Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements

839 Pages·2005·4.87 MB·english

by  Peter Clarke

Encyclopedia of New Religious
Movements
New Religious Movements (NRMs) can involve vast numbers of followers and in many
cases are radically changing the way people understand and practice religion and
spirituality. Moreover, they are having a profound impact on the form and content of
mainstream religion. The Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements provides uniquely
global coverage of the phenomenon, with entries on over three-hundred movements from
almost every country worldwide. Coverage includes movements that derive from the
major religions of the world as well as neo-traditional movements, which are often
overlooked in the study of NRMs.
In addition to the coverage of particular movements there are also entries on broad
classifications and themes, and key topics, thinkers and ideas—the New Age Movement,
Neo-Paganism, gender and NRMs, cyberspace religions, the Anti-Cult Movement,
Swedenborg, Jung, de Chardin, Lovelock, Gurdjieff, al-Banna, Qutb.
The marked global approach and comprehensiveness of the encyclopedia enable an
appreciation of the innovative energy of NRMs, of their extraordinary diversity, and the
often surprising ways in which they can propagate geographically. A most ambitious
publication of its sort, the Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements is a major addition
to the reference literature for students and researchers in the field of religious studies and
the social sciences.
Entries are cross-referenced, many with short bibliographies for further reading. There
is a full index.
Peter B.Clarke is Professor Emeritus of the History and Sociology of Religion at
King’s College, University of London, UK and Professorial Member, Faculty of
Theology, University of Oxford, UK. His latest book is New Religious Movements in
Global Perspective (Routledge, 2006).

Encyclopedia of New Religious
Movements

Edited by
Peter B.Clarke

LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
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Contents

Introduction vi
How to Use this Encyclopedia xvii
Consultant Editors xix
List of Contributors xx
List of Entries xxv

