NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS - SOME PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION


George D Chryssides
Religious Studies Dept.
The University of Wolverhampton
Walsall Campus, Gorway Road
Walsall, WS1 3BD, UK



Which of the following religious groups should we class as 'New Religious Movements' (NRMs)?

The Baha'i, the Church of England, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), the Church of Scientology, the Nirankaris, the Ravidassis, Soka Gakkai International (SGI), Tarot readers, Theravada Buddhism, Transcendental Meditation (TM), the Unification Church (the 'Moonies'), the Unitarian Universalists, the United Reformed Church (URC).


I suspect that most readers will instinctively have selected the Mormons, Scientology, SGI, TM and the Unification Church as clear examples of new religious movements. Probably they will have rejected the Church of England, Theravada Buddhism and the United Reformed Church, being parts of the world's major religious traditions. Possibly they will have hesitated over the Baha'i, the Nirankaris, the Ravidassis, Tarot and the Unitarian Universalists: after all, the Baha'i faith may be better classified as an independent world religion, the Nirankaris and Ravidassis are Sikh or at least Sikh-related groups which seldom crop up in discussions of NRMs, and although the Unitarians and the Universalists merged in 1957 in the USA, both traditions go back a number of centuries.


Current Definitions of New Religious Movements

Two types of definition tend to be employed in the field of new religious movements. Opponents of NRM's are inclined to refer to the 'cultic' or sectarian nature of NRMs and to define them in terms of a set of negative characteristics, while scholars have tended to look for a value-free definition which relates to their time and place of origin.

The above examples highlight the need for a radical reappraisal of commonly used definitions of NRMs. If NRMs are defined in terms of their age, the Mormons are not so new any longer, whereas the URC is in fact the youngest of the groups I have listed, and hence ought logically to count as an NRM. If NRMs are defined in terms of being 'sectarian', then the Nirankaris and the Ravidassis should be included for the same reasons as the Mormons and the Unification Church; yet one seldom, if ever, discovers them to be the subject matter for western anticultist hostility. And if one claims to identify NRMs on the grounds of their allegedly 'destructive' nature, how can one do this without subjectivity and undue emphasis on pieces of anecdotal evidence?

In what follows, I hope to develop a more appropriate definition of new religious movements than those used by scholars and by critics of the so-called 'cults'. In doing so I shall not be undertaking a mere 'ivory tower' exercise, for arriving at an appropriate definition of an NRM will enable academics to gain a clear understanding of what falls rightly within the scope of their subject area and what does not. Those who are responsible for planning courses on new religious movements will have a clearer idea of what should be in their syllabuses and what can safely be excluded. In the process, both the academic and teacher will have gained in consistency by no longer paying lip service to a definition of NRM which does not correspond with their professional approach. If an appropriate definition is used, members of new religions are more likely to be reassured that they are being given fair treatment. As things stand, academics and anti-cultists alike are inclined to bend or ignore their professed definitions almost at will to suit their own purposes and this lack of consistency has caused considerable offence to a number of religious communities who, for example, have little wish to be bracketed together with 'Moonies' and Scientologists. A final advantage of a realistic and objective definition is that cult critics and cult counsellors will also achieve a clearer and more objective idea of their remit, without having to make premature value-judgments about which 'cults' are 'destructive' and which are harmless.


Anti-cultist definitions

I shall first examine the anti-cultist type of definition. The use of the word 'cult' which is characteristically employed by anti-cultists carries pejorative connotations, as is evidenced by the consistency with which the NRMs themselves take exception to the term. New religious movements are dubbed by their opponents as 'cultic', or, more specifically, as 'destructive cults'. The term 'cultic' is often made more specific by the identification of several features which are deemed to be the 'marks of a cult'. One fairly typical example of such a definition emphasizes their secrecy, deceitfulness, authoritarian leadership, indoctrination ('brainwashing'), total commitment and lack of orthodoxy amongst other features. (MacKenzie and Morrison, 1982, p 2). Alternatively, Christian evangelical critics have attempted to define 'cults' in terms of their lack of presumed orthodoxy. Thus Charles Braden, an early and oft-quoted critic of NRMs, writes: 'A cult ... is any religious group which differs significantly in some one or more respects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expression of religion in our total culture.' (Braden, 1951, in Larson, 1982, p 14; Martin, 1985, p 11.)

