Chapter 3: Why Did NRMs Emerge?

1. Chapter 3:Why Did NRMs Emerge? • RELS 225 • Cults and New Religious Movements

2. Why did NRMs Emerge? • Response to something unique in history, or • They are not unique in history.

3. Response to Cultural Change (Robert Bellah) • 1960’s changes in: • Values • Love for others • life • environment • Self-awareness • Social structure • Role and character of religious institutions

4. Background: Changes after WW2 • Distinct youth culture • Political protest • Civil Rights movement • Vietnam War • Drug experimentation • Liberal lifestyles

5. Changes in Values • NRMs are successor movements to political protest and cultural experimentation of the 1960s. • Rises in: • Affluence • birth rates • Education • Rejection of 2 American pillars of ideological understanding: • Biblical religion • Utilitarian individualism, rejected for being unsatisfying, in light of their new ideals.

6. Baby Boomer values in 1970’s • Me generation • Guidance no longer from church • Had to “grow up”; reintegrate into society • How to redirect revolutionary spirit? • Turned to NRMs for guidance

7. The appeal of 1970s NRMs over conventional religion • NRMs appealed to various classes • Provided a variety of religious beliefs and ways of life • Provided a feeling of control over own lives • Permitted reintegration into society while retaining idealism.

8. Social Reintegration • Thomas Robbins, Anthony, & Curtis • NRMs are a method of social reintegration, providing: • Adjustive socialization • resocializing individuals to mainstream values and norms, • Combination • combining expressive and utilitarian orientations together • Compensation • renewing commitment to vocational routines (religion fulfills the needs jobs can’t) • Redirection • substituting stigmatized activities and satisfactions for those deemed to be socially legitimate (“highs”)

9. Changes in Social Structure • Three varieties of change: • Family / community • young adults search for ‘surrogate families’ to replace ‘mediating structures’ (social clubs) • deinstitutionalization • alienating expectations • Public/private sphere blurred • Adapting life in late modernity • Response to uncertainty: turn inward and cultivate close personal relationship and a heightened sense of subjective identity in the form of self-actualization

10. Family changes • Society moved from community-oriented to nuclear family • What about when you move away from your family of origin? • Family-like system missing in private lives • Work isolates people from others • NRMs transform into something positive: • Childish expressivity • instrumentalism • NRMs reconcile the two

11. Deinstitutionalization • Builds on Berger • Social life became polarized between private and public.

12. Modernity • Modernity created 3 structural changes for religion: • Disembedding of social life • Institutionalization of reflexivity • Process of globalization • Search for meaning • In intense cultivation of personal relationships • When that fails, in religion. • NRMs provide hope

13. Changes in Religion • Secularization • Independent institutions • Economic • Political • Medical • Educational • Transferred authority away from religious institutions

14. NRMs as Cultural Continuity • NRMs not a “New” phenomenon. • Christianity began as a “cult” • Other religions, too. • Were met with skepticism, hostility, persecution • NRMs are a normal part of religious history, not a recent anomaly.

15. Great Awakenings (McLouglin; Wilson) • 1st 3 Great Awakenings since middle of 18th century • American religious dissent • Protestant Christianity • Each show shift in self-conception • In cyclical patterns • Natural • Needed for dynamic growth of nation. • A 4th “Great Awakening” in American religious history? • NRMs since the 1960s

16. NRMs not so “New” (Ellwood & Partin) • NRMs have their roots in older religious traditions. • NRMs are the result of society continuing to seek to fulfill its needs. • What are those needs? • How do NRMs meet these needs?