New religious movements in the United States

Examples and symbols of new religious movements: a Sioux Ghost dance, the USVA emblem for the Native American Church, the symbol for Theosophy, the Cross and Crown of Christian Science, a Pentecostal worship service and a statue of the LDS angel Moroni.

Numerous new religious movements have formed in the United States. A new religious movement (NRM) is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. There is no single, agreed-upon criterion for defining a "new religious movement".^[1]

Prior to the

Revivalism influenced such diverse movements as Joseph Smith's Mormonism (1830), William Miller's Adventism (1831) and Parham and Seymour's Pentecostalism (1900). Adventism in turn influenced Charles Taze Russell's Jehovah's Witnesses.^[2]

Ayn Rand's Objectivism, though explicitly atheist, has been studied through the framework of new religious movements.^[11][12]

Antebellum movements

Purification movement

Around 1805, Tenskwatawa, a town drunk, reportedly experienced a stupor so deep that he believed he was dead. According to Tenskwatawa, he visited "the Master of Breath", and was shown heaven with game and honey for those who lived virtuously and traditionally. Tenskwatawa denounced Euro-American settlers, calling them offspring of the Evil Spirit, and led a purification movement that promoted unity among Native Americans.

By 1808, Tenskwatawa and his brother Tecumseh established a village that the Americans called Prophetstown and the movement included thousands of followers. On November 7, 1811, while Tecumseh was away, Tenskwatawa ordered the pre-dawn attack on a U.S. military force that initiated the Battle of Tippecanoe. Tenskwatawa's followers retreated after a two-hour engagement and abandoned Prophetstown, which the military burned to the ground. This event was a catalyst for the War of 1812, as the United States blamed the British for providing financial support and ammunition to the Prophetstown community.^[13]

Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, and the resistance movement did not recover and was eventually defeated. Tenskwatawa remained in exile in Canada for nearly a decade. After the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, he returned to the United States in 1824 to assist the U.S. government with the Shawnee removal to reservation land in what is now Kansas. The aging Prophet arrived at Shawnee reservation lands in 1828 and faded into obscurity. Tenskwatawa died in Argentine, Kansas, in 1836.^[14]

Latter Day Saint movement

On March 20, 1826, a 20-year-old tenant farmer named Joseph Smith was arrested on charges of being "a disorderly person and an imposter" in Bainbridge, New York.^[15][16] According to court records, Smith said "he had a certain stone which he had occasionally looked at to determine where hidden treasures in the bowels of the earth were; that he professed to tell in this manner where gold mines were a distance under ground".^[17]

Starting on September 22, 1827, Smith reported that he had recovered a set of ancient plates and a pair of magical "spectacles".

By 1840, Joseph Smith and thousands of followers founded a settlement which Smith named Nauvoo. Smith simultaneously served as Prophet of the church, Mayor of the city, Chief Justice of the Municipal Court, and General of the city's 2,500-man militia (the "Nauvoo Legion"). In 1844, Smith began a campaign to be elected President of the United States, and by April 1844, a Mormon council had declared Smith to be King.^[20] On June 18, 1845, Smith declared martial law in Nauvoo and called out the Legion.^[21][22] Smith and his brother were arrested on charges of Treason; both were killed by a mob before being brought to trial.^[23]

As of December 2019, the most-populous Latter Day Saint denomination reported having 16 million members worldwide.^[24]

William Miller was a prosperous farmer, a

After March 21, 1844, passed without incident, the prediction was revised with a new date of April 18. [41] After that date also passed without Christ's return, Millerites settled upon a third date of October 22.^[42] After the failure of Miller's expectations for October 22, 1844, the date became known as the Millerites' Great Disappointment.^{[citation needed]}

Following the Great Disappointment, most Millerites simply gave up their beliefs. Some did not and viewpoints and explanations proliferated. Miller initially seems to have thought that Christ's Second Coming was still going to take place—that "the year of expectation was according to prophecy; but...that there might be an error in Bible

Miller's legacy includes the Seventh-day Adventist Church with over 19 million members and the Advent Christian Church with 61,000 members.^{[citation needed]}

New Thought

In 1838, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby attended a lecture about Mesmerism by French mesmerist Charles Poyen. Quimby followed Poyen's tour for the next two years, studying Mesmerism.^[45] During this time, Quimby encountered an uneducated youth who was particularly susceptible to Mesmerism and developed a tour of his own, demonstrating Mesmerism in front of large crowds.^[46]

Quimby claimed to heal people of ailments that doctors could not cure. Quimby told his patients that disease was caused by false beliefs and that the cure was in the explanation of this. Scholar William James used the "mind-cure movement" to refer to Quimby and his successors. Quimby is commonly seen as the founder of the New Thought movement.^{[citation needed]}

New Thought publishing and educational activities reach approximately 2.5 million people annually.

