Anti-modernism, modernism, and postmodernism: struggling with the cultural significance of new religious movements

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 1998 by Lorne L. Dawson

Assuming that over the last thirty years there has been an increase in the number and diversity of new religious movements (NRMs) in North America (a subject of some dispute), is the emergence of these new forms of religious life indicative of significant changes in the nature and role of religion in our societies or changes in the character of our cultures as a whole? In response to such a question, partial speculations abound, scattered in sources obscure and profound. Calling on a divergent array of theoretical frameworks, ranging from Durkheim's "cult of man" through Berger's theory of secularization, to talk of globalization and postmodernism, sociologists of religion have sought to explain the broader implications of the study of NRMs. A recurrent theme of these discussions is the response to "modernism," and the cultural significance of NRMs is contingent on their alignment, in whole or in part, with various perceived anti-modernist, modernist, and post-modernist tendencies in our societies.

A close examination of some of the primary interpretive options available, however, reveals certain curious tensions in the discussion. Despite the seemingly disparate and diverse character of their theoretical foci, there is a significant convergence in the perspectives advanced. But the points of convergence are rather paradoxical. On the one hand, explicitly or implicitly, most scholars addressing the issue are still taking their cues from the pessimistic reading of the cultural significance of NRMs implied by the theoretical analyses of Peter Berger (1967) and Bryan Wilson (1982). On the other hand, there is a surprising dissatisfaction with the very use of the criterion of the acceptance or rejection of "modernity" (however that is defined), that stems from the views of Berger and Wilson (among others), to categorize and explain new religious phenomena in the contemporary world. Let me explain what I mean.

Focused on the unexpected resurgence of religious life in the late twentieth century, in the form of both NRMs and the various kinds of fundamentalism or revivals of orthodoxy, all of the perspectives examined are part of the growing tide of doubt about the veracity of the theory of secularization (see e.g., Berger 1983; Hadden 1987). Nonetheless, there are many important nuances to the various positions taken by members of this camp of sceptics. Most significantly, in this context, while all these sociologists now doubt that religion is destined, as Marx predicted, to whither away altogether, many implicitly or explicitly confine the new religious phenomena in our midst to one or both of two categories. In their essential nature, NRMs and fundamentalism are thought to be either some kind of rear-guard action on the part of a persisting remnant of premodernism, and hence anti-modernist in their operation, or they are thought to be the products of some basic accommodation to the realities of modernity, which has secured a permanent place for religion in the contemporary world, but in a much reduced capacity and with diminishing significance. In other words, few of the sociologists in question have truly abandoned the positive correlation of modernity and secularization, they have merely found ways to modify the secularizationist thesis to allow for some measure of religious survival. Their assessment of religion in the contemporary context still seems to be restricted to the options delineated some time ago by such prominent sociologists of religion as Peter Berger and Bryan Wilson.

As indicated, however, in the studies to be examined here there is also a common set of insights that may allow us to break free of these restrictive options and develop a third more empirically adequate and dialectical conception of the relationship between NRMs and the rest of society. This perspective abandons the overly general talk of "modernity," as well as the use of such lexically dependent terms as "post-modernity," "high modernity," or whatever. It seeks to stop identifying religion intrinsically with one side of various essentially invidious dichotomies, like those framed in terms of the pre-modern and modern, anti-modern and modern, conservative and liberal, irrational and rational, modern and postmodern. This is not to say that some religions, new and otherwise, do not actually fit these categories. Rather it is simply to say that these are no longer the only theoretical terms of analysis sensibly available and that there is no intrinsic reason to restrict the study of existing NRMs to these perpetually reiterated terms of reference.(1)

Let us set the stage for this argument by briefly examining a classic and influential instance of the use of Berger's perspective to frame NRMs (including fundamentalism) as essentially anti-modern, namely the views of James Davison Hunter (1981). Our attention then will turn to a synthetic analysis of three important and unduly neglected essays on the possible social significance of NRMs, published almost twenty years ago by Donald Stone (1978), Frances Westley (1978), and Colin Campbell (1978). Individually and collectively these articles suggest a more nuanced interpretation of the relationship between NRMs and modernity than the one proposed by Hunter. They present a different image of the very nature and hence significance of NRMs, one which highlights the compatibility of these new religions with the conditions of modernity, without necessarily subscribing to Berger's and Wilson's pessimistic accommodationist reading of the role of religion in a more secular age. Stone does so by simply reflecting, with great astuteness and prescience, on the empirical results of the Berkeley New Religious Consciousness Project; while Westley and Campbell arrive at similar conclusions by applying some of the insights of Durkheim and Troeltsch into the future of religion to NRMs. The surprising convergence in these analyses has been independently corroborated by observations made much later in other innovative analyses of Arthur Parsons (1989), Phillip Lucas (1992), and James Beckford (1989, 1992, 1996). Beckford is one of the few prominent sociologists of religion to directly tackle the issue of whether the concept of postmodernism can be used to clarify the cultural significance of NRMs. A survey of this literature does not provide us with a fully formulated alternative view of the probable social and cultural significance of NRMs. To that end more focused theoretical and empirical research is required. But the theoretical rudiments are falling in place to warrant seriously rethinking the limited options with which we have been working for so long, without reverting, however, to the unproductive and perplexing discourse of post-modernism.