The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life

Roy Wallis

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367025052
• eBook ISBN: 9780429678400
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book, first published in 1984, examines the whole range of new religious movements which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s in the West. It develops a wide-ranging theory of these new religions which explains many of their major characteristics. Some of the movements are well-known, such as Scientology, Krishna Consciousness, and the Unification Church. Others such as the Process, Meher Baba, and 3-HO are much less known. While some became international, others remained local; in other ways, too, such as style, belief, organisation, they exhibit enormous diversity.

The movements studied here are classified under three ideal types, world-rejecting, world-affirming and world-accommodating, and from here the author develops a theory of the origins, recruitment base, characteristics, and development patterns which they display. The book offers a critical exploration of the theories of the new religions and analyses the highly contentious issue of whether they reflect the process of secularisation, or whether they are a countervailing trend marking the resurgence of religion in the West.

1 Introduction

This essay presents a framework for conceptualising the new religious movements which have emerged in the West in the post-second world war period, particularly the extremely diverse range of movements which became prominent in the 1960s. This conceptualisation elaborates a logical trichotomy into three analytical types, and from this develops a theory of the origins, recruitment bases, characteristics, and developmental patterns which they display. Although some of the movements have been widely publicised, even attaining a certain notoriety through mass media treatment, for example: Scientology, Krishna Consciousness, the Unification Church, and the Manson Family; others such as The Process, Meher Baba, and 3-HO, are much less well known. While some became international, others remain small, local entities, or have already virtually disappeared. In multitudinous other ways too - style, ritual, belief, organisation, and so on - they exhibit enormous diversity.

While less discerning commentators have sought to describe and explain all the new religions as a unified phenomenon, or to treat each one as unique, more thoughtful and perceptive scholars such as Bryan Wilson have sought to distinguish them in terms of a limited number of types. Wilson, for example, constructs a classification on the basis of three themes which he finds to characterise the teachings of the new religions. The themes are:

that salvation is gained by becoming acquainted with a special, perhaps secret, knowledge from a mystic source; that ultimate salvation and knowledge comes from the liberation of powers within the self; that real salvation is attained by belonging to a saved community, whose life-style and concerns are utterly divergent from those of worldly people. (Wilson, 1976: 63)

Wilson’s treatment of the new religions has been one of the more interesting and enlightening, but none the less it must be said that classification is of limited utility unless linked to a theory which explains salient differences distinguished by the classification.

Frederick Bird (1979) distinguishes between the various new religious movements in terms of ‘the relationship of followers to masters or the relationship of the religious seekers to the sacred power they revere’ (1979: 336). Thus, adherents may become ‘(a) devotees of a sacred lord or lordly truth, (b) disciples of a revered or holy discipline, (c) or apprentices skilled at unlocking the mysteries of a sacred, inner power’ (ibid.). In the first category would fall Neo-Pentecostals, Divine Light Mission and Krishna Consciousness. (Descriptions of these groups - albeit inevitably brief and selective - will be presented in the pages that follow.) In the disciple category fall some of the smaller groups such as Integral Yoga, or the Zen Centers in the American West. (Groups of this type have not been widely described, but on Zen, see Tipton, 1982b). Examples of apprenticeship groups would be Silva Mind Control, est, Transcendental Meditation, or Scientology. Bird seeks to show that these different types of movement provide different ways of coping with the problem of ‘moral accountability’ which he believes to be one of the factors in their appeal.

Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony have produced one of the best known and most influential typologies of the new religious movements. Drawing theoretically upon Robert Bellah’s (1967, 1969) conception of religious evolution and ‘civil religion’, they argue that the new religious movements are to be understood as a response to a crisis in American civil religion (Anthony and Robbins, 1982a). I shall examine this theory more closely in chapter four, when I consider the relationship between such movements and secularisation. Here, however, I wish to explore the typology which is associated with this theory.

Robbins and Anthony argue that two main types of response to the ‘decline of civil religion’ can be observed in the new religions: the emergence of ‘dualistic movements which reaffirm elements of traditional moral absolutism in an exaggerated and strident manner’ (Robbins, Anthony and Richardson, 1978: 101), and ‘monistic movements which affirm relativistic and subjectivistic moral meaning systems’ (ibid.). The former type are sometimes called ‘civil religion sects’ by Robbins and Anthony.

