NRMs in Western societies II: Movements of nonChristian origin

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NRMs in Western societies II Movements of
non-Christian origin

• 25.3.2004

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Readings

• Bednarowski The Church of Scientology Lightning
  Rod for Cultural Boundary Conflicts (in Miller
  1995)
• Puttick, E. New religions and counter-culture (in
  Lehmann Myers 2001)

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Discussion topics

• New religions and counter-culture
• Typology
• Personal Development movements
• Eastern movements
• Esoteric and Neo-Pagan movements
• Other "Book" religions
• New Age
• Examples
• Wicca
• Raelian movement
• Nation of Islam
• Soka Gakkai

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New religions and counter-culture

• 1950s
• a period of post WWII conservatism
• 1960s
• period of rapid social change
• explosion of rebellious creativity
• rebellion against materialism and 'technocracy'
• active escapism
• flight into sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll
• search for meaning and fulfillment
• alternative society / counter-culture
• impact on all aspects of society
• a reaction against the disenchantment of the
  world"
• spiritual revival NRMs
• Attempts to cope
• HPMs

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Human Potential Movements I

• Human Potential Movements
• 'The Realization System Private Lessons in
  Practical Psychology'
• will start to build the structure of a new and
  dominant YOU, a serene and successful YOU, a more
  courageous and capable YOU, a happier, healthier,
  more wonderful YOU ... A triumphant YOU born of
  Greater Self-Knowledge which THE REALIZATION
  SYSTEM will bring you, just as it has done for
  countless others in all walks of life.

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Human Potential Movements II

• psycho-spiritual wing of the counter-culture
• outgrowth of humanistic psychology
• Abraham Maslow
• 'self-actualized' human being
• exploration of human potential, counselling
• British MP Nicholas Soames
• This terrible counselling thing has grown up in
  Britain. Whatever you do wrong it's somebody
  else's fault, or your mother hit you. I think
  that's all balls. It's ghastly political
  correctness. People need to pull themselves
  together. I'm not a great believer in blubbing in
  your tent. I do get melancholy now and again, but
  you go to bed, sleep well and wake up pawing the
  ground like a horse in the morning.
• 1970s
• Eastern Spirituality Western Psychotherapy
• spiritualization of psychotherapy

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Human Potential Movements III

• Personal development
• not a new phenomenon
• Samuel Smiles
• Self-Help (1859)
• he who never made a mistake, never made a
  discovery"
• the shortest way to do many things is to do one
  thing at once."
• Dale Carnegie
• How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)
• courses taught to business and professional
  people
• 5 million copies by his death in 1955
• Ron Hubbard
• Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health
  (1950)
• "a condition of ability and rationality for Man
  well in advance of the current norm"
• "complete insight into the full potentialities of
  the mind."

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Human Potential Movements IV

• Norman Vincent Peale
• The Power of Positive Thinking (1952)
• "Expect the best and get it"
• "I don't believe in defeat"
• Bernard Haldane
• How to Make a Habit of Success (1960),
• "Open your life to success"
• "Building success into your thinking"
• Robert Lumsden
• Twenty-three steps to success and achievement
  (1972)
• "Make maturity your goal"
• "Increased happiness for you"
• "Wider mental horizons"

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Human Potential Movements V

• last couple of decades
• combination of HP with spirituality
• Will Schutz
• "Profound Simplicity" (1979)
• explosion in the number of
• techniques
• courses
• seminars to improve oneself
• A man can make millions by telling other people
  how they might make millions

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Human Potential Movements VI

• HPMs most common in success-orientated US
• the opportunities are there
• If you don't succeed, you are a failure
• more people undergoing therapy than anywhere
  else
• Eastern Europe
• HPMs as NRMs?
• dont necessarily involve God
• similar goals with many religions
• Self-improvement
• person's awareness of and confidence in himself
  or herself
• awakening and experiencing energy
• Self-identification
• Scientology vs other
• Criticism
• pseudo-science
• reluctance to let people go

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Human Potential Movements VII

• Examples
• Landmark Education / Landmark Forum
• Neuro-Linguistic Programming
• Insight
• The Emin
• Life Spring
• Rebirthing
• Scientology

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Eastern movements I

• Indian influence in particular
• 19th c.
• discovery and translation of ancient Buddhist
  scriptures by European scholars
• Until the 1960s
• interest in Eastern religions - largely
  intellectual
• confined to an elite group of scholars and
  psychologists
• experiential, mystical approach limited
• Transcendentalists
• Theosophical Society
• teachings of Krishnamurti
• visits by Vivekananda and Yogananda
• 1960s
• influx of Chinese and Japanese immigration
• 'hippie trail'
• Allen Ginsberg, other Beat poets, the Beatles in
  the 1960s

