15
Modern Alternative Religions in the west
During the twentieth century, the West has experienced a phenomenon it has not encountered since the reign of Constantine: the growth of and significant visible presence of a variety of non-Christian and non-orthodox Christian bodies competing for the religious allegiance of the public. This growth of so many religious alternatives is forcing a new situation on the West in which the still dominant Christian religion must operate in a new pluralistic religious environment.
Recognition of what was happening was slow in coming. Early in the twentieth century, conservative religious leaders, primarily fundamentalist Christians, felt the presence of some alternative religions such as Spiritualism and Christian Science and new religious perspectives such as humanism and modernism. Seeing a threat to orthodoxy, they attacked the alternatives as heresies, apostasy and the influence of Satan, and developed the ‘cult’ model for understanding these groups. Each author assailed those groups that offered the greatest threat to his or her particular orthodox perspective. Social scientists also lumped these different religions together as ‘the cults’, rather than calling them churches or sects, but did little research on them. During the last generation, in response to the rapid growth of the alternative religions since the Second World War, a new group of scholars has arisen who see these alternative and non-conventional religions as ‘new’ religions or new religious movements (NRMs) and who have devoted several decades to extensive research on them and the people who have joined them. The area has proved so fruitful in extending our knowledge of the dynamics of religious life that what amounts to a subdiscipline in the sociology of religion has emerged among scholars who have specialized in studying them.
The designation ‘new religions’ properly conveys the recognition of the manner in which fresh religious expressions are competing with secularizing forces in directing the future of Western society. The emergence of new spiritualities is not unique to this generation, however, and some historical perspective is needed to grasp the significance of the current presence of NRMs.
Beginnings
As both political and intellectual forces in the eighteenth century freed the religious environment from the control of the state church, and fostered initially a climate of religious tolerance, and then genuine religious liberties, altemative religions began to appear. First came the Quakers, then the perfectionists (i.e. the Wesleyans), the Deists, the Swedenborgians and the Millennialists. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, new patterns of religious growth were evident. Periodically, the West convulsed with religious revivals as the churches, no longer always supported by state taxes, were forced to find ways to gain the voluntary support of the populace. Each wave of religious fervour, beginning with the well-known ‘Second Great Awakening’ at the start of the nineteenth century, saw the birth of new alternative churches and religions. Older, minuscule groups often seized the opportunity of the revivals to jump into prominence. The ‘Second Great Awakening’ in America launched the Methodists, Baptists, Disciples of Christ and Cumberland Presbyterians into the prominent position they attained during the rest of the century and initiated an era of prosperity for the Shakers. Later periods of revival saw the rise of Spiritualism, Latter-day Saints, the Holiness Churches, New Thought, Christian Science and Pentecostalism. From their American beginnings, each soon travelled abroad, some gaining their greatest acceptance in a European (Spiritualism) or South American (Pentecostalism) home.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, the alternatives were basically indigenous to the West. England (with Ann Lee, 1736–84; Joanna Southcott, 1730–1814), the European continent (Swedenborg; the German Brethren) and the New World (Joseph Smith, 1805–44; Mary Baker Eddy, 1821–1910) each contributed new leadership. However, in 1893 a very different set of ‘alternatives’ arrived in the West. In that year, the League of Liberal Clergymen of Chicago, Illinois, sponsored the World’s Parliament of Religions, when for the first time representatives of all the major world faiths assembled in a large Western city for a religious showcase without precedent. Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Confucians and Jews joined Spiritualists, Taoists, Parsis and Christians of every perspective for this giant conclave. Some saw the gathering as merely a big religious show, with little future significance. Yet the Parliament initiated some profound changes, especially among the religions of the East. The enthusiastic welcome given to Eastern thinkers such as Vivekananda, A. R. M. Webb and Shaku Soyen led directly to the founding of centres of Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism in the United States and to the spread of these religions in the West. Spurred by the warm experience, Eastern religious leaders began to see the West as a fertile mission field and set as their goal the returning of the favour accorded them by the nineteenth-century Christian missionary movement into Asia.
The mere fact of the Parliament being held underscored a new attitude of respect among Western scholars and religious leaders for the non-Christian religions of the world. Although many years were to pass before a majority of Christians would move beyond the view that other religions were at best pagan and heathen (and those of Asia a major source of degradation), the Parliament gave many the opportunity to see at first hand the depth and sophistication of non-Christian religious thought. After the Parliament, the various Eastem religions began to appear in the urban landscape, despite strong anti-Asian prejudice in many parts of the West. The growth of Eastern religions suffered a severe blow in 1917 when the United States passed an immigration law which stopped all immigration from Asia except by a small number of Japanese.
While Asian religions grew slowly in the West, metaphysical and occult religions expanded rapidly following the founding of the Church of Christ, Scientist (1875), the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (1893) and the International New Thought Alliance (1914). At the same time ‘ritual magick’ re-emerged on the European continent and spread to England and subsequently to North America. The earliest metaphysical and occult groups tended to be Christian in orientation and to use Christian symbols, though in unfamiliar ways; but as the century progressed, newer branches tended to drop any Christian veneer, with the exception of occasional references to Jesus as a great teacher.
