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Lorne L Dawson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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cults and new Religious Movements a reader
2003Co-Authors: Lorne L DawsonAbstract:Acknowledgements. Introduction: The Book and The Subject. 1. The Study of New Religious Movements:. Eileen Barker, The Scientific Study Of Religion? You Must Be Joking!. James A. Beckford, The Continuum Between "Cults" and "Normal" Religion. 2. The Nature of New Religious Movements:. Roy Wallis, Three Types of New Religious Movement. William Sins Bainbridge and Rodney Stark, Cult Formation: Three Compatible Models. 3. New Religious Movements in Historical and Social Context:. Philip Jenkins, False Prophets And Deluded Subjects: The Nineteenth Century. Robert Wuthnow, The New Spiritual Freedom. 4. Joining New Religious Movements:. Lorne L. Dawson, "Who Joins New Religious Movements And Why: Twenty Years Of Research And What Have We Learned?. Saul Levine, The Joiners. 5. The 'Brainwashing' Controversy:. Margaret Thales Singer, The Process Of Brainwashing, Psychological Coercion, And Thought Reform. James T. Richardson, A Critique Of 'Brainwashing' Claims About New Religious Movements. Thomas Robbins, Constructing Cultist 'Mind Control'. 6. Violence and New Religious Movements:. John R. Hall, The Apocalypse At Jonestown. Jean--Francois Mayer, "Our Terrestrial Journey is Coming to an End": The Last Voyage of the Solar Temple. 7. Sex and Gender Issues and New Religious Movements:. Elizabeth Puttick, Women In New Religious Movements. Susan J. Palmer, Women's 'Cocoon Work' In New Religious Movements: Sexual Experimentation And Feminine Rites Of Passage. 8. New Religious Movements and The Future: Rodney Stark, Why Religious Movements Succeed Or Fail: A Revised General Model. Lorne L. Dawson And Jenna Hennebry, New Religions And The Internet: Recruiting In A New Public.
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The Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements: The Case of Soka Gakkai
Sociology of Religion, 2001Co-Authors: Lorne L DawsonAbstract:This paper advances previous arguments I have made about assessing the cultural significance of new Religious Movements (Dawson 1998a, 1998b) using the example of Soka Gakkai. An examination of this Japanese-based, but now world-wide, new religion highlights two things: (I) it denumstrates that there is an intimate relationship between the investigation of the "success" and the "significance" of a new Religious movement, though the two concerns are not necessarily linked; adul (2), and it points to the most methodologically sound foci for future research on both topics through the comparative analysis of new Religious Movements. The success and significance of Soka Gakkai in the West is explained in terms of certain organizational adaptations and the elective affinity of its ethos with the emergent Religious sensibilities of advanced industrial societies. Implicit to the study of new Religious Movements is the assumption that they are somehow of cultural significance, either as individual phenomena or as part of a larger pattern of social development. It is widely recognized, however, that even the most successful new Religious Movements (hereafter NRMs) are unlikely to achieve a size sufficient to directly influence the development of any Western society in the foreseeable future. Rather, as socially segregated and permitted realms of lifestyle experimentation, the significance of NRMs rests with their potential status as windows into broader patterns of social change. But what kind of change, and how are the different NRMs connected with the patterns of change? Sociologists have been trying to answer these basic questions for some time, acquiring in the process a much better grasp of the forms, functioning, and possible futures of the new religions in our midst (e.g., Bellah 1976; Wilson 1976; Campbell 1978; Stone 1978; Westley 1978; Hunter 1981; Johnson 1981; Robertson, 1985; Robertson and Chirico 1985; Bromley and Busching 1988; Robbins and Bromley 1992; Dawson 1998a and 1998b). But the efforts made to date are still fragmentary and handicapped by an explicit or implicit reliance on the conceptual parameters set by the debate over secularization in Western societies.
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Comprehending Cults: The Sociology of New Religious Movements
1998Co-Authors: Lorne L DawsonAbstract:Comprehending Cults, Second Edition, provides a sociological interpretation of the phenomenon of new Religious Movements. While the author does not offer an apologia for cults--in either a Religious or a sociological sense--he does attempt to replace suspicion and misinformation with a greater knowledge of the facts (as best we know them) and a measure of sympathetic understanding. Completely revised and updated in this second edition, the book examines all aspects of cults, while striving to delineate the very real limits of our knowledge. In addition to dealing with the troublesome aspects of the subject, including issues of violence, sexuality, and brainwashing, the author also considers the possibility that new Religious Movements are a source of spiritual satisfaction to their members. Offering up-to-date social science research about contemporary Religious cults, Comprehending Cults, Second Edition, is ideal for undergraduate sociology of religion and new Religious Movements courses.
