Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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Questioning modern notions of mysticism and spirituality

Although it is often difficult to distinguish between accounts of drug-induced and non-drug- induced mystical experiences, the debate about the role of drugs in the cultivation of mystical states suggests that the phenomena of the mystical is more than a matter of simply inducing an altered state of consciousness. As we have seen, the explicit identification of mysticism with extraordinary and transient states of consciousness is an approach that began in earnest with the work of William James at the beginning of the twentieth century and continues to the present day in debates concerning the relationship between mystical experiences and their interpretation and the question of the possibility (or not) of an unmediated or ‘pure’ experience of reality.

However, the modern privatisation of ‘the mystical’ has come under increasing criticism in some of the most recent scholarship in this field. The privatization of the phenomenon of mysticism is most obviously demonstrated in the emergence of ‘spirituality’ in the late twentieth century to denote some kind of interiorised experience or apprehension of reality. Such approaches are increasingly oriented towards the individual self rather than religious traditions as the source of their authority. Such contemporary shifts have affected the way in which we as ‘moderns’ understand the spiritual traditions of the past, in both the East and the West. Deny Turner (1994), Grace Jantzen (1995) and Richard King (1999) have all questioned the modern tendency to approach classical and medieval mystical texts as if they were offering psychological accounts of extraordinary experiences. Ineffability in the modern study of mysticism and spirituality has become a question of the indescribable nature of intense and private experiences rather than a reflection of the traditional exploration of the transcendental majesty of God or the ultimate reality. This reflects the tendency to read such historical material in terms of modern psychological theories of the self. This ‘psychologisation’ of the religious has been an important step in the unhinging of ‘the mystical’ from its roots in the world’s religious traditions, and its reformulation in terms of privatised and ‘custom-made’ spiritualities oriented towards the concerns of modern individual consumers searching for meaning in a marketplace of religions (Hanegraaff 1996; see also Carrette and King (2005) for a critical discussion of this trend). In response to such criticisms of modern forms of ‘spirituality’, some scholars (notably Forman 2004, Lynch 2007 and Heelas 2008) have argued that we are in fact seeing the emergence of a ‘progressive spirituality’ that is potentially transformative and socially-conscious rather than merely accommodating of contemporary consumerism and capitalism.

In her feminist analysis of Christian mysticism, Jantzen points to the shifting meanings of ‘the mystical’ throughout history, highlighting both the power struggles involved in all attempts to define the category and the ways in which women have been excluded by men from positions of authority in this process. Similarly, King (1999) offers an analysis of the colonial origins of the notion of ‘the mystic East’, arguing that the representation of Hinduism and Buddhism as mystical religions has functioned to reinforce Western Orientalist stereotypes of eastern religion and culture as world denying, amoral and lacking an impulse to improve society. This has allowed the West to define itself as progressive, scientific and liberal in contrast to the superstitious, tradition-bound and ‘underdeveloped’ Third World nations of Asia. In this regard the stability of the categories of ‘spirituality’ and ‘the mystical’ and the way in which they have been adopted has itself become subject to critical analysis as emphasis has shifted towards the power relations involved in attempts to classify particular

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religious figures, movements or traditions as mystical or spiritual in nature. At the same time, the emergence of contemporary forms of eclectic ‘religiosity’ in the Western world and the increasing popularity of the term ‘spirituality’ as an indicator of many people’s sense of the ‘transcendent’ in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is seen by some as the development of a kind of ‘post-secularity’ and has begun to attract the attention of sociologists of religion, seeking to map, classify and understand such contemporary trends in a way that moves beyond the secularisation debates of a previous generation of scholars.

Bibliography

Beer, Frances (1992), Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages, Rochester, New York and Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell.

Bouyer, Louis (1990), The Christian Mystery: From Pagan Myth to Christian Mysticism, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

Bynum, Caroline Walker (1982), Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Carrette, Jeremy and Richard King (2005), Selling Spirituality. The Silent Takeover of Religion, London and New York: Routledge.

Certeau, Michel de (1992), The Mystic Fable Volume 1. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. by Michael B. Smith, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Deikman, Arthur J. (1980), ‘Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience,’ in R. Woods (ed.) Understanding Mysticism, London: Athlone Press; Garden City, NY: Image Books.

––––Â(1982), The Observing Self: Mysticism and Psychotherapy, Boston: Beacon Press.

