Attraction to NRMs and NAMs

TIMELINE OF DISILLUSION WITH CHURCH OR FAITH:

• Until the 16th century:

  • There was one dominant church in Europe – the Catholic Church – and therefore only one conception of God.

• 1517:

  • Martin Luther published his 95 theses, which rejected many of the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church. He believed the church was corrupt and rejected in particular the dominant ideas people could buy God’s forgiveness by giving money to the church. Excommunicated by the Pope.

• 16th and 17th century:

  • The Reformation following Luther’s ideas. The growth of greater religious freedom and the emergence of different Protestant religion, with competing conceptions of God. King Henry VIII took advantage of the emergence to break with Rome and set up the Church of England.

• 17th century:

  • Protestant religion under the Church of England had become the dominant religion in Britain. Protestantism broke away from Catholicism as some believed the catholic Church had compromised its beliefs and practices.

• 16th, 17th and 18th centuries:

  • Many Christians separated from the Church of England. Many of these Christians, such as the Lollards, were persecuted to extinction by the Anglican Church and the political elite. Other groups, such as the Puritans, fled to America in order to pursue their beliefs freely.

• 19th century:

  • John Wesley’s critique of Anglicanism led to the establishment of the Methodist denomination.

• 1980s:

  • Disillusion with mainstream Protestantism was responsible for the increase in the popularity of Christian world accommodating and world rejecting NRMs at this time, particularly those associated with the evangelical Pentecostal movement. Nelson argues that the growing popularity of Pentecostalism indicates that some Christians believed there were more genuine and exciting ways of satisfying spiritual needs and being in contact with God.

FIRST WAVE NRMs:

• People in 19th century America were anxious about the scale of social change – industrialisation, urbanisation, immigration and secularisation.

• Charismatic leaders (e.g Charles Taze Russell of the Jehovah's Witnesses) offered hope and certainty in an uncertain and increasingly secularised world.

• Converts had a community purpose and moral code again.

SECOND WAVE NRMs:

• Lots of world affirming, new age cults and sects grew in the 1960s and 70s.

• The beliefs of these NRMs came from a range of world religions and non-religious disciplines like philosophy and psychology.

• These recruited mainly middle class, university-educated young people who were disillusioned with mainstream US society (e.g involvement in Vietnam war and racial segregation).

• NRMs like the Unification Church and Scientology, alongside increased access to education and experimentation with drugs, brought about a counterculture where individualism, selfishness, consumerism and materialism were rejected.

• They were probably attracted to the communal living in which property, work and even relationships were shared.

• Barker suggested the Unification Church offered a ‘surrogate family’.

• NRMs from the East and Indian Continent were attractive because of their emphasis on inner experience – seen as uncontaminated by the dominant parent culture.

CRITICISMS OF ‘WAVE’ NRMs:

• Wallis was criticised for putting too much emphasis on a counterculture rebellion.

• Fails to explain the sheer diversity of NRMs that rose in this period and why they adopted qualitatively different strategies of opposing mainstream values.

• Wallis doesn’t make clear why some groups shut themselves off from society, whilst others went into society seeking converts.

THIRD WAVE NRMs:

• Appeared in the 1900s motivated by the approach of the millennium.

• Many NRMs saw this as the year the world would end, or Jesus or aliens would reveal themselves.

• A number of sects offered salvation from these disasters.

• Members of Heaven’s Gate killed themselves in order to release their souls from their human shells, to join an intergalactic spacecraft concealed in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet, which was passing close to earth.

TYPES OF DEPRIVATION AND WHY THEY LEAD TO NRM INVOLVEMENT:

• Economic:

  • There’s evidence that those experiencing poverty are attracted to world rejecting and world accommodating NRMs particularly.

  • They give a supernatural explanation of their position, and hope of improvement. Weber called this a ‘theodicy of misfortune’ – religions, especially sects, offer compensation in the form of salvation.

  • This could explain why world rejecting sects like the Nation of Islam or Rastafarianism appeal to ethnic minorities.

  • Norris and Ingleheart – poorer people in the developing world may turn to NRMs as they provide security, comfort and compensation for the life-threatening risks of poverty (existential security theory).

• Social/Status:

  • Skilled manual workers, or members of the lower classes may feel socially deprived at work.

  • They may lack job satisfaction as they’re denied creative power at work. Glock and Stark suggest evangelism may be an alternative way of gaining status.

  • This may be why some workers are attracted to the evangelical goals of NRMs like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or world accommodating NRMs like Pentecostalism.

  • It provides an opportunity to achieve positions of responsibility, authority and status.

• Organismic:

  • Those with physical, mental and addiction problems may turn to NRMs in the hope of being healed.

  • NRMs may offer faith healing, or support in developing self-discipline and rejecting deviant behaviours like alcohol or drug abuse.

• Ethical:

  • Some feel the world is wicked and in moral decline.

  • World accommodating groups like Pentecostalism, or world rejecting groups, can provide moral certainty in societies undergoing secularisation.

  • Griffiths – some women may be attracted to the traditional gender roles offered by Pentecostal denominations.

• Psychic:

  • Some people reject socially dominant values like individualism and consumerism and wish to explore spiritual alternatives.

  • They wish to ‘find themselves’ in a lonely materialistic world.

  • Involvement with cults and NAMs is normally associated with the middle class – they don’t lack material wealth, but spiritual wealth.

• Beckford: argues that there’s too often an assumption that members of an NRM feel deprived.