The Fox sisters were three sisters from New York who played an important role in the creation of Spiritualism.^[49] The two younger sisters used "rappings" to convince their older sister and others that they were communicating with spirits. Their older sister then took charge of them and managed their careers for some time. They all enjoyed success as mediums for many years.^{[citation needed]}

In 1888, Margaretta confessed that their rappings had been a hoax and publicly demonstrated their method. Margaretta attempted to recant her confession the next year, but their reputation was ruined and in less than five years they were all dead, with Margaretta and Kate dying in abject poverty.^[50]

By 1897, Spiritualism was said to have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe,^[51] mostly drawn from the middle and upper classes. Spiritualism flourished for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, attaining cohesion through periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and the missionary activities of accomplished mediums. Many prominent spiritualists were women, and like most spiritualists, supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage.^[52] Spiritualism is currently practiced primarily through various denominational spiritualist churches in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.^{[citation needed]}

Fraternitas Rosae Crucis

The Fraternitas Rosae Crucis (Latin for Brothers of the Rosy Cross) was founded by Paschal Beverly Randolph in 1858. Their first lodge was established in

During the Gilded Age, the United States saw the rise of movements such as Theosophy, Christian Science, and Jehovah's Witnesses.^[citation needed]

Theosophy

In 1873, Russian immigrant Helena Blavatsky came to the United States and became involved in the

In October 1862, Mary Baker Eddy became a patient of New Thought founder Phineas Quimby.^[55] From 1862 to 1865, Quimby and Eddy engaged in lengthy discussions about healing methods practiced by Quimby and others. Eddy gave Quimby much credit for his hypnotic treatments of her nervous and physical conditions and initially thought his brand of Mesmerism entirely benign.^[56]

Eddy served a Spiritualist medium.^[57] Between 1866 and 1870, Eddy boarded at the home of Brene Paine Clark who was interested in Spiritualism.^[58] Seances were often conducted there.^[59] In one of her spiritualist trances, Eddy gave a message that was supportive of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, stating "P. Quimby of Portland has the spiritual truth of diseases. You must imbibe it to be healed. Go to him again and lean on no material or spiritual medium."^[60]

In 1868, Eddy first advertised services as a healer in the Spiritualist paper

In 1875, Eddy self-published Science and Health, which she called the textbook of Christian Science. Eddy reported teaching at least 800 people.^[64] Science and Health contained testimonies of people who claimed to have been healed by reading her teachings.^[65] Eddy showed extensive familiarity with Spiritualist practice but denounced it in her Christian Science writings.^[66] Historian Ann Braude observed Eddy broke with Spiritualism in her assert that spirit manifestations had never really had bodies to begin with, because matter is unreal and that all that really exists is spirit, before and after death.^[67]

In 1879, Eddy founded The Church of Christ, Scientist. At the height of the religion's popularity in 1936, a census counted c. 268,915 Christian Scientists in the United States (2,098 per million).^[68][69] There were an estimated 106,000 Christian Scientists in the United States in 1990 (427 per million).^{[citation needed]} In 2009 the church said that for the first time more new members had been admitted from Africa than from the United States, although it offered no numbers.^[70]

Jehovah's Witnesses

About 1870, Charles Taze Russell and his father established a group with a number of acquaintances to undertake an analytical study of the Bible and the origins of Christian doctrine, creed, and tradition. The group, strongly influenced by the writings of Millerite Adventist ministers George Storrs and George Stetson, who were also frequent attendees, concluded that many of the primary doctrines of the established churches, including the Trinity, hellfire, and inherent immortality of the soul, were not substantiated by the scriptures.^[71]

Around January 1876 Russell received a copy of Nelson Barbour's Herald of the Morning in the mail. Barbour was an influential Adventist writer and publisher. Russell telegraphed Barbour to set up a meeting. Barbour and John Henry Paton visited Allegheny in March 1876 at Russell's expense so that he could hear their arguments, and compare the conclusions that each side had made in their studies. Russell sponsored a speech by Barbour in St. George's Hall, Philadelphia in August 1876 and attended other lectures by Barbour.^{[citation needed]}

