Whflt Are New Religious Movements?

Chapter Two WHflt Are New Religious Movements? Much of the debate over the future of religion in North America is repro- duced in a recent clash of two theoretical paradigms. An understanding of these two perspectives helps clarify many of the issues raised by the study of NRMs. As to the nature of NRMs themselves, we should also look at what sociologists call church-sect theory, which helps us distinguish a cult from other forms of religious organization. Religion ond Its Continuing Significnnce The first of the two paradigms is derived from the seminal writings of the American sociologist Peter Berger, in particular his book The Sacred Canopy (1967). The second paradigm is from the American sociologists of religion Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge (1985,1987), developed further in later writings by Stark with Roger Finke and also Laurence Iannaccone. Berger's theory of religion offers an account of the most essential social grounds of religious belief and practice; his theory is repeatedly called upon in relation to NRMs. Its logic tends to suggest, though, that society is destined to become ever more secular, and that neither old nor new religions will have much importance in advanced industrial societies. In contrast, the theory offered by Stark and his colleagues argues against the demise of religion, breaking with the tendency to equate this with progress towards more ratio- nal forms of social management.1 The result provides alternative criteria for assessing the nature, appeal, success, or failure of various kinds of NRMs. A close reading of the divergent theoretical paradigms of Berger and of Stark reveals some interesting points of convergence, however, which may point the way to an even better understanding of NRMs. We will be discussing this last point further in Chapter 8. BERGER'S THEORY OF RELIGION Berger's theory grew out of his earlier and equally important work with Thomas Luckmann on the social construction of reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Building on a masterful synthesis of the insights of foun- dational thinkers of contemporary social science (Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, George Herbert Mead, Sigmund Freud, Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim, Alfred Schutz, and others), this theory begins with the simple premise that 'every human society is an enterprise of world- building' (Berger, 1967: 3). The world we live in, the world as perceived by humans, is constantly being created and re-created through a 'dialectical process' that has three aspects: 'externalization, objectivation, and internal- ization'. Our thoughts become embodied in the things we make and do in the world—they are externalized. Once out there, these products of our thought (e.g. machines, art forms, institutions) take on an independent existence as objects of our awareness—objectivation occurs—and they act back upon us, shaping and changing our behaviour and our further thoughts. We internalize the lessons of living in the world of these objects (physical, social, and cultural), adapting ourselves in thought, word, and deed to the presumed requirements of 'reality'. We are the creators of our world, but we are in turn shaped by our creation and become one of its objects, in part because we are not fully aware of our creativity. This lack of awareness stems from the fact that the creativity is a collective undertaking. World-building is a social process, so complex and dispersed as to defy the ready comprehension or control of any individual or group. Berger argues that human participation in world construction is an 'anthropological necessity'. Unlike other animals, humans are born 'unfin- ished'. Since our biological programming is deficient, to survive we must complete our natures by learning how to function in our environment. To this end we have created culture. Culture is the truly 'natural' world of humans, and it stands protectively between individuals and the forces of nature. The problem is that culture is also unstable, fluctuating with the changing conditions of collective life. Thus, Berger proposes, we are eter- nally trapped between a biologically given imperative to secure a stable and safe environment through culture and the inherent instability of the cul- tures we create. This is the human predicament. Religion is the ultimate response to this predicament. The success of a culture in providing a stable environment for human development 'depends upon the establishment of symmetry between the objective world of society and the subjective world of the individual' (Berger, 1967: 15). The upshot of such a symmetry is that the institutions of society and the roles these pre- scribe for individuals strike us as 'factual', which is to say that we think we must abide by their dictates, by society's traditional ways of doing things, because these are seen as somehow belonging to reality itself. Under such conditions people do not merely perform their assigned roles in social life, they freely identify with these roles. They seek what another sociologist, Ralph Turner, calls 'role-person merger'—they become their roles—and in the process they impart great stability to the received social order. Human activity becomes very regular and predictable, providing practical and psy- chological reassurance to everyone about their own and other people's behaviour. Hence, under ideal circumstances, which are never actually achieved, most aspects of the social order should come to be 'taken for granted'. The relatively stable human environment that results is what Berger calls a 'nomos', a meaningful world order. The collective effort to fashion this nomos is 'totalizing', in that to become more stable the meaningful order must grow to encompass all aspects of society. The nomos does not, however, embrace all the discrete experiences of individuals; on the margins of everyday life are less predictable experiences that can induce 'anomie', an anxiety-inducing sense of normlessness. In dreams, death, defeat, and unexpected events, we are repeatedly threatened with separation from the social world and hence with a loss of meaningful order in our lives. In Berger's words (1967: 23), 'every nomos is an edifice erected in the face of the potent and alien forces of chaos'. Religion seeks to provide the 'ultimate shield against the terror of anomie' (1967: 25) by supplying the most effective legitimation of the social order. Religious myths, rites, doctrines, and practices seek to assert the merger of the nomos and the cosmos. The social order, in Berger's words, is 'cosmosized' and rendered 'sacred'. It is no longer a human construct, subject to change, but a divinely given order subject to the will of the gods (or other supernatural forces) alone. In such a world, any attempt to deny the order that the religiously sanctioned society imposes is an act of evil as well as madness (Berger, 1967: 39). Of course, it must be remembered that Berger is speaking hypothetically about the earliest stages of human social development, but there has been no real mass awareness of the creative role of humans in the construction of the world until modern times. Rather, as best we can tell, the gods evolved hand in hand with society from the begin- ning. Historically, ^ergetfulness' is the normal state, and 'awareness' is the modern aberration brought on by philosophy, science, and technology. In a world where the human microcosm has been merged with the natural macrocosm, where social roles become reiterations of cosmic realities, the experience of anomie is much more tolerable. It is not eliminated, since death, nightmares, and unanticipated twists of fate persist. But these events are given a meaning in light of some larger divine scheme, whether through reference to the will of a supreme God, the struggle of supernatural forces of good and evil, or the consequences of karma. This meaningfulness helps individuals to maintain hope and endure suffering. The promise of ultimate order provides comfort, and more, it ensures that individuals will continue to willingly sacrifice themselves and their own selfish interests for the ben- efit and survival of the group, the social system, and the culture. The price of this security is 'alienation', or the forgetfulness 1 just mentioned. For the illusion of world-building to work, humans must 'forget' their own creative role in the dialectic. They must become estranged from their own responsi- bility for the nature and fate of their society. To consider one's creative role would be to question the objectivity of the social order and hence the ultimate meaning attributed to life. In Berger's theory, every society strikes some balance between the evils of anomie and alienation. The former can only be staved off by a certain amount of the latter. Berger's theory is full of complexities, such as his description of religions existing in 'plausibility structures'. Just as religion may justify certain habits or institutions of society, a social system can provide a kind of material justification for its religion; a powerful, viable society lends cre- dence to the belief system associated with it. Conversely, the military defeat or social disruption of a society may discredit its religious ideology. (Ari exception to this pattern would be Judaism, which managed to fashion a new ideology of hope out of disruptions such as the Babylonian exile and later the Diaspora, developing a nomos from the notion of redemptive suffering.) Although Berger meant to provide only broad guidelines, he has deci- sively influenced the academic study of religion in general and the study of NRMs in particular. Since the 1960s, discussions about the emergence of NRMs have tended to lean heavily on Berger's ideas, partly due to another major aspect of his theory, his analysis of the process of secularization.

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