DUALISTIC ‘CIVIL RELIGION SECTS’

These movements articulate a protest against the ambiguity, relativism and permissiveness of modern culture, and reaffirm a ‘theocentric ethical dualism’. They also aspire to reorder the political process and its assumptions, generally in a conservative direction. They fall into two sub-types: ‘neo-fundamentalist’, such as the Jesus People; and ‘revisionist syncretic’, such as the Unification Church. Other groups within this type are the Children of God, the People’s Temple, and Synanon. In the face of resistance to their efforts to recast the political arena, or to initiate its transformation by supernatural means, they may ‘create alternative communities as models of future American society’ (Anthony and Robbins, 1982a: 221). They may thus become regimented ‘total institutions’ and sharply segregate their members from former associations and the wider society.

‘MONISTIC GROUPS’

These movements articulate a ‘vision of the universe in which there is an ultimate metaphysical unity or “oneness” which dissolves polarities and imparts an ultimately illusory or epiphenomenal quality (Maya) to the material world’ (Robbins, Anthony and Richardson, 1978: 102). They cultivate an inner spiritual awakening and ‘the exploration of intrapsychic consciousness’. They may thus converge with psychotherapeutic preoccupations. They tend to be ethically relativistic. Various sub-types of monistic movement are suggested, depending on the means by which enlightenment is secured, i.e. technical or charismatic, and on whether enlightenment is seen as involving one or two levels.

Technical movements employ defined techniques and standardised procedures of an instrumental kind, for example, TM, est, Scientology and (surprisingly) Krishna Consciousness. Charismatic movements promise enlightenment ‘through veneration and emulation of leaders who are regarded as exemplars of advanced consciousness’ (ibid.: 105). Examples are Meher Baba, Guru Maharaj-Ji, and Charles Manson. One-level movements see their members as being enlightened as soon as they are converted, or are movements in which enlightenment is seen as being attained very rapidly. Again TM and est are offered as examples, along with Scientology. Two-level movements view enlightenment as ‘a characteristic of a rare stage of spiritual evolution’ (ibid.: 106), for example, Meher Baba, Yogi Bhajan (Healthy-Happy-Holy Organisation).

This typology is ingenious and insightful. It illuminates the vast plethora of movements by dividing them into a set of categories which are economical in terms of the criteria employed, and which appear to be strong predictors of other attributes of the movements concerned. However, it is not without difficulties. ISKCON (Krishna Consciousness) may be monistic, as would be expected from a movement so clearly committed to Hindu traditional thought, yet it also possesses an aspiration to reform the social and political order, and has developed a model of the new world in its communal endeavours, such as New Vrndāvana. Thus, in many ways it would seem to have more in common with the Children of God and the Unification Church, than with est or TM. It also seems somewhat curious to refer to the devotional practice of ISKCON, notably chanting the Hare Krishna mantra, as merely a technique for securing enlightenment.

Frederick Bird (1979: 337) has also raised some queries about the blanket description of the eastern-originated groups as monistic, ‘not only because of the ontological and ethical dualisms which seem to be inter-related with Hindu Vedantism … but also because the significant differences between religions arising out of Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and Taoist traditions are blurred….’ He argues that some of the groups identified by Robbins and Anthony as monistic are, in fact, dualistic, suggesting some ambiguity about the correct application of these labels. Moreover, I would also argue that some of the groups in the monistic category have quite significant political aspirations - albeit not of a nationalistic kind (e.g. Scientology, and ISKCON, perhaps even TM in more recent years). On the other hand, it is not entirely clear to me that a movement like Synanon can be said to advance a political perspective which reaffirms a ‘theocentric ethical dualism’, as the basis for the re-invigoration of national consensus, and thus that it qualifies as a ‘civil religion sect’. Therefore, not all dualistic movements would seem to qualify as ‘civil religion sects’. Some seem to have no political orientation at all to speak of (e.g. the followers of Brother Evangelist, see Martin, 1979).

The Robbins and Anthony typology has achieved a substantial measure of descriptive validity, and its dimensions do appear to have some value in predicting further features of the movements in question. It must be recognised, however, that any given body of phenomena is susceptible to classification in terms of an infinite number of typological schemes. Thus, ultimately, the test of a typology lies not in its components, but rather in the uses to which it can be put, particularly that of identifying the significant characteristics of the phenomena in terms of a theory which turns out to be able to bear the heat of critical appraisal. It is at this point that the adequacy of the Robbins and Anthony schema falls most into question, but discussion of their theory, and that of Frederick Bird, will be reserved for a later stage, when I take up the issue of the role of secularisation, in chapter four.

These various typologies, then, all have considerable value in providing insight into the beliefs and structure of the new religious movements. However, in the pages that follow I shall advance an alternative typology which seems not only to provide some leverage on the divergent forms of the new religious movements, but which is also linked to an analysis of their sources of support, and of their developmental patterns.

