A History of New Religious Movements in the United States
Capstone Proposal
SBS400
December 3, 2011
Capstone Proposal
Introduction
The objective of this paper is to explore the rise of new religious movements in the United
States.
I have been interested in the topic of “cults” for several years now and have done personal
research on them as well. I will admit that when I officially began this research, I already held a
negative opinion of cults. As my research progressed, my perspective of these movements began
to shift; suddenly the term “cult” seemed to carry too much of a negative connotation for what I
was looking at. I chose to switch to “new religious movements”, because the amount of distance
between a cult and an NRM appears to be largely a matter of opinion, not fact (Robbins 1993).
One of the first findings concerning new religious movements that I encountered was the
difficulty in pinning down an exact definition of NRMs. What is it, exactly, that makes a group
of worshippers a cult, as opposed to a religion? Is it the size of its following, or the believability
of its central legends? Is it how it is received by the community, or perhaps the actions it does or
does not take?
Most NRMs in the US are not harmful, exploitative or radical; the ones that do have these
characteristics, however, are given much more attention in the media, and consequently there
seems to be an automatic skepticism that permeates perception of NRMs. As mentioned, I
myself had fallen into this perception.
The portrayal of NRMs in the media is not the only reason for my initial slanted viewpoint.
Several years ago I spent a few months on the periphery of what I eventually concluded was an
exploitative organization that operated from a religious framework. I left the experience feeling
deceived, angry, and foolish. After my departure I continued researching the organization,
finding more and more stories of abuse and manipulation from former members – including a
New Yorker expose that had been done on the organization in the 1980s.
I initially came to the topic of cults intending to attempt to find a way to protect people from the
harmful effects of ones that are exploitative. Yet as my research progressed I became more and
more interested in the very definition of “cult” and the fact that whether or not a group is labeled
a cult rests largely on the perception and acceptance (or lack thereof) of outsiders – this has led
me to use the more objective term “new religious movement”. Coming from this perspective, I
began to see my desire to “protect others from cults” as actually paternalistic, something I was
not comfortable with. In the absence of protecting people from cults, I instead opted to examine
the conditions from which these religious movements are born. This has led me on a journey of
new religious movements that have cropped up in the history of the US.
In this paper I will be exploring two different NRMs that have arisen in the US: Mormonism and
Peoples Temple. I will be looking at the initial internal workings of NRMs and also the social
environments within which they arise. I will also give a very brief history of early NRMs in the
US.
Literature Review
Some NRMs may subscribe to beliefs that may cause many people to dismiss them as strange,
incredible, or unbelievable. Scientologists, for example, believe that ancient humans had their
souls tarnished when an alien god named Xenu kidnapped the spirits of extraterrestrials and
brought them to earth, placed them in multiple volcanoes around the world, and then detonated
nuclear bombs inside of those volcanoes, sending fragments of alien spirits flying out into the
world to infect humankind; Scientology claims it has the methods to cleanse people of these
infections (Sappell and Welkos 1990). The story may seem preposterous, but is it any more
unbelievable than a story of a God coming to earth as a human with the express purpose of
dying; one who could feed people from one endless basket of food; turn water into wine; heal
incurables with just a touch; endure torture as no human ever could; and then rise from the dead
three days later, move an impossibly large boulder that was sealing his burial cave, only to
ascend into the sky? This is the mythology of the New Testament part of the Bible, a book that
is followed by millions. How is one person to judge another for holding beliefs that seem odd
and incomprehensible to outsiders?
Another finding in the course of my research is that while NRMs certainly exist in periods of
social tension and upheaval, they do not require troubled times to flourish (McCall 2007); for
example, Mormonism arose during a period of relative stability, and it has grown to be one of the
biggest NRMs in the country today. One scholar believes that immigration patterns and policies,
not fear and social instability, are responsible for upsurges in NRMs (Melton 1993). Another
sees roots in the European Old World, where each period of scaling back of the authority of the
church bred new ideas and left niches to fill (Jenkins 2003).
