Cause # 4. Caste System:Cause # 5. Difficult Language of Vedas:Cause # 6. Belief in Mantras:Cause # 7. Contradictory Theory Regarding Deliverance:

Is Mormonism a new religious movement?

Take, for example, Scientology and Mormonism. Both were new religious movements that have evolved into a general understanding or definition of a religion.

What do you mean by religious movement?

Definition of Religious Movement (noun) A social movement that promotes spirituality in individuals or groups.

Is Islam the newest religion?

Islam is the second largest religion in the world after Christianity, with about 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide. Although its roots go back further, scholars typically date the creation of Islam to the 7th century, making it the youngest of the major world religions.

Why do new religious movements fail?

In contrast, many religious movements fail from the inability of members to form and maintain outside social ties. movements will continue to grow only to the extent that they maintain sufficient tension with their environment—remain sufficiently strict.

What is the largest religion in the world?

Adherents in 2020ReligionAdherentsPercentageChristianity2.382 billion31.11%Islam1.907 billion24.9%Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist1.193 billion15.58%Hinduism1.161 billion15.16%18 more rows

Is Islam the newest religion?

Islam is the second largest religion in the world after Christianity, with about 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide. Although its roots go back further, scholars typically date the creation of Islam to the 7th century, making it the youngest of the major world religions.

Which religion is most powerful in the world?

Major religious groupsChristianity (31.2%)Islam (24.1%)Irreligion (16%)Hinduism (15.1%)Buddhism (6.9%)Folk religions (5.7%)Sikhism (0.3%)Judaism (0.2%)

What is the first known religion in the world?

Hinduism is the world's oldest religion, according to many scholars, with roots and customs dating back more than 4,000 years. Today, with about 900 million followers, Hinduism is the third-largest religion behind Christianity and Islam. Roughly 95 percent of the world's Hindus live in India.

What is a new religious movement?

A new religious movement (NRM) is a religious, ethical, or spiritual group or community with practices of relatively modern origins. NRMs may be novel in origin or they may exist on the fringes of a wider religion, in which case they will be distinct from pre-existing denominations. Academics identify a variety of characteristics which they employ in categorizing groups as new religious movements. The term is broad and inclusive, rather than sharply defined. New religious movements are generally seen as syncretic, employing human and material assets to disseminate their ideas and worldviews, deviating in some degree from a society’s traditional forms or doctrines, focused especially upon the self, and having a peripheral relationship that exists in a state of tension with established societal conventions.

What is NRM movement?

An NRM may be one of a wide range of movements ranging from those with loose affiliations based on novel approaches to spirituality or religion to communitarian enterprises that demand a considerable amount of group conformity and a social identity that separates their adherents from mainstream society. Use of the term NRM is not universally ...

Who is the author of The New Believers?

Barrett, David V. (2001). The new believers: a survey of sects, cults and alternative religions (Revised ed.). London: Cassell. ISBN 978-0-304-35592-1.

What constitutes a new religious movement?

What constitutes a new religious movement? Matters of definition are exceedingly thorny, but this entry seeks to survey a wide range of nonmainstream religions and will cast its net broadly. This entry will presume that there is an American religious mainstream that consists of the major, culturally well-established branches of Christianity and Judaism, including Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, mainline Protestantism, most evangelical Protestantism, and the three major branches of Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform). New religious movements are groups outside that mainstream. Admittedly there are many shades of gray in such a definition, but living with ambiguity is essential to any study of religion.

Who studied the non-mainstream religious movement?

Milton Yinger wrote important sociological analyses of NRMs in the 1950s. During the 1940s and 1950s such observers as Marcus Bach, Elmer T. Clark, and Charles S. Braden surveyed the nonmainstream religious scene and discovered many previously little-noticed religious movements, describing them in terms that did not dismiss them as heretical or diabolical.

What religious group was founded in 1830?

