New religious movement: Difference between revisions

[[J. Gordon Melton]] argued that "new religious movements" should be defined by the way dominant religious and secular forces within a given society treat them. According to him, NRMs constituted "those religious groups that have been found, from the perspective of the dominant religious community (and in the West that is almost always a form of Christianity), to be not just different, but unacceptably different."{{sfn|Melton|2004|p=79}} Barker cautioned against Melton's approach, arguing that negating the "newness" of "new religious movements" raises problems, for it is "the very fact that NRMs are new that explains many of the key characteristics they display".{{sfn|Barker|2004|p=89}}

 

 

Scholars of religion [[Olav Hammer]] and [[Mikael Rothstein]] argued that "new religions are just young religions" and as a result, they are "not inherently different" from mainstream and established religious movements, with the differences between the two having been greatly exaggerated by the media and popular perceptions.{{sfn|Hammer|Rothstein|2012|p=3}} Melton has stated that those NRMs that "were offshoots of older religious groups... tended to resemble their parent groups far more than they resembled each other."{{sfn|Melton|2004|p=76}} One question that faces scholars of religion is when a new religious movement ceases to be "new".{{sfn|Barker|2004|p=99}} As noted by Barker, "In the first century, Christianity was new, in the seventh century Islam was new, in the eighteenth century Methodism was new, in the nineteenth century the Seventh-day Adventists, Christadelphians, and Jehovah's Witnesses were new; in the twenty-first century the Unification Church, the [[International Society for Krishna Consciousness|ISKCON]], and [[Scientology]] are beginning to look old."{{sfn|Barker|2004|p=99}}