The growth of the metaphysical and occult religions, and the presence, especially in the Asian communities in the West, of Hindu and Buddhist groups, set the stage for 1965. In that year, without fanfare, President Lyndon Johnson opened the United States once again to Asian immigrants, an act which had grown out of an attempt to pacify new American allies in southern Asia who felt insulted by the anti-Asian immigration policies of the United States. The results were quite unexpected, however, as large numbers of Japanese, Indians and, in fact, Asians from Korea to Sri Lanka took advantage of the new situation and filled the quotas. Among all the Asians, gurus, swamis and Zen masters travelled to their compatriots’ new homelands ready to meet the spiritual needs not only of the immigrants. Even prior to 1965, Eastern teachers had been moving into Europe; now, stimulated by the new opportunities in North America, they also increased their presence in the more open of the European nations. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, numerous teachers have opened centres in eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Having founded various movements in the 1960s, the Eastern religions were ready to reap the harvest when a period of general religious enthusiasm swept the West in the early and mid-1970s (see figures 15.1 and 15.2). New movements in the United States grew to national proportions and quickly spread to Europe, while movements previously established in Great Britain and on the European continent soon set up branches in North America. Eastern religions were joined by Jewish and Islamic groups. These Middle Eastern groups, displaced by the Nazi onslaught, found haven in England and the United States. Islam took root and flowered within the African-American community from a small seed originally planted in the 1930s. The religious revival of the 1970s gave impetus and growth to every family of ‘alternative religion’ and the emergence of the pluralistic situation allowed all kinds of deviation from the old norm of mainstream Christianity. Once a new form of faith appeared it soon found cause to splinter, thus enlarging the number of available religious options from which a new believer could choose. By 1990, in the United States alone, over 1,000 Christian sects and 600 alternative religious bodies competed for members. A similar situation, if on a lesser scale, could be found in most Western countries, the few exceptions being those which took legal measures to hinder the spread of alternative religious organizations.
Figure 15.1 Alternative religions in the United States: growth by decades, 1900–1970
Source: After J.G. Melton, A Directory of Religious Bodies in the United States, New York, Garland, 1977.
Figure 15.2 Growth rate of alternative religions in the United States, 1900–1990
Source: After J. G. Melton, A Directory of Religious Bodies in the United States, New York, Garland, 1977 (updated)
The Families of Alternative Religions
Over 700 alternative religions, religious communities quite distinct from the main branches of Christianity and Judaism in the West, have appeared in the United States. Simultaneously, a like number have also emerged and are active in Europe. While many of these newer groups have become international bodies with local communities in both Europe and America, just as many have yet to develop ties across the Atlantic. The seeming chaos of beliefs and practices that meets the first cursory glance at the alternative religions masks the fact that the overwhelming majority of the new religions cluster into a relatively small number of denominational ‘families’. Groups of each family share a common thought-world of ideas they believe to be important, a similar lifestyle with predictable behaviour patterns and a heritage which can be traced to a common root. These families represent the major directions that alternative religious groups have taken.
| Table 15.1 New religious movements in Europe and America (early 1990s) | ||
| Cult movements per million |
No. cult movements | |
| Switzerland | 16.7 | 108 |
| Iceland | 12.0 | 3 |
| United Kingdom | 10.7 | 604 |
| Austria | 7.9 | 60 |
| Sweden | 6.8 | 57 |
| Denmark | 4.5 | 23 |
| Netherlands | 4.4 | 64 |
| Ireland | 3.9 | 14 |
| West Germany | 2.5 | 155 |
| Belgium | 2.4 | 24 |
| Norway | 1.9 | 8 |
| Greece | 1.5 | 15 |
| Italy | 1.2 | 66 |
| Portugal | 1.0 | 10 |
| France | 0.9 | 52 |
| Finland | 0.8 | 4 |
| Spain | 0.7 | 29 |
| Poland | 0.5 | 17 |
| Europea | 3.4 | 1,317 |
| United States | 1.7 | 425 |
| aTotal based only on the nations listed in the table. | ||
| Source: R. Stark, ‘Europe’s Receptivity to New Religious Movements’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 31, 1993, pp. 389–97 | ||
The Latter-day Saint Family
The Latter-day Saints are held together by a shared belief in the revelations of Joseph Smith, Jr, which they collected into a set of books that now serve as authoritative literature alongside the Bible. The most famous piece of Latter-day Saint scripture, the Book of Mormon (from which they take their more popular designation as Mormons), stands beside other volumes, the Doctrines and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Smith also produced an inspired version of the Bible which some Mormon groups use.
Central to Latter-day Saint belief is the idea of the Restoration. According to Smith, true Christianity died with the death of the last original apostles, but was restored through Joseph Smith’s ordination by God and subsequent ministry. The Restoration found its earthly visible manifestation in Zion, the gathered community of saints, and a new temple (complete with new ceremonies) to replace the one destroyed many centuries ago. Also, in the first generations, the Saints adopted the United Order, a communal self-help structure (which was, however, abandoned by most Mormons soon after the move to Utah in 1847).