Another religious movement that arose while the Shakers and Harmonists were flourishing had the dubious distinction of being arguably the most controversial religious group in American history. Founded in 1830, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, based their distinctive version of Christianity, which featured an unorthodox account of American history before Christopher Columbus, on revelations that the founder Joseph Smith Jr. (1805 – 1844) claimed to have received. No religious group in American history has suffered more persecution than the Mormons; for nearly a century they were widely derided as devious outlaws and sexual miscreants. Conflicts with neighbors drove the early Mormons from New York State to Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and finally to Utah after the lynching of the founder Smith in 1844. Ex-Mormons fanned the flames with stories of dictatorial theocracy, violence, and corruption among the Latter-day Saints. Although their practice of polygamy was not announced publicly until after the migration to Utah, it had been practiced for years. Such early Mormon leaders as Smith and his successor Brigham Young (1801 – 1877) each had dozens of plural wives. Word about the practice that leaked out provided sensational fuel for the anti-Mormon flames. Only with the passage of time did anti-Mormon agitation diminish. The Mormons, for their part, helped deprive their opponents of rhetorical ammunition by retreating from their most controversial ideas and practices. Polygamy was phased out in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, and a teaching that suggested that African Americans were inferior to whites was abandoned in 1978.

How does NRM spread its message?

Furthermore the spreading of an NRM's message is often conducted through mass media, and expertise in writing and speaking, video production, and Web site development has become a critical tool for the propagation of a group's message. Here again the growth of a class of specialized professionals is essential to a religious movement's growth and prosperity.

What is sect and cult?

Sect and cult are terms that were once used with a fair degree of academic precision. Classically a sect is a splinter group, a movement that has split from an existing religious body for some reason. Often such groups see themselves as revitalization movements that seek to return to a pristine purity from which, it is believed, the parent group has departed. The Holiness movement, for example, began when some Methodists came to believe that their church had undergone a degree of liberalization that took it unacceptably far from its Wesleyan roots, and the dissenters set up new churches that they saw as restoring pure Methodist doctrine. A cult, on the other hand, is classically a more distinct group — one that does not have clear roots in an existing, well-established tradition. A cult may be a newly created religion, usually one formulated by a founding prophet of some kind, or it may be a religion that is simply unfamiliar (and in that sense "new") in the American context. Some Hindu movements that have come to the United States, for example, have been widely regarded as cults because they are not familiar to Americans, even though they would be part of the religious mainstream in India.

What was the first amendment to the Constitution?

The First Amendment laid down what was then a bold precept: the United States would have no established, or officially endorsed, religion, and it would permit the free exercise of religion. More than two centuries later more religions are being freely exercised than the nation's founders could possibly have anticipated. Every substantial religion in the world has an American manifestation, and many homegrown startups have appeared in the United States. It is safe to say that no place in the world has greater religious diversity than the United States at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Who were the Shakers?

A 1780 convert, Valentine Rathbun, soon dropped out of the movement and accused the Shakers of deception and even, perhaps, what some would now call brainwashing. The Shakers received visitors joyfully, Rathbun wrote, feeding and lodging them readily. But after his departure from the group, he claimed it was all a ruse designed to create "absolute dependence" among members. Some years later the Shakers found themselves challenged by an even more formidable opponent, Mary Marshall Dyer (1780 – 1867), whose opposition to the group she had joined and then left became her life's work. Dyer's anti-Shaker polemics sounded like many anticult diatribes of the late twentieth century; among other things, she accused the movement of using mind control of a sort that amounted to hypnotism. In the twenty-first century the Shakers are best known for their classic furniture and exquisite villages, and the few surviving Shakers in Maine enjoy great admiration and support. Only with time — and perhaps with their steep decline in numbers — has their unusual religion become acceptable.

What is a new movement?

The new movement is usually founded by a charismatic and sometimes highly authoritarian leader who is thought to have extraordinary powers or insights.

Who was the first person to start a new religion?

Among the first new religions in the United States were the Seventh-day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, both the products of millenarian fervour set off in the mid-19th century by William Miller (1782–1849). Miller predicted that Christ would return to earth sometime in 1843 or 1844.

What are NRMs in religion?

NRMs are characterized by a number of shared traits. These religions are, by definition, “new”; they offer innovative religious responses to the conditions of the modern world, despite the fact that most NRMs represent themselves as rooted in ancient traditions. NRMs are also usually regarded as “countercultural”; that is, they are perceived (by others and by themselves) to be alternatives to the mainstream religions of Western society, especially Christianity in its normative forms. These movements are often highly eclectic, pluralistic, and syncretistic; they freely combine doctrines and practices from diverse sources within their belief systems. The new movement is usually founded by a charismatic and sometimes highly authoritarian leader who is thought to have extraordinary powers or insights. Many NRMs are tightly organized. In light of their often self-proclaimed “alternative” or “outsider” status, these groups often make great demands on the loyalty and commitment of their followers and sometimes establish themselves as substitutes for the family and other conventional social groupings. NRMs have arisen to address specific needs that many people cannot satisfy through more traditional religious organizations or through modern secularism. They are also products of and responses to modernity, pluralism, and the scientific worldview.