Evans, Donald (1989), ‘Can Philosophers Limit What Mystics Can Do? A Critique of Steven Katz’ in

Religious Studies 25: 53–60.

Forman, Robert K. C. (2004), Grassroots Spirituality. What It Is, Why It Is Here, Where It Is Going, Imprint Academic.

Hanegraaff, Wouter J. (1996), New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Numen Book Series, Leiden, New York, Köln: E. J. Brill.

Heelas, Paul (2008), Spiritualities of Life. New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism, Oxford: Blackwell.

Huxley, Aldous (1954), The Doors of Perception, London: Grafton Books (Collins). Inge, Dean (1899), Christian Mysticism, London: Methuen.

James, William (1977), The Varieties of Religious Experience, The Gifford Lectures 1901–2, Glasgow: Collins.

Jantzen, Grace (1995), Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, W. J. (1994), The Bhagavad Gita, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Katz, Steven (1978), ‘Language, Epistemology and Mysticism,’ in Katz (ed.) Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

King, Richard (1999), Orientalism and Religion. Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘the Mystic East’, London and New York: Routledge.

King, Sallie B. (1988), ‘Two Epistemological Models for the Interpretation of Mysticism,’ in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61(2): 275–9.

Lynch, Gordon (2007), The New Spirituality. An Introduction to Progressive Belief in the Twenty-first Century, UK: I. B. Tauris; US: Palgrave-Macmillan.

McGinn, Bernard (ed.) (1986), Meister Eckhart. Teacher and Preacher, London: SPCK and New York: Paulist Press.

Nygren, Anders (1953), Agape and Eros, Philadelphia: Westminster.

Otto, Rudolf (1932), Mysticism East and West. A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism, New York: MacMillan, 1970; London: Quest Edition, 1987.

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––––Â(1959), The Idea of the Holy (original, 1917, Das Heilige), 2nd edn, London: Penguin.

Petroff, Elizabeth (ed.) (1986), Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pseudo-Dionysius (1987), The Complete Works, trans. by Colm Luibheid et al., New York: Paulist Press. Raphael, Melissa (1994), ‘Feminism, Constructivism and Numinous Experience’ in Religious Studies

30: 511–26.

Revised Standard Version of the Bible (1973), London/New York/Toronto: Collins.

Schimmel, Anne-Marie (1975), Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Sells, Michael (1996) Early Islamic Mysticism. New York: Paulist Press.

Smart, Ninian (1965), Reasons and Faiths. An Investigation of Religious Discourse, Christian and NonChristian, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Stace, Walter (1960), Mysticism and Philosophy, London: Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc. Tart, Charles (1969), Altered States of Consciousness, New York: Wiley.

Turner, Denys (1995), The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Watts, Alan (1965), The Joyous Cosmology, New York: Vintage Books. Zaehner, R. C. (1957), Mysticism Sacred and Profane, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Suggested reading

Robert Forman (ed.) (1990), The Problem of Pure Consciousness, New York, Oxford University Press. Scholarly articles responding critically to the constructivist position of Katz and others.

Aldous Huxley, (1945) The Perennial Philosophy, New York: Harper Brothers.

Wide range of mystical quotations (in English translation) from the major religious Âtraditions, with commentarial remarks by Huxley. A classic anthology and example of the perennialist position.

Steven Katz (ed.) (1983), Mysticism and Religious Traditions, New York: Oxford University Press. Scholarly articles on various mystical traditions, mostly espousing the constructivist position.

Frits Staal (1975), Exploring Mysticism, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Quality study, though rather difficult when dealing with Staal’s own specialist area of Hindu and Buddhist mysticism.

Richard Woods (ed.) (1980), Understanding Mysticism, London: Athlone Press; Garden City, NY: Image Books.

Chapter 20

New religious movements

Judith Fox

In April 2008 law enforcement authorities raided the Texan ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the FLDS Church). A tip had been received that women and children inside the polygamous community were being abused. The group, which had broken away from the main Mormon Church in the 1930s, led an isolated existence. On the basis that they were in imminent danger, and under the watchful eyes of the media networks, who knew good television when they saw it, Child Protective Services took more than 400 children into custody. Over one hundred of the women voluntarily chose to leave the ranch with them. Stories rapidly circulated of under-age sex and marriage, and of harsh physical punishments being meted out, even to babies. But in addition to the debates over whether these individuals had ever really been under threat – on May 29 2008 the Texas Supreme Court ruled that all of the children must be returned as their removal had not been justified – there was another, more basic, question. How best to characterize this religious organization? For, as an article posted on the American news channel MSNBC’s website on April 9 2008 pointed out, there was no consensus between ‘the experts’ as to its status. Was it a cult, a sect or a new religious movement (NRM)?