Over the years no fewer than fifty distinct Latter-day Saint bodies have appeared and disappeared, while almost as many again survive to the present day. Most of these emerged in the United States, but a few, such as the Independent Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, developed originally in Europe. A disruption in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the late 1970s led to the emergence of ten new independent church groups, most of which survived their first decade. The majority of the twentieth-century Mormon groups began with a prophet providing new revelations to supplement those left by Smith. In Utah, polygamy, practised and then abandoned by the main body of Mormons, arose anew as young Fundamentalists, i.e. those who practise polygamy, became more vocal and visible during the 1970s.
The Communal Family
The communal impulse constantly reappears in all religious traditions, but, even in its more accepted monastic form, it implies a lifestyle that separates its practitioners from the mainstream of culture and religion. Among those groups which thrived in the nineteenth century by far the most successful (in length of existence) were the religious communities such as the Shakers and the Perfectionists of Oneida. The single most successful communal group of recent centuries are the Hutterites, who migrated from Russia into the American north-west and western Canada just across the border. The Hutterian agricultural lifestyle proved remarkably resilient in the face of the modern world, and by the early 1990s there were over 300 Hutterite colonies in existence. In the 1960s and 1970s a new wave of communalism swept the younger generation, who established a range of communities in every country of the Western world. Most that survived into the 1990s were overtly religious in nature.
The major groups formed in the twentieth century were either Christians who took a very literal approach to Scripture, and particularly the injunction to hold all things in common (Acts 2), or groups with a distinctly Eastern mystical perspective (though they seem very eclectic theologically). In either case, they agree that the main fact of their life and thought is the challenge of communal existence. Most communal groups have a very low profile and are not well known, though a few, like The Farm and the Church of Armageddon, have become visible because of their activism and their brushes with the legal authorities. Living almost invisibly through the 1980s, The Family, known in the 1970s as the Children of God, emerged out of seclusion with approximately 9,000 members in some thirty countries.
The New Thought Metaphysical Family
New Thought, a very eclectic movement, draws inspiration from mesmerism, New England Transcendentalism, laissez-faire economics and a basic intuition that religion must be practical and applied to the major problems of everyday life – illness, poverty, unhappiness. The modem metaphysical church, which exists in two rather distinct wings, Christian Science and New Thought, can best be traced to the New England Transcendentalist movement of the mid-nineteenth century. Ralph Waldo Emerson, reacting to both orthodox Christianity and a cold rationalism, developed an idealistic philosophy which placed its faith in an underlying invisible spiritual reality that gave depth to the visible world and could be apprehended more easily by direct intuition than by reasoning.
In the 1870s, Mary Baker Eddy gave a distinctly religious, even Christian, slant to Emerson’s idealistic spiritual world. She added a practical twist in suggesting that an apprehension of the Oneness underlying the visible world led to a realization of one’s unity with God and of God’s perfection. In God, illness and even poverty could not exist. Eddy not only advocated a Christianized version of Emersonian thought, but called those who had experienced the Oneness she talked about and its healing effects into a community of faith, the Church of Christ Scientist. The movement spread quickly after the publication of her textbook, Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures (1875).
Eddy’s church was a tightly run organization with little room for creative variations in either theology or practice. Thus it was inevitable that some of her strongest leaders would feel constrained under the system and break away from it to create variations. This happened almost from the beginning. However, the most important of those who separated from Eddy and established independent work was Emma Curtis Hopkins. The first person to whom Eddy entrusted the editorship of the Christian Science Journal, Hopkins broke with Eddy after a little more than a year and began rival work in Chicago. She soon emerged as the leader of the independents, and by 1887 the Hopkins Metaphysical Association had established affiliated centres across America from Maine to San Francisco. Hopkins opened the Christian Science Theological Seminary in Chicago, and sooner or later all of the founders of what were to become the important New Thought groups came to sit at her feet. Among her hundreds of students were Melinda Cramer (Divine Science); Annie Rix Militz (Homes of Truth); Charles and Myrtle Fillmore (Unity School of Christianity); Ernest Holmes (Religious Science); and Frances Lord, who first brought New Thought to England in the 1880s. The numerous New Thought groups were finally able to find some unity in the International New Thought Alliance, formed in 1914.
The Spiritualist/Psychic Family
Possibly the largest of the alternative families contains the groups built around the experience of various forms of psychic phenomena. They have a continuous history in the West, at least since the time of Scandinavian seer Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). These groups are the most ahistorical in their perspective, and few contemporary leaders of psychic groups know about, or seem willing to acknowledge their debt to, the thought and practices of their predecessors. The psychic groups share a common relationship to science, in that they believe that psychic phenomena demonstrate ‘scientifically’ the truth of their religious perspective. They look to parapsychology for a verification of their religion, and have grown as the recognition of psychical research has grown. They might be said, however, to have an attitude better labelled ‘scientism’, that is, they have a love of things scientific accompanied with little actual knowledge, or appreciation, of science or of scientific methodology.