Entries A to Z 1

Index 719
Introduction
New Religions as a global phenomenon
The apparent ease with which New Religious Movements (henceforth: NRMs) are
‘invented’ can be attributed in part to the increasingly global character of the
contemporary world, which has witnessed the disembedding from their original cultural
context and the wider circulation of religious beliefs and practices of every kind. This
process of globalization has occasioned a shift in religions from geographically and
culturally specific ‘facts’, that is from their being associated with one particular
geographical and cultural zone such as the Middle East, Asia, the West, or Africa, to
being a reality everywhere. Increasingly since the 1960s, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism
have come to be seen less and less as exotic appendages to the religious culture of
Western society, while the beliefs and practices associated with these religions, including
the belief in reincarnation, the notion of God as impersonal, and the practices of yoga and
vipassana or insight meditation are shared by a sizeable minority of the population of
Western Europe, many of whom continue to identify themselves as Christians (Lambert
2004). Associated with this change, albeit less easily measured, are changes in
spirituality, which include in the West a greater interest in an inner-directed kind of
spirituality and in Asia in socially engaged spirituality.
Although the confluence, of historically unprecedented proportions, of religious
systems and spiritualities has contributed, along with other processes that include
modernization, urbanization, new developments in science and technology, economic
migration, and legal changes such as the repeal of the Asian Exclusion Act in the United
States in 1965, to make the phenomenon of NRMs a global one, there is, none the less,
much variation in the structure, content, size, and in the goals of these religions and in
their orientation towards the wider society.
Thus, while vast numbers of NRMs have either become or are in the process of
becoming global religions, they manifest different characteristics in different parts of the
world due to the process of domestication or to use Robertson’s (1994) term
‘glocalization’. This accounts for why Japanese NRMs develop a somewhat different
reality in Brazil compared to Japan. In Brazil they display many more Catholic features,
are more inclusive in terms of membership, and their ceremonies and rituals bear a close
resemblance to those of Catholicism.
It is not possible even in an Encyclopedia to convey all the variation and variety of the
NRMs that now exist. However, what can be done and has been attempted here, is to
provide examples of the various kinds of NRMs that have arisen in different parts of the
world in order to show how truly universal the phenomenon is, although the temptation to
postulate a single general causal explanation for this widespread phenomenon, such as
rapid social change is resisted. I will return briefly to this point later.
This Encyclopedia in addition to providing basic data on numerous NRMs from every
continent also intends to offer the reader an idea of the direction taken by NRMs, which
are often depicted as flowing directly from West to East, starting in the United States. In
reality the flow resembles more a global labyrinth than a straight highway. Elsewhere
(Clarke 2000) I wrote of reverse globalization in the case of Japanese NRMs to offset the
widespread impression given at the time that everything had been moving from West to
East. Even this was an oversimplification, movement is in all directions. For example,
several Japanese NRMs including Sekai Kyûsei Kyô (Church of World Messianity)
have arrived in parts of Africa including Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, and via the furthest point West of Japan, Brazil. By
way of contrast the Brazilian NRM the Santo Daime movement has travelled with
Brazilian-Japanese migrant workers to Japan.
The pathways taken by NRMs are endless, as are the interactions. These include the
interactions of Korean spiritual beings and African spirits in the notorious Lord’s
Resistance Army in northern Uganda, the dynamic interaction of Rastafarian (see
Rastafarian movement) and Maori religious worldviews, of African-Brazilian and
Amerindian spiritual concepts and practices, and of the New Age Movement (NAM) with
most forms of spirituality including various kinds of Islamic Sufism or mysticism and
Native American religion. Through the NAM spiritualities of all kinds have been carried
from one part of the world to many others.
A feature of the contemporary religious environment is the ground being gained
globally by what I have described above as inner-directed spirituality, much of which is
based on the premise that the Self is the source of the supernatural. This kind of
spirituality takes different forms and includes the use of various techniques such as the
physical exercises of t’ai chi and yoga, which are designed to enable the practitioner to
access and release the spiritual force that rests within the deepest layers of the self and
apply it to the existential and emotional, and even material, areas of life. With this kind of
spirituality comes a preference for a transpersonal understanding of transcendence over a
theistic one, for experience over reason in spiritual matters and for knowing over
believing, since logically experiencing the divine dispenses with the need for faith.
Although privatized and inner-directed, this form of spirituality, which is gaining
ground in the West and contrasts with the previously mentioned socially engaged
spirituality movements found in predominantly Buddhist countries, is not unconcerned
with the condition of the world. Rather it holds to the view that self-transformation is the
sine qua non of that social transformation which is anxiously awaited, an anxiety evident
in the fundamental importance that countless NRMs give to the millenarian idea. Even
those NRMs that derive from traditions where this belief is only adhered to in a weak
sense, such as Buddhism, are, at least at the outset, passionately millenarian (see
Millenarianism). While millenarianism is also a feature of almost all the NRMs that
have been involved in violence, it must be stressed that it cannot be assumed that this
belief predisposes a group to violent action. Many millenarian movements are pacific and
among these are the Rastafarian movement, the Mahdiyyat movement and Sekai
Kyûsei Kyô.
Being gripped by this belief in the imminent advent of the millennium as they are
suggests that NRMs might best be understood if interpreted as ideologies of social
transformation. This seems preferable to trying to understand them by classifying them
