Whether or not this is a reasonable estimate doesn't really matter. What
is clear is that new religions are constantly emerging and older religions slip away into oblivion. No new religion emerges full blown but evolves--sometimes slowly, other times at a rapid pace. New religions take the form of either a sect or a cult and
only gradually become recognized as a legitimate faith tradition of the culture
in which they reside.
This course is about how cults and sects emerge,
develop and interact with a host culture. The sparsity of historical records
prohibits detailed reconstruction of the emergence of any of the worlds great
religions. By studying emerging religions, however, we can learn a lot about how
and why these great religious came into existance and developed, as well as why
religion has persisted.
New religious movements have almost always been unpopular.
The leaders have been accused of illegitimate motives. Their followers have been
viewed as misguided, or worse yet, victims of some sinister form of "mind
control." The "cult controversies" of our day are not very different from the
conflicts of new religions over the course of human history. When religious
movements are new, there are no easy criteria for sorting out "legitimate" from
"illegitimate" groups; charlitans and co-artists from bonified religious
prophets. Only with the hindsight of history, and the evidence that a group has
survived and entered the mainstream of cultural life, do we tend to assign
"legitimacy" to new religions movements.
The United States presents a
special case in the study of new religions because theConstitution guarantees
both freedom of religious conscience and freedom to act upon one's beliefs. The
constitutionally guaranteed rights of religious establishment and exercise have
been repeatedly challenged throughout American history. As Harvey Cox of the
HarvardDivinity School has written, "[d]espite all the elegant rhetoric about the
Pilgrim fathers and the smiling exchanges at interfaith banquets, America has not
set an exemplary record in the area of religious freedom." The firey immolation
of David Koresh and his followers near Waco, Texas in 1993 is the most recent
tragedic episode in American history. However seemingly bizarre, the beliefs and
practices of the Branch Davidians were not all that different from other
religious movements in American history. To understand what happened to the
Davidians, we need to learn about the treatment of Catholic immigrants, the
Mormons, the Christian Scientists and many other groups.
Studying new religions from a social science perspective provides conceptual tools for
theanalysis of new religions. These conceptual tools help us understand how and
why contemporary conflicts are mirror images of conflicts that have occured
repeatedly in the history of humankind. The social sciences also provide
important insights about the nature and central role of religion in human social
organization.