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Eastern movements II

• Common characteristics
• strict discipline
• obedience to a teacher and a tradition
• rejection of scientific materialism
• meditation
• appeal to Westerners
• discipline and guru-disciple relationship
• normative limbo of modernity
• Parallel from the mundane world
• leaving army or prison
• Parallel from Christianity
• Pope John XXIII's Vatican 2
• adaptation difficulties of many monks and nuns
• antiquity of the Eastern message
• Old original truth
• Hinduism 5000-year history.

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Eastern movements III

• Examples
• Maharashi Mahesh Yogi
• Transcendental Meditation to the West in 1958
• ashram in Rishikesh in 1960s
• Beatles, Mia Farrow and other celebrities
• "Easy is right
• Swami Prabhupada
• International Society of Krishna Consciousness
  (ISKCON)
• George Harrison
• Maharaji Guru Ji
• Divine Light Mission Elan Vital
• Other
• Soka Gakkai
• Movement of Inner Spiritual Awareness
• School of Economic Science

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Esoteric and Neo-Pagan Movements I

• Heterogeneous group
• Esoteric movements
• usually either Eastern-based or Judaeo-Christian
  in origin
• Neo-Pagan movements
• based on Celtic, Norse or Native American
  traditions
• Goddess worship
• Shared characteristics
• New Age
• 'Mind-Body-Spirit'
• Magic
• Eclectic

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Esoteric and Neo-Pagan Movements II

• Anthropological interest in magic
• Frazer
• Malinowski
• Evans-Pritchard
• Magic in esoteric NP movements
• Generally for positive purposes
• healing
• Positive encouragement (eg. plants to grow)
• blessing

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Esoteric Movements I

• Two main sources
• Western origins (Judaeo-Christian)
• Eastern origins (Hindu, Buddhist or Sufi thought)
• Terminology
• esoteric (within, i.e. only for the initiated)
• hermetic
• Hermes Trismegistus
• "sealed (hermetic seal)
• occult
• hidden' or 'secret'
• not anymore (www)

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Esoteric Movements II

• beliefs and practices
• emphasis on secret knowledge
• restricted to a select few
• unorthodox ideas
• magic and mysticism
• highly complex, and progressive teachings
• build up on each in steps
• eclectic
• borrow from several traditions
• Schisms and offshoots frequent
• unorthodox nature of beliefs believers
• Examples
• Theosophy, Rosicrucians, Chaos magic, Raelian
  Movement, UFO cults

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Neo-Pagan Movements I

• original usage
• "pagan" "country-dweller"
• Also heathen
• "people who live on the heath
• Romans the uneducated barbarians
• anthropological usage
• follower the old native religion of their land
• rather than an imported religion
• Neo-paganism
• coined by Oberon Zell, founder of Church of All
  Worlds
• "a revival and reconstruction of ancient Nature
  religions adapted for the modern world."

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Neo-Pagan Movements II

• Characteristics
• usually includes worship either of the Earth
  Mother Goddess
• pantheon of gods
• Hinduism paganism?
• polytheism ? Paganism
• eclectic
• borrowing from several sources
• diversity
• ask two Pagans a question and you get three
  different answers.
• Examples in England
• Wicca, Druidry, Neo-shamanism and Norse religion
• Examples in the US
• Native Americans religions

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Reactions to NP and esoteric movements

• Society
• 1980s satanic panic
• moral panic of Satanic Ritual Abuse
• Fundamentalist Christians
• witch hunts
• NPs / esoteric religion Satanism
• witchcraft ? Satanism
• original Paganism - pre-Christian
• Neo-paganism - use of pre-Christian mythologies
• Satanism perversion / inversion of Christianity

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Other "Book" religions

• Generally
• Judaism and Islam
• spiritual racial and political foundations
• Eg. Various Black Muslim movements
• Examples
• Bahai Faith
• Nation of Islam
• Holy Tabernacle Ministries

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New Age I

• counter-culture movement of the 1960s
• dissatisfaction with
• the norms and beliefs of western society
• Judaeo-Christian establishment
• The term
• late 1960s
• Alice Bailey's neo-theosophy
• contemporary usage
• broad and vague
• Astronomical and astrological bases
• Solar Age 2,100 years
• current solar age (Pisces) started around 0 AD
• "New Age" (Aquarius)
• Age of Pisces yang
• emphasis on rationality and materialism
• Age of Aquarius yin
• emphasis on spirituality and intuition

