What’s “New” in New Religious Movements?

By Franz Winter, Visiting Scholar (2024-25). Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey.

The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions.

We should more carefully consider the word “new” in the term New Religious Movement (NRM), a fluid and debated category in the academic study of religion. NRMs’ newness is not merely due to their emergence during the last two centuries. I argue that NRMs are new, in fact, because of the experimental aspects and innovative features they embrace as they reconceptualize traditional religions, responding to the socio-cultural changes of modernity.

NRMs’ newness attracts controversy and media attention, usually related to the spectacular ways their members and founders present themselves in the public sphere: the Unification Church with its mass wedding ceremonies in sport stadiums, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness’ orange-robed devotees publicly chanting praise of the “Lord,” the Church of Scientology’s evocative advertising campaigns with celebrity members. Not all NRMs are so spectacular. Some of them establish global organizations with stable, substantial, worldwide membership: the Baha’i, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Soka Gakkai.

The newness of NRMs is about more than their age, for all religions were once new religions, making them not qualitatively different from other religions. All NRMs are embedded in established religious traditions as well as the cultures of their founders. Their religious backgrounds—whether Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or something else—shape NRMs’ general frames and determine patterns in their contents, structure, and development. NRMs experiment and innovate by modifying and building upon their backgrounds. Nearly all the founding figures have a history of prior religious affiliations, though their affiliations are often loose, driven by dissatisfaction and questioning.

By focusing on NRMs’ experimental aspects, we observe that they put forward untried teachings, reshape doctrines, implement novel organizational structures, and propose evolving solutions for members’ concerns, evaluating whether to permanently adopt these fresh aspects or to further experiment. NRMs continually adjust to new challenges, sometimes enacting major shifts that demand a lot from their members. They do all this while pushing against suspicions and mistrust about their experimental aspects from traditional religions, mainstream cultures, and local neighbors.

Consider millenarian NRMs’ experimental aspects. When the end of the world does not come as prophesied, some NRMs postpone the world’s alleged end date. Others integrate these passing apocalypse dates into the doctrines by offering a “spiritual” interpretation for the world not ending: the proposed apocalypse did happen, but the effects are only understood by the members. These millenarian innovations and experiments are not different from issues faced by traditional religions’ experiments. For instance, early Christianity theology developed in part by searching for a proper explanation why the prophesied end of time didn’t happen, experimenting with the apocalyptical message inherent to Christianity’s foundation. Early Christianity can help interpret millenarian NRMs, and millenarian NRMs can help interpret early Christianity.

By focusing on NRM’s innovative features, we observe that they provide religious answers to topics traditionally unheeded. They respond to issues unaddressed by seemingly inflexible traditional religions locked into established structures. NRMs address societal changes unanticipated by traditional religions’ founders. All religions emerge from a social context; they do not come into being fully formed, out of the blue. NRMs emerge from different, more recent contexts than their parent religions, requiring them to be responsive and innovative. NRMs may enhance the practices and doctrines of their background religions and communities, but these groups eventually break away, growing into communities separate from their religious origins.

Consider NRM’s innovative features displayed by their fresh approaches to media. Unbound by established religions’ typical suspicions of new media, NRMs promote themselves using the most recent of emergent media technologies. Charles Taze Russell revitalized the Bible Study movement, which eventually became the Jehovah’s Witnesses, by organizing a multimedia production called The Photo-Drama of Creation, an eight-hour, four-part show that combined magical lantern slides and short film clips with recorded speech, a highly innovative media approach in 1914. Japanese NRMs, such as the infamous Aum Shinrikyō or Kōfuku no Kagaku, aka “Happy Science,” were founded in the 1980s and made extensive use of manga publishing and anime film. They produced manga and anime products that gained the attention of younger people, but manga literature also inspired their teachings.

Studying NRMs within the frame of a larger socioreligious continuum and history is an important enhancement for the study of religion. As if observing a chemical reaction in a test tube, we have the opportunity to glimpse the dynamics of religious history as they emerge. Paradoxically, the experimental and innovative features of these religions considered new can provide insights about religions considered old, which once also radically experimented and innovated. And vice versa.