Academics, of course, have long since abandoned the word 'cult' as a descriptor, preferring the term 'new religious movement' for two principal reasons. First, 'cult' has pejorative connotations and begs important questions about a religious group's integrity. Second, the anti-cult movement has come to use the term as if it meant a religious (or, they might say, quasi-religious) group which is new and disliked. Such a definition of the term 'cult' is widely at variance with definitions which have been used within the human sciences.

It is clear that the word 'cult' as used by modern sociologists cannot properly characterize groups such as the Unification Church, ISKCON and the Church of Scientology. It is true that there has been some disagreement regarding the definition of cult. According to Troeltsch (1931), its distinctive characteristic is its preoccupation with the mystical- a characterization which seems no more true of the Jehovah's Witnesses than the Church of England, or of L Ron Hubbard than Meister Eckhart. However, the majority of social scientists now tend to prefer 'heterodoxy' or deviance from the dominant culture as the cult's distinguishing feature. Whichever definition is favoured, however, a cult is normally regarded as something which is loosely organized, and probably in a relatively undeveloped state of being prior to its becoming more formally organized as a 'sect'. (Campbell, 1972, pp 119-135.) This characterization of the cult, of course, stands in sharp contrast to the stereotype of the NRM perpetuated by the anti-cult movement who claim that 'the cults' are tightly controlled by an authoritarian leader with very strict and rigorously enforced rules about morality, commitment and community living.

Anti-cultism has proved singularly resilient to such objections. With characteristic contempt for academic research in the field, two Christian evangelical commentators write as follows:

"We must never abandon the legitimate use of a term simply because of its misuse by others. Psychologists have tried to define a cult as a group that alters one's behavior and psychological outlook on life. Sociologists have defined a cult as a group that does not fit the norms of a given society. Both of these recent endeavors fail to address what is essential to all cults, that is theology. (sic) Thus, we will use the theological definition as the only one that addresses all aspects of life, thought, and behavior." (McDowell and Stewart, 1992, pp 13-14.)

McDowell and Stewart proceed to offer their 'theological' definition of 'cult', as follows:

"A cult is a group of people basing their beliefs upon the world view of an isolated leadership, which always denies the central doctrines of Christianity as taught from the Bible." (Ibid, p 15.)

Quite apart from the problems inherent in agreeing on 'the central doctrines of Christianity' and on what the Bible actually teaches, such a definition effectively relegates all non-Christian religions to the 'cultic': presumably the whole of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism would have to be regarded as 'cults'. Indeed, in some anti-cult literature, denominations which are as mainstream as Roman Catholicism are relegated to the 'cultic', on the grounds that certain Protestant commentators believe that it departs from the Biblical tradition.

Attempting to differentiate between 'destructive' and 'benign' cults, as some critics of NRMs have tried to do, does not improve matters to any great degree, as Eileen Barker has ably argued. (Barker, 1989, pp 5-6.)  Whether an NRM is 'destructive' is often a matter of opinion, depending on one's standpoint. A parent who has 'lost a child' to an NRM may believe that the 'cult' has proved to be 'destructive' to family life. By contrast, the 'child' (who is usually an adult of at least 18 years of age) may believe that he or she has discovered the solution to life's problems, and in some cases liberation from oppressive parents into the bargain!


Academic definitions

For the reasons I have mentioned, academic writers are often contemptuous of such anti-cultist and Christian evangelical attacks on new religious movements, since the anti-cultists'definition of what does and does not count as a 'destructive cult' appears to be arbitrary, and because they interpose their own value judgments concerning religious and moral matters - judgments which are generally viewed as inappropriate by the sociologist and phenomenologist of religion who seek to be value free. Consequently, academic writers have tended to favour a definition of NRMs which refers to their time and place of origin. Times and places seem to be hard facts defining NRM's which, one might suppose, would help academics to display the characteristics of NRM's objectively; they contrast with the arbitrary basis of the anti-cultist definition which appears simply to rely on an inner feeling or theological conviction that certain groups, regardless of time or place of origin, are 'cultic' or 'destructive'.

