NRMs, reasons for their growth and their dynamics

Wallis (1984) — definition and types of NRMs

• New religions and organisations — both cults and sects

1. 🌍-rejecting

2. 🌍-accommodating

3. 🌍-affirming

Wallis (1984) — 3 examples of 🌍-rejecting NRMs

1. Moonies

2. Jim Jones

3. Manson Family

Wallis (1984) — 5 features of 🌍-rejecting NRMs

1. Clearly religious w/clear notion of God

2. More critical of outside 🌍 and advocate for radical change

3. Salvation requires sharp break w/former life

4. Control of all aspects of member’s lives — communal living and restricted contact w/outside 🌍

5. Conservative moral code

Wallis (1984) — 🌍-accommodating NRMs + 2 examples

• Often breakaways from mainstream ⛪️/denominations

1. Neo-Pentacostalists (✝; believe other ✝ religions have lost the Holy Spirit

2. Subud (☪)

Wallis (1984) — 4 features of 🌍-accommodating NRMs

1. Neither accept nor reject 🌍

2. Wish to restore spiritual purity as dismayed at state of world

3. Members have conventional lives

4. Place value on religious life, e.g. speaking in 👅

Wallis (1984) — 🌍-affirming NRMs + 1 example

• Most similar to cults

• Most successful as differ from conventional religion — no collective worship — but offer access to spiritual/supernaturalpowers

1. Scientology

Wallis (1984) — 4 features of 🌍-affirming NRMs

1. Accept 🌍 as it is — optimistic, promise followers success

2. Non-exclusive and tolerant but offer special knowledge/powers — ‘psychologising religions’

3. Followers = customers (not members) and gain entry through training

4. Members live normal lives w/few demands

3 CRITICISMS of Wallis (1984)

1. Not clear if categorisation focuses on mvmt’s teachings or individual’s beliefs

2. Ignores diversity of beliefs w/in NRMs

3. Some have features of all types like 3HO

CRITICISM of Wallis (1984) — Stark and Bainbridge (1986)

• Shouldn’t typologise

Stark and Bainbridge (1986) — 2 types of organisation in conflict w/wider society

1. Sects — result from schisms, usually break away from ⛪️

2. Cults — new religions/new to their society

Ethical deprivation

• When one’s values conflict with society

Psychic deprivation

• Suffering from normlessness

Organismic deprivation

• Suffering from health issues

Stark and Bainbridge (1986) — 1 benefit of sects

• Promise other-🌍 benefits to economically/ethically deprived people (W/C)

Stark and Bainbridge (1986) — 1 benefit of cults

1. Promise this-🌍 benefits to psychically or organismically deprived (M/C)

Stark and Bainbridge (1986) — 3 subdivisions of cults based on their levels of organisation from low to high

1. Audience cults

2. Client cults

3. Cultic movements

Stark and Bainbridge (1986) — audience cults + 2 examples

• No formal membership or proper commitment

• Little interaction between members — participate via media

1. UFO cults

2. Astrology

Stark and Bainbridge (1986) — client cults + example

• Promise medical miracles, contact w/dead or ‘therapies’

• Based on consultant-client relationship

• Provide services to members

1. Scientology

Stark and Bainbridge (1986) — cultic movements + example

• Highest level of commitment

• Meets all member’s needs, they can’t belong to any other group

• Some client cults → cultic mvmts from some followers

1. Moonies

CRITICISM of Stark and Bainbridge (1986)

• Some examples don’t fit neatly into any single category

3 reasons for rise in NRMs

1. Marginality

2. Relative deprivation

3. Social change

Marginality — Troeltsch

• Sect members often poor and oppressed

Marginality — Weber (1922; 1993) — reasons for sects attracting marginalised people

• Marginal people feel disprivileged

• Sects offer solution: theodicy of disprivilege

  • Justify current suffering as being rewarded with salvation in the afterlife

Marginality — types of sect recruitment

• From marginalised poor: Nation of ☪ (Black ☪)

• From non-marginalised people: Moonies (white, M/C but also hippies, dropouts and drugusers)

