Religion

New Religious Movements (NRMS)

Although traditional sects have been experiencing a decline in membership in resent year, other forms of religious activities have been in the rise. A scholar uses the term new religious movements to refer collectively to the broad rain of religious and spiritual groups that have images in western counties along side main stream of religion. NRMS compass and enormous diversity of groups from spiritual and self-help groups within the new age movement to exclusive sect such as Hare Krishna.

Many new religious movements are derived from main stream religious traditions such as Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism. While other have emerged from traditions, that were almost unknown in the west until recently. Some NRMS are essentially new creations of the charismatic leaders who head their activities. This is the case with the unification church led by Ren Sung Myung Moon. Membership in new religious movement mostly concept of converts rather than individual brought up in the particular faith members more often than not are well-educated and from middle class background.

Most new religious movements in the UK have originated in the USA the entire east. Although a few already existed at an early period in the UK since the 2^nd world war, the United Stated has witness a far greater for proliferation of religious movements than at any previous times in its history including serious of divisions between denominations. Most have been short lived but a few have achieved remarkable followings. Various to explain the popularity of NRMS have been advanced. Some observers argue that new religious movements should be seen as a respond to the process of liberalization and secularization within society and even within traditional churches. People who feel that traditional religions have become ritualistic and devoid of spiritual meaning may find comfort and a greater sense of community in a smaller. 

The prominent scholars, Bryan Wilson has pointed to NRMS as an outcome of rapist social change as traditional social changes are disrupted. People search for new explanation the right of group and sects that emphasize personal spirituality need to reconnect with their own value and belief in the face of uncertainty.

A further factor may be that NRMS appears to people who feel alienated from main steam society. Ray Willis has developed this idea further in examine the participation of middle class youth in NRMS. Although they are not marginalized from society, in a material sense they may feel isolated emotionally and spiritually. Membership in a cunt can heal to overcome this feeling of alienation.

Ray Willis, in his book proposes that new religious movement can be understood as falling into three broad categories, his division of NRMS into world affirming, world rejection and world accommodating. Movement is based on the relationship of each individual group to the large social world.

World affirming movements are more akin to self-heal groups than to conventional religious groups. Their movements that often lack ritual charges and formal theology. Turning their focus on member’s spiritual well beings as the name such as world affirming movement to not reject their outside world all its value rather they see to enhance their followers’ abilities to perform and success in that world.

The church of scientology is an example for a world affirming NRMS founded by Ron Hubbard. It’s grown from its original based in California to include a large membership in countries around the world. Scientology believes we are all spiritual beings but have neglected our spiritual nature. Many a strands of new age movement comes under the categories of world affirming movement (NAMS). The New Age Movement emerged in 1960 and contented the practices and ways of life. Pagan, Zen Wicca, Shaminsm, and Celt are only a few of the activities which are told often new ways. New age groups encourage followers to read discover their inner spiritual.

Followers of new age movement seek out and develop alternative ways of life in order to cope with the challenge of modernity. The aims of the new age movement coincide closely with the modern age.  People are encouraged to move beyond traditional values and expectation and to live their lives actively.

Examples

NRMs are diverse in their beliefs, practices, organization, and societal acceptance. Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe have consequently proposed that there are NRMs, particularly those who have gained adherents in a number of nations, which can be understood as forming global subcultures.

In general, the number of people who have affiliated with NRMs worldwide is small when compared to major world religions. However, the diversity of NRMs has seen the emergence of different groups in Africa, Japan, and Melanesia. In Africa, David Barrett has documented the emergence of 6,000 new indigenous churches since the late 1960s. In Japan a number of NRMs based on revitalised Shinto belief, as well as neo-Buddhist and New Age groups, have emerged, some of which originated in the late Nineteenth century in the Meiji Era and others in the aftermath of World War Two.

Around twenty-five percent of the world's distinct cultures are found in Melanesia, spanning the island nations from Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji. It was here that the phenomena of Cargo Cults were first discerned by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The Cargo Cults are interpreted as indigenous NRMs that have arisen in response to colonial and post-colonial cultural changes, including the influx of modernisation and capitalist consumerism.

At the time of their foundation, the religious traditions considered "established" or "mainstream" today were seen as new religious movements. For example, Christianity was opposed by people within Judaism and within the Roman culture as sacrilege toward existing doctrines. Likewise, Protestant Christianity was originally seen as a new religious movement or breakaway development.

In similar fashion , some of the contemporary naturalistic religions (naturalism) have evolved out of traditional Christianity and Judaism via process theology or using the term ‘God’ as a metaphor. Others have emerged via a dominating scientific perspective or by atheistic rebellion to the established beliefs of their culture. Still others have added a religious ingredient to their humanistic thinking. Most of these see the ritual/spiritual aspects of religious practice as necessary for broad adoption by many people. Examples are Religious Naturalism, Scientific Pantheism, Religious Humanism and some liberal Unitarians, Quakers, Rastafarians and Jews.

Joining

According to Marc Gallanter,^[13] typical reasons why people join "cults" include a search for community and a spiritual quest. Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge, in discussing the process by which individuals join new religious groups, have even questioned the utility of the concept of conversion, suggesting that affiliation is a more useful concept.^[14]

Jeffrey Hadden summarizes a lecture entitled "Why Do People Join NRMs?" (a lecture in a series related to the sociology of new religious movements, a term Hadden uses to include both cults and sects)^[15][16] as follows:

1. Belonging to groups is a natural human activity;
2. People belong to religious groups for essentially the same reasons they belong to other groups;
3. Conversion is generally understood as an emotionally charged experience that leads to a dramatic reorganization of the convert's life;
4. Conversion varies enormously in terms of the intensity of the experience and the degree to which it actually alters the life of the convert;
5. Conversion is one, but not the only reason people join religious groups;
6. Social scientists have offered a number of theories to explain why people join religious groups;
7. Most of these explanations could apply equally well to explain why people join lots of other kinds of groups;
8. No one theory can explain all joinings or conversions;
9. What all of these theories have in common is the view that joining or converting is a natural process.