The lack of agreement evident on this particular occasion mirrored a more general absence of agreement that has existed among those who study NRMs. The first reason for this is that that scholars on different sides of the question have come from diverse academic backgrounds, including sociology, psychology and the history of religion. These different disciplines, based on somewhat different presuppositions, have given rise to different approaches and degrees of contact that, in turn, have led at times to markedly different views.

Another reason has been that there are substantial dissimilarities between the many groups that have been labeled by scholars under the blanket heading of NRM. Some are breakaway groups from earlier religious organizations, others coalesce around new charismatic leaders. Most teach that it is wrong to injure either oneself or others. Several groups, however, mostly apocalyptic in tone, have been responsible for violence against both followers and outsiders, resulting in injury and death. The vast majority of people in NRMs have not been interested in indulging in any type of criminal activity. Nevertheless, there have also been a small number who have engaged in reprehensible and illegal activities. Most followers enjoy normal mental health, but some have suffered breakdowns and emotional trauma. Hence, scholars have found themselves in sharp disagreement when seeking to provide generalized

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answers about, for example, the social relevance of the groups and the degree of danger NRMs pose to their members and the rest of the world.

An additional reason for why consensus on such a fundamental question as ‘what is the nature of the beast/s we are studying’ has not been forthcoming is that the study of NRMs has taken place in a strongly contested and politically charged arena, contributing to the discord. NRMs have often been the sites of arguments that tend to provoke passionate debate, such as the nature of ‘free will’, ‘authenticity’ and even ‘religion’ itself. Among researchers, some of these debates have taken the form of methodological concerns. There have been emotionally charged exchanges, for instance, over the kinds of relationships that scholars should adopt with the groups with which they work; and allegations have been made that some academics have been either duped by or have become complicit with NRMs, and that their research has consequently lacked ‘objectivity’. Other arguments have centered on whether members of NRMs are ‘freethinking’ members of society, and so entitled to practice their religion as they see fit, or, alternatively, whether they are victims in need of rescue.

To shed further light on the difficulties in achieving academic consensus with regard to NRMs, this chapter will begin with a discussion of the widespread adoption by researchers of the category of ‘new religious movement’. This will be followed by a brief outline of some of the common characteristics of NRMs that have been identified by scholars, along with the explanations that have been offered for the emergence and features of NRMs. After this, we will take a closer look at the conditions under which scholarship in the field has taken place by examining in more detail the debates over the relationships scholars have had with NRMs that have occurred, as well as the impact the prevailing cultural milieu has had on their research. Finally, we will look at the rather different public perceptions of NRMs around the world, and close with the question of whether NRMs are as ubiquitous as has been suggested, or whether it may be more useful to understand them as emerging from and operating under very particular historical conditions.

Labeling ‘new religious movements’

‘New religious movement’ (NRM) is the label generally used today by scholars in Europe and America to designate a religious group which has either arrived in the West after 1950, and so is new to Westerners, or that has originated in the West since that time. By contrast, in Africa as well as in South and Southeast Asia, most scholars have tended to use the end of the nineteenth century as the cut-off point between ‘new’ and ‘older’ religious movements. In Japan, which has seen successive waves of new religions since that time, there has been a further differentiation made, between the ‘new religions’ of the early twentieth century and the ‘new new religions’ that have emerged since 1970 or so. In other words, there has been no single understanding of which groups come under this umbrella designation. As a result, movements as disparate as Teen Witches, Kundalini Yoga, African Charismatic Churches, Satanism, Tibetan Buddhism and UFO groups, to name but a few, have all been classified as NRMs.

This confusion has its source in the reason why the phrase NRM was coined in the first place. It was not the result of the identification of common elements between different religious groups that primarily led to them being grouped together. Instead, scholars agreed upon the term because of their burgeoning anxiety over the disparate ways in which other terms that had been used until then to designate such groups were being deployed. In particular, it was employed to serve as a counter-measure to the pejorative associations that had became associated with the label ‘cult’.