Global InformationNew religious movement information
A new religious movement (NRM), also known as alternative spirituality or a new religion, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin or they can be part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges that the modernizing world poses to them by embracing individualism, while other NRMs deal with them by embracing tightly knit collective means.[1] Scholars have estimated that NRMs number in the tens of thousands worldwide. Most NRMs only have a few members, some of them have thousands of members, and a few of them have more than a million members.[2]
There is no single, agreed-upon criterion for defining a "new religious movement".[3] There is debate as to how the term "new" should be interpreted in this context.[4] One perspective is that it should designate a religion that is more recent in its origins than large, well-established religions like Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.[4] Some scholars view the 1950s or the end of the Second World War in 1945 as the defining time,[5] while others look as far back as the founding of the Latter Day Saint movement in 1830[4][6] and of Tenrikyo in 1838.[7][8]
New religions have sometimes faced opposition from established religious organisations and secular institutions. In Western nations, a secular anti-cult movement and a Christian countercult movement emerged during the 1970s and 1980s to oppose emergent groups.
In the 1970s, a distinct field of new religion studies developed within the academic study of religion. There are several scholarly organisations and peer-reviewed journals devoted to the subject. Religious studies scholars contextualize the rise of NRMs in modernity as a product of, and answer to modern processes of secularization, globalization, detraditionalization, fragmentation, reflexivity, and individualization.[1]
- ^ a b Clarke 2006a.
- ^ Eileen Barker, 1999, "New Religious Movements: their incidence and significance", New Religious Movements: challenge and response, Bryan Wilson and Jamie Cresswell editors, Routledge ISBN 0-415-20050-4
- ^ Oliver 2012, pp. 5–6.
- ^ a b c Oliver 2012, p. 14.
- ^ Barker 1989, pp. 6, 143.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
siegler2007was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Clarke 2006b, pp. 621–623, Tenrikyo.
- ^ A notable proponent of the earlier dating is George Chryssides (Driedger & Wolfart 2018, pp. 5–12).