Historically, the psychic community traces its lineage not only from Swedenborg but also from his later contemporary Austrian Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), whose ideas about animal magnetism fosteted a movement that, while not being directly religious itself, gave content and an early rationale to the psychic groups. From the thin thread of mesmerism and Swedenborg’s New Church, Spiritualism emerged in New York. Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910), Spiritualism’s great prophet, counted Swedenborg among his main spirit contacts. From New York, Spiritualism quickly spread across North America and to Europe, where it enjoyed a much greater acceptance in England and France than it did in the land of its origin. Once Spiritualism had spread and provided a base, other psychic groups could emerge.
Spiritualism centred upon the presentation of ‘scientific’ evidence of life after death, demonstrated in the practice of mediumship. Mediums were special people, capable of contacting, often while in a state of trance, the realm of the dead. If one accepted the reality of mediumship then a logical possibility emerged: the medium could not only contact the spirits of the dead and prove that they survived, but could explore in some detail the nature of the life to come and even locate accomplished teachers who could, having experienced and survived the veil of death, speak authoritatively about the great human questions of origins, meaning and destiny. Such attempts to turn to the spirit world to find the answers to philosophical, cosmological and ethical issues began with Spiritualism’s first generation. Many of the volumes of Andrew Jackson Davis’s books include the results of such probing. By the end of the nineteenth century, mediums whose work specialized in the bringing forth of new teachings from the spirit realm emerged. Such mediums are today called channels.
Through the twentieth century, the psychic/occult movement has grown and diversified widely. Each generation has produced a host of psychics with variant revelations and a wide range of attitudes towards the dominant Christian perspective in society. Through the 1960s and 1970s, groups founded upon psychedelic drug experiences and ‘flying saucer’ sightings created even more variations. The splintering of psychic groups can be traced to the complete lack of any central authority system or support from the dominant culture, coupled with a drive among members for an immediate experience of some form of psychic phenomenon, an impulse not unlike the Pentecostal drive to experience the gifts of the Spirit. Leaders rest their claim to authority on their ability to produce psychic phenomena or on their relation to someone who can.
The impact of psychic alternatives in the West has been measured during the last decade by the spread of belief in astrology, reincarnation and the efficacy of meditation. Since the 1970s, over 20 per cent of the American public profess to practising meditation, to believing in reincarnation and to holding some faith in astrology. From so large a base, it is no surprise that over 300 of the alternative religions are psychic/occult groups.
The Ancient Wisdom Groups
Closely related to and deriving from Spiritualism are the ‘ancient wisdom’ groups. These groups are recognizable by their adoption of a mythical story placing their origin at some point in the far past, frequently Atlantis or ancient Egypt. At this olden time a pure spiritual teaching existed but was overthrown by a corrupt religiosity, frequently identified with the Christian Church. The pure teaching went into hiding but was preserved by a small group of evolved beings, the masters, most of whom have been reincarnated on earth periodically, and now exist in a disembodied state. Collectively they are called the Great White Brotherhood, and from their evolved state they attempt to guide the destiny of humanity in the godly direction. The members of the ancient wisdom groups are their instruments of their working in the visible world.
Among the groups which have a form of the ancient wisdom story at the heart of their understanding of the world are the Rosicrucians, Theosophy, the I AM Religious Activity, the Church Universal and Triumphant, and many additional occult orders.
The modern New Age movement combines influences from both the ancient wisdom and Spiritualist psychic groups. The New Age movement began in Great Britain among some independent Theosophical groups. Through the twentieth century Theosophists had looked for the coming of a New Age, though the vision of what form such a new society might take varied. However, in the 1960s some of these groups began to talk about the emergence of the New Age during the next generation. The New Age was to be brought about by the release of new spiritual energies resulting from the change of astrological cycles, popularly referred to as the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. These early New Age groups linked together with groups internationally who shared a common commitment to receiving the new spiritual energy and transmitting it to the world. The vision of a possible imminent new age became a vitalizing message to members of the older metaphysical, Spiritualist/psychic and ancient wisdom communities.
During the 1980s the New Age movement became an important force which raised the standing of these alternative communities in the West and reached far beyond them to bring many hundreds of thousands of new adherents to its member organizations. Study of the New Age has been hampered by its decentralized structure, which has made it difficult to measure. Also, the New Age differs from other groups in that rather than attracting young adults, it has tended to attract an older group (age 35–45), those making the transitions of mid-life. By the 1990s, the New Age vision had largely been spent, but it left behind millions of people who had found meaning in New Age/occult belief. Recent surveys indicate that many people who have accepted such beliefs have remained attached to older churches where they can make a personal adjustment.