The historical bench-mark normally taken to divide new religions from old is the Second World War or shortly after. Thus Peter Clarke identifies his focus as 'those new religions that have emerged in Britain since 1945'. (Clarke, 1987, p 5.) Eileen Barker places the watershed slightly later when she writes,

"The term new religious movement (NRM) is used to cover a disparate collection of organisations, most of which have emerged in their present form since the 1950s, and most of which offer some kind of answer to questions of a fundamental religious, spiritual or philosophical nature." (Barker, 1989, p 9).

Other scholars such as Melton and Moore suggest that although 'postwar' provides a definitional criterion the real mushrooming of new religious movements came in the 1960s and 1970s. (Melton and Moore, 1982; Beckford, 1985; Nelson, 1987.)

Although academics are often confident that they have 'got it right' and the anti-cultists have 'got it wrong', I wish to suggest that there are serious deficiencies in the definition of NRMs which academics claim to employ. For example, Clarke's apparent restriction of the definition to Britain fails to acknowledge new religious movements as a wider western, indeed worldwide, phenomenon - a restriction which indeed runs counter to Clarke's own researches which are global rather than national. Second, the restriction of the term 'new' to the post-Second World War period entails that subsequent generations of scholars will be obliged to re-define the term. Post-Second World War will no longer be 'new' in two centuries time, when - one imagines - ever newer religious movements will arise and provide the subject matter for scholarly research.

Perhaps even more worryingly, the post-World War Two criterion, or, worse still, those criteria which point to a more recent date, fail to correspond to our intuitive identification of new religious movements and indeed the subject area which is in reality demarcated by scholars such as Clarke, Barker, Melton and Moore and indeed nearly all students of religion. If a new religious movement is indeed to be equated with a group which arose after 1945 it will simply not do to exclude the United Reformed Church on the grounds that it resulted from the merger of two older denominations. Nor is it satisfactory to include Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons on the ground that they are 'nearly new' or 'sufficiently similar' to those recently-arisen groups which unarguably fall within the researcher's declared agenda. In practice the anti-cult criterion - 'new and disliked' - seems a more reliable means of distinguishing those religions which academics intuitively wish to classify as NRMs from those which they do not.


Towards a new definition of NRMs

Is it possible to arrive at an adequate definition of new religious movements which avoids the arbitrariness and subjectivity of the anti-cultists and yet envelops all those and only those groups which are clearly recognizable as NRMs? I believe it is possible to do this by combining certain elements from each of the two types of definition. Hence I offer the following criteria as a means of defining NRMs in a more acceptable and realistic way.

(1) An NRM is 'recent'. 
First, I would suggest that an NRM is a 'recent' phenomenon. By 'recent' I mean recent in inception, not in its arrival in Britain or in any other country in the world. Thus mainstream forms of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Sikhism do not count as new religions, even though they may be new to the West. I would prefer to leave the precise definition of 'recent' fairly vague rather than specify the exact time before which an organization can no longer be regarded as 'new'. The Unification Church, The Family, the Scientologists and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness are certainly recent; the Quakers and the Unitarians are certainly not; and the Latter Day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses are sufficiently recent to be of interest to the student of new religions.

The somewhat vague nature of this definition need not worry us unduly. The fact that I cannot specify an exact date on which, for example, my car ceased to be new and became old does not mean that 'new' and 'old' are not appropriate distinctions to make about cars. Indeed the somewhat nebulous definition of 'new' takes into account the fact that currently new religions will age and perhaps in some cases become the older more established religions of the future.

(2) An NRM is outside the mainstream. 
I have argued elsewhere that it is not the role of the scholar to adjudicate on matters of orthodoxy and heresy. (Chryssides, 1991). Nevertheless I believe that the critics of new religious movements have alighted on an important point in defining NRMs when they accuse them of 'heretical' beliefs or 'unorthodox' practices. For the Christian evangelical, the Mormons and the Unification Church have undoubtedly touched raw nerves when they claim respectively that Joseph Smith received a new revelation of Jesus Christ and that the new messiahs are now on earth to complete Jesus' unfinished work.