Among the teachings Barbour introduced was the view that Christians who had died would be raised in April 1878.^[72] Russell, who had previously rejected prophetic chronology, was moved to devote his life to what he was convinced were now the last two years before the invisible, spiritual return of Christ. He sold his five clothing stores for approximately $300,000 (current value $8,584,000). With Russell's encouragement and financial backing, Barbour wrote an outline of their views in Three Worlds and the Harvest of This World, published in 1877. A text Russell had previously written, titled The Object and Manner of our Lord's Return, was published concurrently through the offices of the Herald of the Morning.^[73] Russell was eager to lead a Christian revival and called two separate meetings of Christian leaders in Pittsburgh. Russell's ideas, particularly stressing the imminence of the rapture and the second advent of Christ, were rejected both times.^[74][75] When 1878 arrived, failure of the expected rapture brought great disappointment for Barbour and Russell, and their associates and readers.^{[citation needed]}

Russell withdrew his financial support and started his own journal, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, publishing his first issue in July 1879. Barbour formed The Church of the Strangers that same year, continuing to publish Herald of the Morning.^[76][77][78] In 1881, Russell founded Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society, with William Henry Conley as president and Russell as secretary-treasurer; they intended to disseminate tracts, papers, doctrinal treatises and Bibles. All materials were printed and bound by Russell's privately owned Tower Publishing Company for an agreed price,^[79] then distributed by colporteurs. The Society was incorporated in 1884, with Russell as president, and in 1886 its name was changed to Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.^{[citation needed]}

Ghost Dance movement

Wovoka claimed to have had a prophetic vision after falling into a coma (possibly due to scarlet fever) during the solar eclipse of January 1, 1889.^[80] Wovoka's vision entailed the resurrection of the Paiute dead, and the removal of whites and their works from North America. Wovoka taught that in order to bring this vision to pass, the Native Americans must live righteously and perform a traditional round dance, known as the Ghost Dance.^[80]

Wovoka's prophetic message referenced a number of Christian theological concepts. In the "Messiah Letters", Wovoka spoke of Jesus Christ's life on Earth and likened the foretold redemption of Native Americans to a biblical Judgement Day.^[81] Wovoka made references to the reunion of the living and the dead, and also advocated for non-violence in the Christian spirit of pacifism and fair temperament. In its imagery and symbolism, the Ghost Dance embodied many of these Christian principles.^{[citation needed]}

Anthropologists, historians, and theologians provide conflicting accounts on when and how Wovoka had his vision. One scholar of religions, Tom Thatcher, cites James Mooney's Smithsonian-sponsored anthropological report to claim that Wovoka received his first vision while chopping wood for David Wilson in 1887.^[82] Conversely, historian Paul Bailey utilized Mooney's work along with interviews with Wovoka's contemporaries and interpreters to assert that he received the vision after entering a two-day trance, awaking in tears.^[83] Regardless, shortly after receiving the vision and its message, it moved quickly beyond his local Paiute community by word of mouth to Native American tribes further east, notably the Lakota.^{[citation needed]}

The Ghost Dance movement is known for being practiced by the victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Before the Ghost dance reached Native Americans on South Dakota plains reservations, interest in the movement came from the U.S. Indian Office, U.S. War Department, and multiple Native American tribal delegations. As the movement spread across the American west, various interpretations of Wovoka's original message were adopted, notably by the Lakota Sioux living on the Pine Ridge reservation. The Lakota interpretation was considered more militant, placing additional emphasis on the foretold elimination of White men. Although the Lakota interpretation promoted hostility toward US federal agents, it did not explicitly advocate for violent action. Historical evidence suggests that the unconventional practice of Christianity on the part of the Lakota tribe was largely responsible for the tensions between Whites and Native Americans leading up to the Battle at Wounded Knee. US authorities challenged the theological views of the Ghost Dance movement, and arguably sought conflict with the Lakota tribe as a means of condemning these practices.^[84] Wovoka never left his home in Nevada to become an active participant in the dance's dissemination in the U.S. interior.^[85]

Indian Agents, soldiers, and other federal officials tended to have a hostile and sometimes violent attitude toward the movement.^[80]

Wovoka was disheartened by how events unfolded at the massacre. He still remained a prominent Native American leader until his death.^[86] Sometime between 1894 and 1896, he was reported to have been a sideshow attraction at a San Francisco Midwinter Fair Carnival. In 1917, an agent for the Nevada Agency named L.A. Dorrington tracked down Wovoka to report on his whereabouts to Washington. Curious to see if the former Native American messiah had any ties to the Native American Church, Dorrington found that Wovoka was instead living a humble life in Mason. He abstained from the practice, worked as an occasional medicine man, and traveled to events on reservations across the United States.^[87]

