Some groups have new ways to pray.
They started more recently. Some have many people. Some have only a few. These groups help people find meaning.
Do you know about new ideas?
Some groups have new ways to believe.
These are called new religious movements. They started more recently than old faiths. Some groups have a few members. Other groups have millions of people.
Some groups use the internet to meet. They may use new books. Some even talk about life in space. These groups help people find meaning in the world.
People have many ways to think about faith. Some groups are called new religious movements. These groups have modern origins. They are often different from the main religions in a country.
Some of these groups are very large. The Latter Day Saint movement has over 17 million members. Other groups are small with only a few people.
Scholars debate what makes a religion "new." Some look at groups from the 1800s. Others look at groups from the 1950s. Some groups use new holy books. These books might use modern science. Some groups even believe in life from other planets.
In the past, some groups faced pushback from others. In the 1970s, many people talked about these groups in the news. Today, many groups use the internet. They use it to find new members. They may even hold meetings online. Some ideas from these groups are now part of our daily lives.
The first Parliament of the World's Religions was held in 1893. It helped many people learn about different faiths.
A new religious movement, or NRM, is a spiritual group with modern origins. These groups are often on the edges of a society's main religious culture. Some NRMs are brand new ideas. Others are branches of older religions that have become distinct. Some groups focus on the individual person. Other groups focus on a very tight community. Scholars think there are tens of thousands of these movements worldwide. Some have only a few members, while others have millions.
There is no single way to define what makes a religion "new." This is a subject of much debate among scholars. Some thinkers look at very old religions like Hinduism or Islam as the standard. They might say a movement is new if it started after 1945 or the 1950s. Other experts look much further back in time. They point to the founding of the Latter Day Saint movement in 1830. They also look at Tenrikyo, which began in 1838.
Many different groups have formed across the globe at different times. Joseph Smith founded the Latter Day Saint movement in 1830. By 2023, it had over 17 million members. In 1863, Bahá'u'lláh founded the Bahá'í Faith in Iran. The Unity Church began in the United States in 1891. In 1911, Isaiah Shembe founded the Nazareth Baptist Church in South Africa. In 1954, L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology in the United States. These groups show how diverse modern spirituality can be.
History shows that these movements often face strong reactions. In the 1970s and 1980s, new movements became very visible in the news. This period is sometimes called a "cult boom." During this time, some groups faced opposition from secular and Christian organizations. This led to what scholars call the "cult wars." These were disputes over how people joined groups and how they were treated. Today, many NRMs use the internet to find members and hold meetings.
Every NRM is unique, so it is hard to group them all together. Some use their own holy books that include modern science. Others believe their truths are old ideas being brought back. Some groups even believe in life from other planets. For example, the Aetherius Society was founded in England in 1955. Some members may also choose to practice celibacy, which means staying unmarried. Even if a group is small, its ideas can sometimes reach the wider world.
A new religious movement, or NRM, is a spiritual or religious group with modern origins. These groups are often considered peripheral to the dominant religious culture of their society. This means they exist on the edges of the main religious traditions. Some NRMs are entirely novel in their origin. Other NRMs are branches of wider, older religions that have become distinct from their original denominations.
NRMs vary greatly in how they respond to the modernizing world. Some movements embrace individualism, focusing on the personal spiritual experience of the person. Other movements embrace tightly knit collective means, focusing on a strong, shared community. Scholars estimate that NRMs number in the tens of thousands worldwide. Their size varies significantly. Some groups have only a few members. Others have thousands, and a few have grown to include more than one million members.
Scholars debate how to define the "new" in new religious movements. There is no single, agreed-upon criterion for this classification. One perspective compares NRMs to large, well-established religions like Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Some scholars use the end of the Second World War in 1945 or the 1950s as a defining time period. Others, like George Chryssides, look much further back. They point to the founding of the Latter Day Saint movement in 1830 or Tenrikyo in 1838 as early examples.
History shows a wide variety of these movements appearing across different eras and nations. In 1830, Joseph Smith founded the Latter Day Saint movement, which had over 17 million members by 2023. In 1863, Bahá'u'lláh founded the Bahá'í Faith in Iran. In 1889, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad founded the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam. In 1911, Isaiah Shembe founded the Nazareth Baptist Church in South Africa. The 1950s and 1960s saw a rise in many groups during the height of counterculture movements. For example, Scientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard in 1954.
In 1893, the first Parliament of the World's Religions was held in Chicago. This event included NRMs such as spiritualism, the Bahá'í Faith, and Christian Science.
The conference allowed Asian religious teachers, like the Jain preacher Virchand Gandhi, to reach a wide American audience. Later, in the 1950s, the Aetherius Society was founded in England. This group is an example of a "UFO religion," which combines traditional religious principles with beliefs in extraterrestrial life.
New religious movements have often faced significant social tension. During the 1970s and 1980s, many groups became highly visible in North America and Western Europe. This period is sometimes described as a "cult boom" or "cult explosion" in certain literature. This visibility led to the "cult wars," which involved disputes over conversion and allegations of coercive persuasion. These disputes included legal battles and the growth of organized opposition, such as the secular anti-cult movement and the Christian countercult movement.
Despite these tensions, the study of NRMs has become a formal academic field. Scholars study how these movements relate to processes like globalization, secularization, and individualization. In the 21st century, many NRMs use the internet for recruitment and rituals, a practice called cybersectarianism. Even if a movement does not become a dominant faith, its ideas can still spread. Scholar Elijah Siegler noted that many "New Age" concepts introduced by NRMs have become part of mainstream worldwide culture.
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