The student of religion may identify theological differences within and among religions but does not adjudicate on questions of 'orthodoxy' or 'heresy' - something that can only be done from the standpoint of religious commitment. However, the student of religion can appropriately note that those movements which we instinctively classify as NRMs find difficulty in securing a position within mainstream religious orthodoxy or orthopraxy. For example, when the Unification Church applied for membership of various national Councils of Christian Churches, it was consistently turned down and the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons would not particularly wish to be part of mainstream Christianity (although of course they would still classify themselves as 'Christian') since they consider all the mainstream churches to be in serious error. Similarly, the Soka Gakkai is often regarded as an inauthentic form of Buddhism amongst Buddhists more widely. Not only did Nichiren, their historical founder-leader regard all other forms of Buddhism as inadequate but other Buddhists, conversely, often regard them as 'not truly Buddhist'. Despite Soka Gakkai International being one of the largest Buddhist groups in Britain the current edition of the Buddhist Society Directory includes only an indirect reference to Soka Gakkai under the entry for the library of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy which is described as a centre 'associated with SGI-UK, a lay Buddhist organisation'. 

The criterion of being 'outside the mainstream' does not only apply those groups that identify themselves within a major world religion but find difficulty in securing adequate recognition. Additionally, there exists a cluster of religious groups which are 'free standing' and which cannot easily be related to any single mainstream tradition. For example, there is the group of religions which Paul Heelas characterizes as the 'self religions' - a category which embraces movements such as Exegesis (Programmes Ltd), Rebirthing, Transcendental Meditation and the Church of Scientology. (Heelas, 1982.) Such groups of course have no particular desire to be aligned with a single major world tradition although some may sometimes claim to draw on mainstream traditions - Hinduism and Buddhism in the case of Scientology. (Anon, 1994, p xxvii.) The fact that they are 'free standing' and hence lack a specific religious identity helps the anti-cult movement claim that because their goals are unclear they are possibly sinister.

ISKCON is perhaps more of a problem. Not only does ISKCON claim to be the world's oldest religious tradition, stemming from the ancient Vedic tradition, but it now has a large following of those who are Hindu by birth and is accepted by the National Council of Hindu Temples in the UK. There are of course many problems in defining what is 'mainstream' in such a set of traditions as diverse as those that comprise the Hindu religions, and in which there is no tightly defined hierarchy to establish orthodoxy and orthopraxy. However, I believe that there are certain aspects of ISKCON that mark it out from traditional Hinduism as found in western society. As I have discussed elsewhere (Chryssides, 1994) most Hindu families in the West maintain a form of caste identity determined by birth and which is evident in their social contacts and marriage arrangements. ISKCON has called into question conventional Hindu attitudes to caste by attributing to the Bhagavad Gita the teaching that the original four varnas referred to societal function rather than to social status and that the true brahmin is the one who understands 'Supreme Absolute Truth.' (Prabhupada, pp 74-75.) Caste, according to Prabhupada and his disciples, is not something which is gained by heredity and indeed it would not be possible for the western convert who embraces ISKCON's beliefs and practices to find a niche in a caste system which belongs to a different society and has operated in a very rigid manner for millennia. A further implication of this is that the western leaders, who have acquired what effectively amounts to brahmin status within the organization, enjoy the somewhat controversial status of white western brahmins. Although this may not seem incongruous to westerners who remain outside any caste system, it is a remarkable feature to the Hindu and arouses comment particularly inside India. In Vrindaban, for example, where its international headquarters are situated, ISKCON is regarded as an unusual expression of Hinduism.

(3) The NRM attracts converts from the indigenous culture. Although issues of evangelization tactics, 'recruitment' and allegations of 'brainwashing' have assumed a certain importance in academic study (Barker, 1984; Clarke, 1987), the concept of conversion is seldom, if ever, regarded by academics as a defining characteristic of NRM's. Proselytizing methods loom much larger in the anti-cultists' discussion of the phenomenon and anti-cult leaflets which state that 'anyone is vulnerable' make the point that members of the public may find themselves converting to a religion which often appears to others to be socially unacceptable or culturally inappropriate. (FAIR, 1990, p 4.)