What is the NRM?

New religious movement (NRM), the generally accepted term for what is sometimes called, often with pejorative connotations, a “cult.”. The term new religious movement has been applied to all new faiths that have arisen worldwide over the past several centuries.

What was the new religion in the 1970s?

In the 1970s a new subfield in academia developed around the study of what was termed new religions. Though minority religions had regularly populated the fringes of Western culture throughout history, a host of new religious movements had appeared in North America at the end of the 1960s and incited public controversy. Parents of the young adults who had joined many of these groups mounted fierce battles against what they termed cults. In order to present a more balanced view, early research efforts began, initially in the San Francisco Bay metropolitan area, to explore these groups from an academic perspective. At the time, it was assumed by some that the sudden burst of new religions was merely a passing phenomenon, particularly related to the social unrest of the 1960s. The long-term role of the many diverse movements was more fully understood only after their growth continued over several decades. Still in its relative infancy, the study of new religions was dramatically affected by the murder/suicides that occurred at Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978.

What is the origin of the term "new religion"?

A secondary origin for the term New Religion has also been suggested. In 1970, San Francisco Bay Area scholar Jacob Needleman authored a book titled The New Religions, which his colleagues began to use to describe the emergence of so many unfamiliar alternative religions within the counterculture at the end of the 1960s. Needleman found special significance in Zen Buddhism, the followers of Meher Baba, Subud, Transcendental Meditation, Krishnamurti, Tibetan Buddhism, and G. I. Gurdjieff. He also went beyond the largely descriptive work from Japan, and invited readers to consider the philosophical/theological questions about the nature of genuine spirituality.

What was the purpose of the cult movement?

The leadership of the cult awareness movement sought justification for the necessity of kidnapping and deprogramming the offspring of concerned parents. Such a rationale appeared during the trial of millionaire heiress Patty Hearst in 1976. Hearst's lawyer, F. Lee Bailey (1933 – ), argued that Hearst, who had participated in a bank robbery some months after being captured and held by the Symbionese Liberation Army, had been brainwashed. Though unable to prevent her conviction, two of the psychologists that had worked with Bailey, Louis J. West (1925 – 1999) from the University of California - Los Angeles and Margaret Singer (1921 – 2003), a psychologist in private practice in Berkeley, began to apply the same argument to members of the new religions — that they were being brainwashed and, in effect, held against their will. They found additional support from Massachusetts psychiatrist John Clark (1926 – 1999).

What was the most important trend in the 1980s?

Among the most important trends was the gradual dismantling of the definition of "cult/new religion" which scholars had been using since the 1950s. Sociologists such as J. Milton Yinger had suggested back then that cults were small, ephemeral groups, led by a charismatic leader to whom a cosmic status and/or various supernatural abilities had been assigned, and which operated in a different theological world than that of the dominant mainstream religions.

What was Bryan Wilson's approach to religion?

In England, sociologist Bryan Wilson (1926 – 2004) began to look at what he termed sectarian religion . Following a format already applied to the more familiar churches, both state-sponsored and free, Wilson began to explore the different behavior and theologies proposed by individual sects and ask questions about the social organization of those groups then visible in England, North America, and Africa. His work, published in several books through the 1960s, led to a system of classifying sects according to the variant paths to salvation they outlined for their members:

What was the negative approach to alternative religions?

Attraction to the new religions was seen as a product of economic, social, and educational deprivation, if not actually linked to ill-defined psychological disturbances.

What are the two groups that Wilson and Clark considered sects?

It is to be noted that both Wilson and Clark developed their classification schema apart from the emerging distinction between sect and cult, and both included in their discussion some groups that would later be seen as sects ( Salvation Army, Christadelphians ) and those thought of as "new religions" (Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses) under the single rubric of sects. This approach had the benefit of allowing consideration of some otherwise orthodox Christian groups that evidenced out-of-the-ordinary behavior, such as speaking in tongues, contemporary revelations, communalism, and apocalypticism.

Why do sociologists use the term "new religious movement"?

Since at least the early 2000s, most sociologists of religion have used the term "new religious movement" in order to avoid the pejorative undertones of terms like " cult " and " sect ". These are words that have been used in different ways by different groups.

What is a new religion?

