The Genuine Character of New Religious Movements - Essay Example

The Genuine Character of New Religious Movements As argued by Max Weber, ‘the disenchantment of the world’ (Lewis 2004: 39) is the outcome of a network of intellectual and social forces. It is debatable, more particularly, that the appearance of certain individualism and rationality has resulted, on the one hand, to the weakening of religion as a public institution and, on the other hand, to the improbability of numerous of its convictions (Chryssides 1999: 79). While this process of secularisation is misleadingly intricate, the basic thought is simple: “Modernisation necessarily leads to a decline of religion, both in society and in the minds of individuals” (Lewis 2004: 39). The disenchantment of the world, according to Weber, is the process by which nature is dealt with rather than enthralled, spiritual mystery and the supernatural is driven from the world, social significance of the spiritual weakens, and the legitimacy of laws and institutions do not rely on religion (Wilson 1992: 49). While not contradicting the secularisation of the Western world, this paper questions its breadth. While the present status of religion in the West is complex and difficult to perfectly describe, and while basic interpretations should be avoided, generally I am convinced that while disillusionment is universally obvious in the West, the secularising forces have never quite been successful in suppressing the influences of religion. Even though institutional religion’s traditional forms have been severely weakened and do not appear to be successful in preventing the course of erosion, fractures are showing in the disillusioned setting and new forms of meaningful spiritual life are coming forward. New circumstances, as with all life, call for evolution. Religion in the dynamic environment of the modern West will unavoidably advance away from what people have become accustomed to referring as ‘religion’ (Saliba 1995: 15). Furthermore, as future creations of alternative faiths become institutionalised, entrenched, and more and more conventional, they may prove more resilient and invulnerable to the disenchanting attempts that their forerunners were unprepared to contend with (Whaling 1999: 235). Certainly, as Cheris Shun-Ching Chan credibly asserts in her investigation of the Hong Kong faction Lingsu Exo-Esoterics, the re-enchantment of the West maybe embodied by new types of religion which are the outcome of a dialectical progression of the ‘sacralisation of the secular and the secularisation of sacred’ (Lewis 2004: 40). New Religious Movements Reflecting on the above argument, how can we interpret the appearance of alternative faiths or new religions? Do they not manifest a fairly grand drawback, in that their rise is barely a buzzing support of the downfall of religion in the West? Several thinkers have claimed that this is precisely what they are. At most they are expressions of ‘pseudoenchantment’ (Wilson 1992: 51). Bryan Wilson (1992), for instance, has claimed that rather than being sign of the revival of religion, they are in fact sign of secularisation. New religious movements should not be viewed as restorations of a customs, but instead they are more precisely viewed as adjustments of religion to emerging social conditions (Lewis 2004: 40). Given the deep-seated features of social change, none of them is able to rebuild the weakening religions of the bygone age (Wilson 1992: 51). In their approach and in their particular appeal they symbolise an adjustment to new situations, and they integrate numerous of the capabilities and assumptions promoted in the more and more simplified secular domain (Chryssides 1999: 127). Hence this countless new movements are evidence of secularisation: they usually make use of extremely secular means in evangelism, publicity, financing, and mobilisation of followers (Chryssides 1999: 127). Quite frequently, the customary imagery, aesthetic and liturgy interest of long-established religion are deserted for much more realistic outlooks and for mechanisms of control, publicity and even dogmatic sanction which more resembles methods of secular endeavour than to conventional religious interests (Whaling 1999: 237). Likewise, Bruce has maintained that new religious movements are little more than the declining religion in the final phases of the history of Western secularisation. Basically, new religious and pagan movements offer specialised religion for disillusioned Westerners who would like to continuously embrace the vestiges of religious principle without putting themselves in a very inconvenient position (Lewis 2004: 41). In general, new religious movements lack religious relevance and serve as poor alternatives for their vanishing antecedents (Saliba 1995: 59). Western culture is, to a greater extent, embodied by religious forms that do not declare absolute truth, do not oblige loyalty to one religious head, and do not claim the power and legitimacy of a single body of holy writings, but instead supports exploration, a perception of the self as holy, and, as a result, usually a faith in the ultimate power of the self (Lewis 1992: 31). To put it briefly, Bruce is positive that the population of those concerned with alternative faiths and new religious movements is rather small, membership is superficial, and their beliefs do not have ideological value. His premise is that “because they are not embedded in large organisations or sustained by a long history... many elements of the New Age are vulnerable to being co-opted by the cultural mainstream and trivialised by the mass media” (Lewis 2004: 41). Definitely, based on the argument of Bruce, as consumerism and individualism grow in the worldly West, all religious forms will become more