A TYPOLOGY OF NEW RELGIONS

The typology I wish to present requires the construction of a conceptual space. This conceptual space is formed by the components of a logical trichotomy, the elements of which constitute an exhaustive set of ways in which a new religious movement may orient itself to the social world into which it emerges. A new movement may embrace that world, affirming its normatively approved goals and values; it may reject that world, denigrating those things held dear within it; or it may remain as far as possible indifferent to the world in terms of its religious practice, accommodating to it otherwise, and exhibiting only mild acquiescence to, or disapprobation, of, the ways of the world. A visual representation of this is presented in Figure 1 (see page 6).

I contend that there are definite types of new religion associated with these orientations, and in the two principal cases (rejection of the world and affirmation of the world), knowledge of the dominant orientation is an excellent predictor of a wide range of further attributes. These will be presented as ideal types, not as mutually exclusive empirical categories. Empirical instances will therefore only approximate to these types, of course, often combining elements of more than one orientation. None the less, some actual cases approximate extremely closely to these constructs and will be drawn upon frequently as sources of appropriate illustrative material.

The third orientation, accommodation to the world, is not associated with an analytical type of new religion comparable in scope to rejection of the world and affirmation of the world. While the two latter orientations seem to create imperatives of, and constraints upon organisation, belief and behaviour over a very wide range, accommodation to the world seems compatible with a broad spectrum of forms and ideologies. Nevertheless it is possible to say something of the features and sources of such a religious movement and this will be briefly essayed.

The world-accommodating type of new religion will be treated more briefly than the other two, since it is less significant for the purpose of characterising those new religions which predominantly emerged in the post second world war period. Movements closest to this type often emerged in an earlier period than is our focus here, and are of little numerical significance (see, for example, Wallis 1974 on the Aetherius Society), or they are an ‘added blessing’, an adjunct to an existing religious attachment (as in Neo-Pentecostalism), rather than a complete alternative to it as a path to salvation. The only important exception to this is the western branch of the Japanese-originated movement, Soka Gakkai. The type is principally important, however, as a possible developmental path for the two main movement types, as they move away from an initial stage of zealous purity. Hence it is of importance also, as a source of insight into the developmental tensions and internal strains in the beliefs and life-style of actually existing cases.

As a final preliminary, it must be observed that this analysis - the conceptual scheme and theoretical observations - are designed to meet only a limited purpose. There is no claim advanced here that the analysis is of universal applicability, relevant to all new religious movements in no matter what historical or cultural circumstances. The aim of this work is a more modest one, essentially involving an attempt to make some sense of the forms and dynamics of new religious movements in the West in the period since the second world war. I would be the very first to admit that the range of movements which emerged in this historically and culturally specific period differed in a number of ways from those appearing in other times and places. The restricted nature of the case being advanced must be borne in mind throughout.

I thus entirely agree with Dr Bryan Wilson’s recent observations on this matter:

Perhaps the time has come to recognise the impossibility - in any terms that are not unduly vague - of any general theory of new movements. Certainly we should not aim - as sociologists have sometimes been wont to do - at a theory that seeks to be outside time and space, even though we wish our concepts to apply outside and beyond the confines of any one culture or historical epoch. If sociology is not to abandon the real world for purely theoretical artifacts, then, we are always likely to be in some degree captive to the empirical circumstances of given cultures, of geography, and of history. (Wilson, 1979: 194–5)

Figure 1 Orientations of the new religions to the world

Figure 1 is intended to provide a broadly representational visual configuration rather than an exact mapping. The latter would not be possible, except for an extremely narrow time span, because a movement may shift around considerably during the course of its development. The representational convention employed places groups and movements which closely approximate the analytical types in the appropriate angles of the conceptual space. In the rectangular central section are located examples of more clearly ‘mixed’ cases.

A superficial appraisal of this construct by those possessing a passing acquaintance with the work of J. Milton Yinger may suggest a similarity with his conceptualisation of types of sect (Yinger, 1970: 278). There is, indeed a similarity - although this typology was not based upon his in any way, deriving rather from an earlier formulation in terms of a continuum between the base types (see Wallis, 1978; 1982a) - in that both employ a triangular visual configuration, and both are attempts to conceptualise types...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Three types of new religious movement
• 3 Social change and the new religions
• 4 Secularisation and the new religions
• 5 The middle ground and the ‘integrative hypothesis’
• 6 Developments I The precariousness of the market
• 7 Developments II The precariousness of charisma
• 8 Concluding theoretical observations
• Appendix Substance and method in studies of new religious movements
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index