NRMs in Western societies II: Movements of nonChristian origin continued

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NRMs in Western societies II Movements of
non-Christian origin(continued)

• 24.11.2005

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Neo-Pagan Movements

• Pagan
• original usage of the term
• country-dweller (paganus)
• anthropological usage of the term
• Follower of the old native religion of their land
  rather than an imported religion
• Neo-paganism
• by Oberon Zell in 1960s
• 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

• Characteristics
• Polytheistic (pantheon of gods)
• Duo-theistic (God and Goddess)
• usually include worship of the Earth Mother
  Goddess
• witchcraft and magic
• historical re-enactment
• syncretistic and eclectic
• New Age vocabulary
• borrow from several sources
• gt diversity
• ask two Pagans a question and you get three
  different answers.
• Examples
• Wicca, Neo-Druidry, Neo-shamanism and Norse
  religion

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Wicca

• Wicca
• wise (Old English)
• gt "Craft of the wise"
• Founded by the British civil servant Gerald
  Gardner in the 1930s
• Heterogeneous movement
• various related Wiccan traditions
• Gardnerian Wicca the original

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Wicca

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

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New religious movements and secularization
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Readings

• Stark and Bainbridge Secularization, Revival,
  and Cult Formation (in Dawson 1998)
• Wilson Secularization The Inherited Model (in
  Hammond 1985)

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Discussion topics

• On terminology
• Historical roots
• Contemporary evidence and critique
• Secularization and NRMs
• NRMs as a reaction against secularization
• Stark and Bainbridge
• Bellah / Anthony and Robbins
• NRMs as a product of secularization
• Wilson

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Secularization

• First used in the 17th century
• Lübbe Säkularisierung
• Eg. Weber
• the disenchantment of the world (die
  Entzauberung der Welt)
• Eg. Wilson
• the process whereby religious thinking,
  practices and institutions lose social
  significance
• Eg. Burke
• interpretation of reality in natural instead of
  supernatural terms

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Secularization

• gt two analytically distinct meanings
• replacement of religious faith with (faith in)
  scientific principles
• increasing differentiation between the religious
  and secular spheres of life
• gt Problematic term
• depends largely on the definition of 'religion'
• concerned with Western civilization and
  Christianity
• 'dechristianization?

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Secularization

• Proponents
• exclusive definition of religion
• religion as 'belief in supernatural'
• born in ignorance and dying in knowledge
• Opponents
• inclusive definition of religion
• religion as symbolic 'universe of meaning
• Eg. communism, civil religion (Bellah)

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Secularization Middle Ages

• Lucien Febvre
• before about 1650 people lacked any sense of the
  impossible, they simply distinguished the
  ordinary from the unusual
• Prevalence of supernaturalist worldview
• revelation superior to reason
• explaining the world exclusively in religious
  terms
• Political religious authority
• Dominance of clergy in the society (e.g.
  education)

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Secularization - Renaissance

• Revival of Greek and Roman secular ideals
• Eg. Neoplatonists
• The importance of human reason
• Eg. Machiavelli
• The spread of some 'naturalist' worldview
• gt Decline of the role of the clergy

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Secularization Reformation

• Religious revival
• Yet indirectly favoured secularization (Weber)
• Advocation of a more worldly religion
• individualism
• salvation not through the church and sacraments
• monotheism
• more powerful god more remote god
• rationalization of religion
• elimination of magic
• clarification of symbols
• reducing theology to consistent rational system
  of ideas

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Secularization Enlightenment

• skepticism
• what do I know?
• Montaigne Que sais je?
• increased knowledge of the world outside Europe
• the French philosophes (Voltaire, Diderot etc.)
• an open attack on organized religion /
  Catholicism
• the existence of God is not provable
  (agnosticism)
• Robespierre
• attempt to secularize the calendar (A.D. 1792
  year I).
• first official rejection of Christianity in
  modern western Europe

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Secularization - Scientific Revolution

• Bible vs 'Book of Nature'
• Evolution of explaining the world
• Eg. Comte
• theological gt metaphysical gt scientific /
  positive
• Eg. Frazer
• Magic gt religion gt science