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New Age II

• a broad movement
• aggregate of beliefs and practices
• alternative approaches to traditional Western
  culture
• philosophy, religion, medicine, music, science
  and lifestyle
• New Age spirituality
• Judaeo-Christian apocalypticism
• esotericism
• Buddhism, Sufism and Taoism
• schools of Yoga, Qigong, Chinese Medicine and
  martial arts
• criticism
• not fully understanding, trivializing their
  practices

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New Age III

• New Age worldview
• relativist approach to truth
• Vedic statement of "one truth, but many paths"
• Zen Buddhist spiritual dictum of "many paths, one
  mountain"
• "do-it-yourself" approach
• assertion of personal choice in spiritual matters
• experiential, rather than empirical, definition
  of reality
• Rejection of scientific physics
• Yet use of terms from physics and quantum physics
• Forces, power, energy, energy fields
• Other
• Spirit
• Holism - a coherent, interconnected cosmos
• Cosmic goal
• all entities are (willingly or unwillingly)
  cooperating

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New Age IV

• New Age medicine
• alternative methods of medicine
• herbal medicine, acupuncture, use of crystals in
  healing
• "holistic medicine
• attention on entire patient's needs
• rather than just her or his specific disease
• medical anthropology
• New Age music
• Hair (1967)
• opening song "Aquarius"
• line "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius"
• instrumental and electronic
• Enya

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Examples

• Personal development movements
• Scientology
• Esoteric and Neo-Pagan movements
• Wicca
• Raelian movement
• Other "Book" religions
• Nation of Islam
• Eastern movements
• Soka Gakkai

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Wicca I

• "Craft of the wise"
• founded by the British civil servant Gerald
  Gardner in the 1930s
• wicca
• "to bend or shape" (from Indo-European root
  word)
• wise (Old English)
• various related Wiccan traditions
• the original - Gardnerian Wicca

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Wicca II

• Beliefs
• worship of two deities
• Goddess (Mother Goddess) and God (Horned God)
• New Age discourse
• Law of Threefold Return
• anything that one does may be returned to them
  threefold
• Practices
• ancient Germanic or Celtic holidays
• groups (covens)
• weddings
• "bondings," "joinings," "eclipses,"
  "handfastings"
• trial marriage for a year and a day
• nudity rituals
• practitioners of Wicca witches
• "Wicca" ? "Witchcraft"

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Raelian movement I

• Raelism (belief)
• Elohim
• scientifically advanced extraterrestrials
• derived from a Hebrew word appearing in the Torah
  
• created life on Earth through genetic engineering
• immortality
• through human cloning and "mind transfer"
• Founded by Claude Vorilhon ( Raël)
• personal meetings with a 25,000 year old
  extraterrestrial
• came in a UFO in 1973
• 55,000 members in 84 different countries
• France, Japan, Canada, and the United States

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Raelian movement II

• Clonaid
• claims to have cloned at least one human being
  (Dec 2002)
• Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, a Raelian bishop
• reincarnation
• Jesus or Hitler
• for inspiration or to allow for retroactive
  punishment
• Geniocracy
• rule by geniuses
• a new form of government
• requirements
• to run for office
• at least 50 more above the average intelligence
  potential
• to vote
• at least 10 above average

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Nation of Islam I

• also known as
• the World Community of Al-Islam in the West
• American Muslim Mission
• The Nation of Peace
• the Black Muslim Movement
• NOI
• Three main aims
• The United Front of Black Men
• Racial Separation
• Economic Separation
• vs Orthodox Islam
• Different interpretations of
• Quran, Allah, Prophet Muhammad, religious
  practices

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Nation of Islam II

• Founded
• by Wallace Dodd Fard (Wali Farad Muhammad) in
  1930 in Detroit
• Great Depression
• discontent among blacks
• Fard (salesman)
• Christianity white man's religion
• used to enslave and subjugate the black man's
  mind
• would not solve the problems of the black
  community
• disappeared in 1934
• NOI after Fard
• internal conflicts and scandals
• controversial figures
• Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan
• shift away from black superiority and desire for
  separate state

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Soka Gakkai

• Soka Gakkai International
• umbrella organization
• Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin
• Founded as the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (1930)
• by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda
• rapid growth after World War II
• United States -1960
• main mantra
• "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo"
• "Adoration to the Scripture of the Lotus of the
  Perfect Truth"