| Table 15.2 Percentage of acceptance of New Age beliefsa by adherents of Protestant denominations in the United Statesb | |||||||
| CC/DC | ELCA | PCUSA | SBC | UCC | UMC | Total | |
| HumNat | 75 | 71 | 72 | 47 | 79 | 76 | 72 |
| Reincr | 7 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 11 | 7 | 8 |
| Astro | 13 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 9 | 9 | 9 |
| TruthinMe | 34 | 31 | 30 | 27 | 33 | 34 | 32 |
| Be Anything | 57 | 54 | 54 | 40 | 59 | 56 | 54 |
| TalktoDead | 6 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| OwnBeliefs | 34 | 29 | 31 | 28 | 36 | 30 | 32 |
aNew Age statements measured:
HumNat = Human nature is basically good
Reincr = I believe in reincarnation, that I have lived before and will experience other lives in the future
Astro = I believe in astrology
TruthinMe = Through meditation and self-discipline I come to know that all spiritual truth and wisdom is within me
Be Anything = I am in charge of my life, I can be anything I want to be
TalktoDead = It is possible to communicate with people who have died
OwnBeliefs = An individual should arrive at his/her own beliefs independent of any church
bFrom a national sample of 3,349 respondents of adult members of the following denominations:
CC/DC = Christian Church Disciples of Christ
ELCA =Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
PCUSA = Presbyterian Church (USA)
SBC = Southern Baptist Convention
UCC = United Church of Christ
UMC = United Methodist Church
Source: M. Donohue, ‘Prevalence and Correlates of New Age Beliefs in Six Protestant Denominations’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 32, 1993, pp. 177–84.
The Magical Family
The magical family consists of those groups which include as a significant element in their life the practice of magic, which can be defined as the art of employing cosmic, paranormal forces (believed to underpin the universe) in order to produce desired effects at will. Magic has two major forms. In working high magic, the major focus of change is the magician’s own consciousness. Low magic refers to the production of alterations in the everyday world, such as healing the body, locating a better job, improving one’s love life or cursing an enemy. While the practice of magic in itself is not necessarily religious, in the modern West its practice is most commonly found as an integral aspect of magical groups which provide all the traditional religious functions for their members.
Almost eliminated from the West in the eighteenth century, magic began a remarkable comeback in the nineteenth century, culminating in the formation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (OGD) in the 1880s. From that group, and in particular from one of its members, Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), the second stage of the magical revival began. First Crowley, and his secretary/student Israel Regardie, published the majority of the OGD material, thus making it available to the wider occult community. Then, through his voluminous writings, Crowley provided occultists with perhaps their single most coherent digest of magical practice and most widely accepted presentation of magical thought. All three major groupings of modern magical ‘religions’ draw heavily upon the work of Crowley (even in those cases where groups and individuals openly separate themselves from Crowley and his more controversial and objectionable emphasis upon sex magic).
This revival of magic concentrated on its ceremonial form, centred upon the disciplined practice of ritual invocation and evocation for the working of high magic. The OGD assembled the work of prior magical teachers such as Eliphas Levi (1810–75), added the writings of their own scholar – teacher S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1854–1918), and formed the first magic group to spread throughout the British Isles, on to the European continent and across the ocean to America. While several groups, such as the California-based Builders of the Adytum and the Fraternity of the Inner Light and the Servants of the Light, both British-based, carry on the Golden Dawn tradition, most ceremonial magic groups can be traced to Aleister Crowley. After leaving the OGD, Crowley joined the German-based Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) and eventually became its Outer Head. He imposed his unique brand of magic, ‘thelema’ (from the Greek word for ‘will’), upon the Order (which led to a split in the German section). Through his travels and writings he expanded the Order into a world-wide organization. In the early 1980s, the OTO branch headed by Grady McMurty of Berkeley, California, was the single largest magical group in the West, with centres in North America, New Zealand, Australia, Europe and even behind the Iron Curtain. Several other OTO branches, such as that founded by British thelemite Kenneth Grant, also have an international membership. More recently, new offshoots of thelemic magic based upon Maat, the Egyptian goddess of truth and justice, have appeared, such as the London/Chicago-based Ordo Adeptorum Invisiblum. Together the various OTO and Maatian organizations include the overwhelming majority of ritual magicians in the West.
Witchcraft, the second major grouping of magical religion, presents a confusing picture to the average observer. The word ‘witchcraft’ is popularly used to describe at least four distinct phenomena, frequently if mistakenly equated with each other. Anthropologists use the word to refer to the art of the tribal shaman in the pretechnological (or primal) societies. Biblical scholars use it to describe the ob, such as the famous ob of Endor (1 Samuel 28), whose accomplishments included knowledge of herbs and poisons and the art of mediumship. The Western historian usually means the worship of the Devil, i.e. Satanism, with all of its associated practice of malevolent sorcery, the black mass and witch-hunters. However, modern witchcraft, as practised in Western technological society, is none of these. Rather, it is a form of polytheistic nature religion based upon the worship of the Mother Goddess. This new witchcraft, more properly called Neo-Paganism, was created during the 1940s and 1950s by Gerald Gardner (1884–1964), a retired British civil servant who had spent most of his life in southern Asia. Gardner attempted to develop a popular magical religion. He combined elements of both Western and Asian magic, Masonic rituals, nudity and Goddess worship with liberal doses of Aleister Crowley. First made public in the 1950s, Gardnerian witchcraft spread quickly in England and came to America in the 1960s. It subsequently spread to Ireland and Europe. Numerous variations of Goddess worship, which (in spite of claims to the contrary) can be traced almost entirely to Gardner, appeared, and by 1980 included literally hundreds of covens and groves (the small groups which meet together to practise their nature-oriented faith) in Europe, North America, Australia and South Africa. The Neo-Pagan witches view their task as reviving the old religion(s) of pre-Christian Europe. With the movement’s growth into its second generation, it has experienced constant change as different covens have put various ethnic facades (Scandinavian, Welsh, Greek) on to their practice and have experimented with newly written rituals and new alternative magical techniques. Low magic predominates in witchcraft’s rituals and practice, an emphasis that generally differentiates Neo-Pagans from ceremonial magicians.
