Examine the appeal of New Religious Movements and New age movements

Previously, religions such as Christianity and Islam, and beliefs such as the belief of science and evolution dominated world beliefs. Nowadays, more and more people are rejecting traditional religious explanations of spirituality and scientific accounts of the natural world, and moving more towards New religious movements and new age movements. New religious movements take aspects from other religions and form a modern group and claim a monopoly on the truth (usually a sect or cult), whereas in a new age movement, the groups focus on unlocking the individuals true potential and then succeeding their goals. The both highlight the flaws in modern day society, but often NRM focus on the group, whereas NAM focus on the individual. In this essay, several argument why people move from religious and scientific beliefs to NAM’s and NRM’s.

New religious movements have seen a rise, and there are an estimated 25,000 new religious groups in Europe alone. New religious groups fit into on out of 3 categories, world affirming, world rejecting and world accommodating. World affirming are individualistic and life positive, releasing human potential. They accept the world, and often appeal to older adults who are disinterested with a materialistic lifestyle, and agree with the laid back attitude of the world affiliating groups. They often have a therapy group as opposed to churches etc. and examples of affiliating movements include Transcendental meditation which was brought to the west by Mahesh Yogi, where followers build a positive mantra, which they dwell upon for long periods of time. World rejecting groups are highly critical of the outside world, and demand commitment from members. They require prayer etc. and share possessions and make the individuals identity fade, and they adopt the group’s identity.