In the previous article you were acquainted with the classification of NSD, based on it you can distinguish features such as phenomena of religious life.
The attempt of fusion of polytheism (Eastern cults) and monotheism (Abrahamic tradition), leading to the actualization of pantheistic motifs – “all is one”. Hence the emphasis on environmental issues and healthy lifestyles, explicitly or latently inherent in almost all NSDs; as an example, the concept of “Gay Earth” (Lovelock-Margulis) used in New Age ideology, which has gained a stable scientific status, can be cited.
“Modernized” – as compared to “traditional” – forms of organization of NSD, among which the essential role is played by horizontal links instead of a hierarchical vertical. However, as noted above, we should not forget that a number of “traditional” confessions prefer horizontal structures to vertical ones (late Protestant denominations such as Baptists, Pentecostals, Congregationalists, and some Buddhist movements). Within the NRD, typical examples of a “horizontal” structure are presented by the Christian Commonwealth as well as by a number of New Age movements. The most typical domestic example is the state of the Vissarionite community outside the Minusinsk commune in the second half of the 1990s and early 2000s.
Another characteristic form of NRD organization is the charismatic cult (the White Brotherhood, the Last Covenant Vissarion Church in the Minusinsk commune, the Moon Unification Church) with an explicit leader figure.
The use of the newest means of communication, forms of missionary, propaganda and advertising of the doctrine, among which we can distinguish:
- Creation of communes-settlements alternative to the laws of macrosociety (in 1962 the first New Age settlement Hindhorn appeared in Scotland), the program of development of the Dawn City, the City of Human Unity (Auroville), implemented by followers of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh’s Integral Yoga, and also the similar program of the Moon Unification Church, providing for creation of a hundred communes in the territory of Argentina.
- Seminars, practical and lecture courses, including virtual ones. This peculiarity of NRDs has caused a wide spread among anti-cultists of the idea of NRDs as “commercial cults”, although a significant element of commercialization is inherent in “traditional” religions, which, as in the case of NRDs, is due to socio-economic conditions: churches, being also social institutions, live under the same laws as other social formations.
- Initially chosen by NRD to instrumentally use for the purpose of spreading the faith both educational institutions already established in the macro-society (state, municipal and non-state) and the creation of alternative secular educational institutions claiming equal status with existing educational institutions (Waldorf system of education, optional courses of the Moon Association Church on family and marriage, Dianetics, Reiki courses, etc.)
- Scientificity in the presentation of doctrinal statements, calculated to be adequately understood by the modern secularized-rationalized mass consciousness. It is interesting that nowadays even purely magical and occult practices (different schools of astrology, chiromancy, practical magic, etc., etc.) can be characterized by a rationalized style of statement. The origins of this trend can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century with the aforementioned program book by Mary Baker-Eddie, Christian Science.
The inseparability of the public, religious, and political activities of the NSD. For example, New Age organizations tend to fuse and ultimately identify fully with state and, above all, supranational structures. Examples include the New Age organizations Citizens of the Planet and Goodwill for Peace, whose offices are located directly in the UN complex, as well as the US Congressional Future Planning Group, created at the initiative of North Carolina Congressman Charles Rose5. In addition to New Age trends, this line was also developed in quasi-orientalist Integral Yoga, whose Auroville project was supported by UNESCO and the Indian government. Under the aegis of the Sun Myung Moon Unification Church, there are numerous public foundations, the most notable of which are foundations for family and family values.
All of these currents are characterized by the advancement and development of global projects for the arrangement of America and the world, primarily on ecological principles, often echoing the environmental initiatives put forward by recognized authorities in one field or another, which have not received governmental support.
The claim to create a religion with original world status. The emergence of the Bahai religion, which in its modern expression has most of the characteristics of the NSD, can be regarded as a peculiar point of reference in this respect.
In connection with all the above, NSD are characterized by a higher degree of social mobility compared to “traditional” confessions/religions.