Non-traditional religions are religious movements and organizations created by them that have gone beyond the traditional national and world religions, but use their ideas, symbols, and rituals. They are also called alternative cults or neo-cults, extra-confessional (supra-confessional) beliefs, and new religious movements.
Non-traditional religions have been widespread since the late 1950s, when they began to appear in the United States and Western Europe as a result of the mass disappointment of believers, especially young people, in traditional religions and churches. The total number of non-traditional religions in the world is difficult to estimate, since there are no statistics on this issue. According to the available data, there are about three hundred of them only in France and more than two thousand in the USA.
Two types of non-traditional religions predominate: those formed on the basis of Christianity and those emerging under the influence of Eastern religions (mainly Hinduism and Buddhism). A separate type is Baha’ism, whose main temple is located in Jerusalem, which proposes to synthesize the scriptures of all the world’s most represented religions and religious-philosophical systems (Abrahamic, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, etc.) and is therefore characterized by extreme eclecticism and has a small number of supporters. A distinctive feature of “New Christian” religions is that their followers formally worship Christ, but actually honor their leaders as “messengers of God” and “new messiahs. The most typical example of non-traditional religions of Eastern origin is Vaishnavism, better known as the Krishna Consciousness Society (Hare Krishna, Krishnaites).
The reason for the emergence of non-traditional religions is considered to be the existential vacuum in which many Western societies found themselves in the 1940s-1950s, their spiritual crisis and the loss of their high standards of valuable life meanings, the loss of moral and social orientation of the individual. The origins of these crises seem to lie in the decline of the post-industrial materialistic culture – the large-scale transformation of values after World War II; the backlash against secularization in the form of mass sacralization of non-sacred objects and the replacement of traditional religiosity by quasi-religious consciousness; the intensification of the sense of tragedy of the rise of global threats (environmental, etc., challenges to the environment, political extremism, etc.) and the crisis of the human mind. The growing sense of loneliness, alienation, and the powerlessness of man in the face of the enormity of the problems that have fallen upon him.
According to the doctrinal principle, the following currents of non-traditional religions can be distinguished.
Pseudo-Christian
Pseudo-Christian ones use theosophical and Eastern religious schemes to interpret the Christian legacy, or they make arbitrary adjustments to the traditional Christian positions, placing an emphasis on eschatology. Their leaders most often present themselves as “continuers of the work of Christ” (Moon’s Unification Church), prophets of the “Third Testament” (Theological Center), new messiahs (Vissarion Church), the Mother of Peace (Great White Brotherhood), etc. Pseudo-Christianity includes some neo-Protestant doctrines (Children of God, Christian Meditation, School of Christian Unity). Among these are the “New Revelation” cults (e.g., Moonists, Vissarionists) and pseudo-Biblical cults that “improve” the Bible with arbitrary translations and interpretations, even to the point of creating new texts (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses). They are joined by some Protestant denominations that emerged the century before last – Mormons and the Christian Science Church are particularly notable among them.
Neo-Orientalist
Neo-orientalists have generally developed from Hinduism, Yoga, Taoism, and Confucianism. Their main emphasis is on the discovery of man’s inner abilities through mastering psychotechnologies: such are Vaishnavism, Transcendental Meditation, Sanatana Dharma Spiritual Revival League, The Only Religion (Osho), Aum Shinrekyo. These non-traditional religions are instrumentalist in nature, which ensured their incredible popularity in the West in the 1960s and 1970s.
Occultism
Occultism, which is characterized by ideas about the ecology of the spirit, a special mystical orientation and concepts borrowed from science such as energy, evolution, etc. These include theosophy, astrology, spiritualism, manticism (the system of divination I Ching, Tarot, etc.), voodoo and similar to the latter rituals.
Neopaganism
Neo-paganism: druids, vican religion, witchcraft, “Slavic” cults, etc. The ideology of the New Acropolis and the Church of Navi is connected to them. Neo-paganism is also the basis of ideas of right-wing religious and political organizations (the movement Toward Godliness).
Satanism. Pseudo-psychological and pseudo-medical
Satanism. Pseudo-psychological and pseudo-medical movements proceed from the doctrine of improvement of man’s spiritual power and his physical condition. Recently, due to the active use of suggestive practices by the distributors of certain types of products, we have begun to speak of the appearance of commercial pseudo-cults such as Herbalife.
Some of the newest and oldest non-traditional religions are distinguished by the worship of the leader as a living deity, severe centralization of management and discipline in the organization, excessive material donations from believers or their complete rejection of property in favor of the community and/or its leader, focus on a rapid and radical change in the mind of a new convert, aggressive methods of attracting and retaining adherents, complete destruction of the follower’s social connections outside the group of adherents, unification of a believer’s personality, and the removal of his/her religious identity.
Among non-traditional religions there are destructive religions that distinguish methods of recruiting followers and psychological treatment of the neophyte: “bombardment with love”, when he is made the center of attention, admiration and love; informational comfort, when he immediately receives seemingly exhaustive answers to all the questions that concern him; restriction of the communication circle of fellow believers; strict regime of sleep restriction and fasting, grueling spiritual practices, hard physical labor.
Some pseudo-Christian – Moonists, Jehovists, Scientologists – and neo-orientalist – Vaishnavism, Yoga and other branches of Hinduism, some Taoist sects – religions actively attract followers from among the artistic, intellectual and political elite and try to have a profound influence on the determination of the ways of development of this or that society. Their influence has taken on serious proportions, particularly in Hollywood. In many countries (Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, etc.) the activities of non-traditional religious organizations recognized as destructive (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Aum Shinrikyo, the White Brotherhood, the Unification Church, the Virgin Center, the Scientologists, etc.) are prohibited by law.