and more underestimated and exposed to individual desire and preference. There is much to praise in this interpretation of the feature of the current religious environment. As Olav Hammer has currently emphasised, the disenchanted West has “few generally accepted or imposed beliefs. Thus, those seeking religious answers will in a far greater measure be compelled to seek these out for themselves. The decline of religious monopoly in a secularised society may paradoxically lead to a proliferation of competing religious alternatives in a privatised spiritual market place” (Lewis 2004: 42). Therefore, there are issues with this interpretation of the condition. Certainly, several scholars are now claiming that this universal form of secularisation and, particularly, its analysis of new religions are basically misguided (Whaling 1999: 238). More relevance should be accorded to the reality that, along the lines of the global development of an ongoing expansion of religion, and together with a number of ‘fundamentalist’ religions, there appears to be an understated yet ever-present rise of alternative spiritualities and new religions in the West (Whaling 1999: 238). Regardless of the acceptance of their interpretations, it is tricky to avoid the judgment that the value of facts appears to support the general premise conceived by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge (Lewis 2004: 41). Basically, their argument as such is very socially and psychologically tied to the human situation that it is not likely to vanish (Lewis 2004: 42). Likewise, in a latest correction of his theory of secularisation, Berger, after foretelling that the twenty-first century will be ‘no less religious than it is today (p. 42)’, claims that “the religious impulse, the quest for meaning that transcends the restricted space of empirical existence in this world, has been perennial feature of humanity... It would require something close to a mutation of the species to extinguish this impulse for good” (Lewis 2004: 42). Thus, it is sensible to assume that if traditional religion loses legitimacy, new religious forms will develop to compensate. Therefore, any evident downfall of religion is misleading. Therefore, it implies that the secularisation theory as created by Bruce is erroneous. Nevertheless, to recognise this common position does not necessitate the indiscriminate dismissal of secularisation. For instance, Stark and Bainbridge do not reject the presence of secularisation, but instead interpret as component of persistent progression. The following argument is significant (Lewis 2004: 43) : Secularisation is nothing new... it is occurring constantly in all religious economies. Through secularisation, sects are tamed and transformed into churches. Their initial otherworldliness is reduced and worldliness is accommodated. Secularisation also eventually leads to the collapse of religious organisations as their extreme worldliness—their weak and vague conceptions of the supernatural—leaves them without the means to satisfy even the universal dimension of religious commitment. Thus, we regard secularisation as the primary dynamic of religious economies, a self limiting process that engenders revival (sect formation) and innovation (cult formation). The argument is that those secularisation thinkers who view alternative faiths and new religious movements as sign of the final downfall of religion in the contemporary world fall short in identifying secularisation as merely a phase in a larger mechanism, a phase which will be pursued by the growing value of new religious movements. Very concisely, the process is as follows: large institutions of religion/ churches turn out to be ever more liberal, fragmented, secular, and indistinguishable from their ‘material’ perspectives (Barker 1992: 81); as a result, they fail to satisfy the spiritual and moral needs of their adherents; restored breakaway factions/sects or innovative religious forms/cults develop (Barker 1992: 81); these become larger and more recognised, such as sects becoming denominations; similarly, they become increasingly more secularised, and the extensive process carries on (Saliba 1995: 41). Conclusions In response to the premise that, insistently motivated by modernisation, the process of secularisation is irreversible, sped up and made all the more powerful and threatening by the current scientific perspective, religion will surface as a prevailing cultural and social force basically due to the fact that science and secular perspectives on the whole are not capable of gratifying human desires. My argument is that, more specifically, naturalistic perspectives cannot provide the important, much-desired rewards that religions provide, such as eternal life. My emphasis is that, while religion cannot provide such compensations openly, it does not present appealing rewards which, while inferior to open rewards, are nonetheless quite attractive. References Barker, E. (1992) New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction, London: HMSO. Chryssides, G. (1999) Exploring New Religions, London: Cassell. Lewis, J. (1992) Approaches to the Study of the New Age Movement, In J. Lewis & Melton, J.G., Perspectives on the New Age, Albany: State University of New York Press. Lewis, J. R. (Ed.) (2004) The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, New York: Oxford University Press. Saliba, J. (1995) Perspective on New Religious Movements, London: Geoffrey Chapman. Whaling, F. (1999) Theological Approaches, In P. Connolly (Ed.), Approaches to the Study of Religion, London: Cassell. Wilson, B. (1992) The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism: Sects and New Religious Movements in Contemporary Society, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Read More