Relative deprivation — sects

• Create sense of community

Relative deprivation — Stark and Bainbridge — ⛪️ → sect

• M/C members more likely to compromise beliefs of their ⛪️ to fit into society

  • Deprived members then more likely to break away from this ⛪️ and form a sect to safeguard its original intention

    • Example: W/C people place more value on rich man/🐪/🪡/heaven and meek inheriting 🌍 than M/C people so more likely to want to retain this sentiment

Relative deprivation — Stark and Bainbridge — ⛪ vs sect

• 🌍-rejecting sects offer deprived later compensation for current deprivation of rewards

• 🌍-accepting ⛪️ express M/C status and bring more 🌍 rewards

Social change — Wilson (1970)

• Periods of rapid social change disrupt and undermine established norms and values

  • Leads to anomie

    • Solution = sects

Social change — Wilson (1970) — example

• Industrial revolution → methodism as recruited new industrial W/C by focusing on social justice

Social change — Bruce (1995; 1996; 2011)

• Sects and cults = response to modernisation and secularisation

• Secularisation → less attachment to ⛪️/strict sects due to commitment required → move to cults as are less demanding and require fewer sacrifices

Reasons for growth of 🌍-rejecting NRMs — Wallis

• Post-1960 changes to young people → development of counterculture and radicial political mvmts w/alternative ideas about the future

  • More time spent in education

  • More freedom from adult responsibilities

• 🌍-rejecting NRMs offer more idealistic way of life

Reasons for growth of 🌍-rejecting NRMs — Bruce

• Failure of counterculture to change the 🌍 → disillusioned youth turning to 🌍-rejecting NRMs

Reasons for growth of 🌍-affirming NRMs — Bruce

• Response to modernity

  • Rationalisation of work → work no longer provides meaningful source of ID

    • Yet still expected to achieve w/out ooprtunities, so 🌍-affirming NRMs provide sense of ID and techniques

Reasons for growth of 🌍-affirming NRMs — Wallis

• Middle ground mvmts like Jesus freaks increased since 1970s

  • Attracted disullusioned ex-🌍-rejecting NRM members as seek as halfway between cult and normality

Niebuhr (1929) — sect → denomination

• Sects = world-rejecting and stem from a schism

• Either die or become a denomination w/in a generation

Niebuhr (1929) — 3 reasons for denomination or death of sects

1. Generational commitment

2. Protestant ethic effect

3. Charismatic leader

Niebuhr (1929) — generational commitment

• 2nd generation commitment < 1st generation commitment

Niebuhr (1929) — Protestant ethic effect

• Ascetic sects prosperous and more mobile

  • Members more tempted to compromise w/🌍 (denominationify) or leave (die)

Niebuhr (1929) — charismatic leader

• Death → sectural collapse OR implementation of bureaucratic leadership

Stark and Bainbridge (1986) — sectarian cycle

• Schism → initial fervour → internal change (denominationism) → change in ext. perspective (establishment) → schism

  • Schism = ⛪️/deprived members split as don’t feel it reflects them anymore

  • Initial fervour due to charismatic leader and sect-🌍 tension

  • Denominationalism due to decreasing fervour — Protestant ethic and 2nd gen commitment

  • Establishment due to increasing acceptance of 🌍 and decreasing sect-🌍 tension

CRITICISM of Stark and Bainbridge (1986) sectarian cycle — Wilson (1966; 2008)

• Sects don’t necessarily follow cycle, depends on thoughts about being saved

Wilson (1966; 2008) — 2 types of sect and saving

1. Convertionist

2. Adventist

Wilson (1966; 2008) — convertionist

• Evangelicals

• Aim to be saved = convert lots of people

• More likely to grow into formal denomination

Wilson (1966; 2008) — adventist

• Jehovah’s Witnesses, 7th Day Adventists

• Await Lord’s second coming

• Aim to be saved = keep separate from corrupt world around them

  • Prevents denominations

5 sects that have survived many generations due to socialisation of children

1. Adventists

2. Amish

3. Quakers

4. Pentacostals

5. LDS

Impact of globalisation on the 2 types of sect

1. Convertionist — will make recruitment easier

2. Adventist — will make keeping separate from society harder