according to their response to the world as ‘world-denying’, ‘world-indifferent’, and
‘world-affirming’ movements (Wallis 1984).
The previously mentioned option chosen by growing numbers for spirituality over
religion and the stress on the need for a spirituality that is relevant and self-empowering
clearly poses a threat to those long established religions whose doctrinal systems are
tightly integrated and exclusive and whose identity depends not only on having a well
defined, unambiguous set of teachings but also on clearly demarcated ritual boundaries.
This is evident in the highly critical responses of some of the mainline Christian
Churches, including the Catholic Church, to the previously mentioned New Age
Movement (NAM). This notwithstanding, very few mainstream religions, and even the
so called Traditional Religions, have remained uninfluenced by the NAM. Not only has
the latter acted as a vehicle for the globalization of various forms of spirituality and
religions, including Traditional Religions once closely associated with a specific ethnic
group and territory such as Native American religion, but, at the same time, by a process
of osmosis, it is fast becoming part of mainstream religion and culture.
Different interpretations of religious innovation and change
It is important to keep in mind when discussing what is meant by New Religion that
religious innovation continues to be understood differently in different cultural and
religious contexts and this despite the rapid pace of globalization. Newness or innovation
in Oriental societies, and even to an extent in Islamic societies, often has more to do with
orthopraxy than orthodoxy. Engaged Buddhism, for example, is not doctrinally speaking
unorthodox but was perceived initially as a major religious innovation in Vietnam and
Thailand, among other places, as was Protestant Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Raja Yoga
in India.
Of course, a change in practice can also mean a change in understanding or belief.
Theorists of ‘Engaged Buddhism’ insist, for example, that nirvana rather than
constituting its goal should be seen as the means to the end of Buddhism which is social
transformation.
There is much discussion concerning how the NRMs of today differ from those of the
past. Wilson (1995) identified a number of characteristics that set contemporary NRMs in
the West apart from past NRMs and existing mainstream religions. Often the differences
are differences of emphasis, some of which characterize NRMs not only in the West but
also across the world. One such difference is the stress placed by modern NRMs on the
central role of lay people in their own spiritual advancement, accompanied by a de-
emphasis on the significance of the role of the cleric. This is in line with the growing
appeal of the previously mentioned inner-directed religion or religions of the True-Self.
Although some NRMs may claim a unique legitimacy for their charismatic leader, who
often seeks to strengthen their authority by asserting that access to secret but vital
revelations or sources of wisdom that can only be had through the leader, most NRMs in
theory stress that every individual is their own spiritual master.
Another general feature of contemporary NRMs that sets them apart from new
movements of the past is their tendency to be more eclectic and more open to secular
therapies, such as psychology, which they frequently fuse with their own spirituality.
They often go beyond the purposes of psychology in making psychological techniques
serve to uncover the ‘god’ within (Heelas 1997).
Different understandings of the principle of membership also distinguish most modern
NRMs from traditional sects and cults in the Christian and other religious contexts. It is
perfectly possible to be a member of several NRMs simultaneously, or even remain a
member of the religion ascribed to one at birth and at the same time be a member of an
NRM. This gives rise to a whole new understanding of the meaning of conversion and is
of direct relevance to the brainwashing debate (Barker 1984). Modern NRMs are also
organizationally different from those of the past, making greater use of more secular
forms of management, administration, and assembly. Networking, rather than a focus on
religion as community, also characterizes much modern religion. Indeed many NRMs,
including Scientology, mirror in so much of their style, ethos, organization, orientation,
and goals the wider society that Wilson (1990) describes them as modern ‘secularized
religions’.
Historically, moreover, NRMs, or as they were once called sects, strongly opposed
either the Church or the society at large, or both, while contemporary ones are often more
inclusive in every domain. Moreover although they profess to seek to transform the world
many endorse the values of the existing order, catering to individualism and
consumerism, the two dominant characteristics of contemporary society. Japan’s NRMs,
and they are not alone in this regard, are frequently presented as offering benefits in
keeping with the consumerist ethic of modern society and as providing religious
legitimization for such benefits, and in this they bear a striking resemblance to the
American Theology of Success or Glory movement, and according to Ezzy (2001) to
several Wiccan groups in Australia.
Newness or innovation does not necessarily mean the introduction of new doctrines or
ritual practices. As the entry on New Religion attempts to make clear, it can consist of
innovative well established, time honoured beliefs and rituals, as in the case of the
changes made to the traditional rite of possession (kamigakari) by Omoto’s (Great
Origin) founder Deguchi Nao (1837–1918) (Ooms 1993). While drawing on traditional
Shinto beliefs of world transformation Deguchi Nao made a radical break with the
traditional understanding of these beliefs and made the rituals associated with them serve
different ends (Ooms 1993:14–17).
This ‘newness’ in the Japanese context, as in others, cannot be understood without
reference to past practice and belief. This notwithstanding, followers of Japanese NRMs
are persuaded that the teachings to which they adhere are original in that they either
contain newly discovered ancient and sacred foundational texts and/or provide for the
first time the only complete and authentic interpretation of a particular ancient sacred text
or tradition.
An example is Kofuku no Kogaku’s (The Institute for Research in Human Happiness)
claim to be presenting for the first time the true teachings of Buddha. Since they were not
written down until one hundred years after his death, this movement believes these
teachings were wrongly interpreted and a core element omitted—the teaching on love.
The movement has now added this fundamentally important element for the first time to