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The cultural significance of new Religious Movements and globalization : A theoretical prolegomenon
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1998Co-Authors: Lorne L DawsonAbstract:Sociologists of religion interested in the possible cultural significance of contemporary new Religious Movements have tended to focus their analyses on whether these new forms of Religious life are or are not agents of modernization and/or secularization. In recent years talk of globalization has been added to these complex concerns. This article outlines the existing debate over the cultural significance of new Religious Movements (NRMs), and summarizes and criticizes the contribution of globalization theory, as framed by Roland Robertson. Robertson's theory, it is argued, helps to undermine the questionable tendency to identify new religions as either modern or antimodern, secularizing or desecularizing. But it tends to erroneously limit the attribution of cultural significance to Movements of Religious fundamentalism or renewed orthodoxy. Logically, however, the theory also suggests new ways of attributing cultural significance to more privatized modes of new Religious life like Scientology or the New Age Movement.
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Cults in Context: Readings in the Study of New Religious Movements
1996Co-Authors: Lorne L DawsonAbstract:In the face of the increasingly variegated ideological landscape of contemporary America, cults have become the focus of public controversy. The growth of new religions has been matched by the development of an organized and vocal opposition, the anti-cult movement. This in turn has prompted an extensive investigation of new Religious Movements (NRMs) by sociologists and psychologists of religion, as well as historians and Religious studies scholars. The readings collected here contribute to the debate about cults by sampling some of the best and most accessible publications from the academic study of NRMs. The contributors address the questions most commonly asked about cults, such as: What brought about the emergence of new Religious Movements? What is a cult or new Religious movement? Who joins new Religious Movements and why? Are converts to new Religious Movements brainwashed? Why did the Jonestown and Waco tragedies happen? Are cults inclined to be violent? What does the emergence of so many new Religious Movements say about our society? What does it say about the future of religion? Cults in Context surveys the descriptive typologies, theories, and data accumulated by sociologists and psychologists studying new Religious Movements over the last twenty years. It serves to defuse many popular fears and misconceptions about cults, allowing the reader to develop a more reasonable and tolerant understanding of the people who join new Religious Movements and the functions of these Movements in contemporary society.
M. Afzal Upal - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Simulating the Emergence of New Religious Movements
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 2005Co-Authors: M. Afzal UpalAbstract:Not unlike other social sciences, study of religion in general and study of new Religious Movements (NRMs) in particular, has suffered from a problem of having too many inter-related free variables and a few data points available to constrain their values. This paper suggests cognitively inspired computer modeling as a technique for exploring, refining and testing theories of religion. Although computer simulation has become a relatively accepted technique for studying social theories, it has rarely been used to study religion. To illustrate this point I describe in detail the Agent-based Information Entrepreneur Model (AIM), a computer model of the recently proposed cognitive theory of new Religious Movements.
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Towards a Cognitive Science of New Religious Movements
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2005Co-Authors: M. Afzal UpalAbstract:AbstractTraditionally cognitive scientists have had little to say about religion (and even less to say about new Religious Movements (NRMs)) partly because religion is arguably a social phenomenon (Bainbridge et al. 1994) and partly because of the pervasive scientific bias of relegating religion to the heap of the irrational, the illogical, and 'a fading vestige of the prescientific times' (Lewis 2003). While sociologists of religion have been studying NRMs, their analysis has been limited to the macro-level. Recent trends in sociology and economics focused on the so called rational choice theories (Iannaccone 1998) and in cognitive sciences of religion (Barrett 2000; Boyer 2001) offer the hope of moving in the direction of a more complete explanation of emergence of new Religious Movements by providing both macro and micro level analyses. I believe that a closer interaction between these two developments is possible, indeed necessary, for the development of a scientific theory of NRMs that weds the macro and the micro levels. I illustrate the benefits of this approach by focusing on a hitherto ignored phenomenon, the emergence of charismatic leaders who inspire new Religious Movements. The primary aim of this paper is to identify the contextual factors (both social and cognitive) that cause self-interested utility maximizing agents to take actions that result in new Religious Movements (NRM). Our secondary aim is to identify factors that cause other self interested utility maximizing agents to align themselves with NRM founders and become the believers. I illustrate how various tools of cognitive science including computer modeling can help in this regard.
Benjamin E. Zeller - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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New Religious Movements: A Bibliographic Introduction
Theological Librarianship, 2020Co-Authors: Benjamin E. ZellerAbstract:This article provides a map to the bibliographic landscape for the academic study of new Religious Movements (NRMs). The article first considers the development of the scholarly subfield, including debates over the nature of the concept of ‘new Religious movement’ and recent scholarship on the nature of this key term, as well as the most salient research areas and concepts. Next, the article introduces the most important bibliographic materials in the subfield: journals focusing on the study of NRMs, textbooks and reference volumes, book series and monographic literature, online resources, and primary sources.