For other uses, see New religion (disambiguation). Not to be confused with New Age. A new religious movement ( NRM ), also known as a new religion or an alternative spirituality, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins but is peripheral to its society's dominant religious ...

Why do people join religious movements?

A popular explanation for why people join new religious movements is that they have been " brainwashed " or subject to "mind control" by the NRM itself. This explanation provides a rationale for "deprogramming", a process in which members of NRMs are illegally kidnapped by individuals who then attempt to convince them to reject their beliefs. Professional deprogrammers, therefore, have a financial interest in promoting the "brainwashing" explanation. Academic research, however, has demonstrated that these brainwashing techniques "simply do not exist".

Why do people join NRMs?

Many of those who have left NRMs report that they have gained from their experience. There are various reasons as to why an individual would join and then remain part of an NRM, including both push and pull factors. According to Marc Galanter, professor of psychiatry at NYU, typical reasons why people join NRMs include a search for community and a spiritual quest. Sociologists Stark and Bainbridge, in discussing the process by which people join new religious groups, have questioned the utility of the concept of conversion, suggesting that affiliation is a more useful concept.

What is NRM in Russia?

A member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness proselytising on the streets of Moscow, Russia. A new religious movement ( NRM ), also known as a new religion or an alternative spirituality, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins but is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture.

What was the rise of the Rastafari movement in the 1930s?

The 1930s saw the rise of the Nation of Islam and the Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States; the rise of the Rastafari movement in Jamaica; the rise of Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo in Vietnam; the rise of Soka Gakkai in Japan; and the rise Zailiism and Yiguandao in China.

When was the Unity Church founded?

In 1891, the Unity Church, the first New Thought denomination, was founded in the United States. In 1893, the first Parliament of the World's Religions was held in Chicago. The conference included NRMs of the time such as spiritualism, Baháʼí Faith, and Christian Science.

What are the causes of the rise of new religious movements?

The following points highlight the seven main causes for the rise of new religious movements. The causes are: 1. Degradation of Vedic Religion 2. Dominance of Priestly Class 3. Sacrifices 4. Caste System 5. Difficult Language of Vedas 6. Belief in Mantras 7.

What led to the rise of the priestly class?

Dominance of Priestly Class: The introduction of the new ceremonies and sacrifices in the religion led to the rise of the class of Priests. This class occupied an eminent position in the society. With a view to maintain their hold on society they introduced unnecessary rites and rituals.

What were the mantras used for in Vedic religion?

It was commonly believed that the mantras possessed divine powers and could cure people of diseases, bring victory or defeat in war, assure the destruction of its enemies, silent opponents etc.

What was the degradation of Vedic religion?

Degradation of Vedic Religion: The religion of the early Vedic people was quite simple and there were no unnecessary rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices in it. In course of time this simplicity of the religion disappeared and ideals of truth gave way to here say.

Why did the 6th century Hindus have spiritual unrest?

The spiritual unrest of the 6th century B.C. was also due to the difficult and complicated language of the Vedas which was beyond the comprehension of common people. All the religious works of the Hindus like Vedas, Upanishads.

What were the members of the lower castes treated with?

The members of the lower castes were not only treated with contempt but also were not permitted to enter the temples or under­take tapasya. Naturally, there was great resentment amongst the members of these classes and they wanted to bring about necessary changes in the social system based on rigid caste system.

Why did the priests have so many rituals?

The priestly class in order to gratify its own needs and desires introduced so many rituals into the religion that people had to undergo these rituals right from cradle to the grave. The people were greatly dissatisfied with the weight of these rituals.

Terminology

NRMS in American History

After 1965

Controversy and Criticism

Women in New Religions

• New religious movements, like other religions, have tended to be defined and dominated by males, but that pattern is not universal. Some movements, especially those rooted in religious traditions that mandate specific gender roles, have restricted the participation of women in various ways. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, for e...

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Ethnicity and NRMS

Millennialism and Violence in NRMS

Maturation and Development of NRMS

The Academic Study of New Religions

Bibliography

New Religions Studies

Transition

The Emergence of New Religions Study

• The books from Japan offered Western scholars a much-needed tool: a new language with which to discuss the numerous, outside-the-mainstream alternative religions that had become their focus in the 1970s. At this time, some older, unfamiliar religious groups joined a number of recently introduced movements to create a new alternative religious milie...

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Picking Up The Study

Additional Developments

Fields Within Fields

Legal Perspectives

Family Life

Western Esotericism

Conclusion