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Criticism

• ? concerns only Western civilization and
  Christianity
• 'dechristianization?
• ? concerns only Western intellectual elite
• minority movements
• What about ordinary people?
• Knew little about these processes
• popular vs learned culture
• Secularization of masses only after the spread of
  literacy

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Criticism

• Rationalism
• Progressive rationalization
• Evolution of thought
• Social evolution
• basis for Western capitalism and science (Weber)
• Religion vs science
• Criticism
• Skepticism part of all societies (Douglas)
• Magic and witchcraft as rational (Malinowski,
  Evans-Pritchard)
• Science and religion as complementary
• contemporary society should not be
  over-rationalized
• The openness of scientific explanation not
  absolute (Kuhn)

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Contemporary evidence and critique

• Decline in church attendance
• according to statistics (?)
• Criticism
• church attendance ? religious belief
• churched vs unchurched believers
• Institutional vs personal religion
• Luckmann The Invisible Religion (1967)

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Contemporary evidence and critique

• Rise of atheism
• Criticism
• Most of the world still religious
• 16.9 of world population non-religious
• 4.4 of world population atheist
• 94 of Americans claim to believe in God
• Rise of religious fundamentalism
• Religious zeal of atheism
• as political action and social agenda
• Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)
• Godless Americans Political Action Committee
  (GAMPAC)

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Contemporary evidence and critique

• Disengagement of the church from the wider
  society
• Separation of state and the church
• Criticism
• Specialization ? decline of importance
• Eg. current US administration

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Contemporary evidence and critique

• Pluralism of 'universes of meaning'
• Decline of major churches
• Fragmentation of the religious field into NRMs
• Criticism
• Filling in the gaps?
• Religious revival?

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Religious Economy Theory

• Stephen Warner (1993)
• US 19th and early 20th c
• Rapid modernization
• Increase of church attendance
• US constitution
• Radical separation of church and state
• gt Religious pluralism
• Competition of different religions
• religious participation
• religious monopoly gt decline
• competitive religious economy gt balanced
• Satisfaction of diversified needs and tastes

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Secularization and NRMs

• Two approaches to the relationship
• 1) NRMs a reaction against secularization
• roots in Durkheims functionalism
• Religion as a source of solidarity and collective
  identity
• Change in social structure
• gt change in form of religious expression
• 2) NRMs a product of secularization
• no chance of halting its course

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Stark and Bainbridge

• A Theory of Religion (1987)
• secularization is a selflimiting process
• Premises
• People seek to gain rewards
• Some rewards are scarce or unavailable
• People prepared to accept compensators instead
• promises
• for value surrendered now, the desired reward
  will be obtained in the future
• Compensators
• Naturalistic systems of belief gt weaker
• Super-naturalistic systems of belief gt stronger

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Stark and Bainbridge

• gt NRMs a reaction against secularization
• Sources of religion may vary within a society
• The amount of religion will remain relatively
  constant
• the decline of old religious traditions clears
  the spiritual marketplace for the rise of new
  ones
• gt Cycle model
• Proof
• Where churches traditionally strong but church
  involvement has declined
• gt number of sects high

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Bellah / Anthony and Robbins

• Bellah The Broken Covenant (1975)
• US 1960s/70s The Vietnam War, Watergate etc
• crisis of civil religion
• gt 'moral ambiguity'
• gt need for new moral meaning systems
• Anthony and Robbins Cultural Crisis and
  Contemporary Religion (1981)
• gt NRMs
• systematized response to the moral ambiguity
• attempt to formulate the meaning of America
• reaffirmation of traditional moral absolutism

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Bryan Wilson

• Contemporary Transformations of Religion (1976)
• Pluralism NRMs
• Not a matter of necessity but a matter of
  preference
• a free choice
• gt become part of consumption economy
• an item of consumption
• On religious market
• In competition with each other
• On leisure market
• As a leisure activity
• gt a highly privatized issue
• the significance of pushpin, poetry, or popcorn

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Bryan Wilson

• gt NRMs a product of secularization
• a differentiation of metaphysical and salvational
  systems
• gt weakening of their power and scope of
  influence
• Incapable of resacralizing the world
• world-affirming movements
• centrally located in the modern world
• Reproduce individualism, rationality, consumerism
  
• World-rejecting movements
• Marginal
• Isolated and numerically insignificant