Originating in the 1970s, Dianic Witchcraft, a form of Wicca which emphasized not only the femaleness of the deity, but the role of Witchcraft as a religion of female liberation, emerged as an important segment of the Neo-Pagan community in the 1980s. Feminist Wicca serves as a bridge between the larger Neo-Pagan world and the community of Goddess worshippers who have found in the proclamation of a female deity a rallying cry behind which women can assert their equality in what they perceive to be a male-dominated world.
The third group of magical religionists flashed into prominence momentarily in the late 1960s, and was heard from with less and less frequency during the 1970s and 1980s. The Satanists, those who actually worship the Devil and whose magic consists of the invocation of him or one of his demonic legion, have gradually faded from the occult world. Generally occultists, including ceremonial magicians and witches, dislike and fear the worshippers of Satan as much as Christians do. Contemporary Neo-Pagans consistently try to separate themselves from the taint of satanic images constantly being thrown at them. Neo-Pagans assert that they practise a positive religion with their own Pagan deities, rather than a negative religion based upon the Devil of Christianity. Satanism is a magical religion which has as its central dynamic the rejection of and an attack upon Christianity. Modern Satanists have drawn their image of his Infernal Majesty from the snake in the Garden of Eden, the bringer of knowledge, and Lucifer, the light-bearer. This modern Satan is seen as the giver of wisdom and builder of the individual ego. His worshippers, though few in number, can be found throughout the Christian world in small disconnected groups.
During the late 1980s, beginning on the west coast of the United States, and expanding to Great Britain in the early 1990s, claims of a large Satanist conspiracy caught the attention of many law officials, social workers and psychological counsellors. A decade of investigation, however, has produced little of substance to verify these claims, and as any official support for such claims was withdrawn, the crusade to stamp out Satanism has largely died.
The Eastern Family
Since 1965 the high level of visibility of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism has indicated a significant proliferation of Eastern religion in the West. Several hundred different Eastern groups now operate in Europe and America; and, most significantly, they have broken out of the Asian ethnic communities which provided their initial base of support to serve both Caucasian and African constituencies. To a large extent, it is the spread of Asian religion among American and European young adults that has been at the core of concern over alternative religions and has given rise to what is popularly termed the ‘cult’ controversy.
Typically, the Eastern groups each have a single teacher, a guru, though the title varies from group to group. The guru teaches the spiritual techniques by which the members can gain enlightenment or mystic vision, and members view the guru as an accomplished master of the system s/he teaches. Within Eastern groups, systems and practices vary as widely as they do within the whole of Western Christianity. Some are ascetic (Hare Krishna), some philosophical (Vedanta), some indulgent (Tantra) and some rigorous (certain types of yoga). While nominally led by the guru, the groups also present a wide variety of organizational strengths, and ask for differing degrees of commitment from their members. Among the Hare Krishna, an ascetic monastic model of life has been adopted; some siddha yoga groups are based on the absolute obedience given to the guru; other groups merely respect the guru as a learned teacher, and have formed a rather loose organization. Some groups seek almost total commitment of the members’ time, money and energy; other seek only a few hours a week and a modest donation of financial resources and labour.
The rather sensationalized media coverage given to these exotic groups, which most Westerners still find strange in the extreme, masks two very different trends among those groups serving the non-ethnic community. First, the success of these groups is much more limited than media coverage would tend to suggest. After almost half a century of their infiltration of the West, the largest guru-oriented group still numbers fewer than 50,000 members, and the majority count their members in the hundreds. Secondly, there has been a steady stream of new Eastern groups through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Thus, while the numerical success of any single group might be limited, the number of groups is constantly growing. Many of the newer gurus and teachers receive little attention from the media unless they become involved in a scandal. As the twentieth century comes to a close, the Eastern religious groups have established a permanent base in the West from which to expand through the next century.
The Middle Eastern Family
Judaism has been in the West longer than Christianity, but, for a variety of historical and theological reasons, has remained a minority religion. The events of the Second World War dramatically reshaped the total Jewish community and scattered most of what was not destroyed of east European Jewry. That war brought many Jews to the United States and Canada, and they brought with them varieties of Judaism never before seen in North America in the many Chasidic groups. (Chasidism is a mystical Orthodox form of Judaism – see p. 22 above.)
