N_bi_G

New Religious Movements is an academic, neutral term that entered academic usage in the second half of the 20th century. Sometimes the term “New Age” is used to describe a worldview characteristic of the NSD followers, although “New Age” can also be interpreted as a separate movement within the NSD (see, for example, the wording in the article with the same name in the reference book “New Religious Denominations, Movements and Organizations in America: “At the heart of the movement is the idea of a new age, a qualitatively different period in the development of humanity as opposed to the preceding age, unsuccessful in many respects.”

The term “NSD” is used to denote and characterize religious and/or quasi-religious movements that differ from what is commonly referred to as “traditional” as well as “established”/”established”/”historical” faiths/religions. In the future we will mainly use the term “traditional” confessions/religions as the most commonly used of the given number of related concepts.

Since there is no unambiguous definition and, accordingly, no clear criteria of confessional/religious “traditionalism,” we will try to define this concept based on the most commonly attributed characteristics.

So, among the distinguishing characteristics of “traditional” confessions/religions are usually mentioned:

1. some long history of their existence (most often in the literature on NSD in Russian this history is tied to a particular ethnicity; i.e. not just Orthodoxy as a branch of Christianity, but Russian, or Greek, or Serbian Orthodoxy, not just Catholicism, but Polish, or Spanish, or Italian versions of it, are considered);
2. internal integrity, wholeness, formality and even “completeness” of doctrine of “traditional” confessions/religions in the sense that nothing can be added to their doctrinal arsenal, which, it should be noted, does not quite correspond to reality (for example, the Roman Catholic Church, whose “traditionalism” is difficult to challenge, after a long break in the XIV century renewed the practice of doctrine-making, which remains in force to this day);
3. sustainability of religious practices of “traditional” confessions, especially cultic (ritual) practices;
4. institutional structure of organizations (not always hierarchical, as for example in some Protestant denominations), and the system of internal discipline in “traditional” confessions/religions, which makes it possible to reproduce at least a relative unity of specific religious organizations (for versions of Christianity – churches) over a long historical period;
5. with respect to “traditional” confessions/religions (especially in Russian journalism) we often mention “rootedness” of their “spirit” in national languages, ethno-cultural stereotypes, “mentality”, transmitted in some unchanged form from generation to generation;
6. The characteristic of “traditionalism” also accentuates “habituality”, “familiarity” of the forms of external manifestation of the activities of “traditional” confessions, which does not cause sharp rejection among the carriers of the modern mass secularized consciousness;
7. Several characteristics of “traditional” confessions/religions also emphasize their world nature, though it should be noted that NSDs may also initially emerge as varieties of world religions (Bahai religion) or claim similar status (the most famous example of this series is the Unification Church of Moon).

Accordingly, among the attributes of the NSD we can point to:

1. the relatively short time span of existence of these movements/faiths/religions;
2. lower degree of formation (even amorphous) of their doctrines compared to “traditional” confessions/religions, coupled with attempts to combine different cultural and religious doctrinal traditions (pretensions to synthesis of the world religious heritage);
3. striving to unite basic science, artistic heritage, religion and modern technology to achieve “higher” goals (Sri Aurobindo Ghosh’s Integral Yoga), which in the long run should lead to the “removal” of any conflicts, especially social ones;
4. desire to “expand” the natural possibilities of individual consciousness by applying a variety of both old and new psychotechniques or their imitations (examples: Dianetics, i.e. “technology that reveals the causes of undesirable feelings and emotions “2) based on fear (in R. Hubbard’s Scientology Church), yogic in origin techniques in Transcendental Meditation, etc.
5. NSDs cause almost unambiguous negative reaction of “traditional” confessions. The latter see them as a serious competitor, even despite the real low degree of distribution of specific NSDs and their often negative image, formed, importantly, under the influence of the media, whose experts are often representatives of “traditional” confessions. The same kind of arguments can be used by the authorities. Quite indicative in this regard is the story of the authorities liquidating the Mosaic Shater religious organization with reference to the discrepancy between the new reading of the Judaism doctrinal statements proposed by the Shater activists and those of the “traditional” branches of the Jewish religion. As a result, the denial of re-registration gave the leaders of this organization grounds to ask the U.S. authorities to grant them the right to enter the country for reasons of religious discrimination in their home country.

Thus, opposition to the NSD can serve as a platform for possible temporary alliances between “traditional” confessions that disagree and conflict with one another on most doctrinal positions.

In terms of institutional arrangements, NSDs take a variety of forms, from interest clubs with non-fixed membership to centers providing ritual or “spiritual” services to the public, to virtually full-fledged cults, denominations, and churches. The latter circumstance gives rise to debate about the appropriateness of using the word “movement” when describing some NSDs, because among the distinctive features of NSDs, as noted above, there is an indication of organizational amorphousness. Perhaps it was this lag between the theory and the terminology in which it was expressed and the real situation that allowed anti-cultists to substitute the concept of NSD with terms of uncertain meaning – “totalitarian sect” or “destructive cult”. It should be noted that the massive propaganda campaign against NSD deployed by domestic anti-cultists actively introduced these very terms in the mass consciousness.

In this connection, it should be noted that the phrase “totalitarian sect” used by the opponents of NSD as a synonym for NSD does not stand up to criticism, because:

1. is not a scientific term, but a publicistic cliché, because it has an evaluative nature, unacceptable in a scientific study;
2. by its semantics does not correspond to the real institutional structure and organizational forms of a large part of NSD.

Accordingly, the vagueness of the phrase “totalitarian sect” leads to the possibility of its application to absolutely any religious movements. Thus, the activity of the Roman Catholic Church, “non-traditional” for the East Slavic medieval states.

Summarizing the above, we can distinguish at least three possible uses of the term NSD:

1. to characterize religious movements and attitudes that emerged in the second half of the 20th century, grouped under the term “new age” (the terms NRD and NE are used synonymously here);
2. To characterize religious movements that went beyond the doctrinal positions of “traditional” confessions and/or consciously opposed them, just as Bahaism, which emerged and formed in the bosom of Islam, opposed itself, even in a mild form, to the doctrine and practice of Muslims of the time;
3. to characterize any religious movement that is not “traditional” for a given nation, country, culture, or territory. The last use of the term, as we have already noted, is not correct, because in the limit it can include any religious formations, except, perhaps, tribal.