New Religious Movements

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New Religious Movements
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Religion in the 21rst Century

• Religious pluralism
• Hardening of the boundaries
• Interfaith movements
• Responses to other faiths
• Social issues and the future

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Considerations
Our religious traditions are not boxes of goods
passed intact from generation to generation, but
rather rivers of faith that are alive, dynamic,
ever-changing, diverging, converging, drying up
here, and watering new lands there.
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Religious Pluralism

• Thousands of forms of Christianity
• Russian Orthodox in America
• Muslims in Indonesia
• Buddhists in Canada
• Christians in Pakistan

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Considerations
Some parts of Canada have been giving state
funding to the Roman Catholic schools for a
hundred years. Yet today such funds have been
denied to Jewish, Muslim and Protestant schools.
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Considerations
In 1997, the British government recognized
Islamic schools on a par with the
long-established Christian and Jewish academic
institutions.
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Fundamentalism
The goal of the fundamentalists is to fight back.
The rush for materialism and secular values has
created reactionaries who do not want their
values and life patterns to be despoiled by
contemporary secular culture.
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Extremists

• Hindus encouraged to destroy Muslim mosques
• Christians trying to control education and
  politics in America
• Catholic churches in Northern Ireland burned by
  Protestants
• Increase in hate crimes

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Considerations
Muslim scholar Frithjof Schuon says there is a
common mystical base underlying all religions.
All religions have the same divine source.
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Response to other faiths

• Exclusive My way is the only way
• Inclusive There are many ways to worship the
  Ground of Beingness
• Pluralistic I will hold my faith and learn
  about others too.

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Swami Kriyananda
dont worship the ladder.
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Swami Vivekananda
..if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of
his own religion and the destruction of others, I
pity him from the bottom of my heart.
Closing speaker at the 1893 Parliament of the
Worlds Religions
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Mikhail Gorbachev
The final speaker for the 1990 assembly of
spiritual leaders in Moscow was Mikhail
Gorbachev who called for the merging of
scientific and spiritual values in the effort to
save the planet.
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Harvard professor Gordon Kaufman wrote,
The problem with which modernity confronts
usdemand that we bring together all the wisdom,
devotion, and insight that humanity has
accumulated in its long history
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Social Issues

• Buddhists are trying to get a ban on landmines
• Hindus and Muslims are trying to stop the immoral
  mass media
• Poverty, racism, and injustice are challenging
  all religions of the world

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Considerations
At the beginning of the 21rst century, the world
faces corruption, power-mongering, greed and
corruption on vast scales. Altruism, service,
and justice for the public good are not the
primary motivating forces in most government
actions.
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Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves,
the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God
the energies of love. And then, for the second
time in the history of the world man will have
discovered fire.