The post-1945 era has also seen many Muslims coming to the West, building upon the smaller immigration efforts that began in the late nineteenth century. Large Islamic communities are currently appearing in American and European metropolitan centres for the first time. The proliferation of both Judaism and Islam has been remarkable, with over thirty mystical Jewish groups and almost as many Islamic groups establishing communities. There have, however, been important differences in their patterns of growth. Jewish groups have tended to grow primarily within the Jewish community. The Chasids have promoted large families and advocated the conversion of more liberal Jews and of non-practising Jews. Muslims, on the other hand, have bolstered their immigrant communities by spreading Islam among African Americans and by the penetration of mystical Islam (Sufism) among young adult middle-class whites, the group most attracted to Eastern faiths in general.
Opposition to Alternative Religions
The growth of alternative religions in the twentieth century generated a counter-movement headed by those who saw the establishment of alternative religious communities as a threat. In the early part of the century, opposition started within conservative Christian bodies which saw their members being seduced by exotic forms of faith. For many years these bodies produced books, pamphlets and tracts warning of the dangerous beliefs of such groups – primarily Mormonism, Christian Science, Spiritualism, Theosophy and Seventh-day Adventism. Several organizations, such as the Christian Research Institute founded by Baptist minister Walter Martin and the Religious Analysis Service in Minneapolis, Minnesota, were established to coordinate anti-cult activity and channel literature to Christians engaged in a ministry to cults.
In labelling the alternative religions as ‘cults’, anti-cultists assumed that in some measure the alternative religions were essentially all alike, an assumption that has proved completely false. The only characteristic they share is a negative evaluation; they each present an alternative to traditional Christianity. The assumption of similarity has also been used to attack the ‘cults’, by attributing to all of them the faults and excesses of any one of them. This practice, along with the highly polemic motivation underlying most anti-cult literature, makes such materials the least useful in understanding the nature of life in alternative religions, though of immense usefulness in understanding the climate in which NRMs have had to operate.
In the early 1970s a new form of opposition to alternative religions developed: the deprogramming movement. Ted Patrick, whose son had briefly associated with the Children of God in southern California, soon found other parents who had offspring in the same group. They formed FREECOG (Free Our Children from the Children of God) and attacked the group for its communal lifestyle and odd beliefs. They were, in turn, joined by parents who had sons and daughters in other alternative religions, with whom they formed the Citizens’ Freedom Foundation, the first of a number of similar groups across North America. The Citizens’ Freedom Foundation gradually transformed itself into the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) and during the 1980s absorbed the energy of most of the earlier activist anti-cult organizations. CAN also inspired similar anti-cult organizations in Europe and South America. Anti-cultism is represented in England primarily by Family, Action, Information, and Rescue (FAIR) and in France by the Association pour la Défense de la Familie et de l’Individu (ADFI). Similar organizations can be found in most European countries, and around the world, such as the SPES Foundation in Argentina and the Association Exposing Pseudo Religious Cults in Australia. These organizations are joined by groups of former members of some of the more controversial new religions (the Unification Church, Nichiren Shoshu, the Children of God/The Family).
Figure 15.3 Religious backgrounds of members of alternative religions in the United States, early 1990s Sources: Based on J. S. Judah, The History and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America, Philadelphia, Westminister Press, 1967; E. M. Layman, Buddhism in America, Chicago, Nelson Hall, 1976; J. G. Melton, ‘The Neo-Pagans of America: An Alternative Religion?’, paper presented to the American Academy of Religion, 1970.
These anti-cult groups have developed a working rationale in which they see cult members as passive victims of recruitment processes through which the alternative religions brainwash and hypnotize members to the point that they lose their freedom to think and make decisions. To alleviate this problem, it is argued, it may be necessary to kidnap the ‘victim’ and keep him or her locked away from the group for a number of days, during which he or she is subjected to a high-powered counter-indoctrination process. While seen as freeing the mind, the process centres on the manipulation of powerful emotional forces applied with great pressure. This process typically includes fatigue, the desecration of sacred symbols, the pleas of parents and family members, and intense interrogation; depending on the degree of resistance of the person being deprogrammed, it can also include the absence of privacy, physical confinement in ropes and physical abuse.
The major target of the anti-cult movement during the 1970s was the Unification Church, a small group built around the charisma and visions of Sun Myung Moon, a Korean prophet who has expounded a version of Christianity called the Divine Principle. In 1975 the anti-cult movement took the Unification Church as its target and directed the majority of its efforts to inhibiting its activity. Second only to the Unification Church as anti-cult targets were the Church of Scientology, the Way International, Hare Krishna, the Church Universal and Triumphant, and the Children of God (now known as The Family).
In the United States anti-cult efforts have included de-programmings, attempted anti-cult legislation, civil suits, and a campaign of vilification directed through the media. Unable to obtain legislative support through the 1980s, the anti-cult movement found some success in civil courts. Representatives were frequently able to convince juries that cults engaged in ‘brainwashing’. However, that approach was stymied by the end of the decade when psychologist Margaret Singer, the major exponent of the brainwashing theory, was denied status as an expert witness in a case in US federal court after several of her colleagues argued effectively that her ideas about mind control were not supported by the findings of the scientific community. Sociologist Richard Of she, also turned out of court in the same case, and several other experts who based their testimony on Singer’s opinions, have since been unable to testify in support of suits brought against the non-conventional new religions. Various attempts to reverse the courts’ view, including suits by Singer and Ofshe against the scholars who opposed them, proved unsuccessful. By the mid-1990s it appeared that the cult wars were slowly coming to an end.