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New Religious Movements and Food
Nova Religio, 2019Co-Authors: Benjamin E. ZellerAbstract:This special issue of Nova Religio brings together four articles that examine particular intersections of new Religious Movements and food. Dan McKanan examines spiritual food practices within the loose network of spiritual Movements associated with Anthroposophy, the turn of the century “spiritual science” developed by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) that continues to have resonance today. Susannah Crockford contributes an article on fasting traditions in the contemporary New Age movement, based on her ethnographic fieldwork in Sedona, Arizona. Dusty Hoesly writes on the countercultural California group the Brotherhood of the Sun, which operated a series of highly successful food businesses in the 1970s and 1980s, and which he situates within a tradition of mindful food production and consumption. Constance Elsberg’s study of food practices and food entrepreneurship in Yogi Bhajan’s (1929–2004) Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization (3HO) movement uses the lens of food to examine the group’s growth, institutionalization, and subsequent struggles. This introduction contextualizes these four Movements, and other new Religious Movements, in terms of their engagement with food, using the lenses of social, cultural, economic, and structural factors.
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“But Aren't Cults Bad?”: Active Learning, Productive Chaos, and Teaching New Religious Movements
Teaching Theology & Religion, 2015Co-Authors: Benjamin E. ZellerAbstract:This article considers the challenges inherent when teaching about new Religious Movements (“cults”), how successful instructors have surmounted them, and how teacher-scholars in other fields of Religious studies can benefit from a discussion of the successful teaching of new religions. I note that student-centered pedagogies are crucial to teaching new religions, particularly if students disrupt and defamiliarize the assumed and reified categories of “cult” and “religion.” I argue that what works in a classroom focusing on new Religious Movements will work more broadly in Religious studies classrooms, since the challenges of the former are reproduced in the latter.
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New Religious Movements and Science
Nova Religio, 2011Co-Authors: Benjamin E. ZellerAbstract:The notion or idea of science, quite aside from actual scientific enterprises, has achieved tremendous cultural power and prestige in modern society. The four studies in this special issue of Nova Religio on science and new Religious Movements indicate not only this newfound power, but also the contentious nature of its definition as well as its limits. The four articles reveal how founders, leaders and practitioners of new Religious Movements seek the authoritative mantle of science, and with it a perceived legitimacy, as well as challenge normative (Western) approaches to science assumed in much of modern society. In fact, these new religions generally seek to supplant normative Western science with the alternative Religious-scientific systems they champion.
Vladimir A. Martinovich - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Terminology of materials about new Religious Movements in print media
Journal of the Belarusian State University. Sociology, 2020Co-Authors: Vladimir A. MartinovichAbstract:This article analyses the results of a study of the terminology of articles on new Religious Movements in the print media of the Republic of Belarus in 1988–2015. The sample included 631 press articles; 76 different special terms were used by the press to name organised forms of unconventional religiosity. It is shown that practically all, including initially neutral terms, acquire negative connotations rather quickly after getting into the press. Negatively loaded terms can be used even in neutral articles on new Religious Movements. At the same time, terminology as a whole turned out to be a secondary component in the process of covering the problems of unconventional religiosity. In a significant group of articles (48.5 %), there are no special terms at all. Print media criticise new Religious Movements and identify Religious communities, both with and without specific terms without any substantive difference. The discourse of the print media is distinguished by the least sensitivity to the simplest semantic shades and differences between special terms among all other institutions of society. The degree of prevalence and frequency of use in the press of all found special terms was revealed.
M. V. Shmihelskyy - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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New Religious Movements and youth
Ukrainian Religious Studies, 2001Co-Authors: M. V. ShmihelskyyAbstract:The number of young people who grew up in the new, democratic conditions of an independent Ukrainian state, where the democratic foundations of freedom of conscience and religion are laid down, is constantly increasing. Youth is the founders and foundation of many Religious Movements in Ukraine. Thus, the Christian charismatic movement in Ukraine does not go without youth. It arose on the basis of the autonomous Pentecostal and youth wing of the Baptist communities. And now this current of Protestantism fills its ranks at the expense of young adherents.
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Religious Movements on websites
Ukrainian Religious Studies, 2001Co-Authors: M. V. ShmihelskyyAbstract:The Internet is a worldwide network of interconnected computer networks. Access to it is primarily a matter of access to a large amount of information. Interesting is the database of the latest Religious Movements available on the Internet, as their own web pages of the latest Religious Movements, and information about them from web pages from other sources. Particularly interesting information is about the newest Religious Movements that operate in Ukraine.