One may of course regard anti-cultist claims about issues of conversion and alleged indoctrination as exaggerated, even hysterical. Barker, for example, has convincingly argued that 'Moonies are no more likely to stagnate into mindless robots than are their peers who travel to the city on the 8.23 each morning'. (Barker, 1984, p 258.) Nevertheless, whatever the excesses of the anti-cultists, the fact that NRMs attract converts seems clearly to be an important feature in determining which organizations come under the scope of cult-monitoring activity, and - I believe - academic scrutiny. Evangelical Christians in particular are concerned that NRMs attract converts whose indigenous religious identity might find a more conventional expression through western Christianity. Conversion (or 'recruitment') is thus seen as demanding not only apostasy from a more appropriate religion which is believed to offer the Truth, but also perhaps a departure from a conventional way of living which gives positive value to material possessions, comfort and a lifestyle which incorporates conventional secular occupations such as medicine, teaching, and so on. The fact that the lifestyle afforded by the NRM is sometimes radically different from western cultural expectations is a common source of difficulty between NRM converts and their families. To the parents whose child was destined to become a lawyer, a teacher or a social worker life as a sannyasin or similar symbolizes 'dropping out' or failure. For the convert, by contrast, to live an unexamined conventional life is failure in comparison with the spiritual liberation that the NRM is believed to afford.

The proselytizing aspect of the phenomenon, I believe, is highly relevant to our initial intuitive decision as to which religious movements might count as NRMs. As Barker has pointed out (1989, pp 11-13), one important characteristic of new religious movements is the first generation convert. What the new religious movements lack in contrast with older religions are family traditions of belonging; because NRMs are new, individual members belong by choice rather than families by habit. Even in the case of NRMs that do not actively proselytize such as Gurdjieff, belonging has come about by converting to the movement rather than a through a long-standing family tradition.

As NRMs become older, of course, a second generation arises and as time goes on the proportion of first generation converts declines. This has already happened in the case of the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and we are beginning to see this occurring in the Unification Church and ISKCON where members ensure that their children are brought up within the movements and remain in it as they mature. When this occurs, movements are less likely to be viewed as 'threatening to society' since they can no longer justly be accused of 'splitting up families' to the same degree. On the contrary, membership is more likely to be seen as contributing to family coherence and stability. One reason for religious organizations such as Methodism, Quakerism and Unitarianism no longer being regarded as 'cultic', is that there are now long family traditions of belonging.

The 'conversion' criterion, I believe, explains why scholars and anti-cultists singularly ignore groups like the Ravidassis and the Nirankaris when it comes to identifying NRMs. Both of these are eastern phenomena, drawing principally on easterners for their membership, and they attract few, if any, converts from Christianity or secular materialism; they consist purely of 'fringe' groups of Sikhs. By contrast, modern Sufi groups in the West are more likely to count as NRMs, since their following is often western, rather than confined to those who have been Muslim. (This, I think, is in line with our intuitive classification.)


Some problems

I shall now turn to some possible objections that may be raised against my three definitional criteria of NRM's as recent, outside the mainstream and making converts from the indigenous culture.

( 1) Borderline cases

An inevitable problem for any definition is that there are borderline cases. The Western Buddhist Order might provide one example of this in respect of recentness and orthodoxy. On the one hand, it regards itself as a form of an ancient religion and is treated relatively sympathetically (though not uncritically) by mainstream exponents. On the other hand, the WBO as an organization is new (founded in 1968).

The fact that there are shades of grey of course does not mean that there is no difference between black and white. In the case of the WBO, we might classify it as an NRM on the grounds that it is recent, not quite mainstream (it explicitly attempts to innovate and to devise a form of Buddhism acceptable to the west) and, above all, it attracts mainly converts who do not come from an indigenous Buddhist background.

A rather more problematic borderline case is the Baha'i faith. Unlike the Ahmadiyya it does not claim to be a form of Islam but an independent world religion. Although some anti-cult writers classify the Baha'i as 'cultic' (Harrison, 1990; Larson, 1989; Martin, 1985; Petersen, 1975), some scholars of religion have now seen their way to giving the Baha'i a chapter in its own right in books on world religions, distinguishing it both from Islam and 'New Religions'. (Bradshaw, 1979; Hinnells, 1984.)