The New Religious Situation
Religious observers have for many years spoken of Western society moving into a post-Christian era, and certainly Christian leaders have experienced a marked erosion of power in directing culture. That downward turn was initially seen in terms of articulate unbelievers, pushing an assertive secularism, emerging as the Church’s major competitor. Through the twentieth century, the older churches, which had previously enjoyed state support, have largely failed to keep up as population grew. Decade after decade they commanded the allegiance of a smaller and smaller percentage of the population. However, the public did not so much turn to atheism as to a host of religious alternatives, especially Christian sectarian movements and the NRMs. During the 1970s the alternative faiths, while not growing nearly so much as the anti-cultists would have us believe, did grow enough to create a qualitative shift in the religious environment. They penetrated society to the point where they can no longer be dismissed as an odd phenomenon on the edge of society. Their members, drawn from the educated middle to upper-middle class, including professionals and career business executives, can no longer be dismissed as merely the alienated and oppressed. They see themselves as full, active participants in Western culture.
The visible impact of the alternative religions is highest in urban areas (see table 15.3), where their worship centres dot street corners, their stores open their doors in shopping districts, and their books rest on bookstore shelves beside Christian devotional texts. Their children now attend state schools in which Buddhists, Scientologists, Hindus, Unificationists, Jews, Sikhs and an occasional Pagan sit beside all varieties of Christians. The alternative religions moved quickly to institutionalize and prepare future leaders. Hastily prepared training sessions in the 1960s have given way to the Unification Theological Seminary, the Religious Science School of Ministry, the Dharma Realm Buddhist University and the California Institute of Asian Studies.
| Table 15.3 Alternative religions in the United States (early 1990s) | |||
| Statea | Number of new religions | New religions per million residents | New religions per million (mid-1970s) |
| Dst. of Col. | 12 | 20.0 | 15.7 |
| California | 191 | 9.1 | 6.0 |
| New Mexico | 10 | 7.8 | 9.1 |
| Utah | 12 | 6.9b | 1.7 |
| Arkansas | 16 | 6.8 | 1.0 |
| Hawaii | 7 | 6.3 | 4.4 |
| Missouri | 31 | 6.0 | 3.1 |
| South Carolina | 4 | 5.9 | 0.4 |
| Connecticut | 5 | 5.0 | 1.6 |
| Idaho | 5 | 5.0 | 1.3 |
| Colorado | 13 | 4.8 | 6.0 |
| New York | 68 | 3.9 | 3.3 |
| Washington | 19 | 3.9 | 2.9 |
| Louisiana | 4 | 3.9 | 0.3 |
| Arizona | 14 | 3.6 | 5.9 |
| Oregon | 9 | 3.6 | 4.8 |
| Vermont | 2 | 3.5 | 0.0 |
| Nevada | 4 | 3.3 | 10.0 |
| Montana | 2 | 2.5 | 0.0 |
| Illinois | 26 | 2.3 | 3.0 |
| Massachusetts | 14 | 2.3 | 1.9 |
| West Virginia | 4 | 2.2 | 0.0 |
| Rhode Island | 2 | 2.0 | 1.0 |
| Florida | 25 | 1.9 | 2.4 |
| New Hampshire | 2 | 1.8 | 2.5 |
| Pennsylvania | 18 | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| Minnesota | 6 | 1.4 | 1.0 |
| Virginia | 8 | 1.3 | 1.6 |
| Maryland | 6 | 1.3 | 0.5 |
| Texas | 20 | 1.2 | 1.2 |
| Michigan | 11 | 1.2 | 1.1 |
| North Carolina | 8 | 1.2 | 0.6 |
| Oklahoma | 3 | 1.0 | 0.7 |
| Tennessee | 4 | 0.8 | 1.0 |
| Wisconsin | 4 | 0.8 | 0.7 |
| Alabama | 3 | 0.7 | 0.6 |
| Indiana | 4 | 0.7 | 0.5 |
| Ohio | 7 | 0.6 | 0.8 |
| Georgia | 3 | 0.5 | 0.4 |
aThe remaining states had either 1 or 0 groups headquartered in the state.
bMormon groups included in count.
Sources. J. G. Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, Detroit, Gale Research, 1992; R. Stark, W. S. Bainbridge and D. P. Doyle, ‘Cults in America: A Reconnaisance in Space and Time’, Sociological Analysis, vol. 4, 1979, pp. 347–59
Dialogue between the leaders of these alternative religions and those of mainstream churches proceeded at a snail’s pace through the 1970s and 1980s, but obviously bore some fruit. In 1993, at the centennial of the World’s Parliament of Religions, the event which marked the beginning of religious pluralism in the West, the new religions participated as full members in dialogue. In addition, religious and social science scholars, led by the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, California, CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions) in Turin, Italy, and INFORM in London, now draw on three decades of new religion studies. There is every sign that as the twenty-first century approaches the new alternative religions, having become a familiar part of the Western religious landscape, will be fully accepted as members of the religious community.
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