Growth of Religious Movements

WEBER:

• Sects tend to arise in marginalised groups.
• Result of feelings of dispriviledge.
• Sects offer members a theodicy of disprivilege.
  • a religious explanation for their disprivilege.
  • may explain misfortune as a test of faith.
  • promises future rewards for keeping faith.

Nation of Islam

• Recruited from disadvantaged black Americans.

Moonies

• Drew membership mainly from middle-class whites.
• However many members still became marginal to society.
  • e.g. most were hippies, dropouts and drug users.

• Refers to the subjective sense of being deprived.
• Materially privileged people may feel spiritually deprived.
  • i.e. middle-class people.
• Society is now materialistic and consumerist.
• Sects provide a sense of community to counteract impersonality and lack of moral value.

STARK AND BAINBRIDGE:

• Relatively deprived break away from churches to form sects.
• Deprived members then break away to form sects that safeguard the original message.
  • harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through eye of needle.
  • the meek shall inherit the earth.
• World-rejecting sects offer compensators to deprived for rewards denied in this world.
• Privileged are attracted to world-accepting organisations that increase worldly rewards.

WILSON:

• Periods of rapid change undermine established norms and values.
• Disruptions produces anomie.
• In response to the uncertainty people turn to sects for structure.
  • e.g. Industrial revolution in Britain led to birth of Methodism.
    • provided sense of community for new working class.

BRUCE:

• Society is now secularised and people are less attracted to traditional churches.
• Strict sects demand too much commitment.
• People now prefer cults.
  • less demanding.
  • require fewer sacrifces.

WALLIS:

World-rejecting NRMs

• Social changes from 60s effect young people .
• Increased time in education gave freedom from adult responsibilities for longer.
• Enabled counter-culture to develop.
• Growth of radical political movements offered alternative ideas about future.
• WRNRMs offered young people more idealistic way of life.

BRUCE:

World-affirming NRMs

• Growth is a response to modernity.
• Work no longer provides meaning unlike past (i.e. Protestant ethic)
• WANRMs provide sense of identity and techniques that promise success.

NIEBUHR:

Denomination or Death

• Sects short lived - either die out or compromise extreme ideas to become denominations.
• 2nd generation members lack committment.
• Asceticism leads to this worldly rewards so world-rejecting beliefs are compromised.
• After charismatic leaders death sects collapse or are taken over by bureacratic leadership.

STARK AND BAINBRIDGE:

Sectarian Cycle

• Stage 1: Schism.
• Stage 2: Initial intense and passionate feeling driven by charismatic leader.
• Stage 3: Denominalisationism - fervour dwindles in second generation.
• Stage 4: Establishment - sect becomes more world-accepting and tensions decrease.
• Stage 5: Further schism - less privileged members break away to form new sects.

WILSON:

• Conversionist sects seek to convert large numbers of people.
• More likely to grow rapidly into formal denominations.
  • e.g. Evangelicals.
    
    
• Adventist sects await the second coming of christ to be saved.
  • e.g. Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses.
• Believe they must hold themselves separate from the corupt world.
• Separatism prevents them from becoming a denomination.
• Established sects are those which have survived over many generations.
  • e.g.Pentecostalists, Amish, Mormons, Quakers.
• Children are socialised into high levels of committment.
• Globalisation makes it harder for future sects to keep themselves separate.
• However, makes it easier to recruit from the deprived Third World.

HEELAS:

• 'New Age' covers beliefs and activities widespread since the 80s.
• 2,000 such activities and 146,000 practitioners in UK.
• Two common themes that characterise the New Age:
  • Self-spirituality
    • turned away from traditional external religions to look within themselves to find spirituality.
  • Detraditionalisation
    • new age rejects spiritual authority of sources such as priests and sacred texts.
    • values personal experience and believes we can discover truth ourselves.
• Include world-affirming and world-rejecting elements.

DRANE:

• Appeal of New Age is part of a shift towards postmodern society.
• Loss of faith in meta-narratives.
  • Science promised to bring progress but has brought war, genocide and global warming.
• People have lost faith in experts/professionals.
• As a result turn to New Age idea that we can find truth for ourselves.

BRUCE:

• New Age is a feature of late modernity rather than postmodernity.
• Modern society values individualism whch is a key principle of the New Age.
• Also important value for those in expressive professions focused on human potential.
  • e.g. social workers, artists.
• Beliefs often watered-down versions of Eastern religions adapted for self-centred Westerners.
  • e.g. Buddhism
• Audience and client cults popular as they make few demands.
• Spiritual shopping appeals to consumerist ethos of capitalist society.

HEELAS:

• Source of identity - little overlap in roles leading to fragmented identity.
• Consumer culture - dissatisfaction bc perfection promised never delivered.
• Rapid social change - disrupts social norms resulting in anomie.
• Decline of organised religion- secularisation removes traditional alternatives to New Age.