Wovoka died in Yerington on September 20, 1932, and is interred in the Paiute Cemetery in the town of Schurz, Nevada.^[88]

20th-century movements

The 20th century saw the rise of such movements as Pentecostalism, Moorish Science, Nation of Islam, Positive Thinking, Scientology and Satanism.^{[citation needed]}

Pentecostalism

In 1905,

In 1906, Seymour moved to Los Angeles, California, where he preached the Pentecostal message and sparked the Azusa Street Revival. The revival drew large crowds of believers as well as media coverage that focused on the controversial religious practices as well as the racially integrated worship services, which violated the racial norms of the time. Seymour's leadership of the revival and publication of The Apostolic Faith newspaper launched him into prominence within the young Pentecostal movement. Seymour broke with Parham in 1906 over theological differences as well as Parham's unhappiness with interracial revival meetings.^[citation needed]

As the revival's influence extended beyond Los Angeles through evangelism and missionary work, Seymour was in the process of developing the revival into a larger organization called the Apostolic Faith Movement. This process was ultimately defeated by power struggles with other ministers, such as Florence Crawford and William Howard Durham, which ultimately damaged the unity of the early Pentecostal movement and led to a decrease in Seymour's influence. By 1914, the revival was past its peak, but Seymour continued to pastor the Apostolic Faith Mission he founded until his death. The revival acted as a catalyst for the spread of Pentecostal practices, such as speaking in tongues and integrated worship, throughout the world. It also played an important role in the history of most major Pentecostal denominations.^{[citation needed]}

Moorish Science

In 1913 Noble Drew Ali founded the Canaanite Temple in Newark, New Jersey, before relocating to Chicago, where he gained a following of thousands of converts.^[84]

Drew Ali taught that African Americans were all Moors, who he claimed were descended from the ancient Moabites (describing them as belonging to Northwest Africa as opposed to Moab as the name suggests).^[93] He claimed that Islam and its teachings are more beneficial to their earthly salvation, and that their 'true nature' had been 'withheld' from them.^[94] Male members of the Temple wear a fez or turban as head covering; women wear a turban.^[94][95]

As Drew Ali began urging the "Moorish-Americans" to become better citizens, he made speeches like, "A Divine Warning By the Prophet for the Nations", in which he urged them to reject derogatory labels, such as "Black", "colored", and "Negro".^[94] He urged Americans of all races to reject hate and embrace love. He believed that Chicago would become a second Mecca.^{[citation needed]}

Drew Ali crafted Moorish Science ideology from a variety of sources, a "network of alternative spiritualities that focused on the power of the individual to bring about personal transformation through mystical knowledge of the divine within".^[96] In the interwar period in Chicago and other major cities, he used these concepts to preach Moorish pride. His approach appealed to thousands of African Americans who had left severely oppressive conditions in the South through the Great Migration and faced struggles adapting in new urban environments.^[96]

In early 1929, following a conflict over funds, Claude Green-Bey, the business manager of Chicago Temple No. 1 split from the Moorish Science Temple of America. He declared himself Grand Sheik and took a number of members with him. On March 15, Green-Bey was stabbed to death at the Unity Hall of the Moorish Science Temple, on Indiana Avenue in Chicago.^[97]

Drew Ali was out of town at the time, but upon his return to Chicago, Ali was arrested by police on suspicion of having instigated the killing. Shortly after his release by the police, Drew Ali died at age 43 at his home in Chicago on July 20, 1929.

Wallace Fard Muhammad, acting as a door-to-door travelling salesman, spread his religious teachings throughout Detroit, and within three years grew the movement to a reported 8,000-9,000 members in Detroit, Chicago and other cities. Today, the Nation of Islam has an estimated membership of 20,000–50,000.[101]

Fard taught a form of Black exceptionalism and self-pride to poor southern Blacks during the Great Northward Migration at a time when old ideas of scientific racism were prevalent. He advocated community members to establish and own their own businesses,^[102] eat healthy, raise families, and refrain from drugs and alcohol.^[103] He influenced his successor Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X and many other black nationalist thinkers. Detractors accuse him of being a con man who used mystery and charisma to swindle poor Blacks by selling them new Muslim names and stirring up racial animosity.^[104]

Publication of the Power of Positive Thinking

Norman Vincent Peale's father was a

Peale was highly-influential, receiving praise from several presidents (

H.W. Bush, Clinton and Trump spoke well of Peale).^[106]

Scientology

In 1938, pulp fiction author L. Ron Hubbard underwent a dental procedure in which he was administered a gas; during the procedure, he had an experience that he interpreted as a revelatory near-death experience.^[107][108] In August 1945, Hubbard moved into the