As far as the date of Baha'i is concerned, its inception is more recent than the advent of Mormonism. Baha'u'llah died in 1892 almost half a century after Joseph Smith (1805-44) and the Universal House of Justice, which is the official governing body of the Baha'i community, was not established until as recently as 1963. On the 'recent' criterion, then, Baha'ism ought to be a candidate for classification as an NRM.

What makes the Baha'i a problem case is my criterion of 'not being mainstream'. Viewed historically, Baha'ism arose from an Islamic background and encountered severe hostility from the Muslim authorities on account of its teaching that Muhammad was not the final prophet. The self-perception of the modern follower of the Baha'i faith is different. Baha'is now see themselves as an independent tradition, not an Islamic sect. In this respect they differ from Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Unificationists who are New Christian groups emphatically claiming to belong to their parent world religion, Christianity.

This discussion of problem cases does not finally resolve the question of whether or not we should regard the Western Buddhist Order or the Baha'i faith as new religious movements. What it does show is that my criteria cause us to hesitate - which makes explicit and open what I believe our intuitions have told us in the first place.


( 2) Problems of correspondence

In the preceding discussion I have attempted to arrive at a definition which corresponds with our intuitions. However, it may be questioned whether my definitional criteria in fact achieve this; a question which might be posed by anti-cultists and academics alike. Anti-cult groups have seen fit to include groups such as forms of Theravada Buddhism, Opus Dei and even Morris Cerullo in their list of 'cults', but these  appear fairly clearly to fall outside the definition I have proposed. Similarly, some academics would suggest that biorhythms, astrology and Tarot are examples of new religious movements  which merit serious academic treatment.

Since there is no complete unanimity on the issue of what counts as a 'cult' or a new religion I cannot realistically expect to offer a definition that will generate a universally agreed and exhaustive list of NRMs. What I can more realistically hope to have done is identify a set of criteria that will clearly include all those groups that we uncontroversially and instinctively recognize as NRMs and which will clearly exclude all those groups that we uncontroversially and instinctively recognize as falling outside the category. Where there is disagreement about what should count as a new religious movement, I can at least attempt to identify some of the issues which give rise to diversity of opinion.

Part of the problem may lie, of course, in one's definition of religion, and in particular, whether one adopts a 'functional' or a 'supernaturalist' definition. Clarke, for example, is firmly committed to a functional view of religion where religion is regarded as 'a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group of people struggles with these ultimate problems of human life' (Yinger, 1970, p 7), rather than the 'supernaturalist' definitions offered by scholars such as Tylor (1871) and Otto (1917) . Biorhythms, for example, may afford the means of struggling with life's problems, but they need not presuppose any supernaturalist beliefs.

The question, 'What is religion?' has of course been a matter of long debate, with no agreed answer. I do not propose to contribute here to the discussion, merely to acknowledge that what falls under my proposed definition of a new religious movement depends on the standpoint of individual scholars on the wider question of what religion itself actually is. This being so, it is hardly surprising that we will continue to find grey areas where a particular group or practice does not have an undisputed claim to a religious identity, and, a fortiori, to an identity as an NRM.

There is, however, another reason why some readers may hesitate to describe biorhythms, Tarot and horoscopes as 'religions'. It may be suggested that they are not sufficiently all-embracing to be regarded as full-blown religions. Arguably, they are merely devices or 'tools' for coping with a discrete set of problems rather than solving the wider problem of life's entire meaning. Within the Semitic religions the notion of a comprehensive religion that brooks no rivals has tended to prevail - a view which no doubt explains the hostility of evangelical Christians to practices such as astrology, cartomancy, ouija boards and so on which are perceived as alien and superfluous ways of dealing with problems to which the Christian faith already claims to provide a complete and final answer. By contrast, eastern spirituality has tended to encourage seekers not to restrict the range of religions on which they may draw: different religions may offer different benefits for different needs.

