NRM's
World-rejecting NRMs
World-affirming NRMs
World-accommodating NRMs
Evaluation
Characteristics
Examples
Clearly religious
Highly critical of outside world
Members must make a sharp break from former life
Members live communally with the movement controlling all aspects of their lives
Often have conservative moral codes
Moonies
Krishna Consciousness
Children of God
Manson family
Branch Davidian
The People's Temple
Characteristics
Examples
Accept the world as it is
Optimistic and promise followers success in mainstream terms
Non-exclusive and tolerant of other religions but claim to have additional knowledge
psychologising religions
Most are cults
Followers = consumers not members
Entry through training
Not demanding on followers
Can live normal lives
Most successful NRMs Wallis studied
e.g Scientology = 165,000 mebers vs 1,200 Moonies
Scientology
Soka Gakkai
TM
Human Potential
Characteristics
Breakaways from mainstream religions/denominations
neither accept nor reject the world
Focus on religious matters
instead of worldly
Seeking to restore spiritual purity of religion
Examples
neo-pentecostalists
Subud
believe that other Christian religions have lose the Holy Spirit
Wallis
Offers useful way of classifying NRMs
not clear if categorising according to movement's teachings or individual members beliefs
Ignores diversity of beliefs inside NRMs
Himself - real NRMs rarely fit into typology
e.g 3HO - characteristics of all
h/e typology is useful for analysing and comparing sig. fig.s of NRMs
h/e Stark & Bainbridge (1986) reject idea of typologies altogether
Say we should distinguish religious organisations from 'the degree of conflict or tension between the religious group and wider society