Babalon Working", a sex magic ritual intended to summon an incarnation of Babalon, the supreme Thelemite Goddess. It was undertaken over several nights in February and March 1946 in order to summon an "elemental" who would participate in further sex magic.^[111]

Hubbard received a revelation that Parsons should fund a business partnership, "Allied Enterprises" which called for Hubbard and Sara to buy yachts in Miami and sail them to the West Coast to sell for a profit.^[112] Aleister Crowley strongly criticized Parsons's actions, writing: "Suspect Ron playing confidence trick—Jack Parsons weak fool—obvious victim prowling swindlers."^[113] Parsons was "shattered" and had to sell his mansion to developers soon afterward.^[114] On August 10, 1946, Hubbard married Sara (though he was not yet legally divorced).^{[citation needed]}

In October 1947 he wrote to request psychiatric treatment:

After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life, I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence. My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst. Toward the end of my service I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected. I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all. ... I cannot, myself, afford such treatment.
Would you please help me?^[115]

Beginning in June 1948, the nationally syndicated wire service United Press ran a story on an American Legion-sponsored psychiatric ward in Savannah, Georgia which sought to keep mentally-ill war veterans out of jail.^[116] That summer, Hubbard was arrested by the San Louis Obispo sheriff on a charge of petty theft for passing a fraudulent check.^[117] In late 1948, Hubbard moved to Savannah, where he would later claim to have worked as a volunteer in the psychiatric clinic, where he claimed he "processed an awful lot of Negroes".^[118]

In May 1950, Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which claimed that the source of all psychological pain, and therefore the cause of mental and physical health problems, was a form of memory known as "engrams". According to Hubbard, individuals could reach a state he named "Clear" in which a person was freed of these engrams. This would be done by talking with an "auditor".^{[citation needed]}

Dianetics was an immediate commercial success and sparked what Martin Gardner calls "a nationwide cult of incredible proportions".^[119] Following the prosecution of Hubbard's foundation for teaching medicine without a license and Hubbard's loss of the rights to Dianetics, in 1953 Hubbard rebranded as Scientology, an explicitly religious movement.^[120][121]

After prosecutions in the United States and the United Kingdom, Hubbard largely lived aboard a ship from 1967 to 1975. During that period, Hubbard instigated a massive infiltration of the US government with over 5,000 covert agents involved; upon discovering the plot in 1977, the FBI conducted simultaneous raids of Hubbard's organizations and multiple high-level Scientologists including Hubbard's wife were convicted and imprisoned for their role in the infiltration. Hubbard remained in hiding the rest of his life, ultimately dying in a motorhome near Creston, California on January 24, 1986.^{[citation needed]}

Satanism

Anton Lavey became a local celebrity in San Francisco through his paranormal research and live performances as an organist. He was also a publicly noticeable figure; he drove a coroner's van around town, and he walked his pet black leopard, named Zoltan.^[84] LaVey formed a group called the Order of the Trapezoid, which later evolved into the governing body of the Church of Satan.^[122] According to Faxneld and Petersen, the Church of Satan represented "the first public, highly visible, and long-lasting organisation which propounded a coherent Satanic discourse".^[123]

LaVey began presenting Friday night lectures on the occult and rituals. A member of this circle suggested that he had the basis for a new religion. According to LaVey himself, on

Walpurgisnacht, April 30, 1966, he ritualistically shaved his head, allegedly "in the tradition of ancient executioners", declared the founding of the Church of Satan and proclaimed 1966 as "the Year One", Anno Satanas-the first year of the Age of Satan (it was later demonstrated that LaVey in fact shaved his head because he lost a bet and made up the "ancient executioners" story after the fact).^[124] LaVey's image has been described as "Mephistophelian", and may have been inspired by an occult-themed episode of the television show The Wild Wild West titled "The Night of the Druid's Blood" which originally aired on March 25, 1966, and starred Don Rickles

as the evil magician and Satanic cult leader Asmodeus, whose Mephistophelean persona is virtually identical to that which LaVey adopted one month later. [125]

See also

• Methodism – Branch of Protestant Christianity
• Jewish Science – Judaic spiritual movement
• Modern paganism – Religions shaped by historical paganism
• UFO religion – Type of religion which includes beliefs about UFOs or extraterrestrial aliens
• Hare Krishna movement
   – Religious organisationPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Transcendental Meditation movement – Programs and organizations connected to Transcendental Meditation
• Rajneesh movement – Persons inspired by the Indian mystic Osho

References