It would be inappropriate here to attempt to discuss whether or not seekers should embrace one religion or several at any one point in their lives. What I can do, however, is to indicate the relevance of this controversy for my discussion. Exclusivists (those who advocate the all-consuming nature of a single religion) will no doubt be inclined to denigrate the status of practices such as those to which I have referred, claiming that at best they are mere 'tools', 'devices' or pastimes which can in no way compete with the profundity and richness of their own true and all-embracing religion. Inclusivists, by contrast, believing that any religion offers important but not necessarily comprehensive benefits will grant a somewhat more favourable status to such activities, seeing them as providing benefits which are comparable to those offered by other activities which are more uncontroversially religious.

In sum, then, although my proposed criteria for defining new religious movements cannot provide a universal consensus about which movements or activities correspond to NRMs, I believe I have demonstrated that many of the disputed areas turn on questions relating to the definition and nature of religion in general.


(3 ) Scholars' definitions and 'self-definitions'

A third problem concerns the self-perception of new religious movements. Scholars who adopt a broadly phenomenological approach to the study of religion will acknowledge the importance of understanding a religious community as if from within, without bringing to bear one's own preconceptions and prejudices. The self-perception of a religious community is therefore of supreme importance and any definition of the phrase 'new religious movement' ought ideally to reflect NRMs' own self-understanding .

It must be conceded that a correspondence between the definition which I have offered and the self-understanding of the religious groups concerned does not invariably hold. For example, Transcendental Meditation claims emphatically that it is not a religion. Baha'i as we have noted accepts that it is an independent religion but not a new one; ISKCON claims to be the world's oldest religious tradition and the Western Buddhist Order prefers to be regarded as an expression of historical Buddhism rather than as a new religious movement.

Both academics and anti-cultists might agree (albeit for different reasons) that an organization's self-definition is not decisive. Thus, although Transcendental Meditation stakes no claim to be a religion it has the same role as organizations that are unarguably religious when it comes to organizing one's life and providing meaning for dealing with life's main events and crises. The role of the secret mantra in TM seems to operate functionally in almost precisely the same way as the chant of 'nam myoho renge kyo' does for the Soka Gakkai member. If it is argued that TM can be practised alongside one's own religion (and hence is a 'method' rather than a religion) it should be remembered that SGI also claims that its practice can be adopted without abandoning one's existing faith, whatever that may be.

The problem lies in the fact that different NRMs may themselves use different definitions of religion. It would be confusing for the academic researcher to switch definitions when switching one's attention to different groups and indeed any such practice would preclude the classification of such groups in accordance with the consistent and objective criteria which are needed for academic study. While TM may not be a religion when measured against the definition which its own practitioners employ, it is certainly a religion in the sense in which many academic researchers would define the term.

In the case of Baha'i and the Western Buddhist Order, I suspect their difficulty in accepting the label 'NRM' is somewhat different. Because there is considerable overlap between the subject area marked out by academic researchers and anti-cultists, the term 'new religious movement' has sometimes been perceived as the academics' synonym for the word 'cult' and is therefore no more welcome as a descriptor. Their difficulty therefore lies in not wishing to be bracketed with other new groups which have a reputation for being controversial and sinister. It is unfortunate that the anti-cultists' use of the term 'cult' has come to have such pejorative connotations. No new group is at home with the description 'cultic'; if only they could be persuaded that academics are not implying similar hostility with the term 'new religious movement' such difficulties would disappear. For better or for worse such movements are new and, I believe, fit the definition of NRM which I have offered - a definition which is purely descriptive, not evaluative.


Conclusion

I hope that the preceding discussion has highlighted many of the problems and inconsistencies of definitions which academics and anti-cultists alike have offered for a New Religious Movement. My proposed criteria for a new definition correspond more closely, I believe, to the agenda of both interested parties, an agenda which is generally not fully articulated. I do not pretend that I have provided the basis of a definition which invariably provides a sharp demarcation between those groups which are NRMs and those which are not. There will always be grey areas and there will continue to exist related problems such as how to define religion itself or how to define 'dominant culture'. In my discussion I have not tried to achieve the impossible by resolving such disputes but I hope that I have at least provided the grounds for a somewhat more appropriate definition of the subject area for those who work in the field of new religious movements.



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