Theory
Weber’s concept of charismatic authority is something that I will be exploring for my project.
Weber, while believing that most of a person’s charisma is generated within the individual, also
says that charisma is something that must be approved and noticed by larger society; lacking
social approval, charisma is often perceived as madness (Barnes 1978). Two notable scholars in
the field of NRM studies claim that “cult” leaders are indeed mentally ill, and that their illness is
reinforced and magnified by the acceptance of their behavior by those around him or her,
creating a positive feedback loop for mental instability (Bainbridge and Stark 2003).
For a person to become a charismatic leader, he or she must tap into and express a tension or
problem that is held by some in wider society yet not voiced or even sharply defined (Friedland
1964). Joseph Smith, prophet of the Mormons, ascended in the US during a time when many felt
that the Old World religions did not quite fit with the New World life; one author writes that
Smith, with his religion of new ideas rooted in biblical Old World religious stories, “took
measure of the public’s yearning and intuitively shaped his ideas to fit the precise dimensions of
that inchoate desire” (Krakauer 2003). Jim Jones, leader of Peoples Temple, began gathering
followers in the 1950’s in the Midwest when racism was rampant; most likely one reason his
church gained legitimacy was that Jones, with his message of racial inclusion, tapped into the
tension and anxiety felt by the black community, whose members filled Peoples Temple
gatherings (Richardson 1980).
Weber’s concept of charismatic authority supports the idea that NRMs need a social environment
that is infused with at least some tension or discomfort. This tension or discomfort could come
from multiple places; as mentioned above, one theory of NRM formation points to an
environment of social upheaval to explain their rise, while another says that immigration is the
most frequent cause – and increases in immigration themselves can create social tension.
Weber’s thoughts on charisma lend social theory to my project; they help by giving me a
framework within which to explore the reasons NRMs are born.
Methodology
The main methodology I will use will be archival research. This will be mostly qualitative, since
I have not found much quantitative research on NRMs, and I do not have the resources to do a
widespread survey on all NRMs in the U.S. Fortunately, there are one or two studies that survey
the frequency of NRMs in the U.S. over a long period of time, and I will be using these in my
research.
The archival research will consist of articles, books, documentaries, and perhaps pictures to help
illustrate the charisma of the different leaders of Mormonism and Peoples Temple. I am also
interested to see if any primary source documents from just before and after the time of a NRM’s
conception, such as letters and journals, can give me a sense of the social environment that
helped give birth to it.
Works Cited
Bainbridge, William S. and Rodney Stark. “Cult Formation: Three Compatible Models.” In Cults
and New Religious Movements: A Reader. Blackwell Publishing: (2003): 59-70.
Barnes, Douglas F. “Charisma and Religious leadership: An Historical Analysis.” Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion 17, no. 1 (1978): 1-18.
Friedland, William H. “For a Sociological Concept of Charisma.” Social Forces 43, no. 1 (Oct
1964): 18-26.
Jenkins, Phillip. “False Prophets and Deluded Subjects: The Nineteenth Century.” In Cults and
New Religious Movements: A Reader. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, (2003): 7388.
Krakauer, James. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. Anchor Books (New
York) 2003: p 114.
McCall, W. Vaughn. “Psychiatry and Psychology in the Writings of L. Ron Hubbard.” Journal
of Religion and Health 46, no. 3 (Sept. 2007): 437-447.
Melton, J. Gordon. “Another Look at New Religions.” Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science 527 (May 1993): 97-112.
Richardson, James T. “People’s Temple and Jonestown: A Comparative Critique.” Journal for
the Scientific Study of Religion 19, no. 3 (Sept. 1980): 239-255.
Robbins, Thomas, and David Bromley. “New Religious Movements in the United States.”
Archives de sciences sociales de religions 38, no. 83 (Jul. – Sept. 1993): 91-106.
Sappell, Joel and Robert W. Welkos. “Defining the Theology.” Los Angeles Times 24 June
1990.