Vol.2, No 6/2 1999 pp. 297 - 299
NEW BOOKS REVIEW
BUCHBESPRECHUNGEN
PROPHETS OF THE "NEW TRUTH" (SECTS AND
CULTS)
New social movements, especially religious ones, require
a careful analysis as well as questioning. It has been noted that the concept
of the "new religious movements" is often used in such a way that it can
involve private interests of religious or economic and commercial nature.
At the level of the means they are using, purely social
movements (for instance, cults, sects, movements propagating some special
cultural life styles, tradition or practice) use perfectly legitimate and
recognizable forms of action such as legally guaranteed freedom of worship
and cultural freedom. The tensions with a wider environment are resolved
in various ways, namely, starting from an open conflict to the withdrawal
into a private area where they can practice their cults and their own life
styles.
Answering to the question What should we know about new
religious movements posed by the author of the book in question, D. Đorđević,
it should be stressed first that these issues have many aspects, sides
and opposite sides, "fronts". Some of them imply many good sides as well
as things that are clearly harmless. On the other hand, there are new religious
movements whose exclusive aim is to set up some control over the means
by which our views and behavioral patterns are shaped, namely, upon those
factors that "ensure" personal prosperity, carrier and welfare.
An essential characteristic of Đorđević's approach is
a well-balanced standpoint which is especially important at the times of
universal militancy and exclusiveness at the very thought of sects and
cults.
Anyway, the aim of the research is to present a clear
idea of the project and the book dealt with. The aim of the book, as suggested
by the author, is to encourage, by his own writings as well by a selection
of a variety of papers, more fundamental sociological theoretical and practical
research in order to introduce responsibility into public discourse concerning
new religious movements. It can rightfully be noted that there is "terminological
starvation" as well as conceptual confusion; due to this, a new theory
of religious movements should be established. In this book, Đorđević clearly
pins down major bearings of possible new theories of the religious movements,
pointing out that these new orientations must start from a balanced and
well-supported discourse about religion and new religious movements. As
for his own standing, he states that it is neither in favor not anti-cult
oriented, though the book is justifiably oriented toward so much visible
signs of an awakening of uncultivated, immature and naive anti-cult movement
that has, let's mention it, brought along lucrative commercial effects,
in addition to moral panic (See B. Stojković, p. 112).
While following Đorđević's work and engagement as well
as the lectures that we both participated in, I have had many opportunities
to make sure of his reactions to extreme behavior of the anti-cult movements.
Eager to grasp all the nuances, he carefully measures presented arguments
in order to estimate whether something is just plain insanity or a form
of spirituality different from ours. This is something lacking in others
who overestimate their knowledge of the things in question. To admit, even
Đorđević sometimes gets carried away while reacting to hate orgies of the
militant anti-cultists and tends to use a harsh word or two ("critical
club", "not to read by any means"). But his reaction is understandable
since he scientifically as well as emotionally warns us that we are sometimes
on the verge of insanity.
The author starts his book by analyzing tolerance and
religious pluralism; he states that confession and self-criticism are not
manners highly appreciated by "domestic religions since it is always easy
to put the blame on someone else" ("we/they"). The book is permeated with
the author's pleading for coexistence and for the experience of the different.
Very interesting analyses are those of economic, communicative and tolerant
behavior.
While adhering to the Stark and Bainbridge's thesis that
"the degree to which a group is essentially religious is an empirical expression
of its momentary position on the continuous measuring scale", Đorđević
offers an effective slogan that "every cult would like to become a sect,
and this through the church denomination." The fundamental text at the
beginning of the book is Stark and Bainbridge's "On Churches, Sects and
Cults - Introductory Concepts for a Theory of Religious Movements." This
text offering new patterns in the understanding of the relationship between
cults, sects, denomination and churches or a new paradigm of religious
organization, "by the miraculous miracle", as stressed by the author, has
not been used in domestic vehement disputes concerning small religious
communities (though published as early as 1987). Đorđević is really right
since it is a text that can, in a nutshell, introduce some order where
previously there was none.
In a very impressive manner of the modern sociologist
Đorđević demonstrates a case study (Old Religious Communities - Case of
an Adventist) as well as application of the most heterogeneous empirical
material in the section entitled "Anti-cult Movements in Their Serbian
Version". At the end, the author warns once again through Pro et Contra
that not all has been carefully thought out in the approach to religious
organization. The selection of texts is knowingly done and it seems to
be covering the entire problem. My impression is that it would have also
been fruitful if an introductory text about religion in the transition
society had also been introduced including everlasting questioning of the
guaranteed practicing of religious freedom that I am going to refer to
just now.
New religious movements are a living testimony that people
of modern times are believers, but they do not believe together any longer.
Religion is in transition, and a new religion is a religion a la carte;
the selection is no longer restricted to old monotheistic religions, but
it is extended to include new religions. In his book The Big Transition,
Guy Sorman states that God himself has become one of the many divinities:
everyone has adopted his own definition of God, metaphysical, economic,
spiritualist, by himself and beyond himself. This expansion of the market
to include the good of salvation (Raymond Lamier) makes institutions, churches
and pastors increasingly useless. The modern believer approaches to the
sacred only by his own imagination or the media mass that is a consumer
of spiritual goods; he is doomed to permanent shortage of these goods.
The market, in fact, cannot meet these needs; in order to persist, the
market stimulates the needs without ever satisfying them.
The same stands for religion that is turning into a market
religion. An individual is left to himself at every moment of time; he
is free to choose, but lonely; he is constantly crucified between apparent
happiness and, on the other hand, frustration and loneliness. This choice
is offered to him by a new spiritual supermarket of religiosity as well
as paganism in the offensive created by capitalism in search of blessed
and immanent self-legitimization. At the end of the twentieth century a
great problem is not scientific skepticism but mass mimicry. People are
ready to believe in anything offered to them with sufficient persuasion,
especially in myths, images and leaders for universal consumption. Not
only old cults are renown, but new religions are being invented: "New American
religion is a set of sects based upon personal experience of the believers
who live their religion by their own free choice... American religion has
not been discovered, it is being experienced. For this experience, churches
are only simple envelopes or machines for producing social rituals and
a group zeal" (Harold Bloom). The fact is that ninety percent of Americans
believe in God. D. Bell interprets this fact carefully stressing that it
does not speak realistically about the faith of the Americans; it just
measures their loyalty or their desire for allegiance to the particular
community. This desire is even stronger with them than with the Europeans
since the USA remains a conglomerate of the communities that have been
joined together by a triple contract, namely, the political (democracy),
the economic (capitalism) and the conformist (religion, no matter which).
Daniel Bell differentiates two levels when he studies religion, namely,
the religion level which is more resistant to modernization and the organization
level which is secularized by capitalism by selecting the communities that
are best adopted to the society it creates.
The market religion, marketing, mass media and new religious
movements have created a new sensibility as well as the production of new
spirituality. These processes should not be ignored; concerning this, I
see a great value and contribution of D. Đorđević's book Prophets of "New
Truth" - Sects and Cults.
Dragan Koković
