In these five thematically diverse papers, panelists exam a variety of new religious movements as well as several critical, contemporary issues in the study of new religious movements from cultural settings including the United States, Korea, and Japan. Cases center on both well-known new religious movements such as the Children of God and Scientology, as well as newer, new religions such as Shincheonji and Unicult. Panelists will explore theoretical issues such as the role of media in perceptions of new religions, the issues of second-generation members of new religions, and new uses of pejorative terms such as "brainwashing" and "cult" by new religions. Taken together, these papers will demonstrate how new religious movements are evolving in the contemporary world and how studies of new religions movements are evolving.
Beginning in 1971, network newscasts frequently regaled their audiences with stories of the Children of God, a movement begun among the Jesus People of Southern California but which quickly spread internationally and eventually renamed itself The Family International. This paper analyzes and contextualizes three pieces of long-form TV journalism, showing how – far from being unremittingly hostile to a new religion as part of a supposed media secularization – reporters viewed and subsequently translated the group to their audience through a series of unspoken middle-class white Protestant myths of the frontier: the garden, the carnival, and the gothic.
The assassin Yamagami Tetsuya has been variously described in traditional and social media as a mentally unstable lone wolf, an anti-cult warrior, and a god-hero of the lower classes. This paper offers a translation and analysis of Yamagami’s manifesto and then a discussion of its social context. It is argued that the intended audience of Yamagami’s manifesto (which was addressed to an anti-cult journalist) and the letter’s contents indicate that Yamagami belongs to Japan’s own version of the “cult wars”—mediatized legal conflicts over the place of marginal NRMs in society. Yamagami’s statement inhabits the intersection of two genres. It bears the hallmarks of the increasingly prevalent “second-generation” grievance narratives penned by adult children who resent their parents’ religions; and the manifesto also mimics the literary trope of last testaments composed by Japanese “tragic heroes” who protest corruption. The sympathetic media reception indicates that these themes resonate with the public.
The E-meter is a device used by Scientologists to aid in spiritual progress. Regarded by Scientologists as a tool used during spiritual counseling and other procedures followed within the church, the E-meter is said to do nothing on its own. However, I suggest this notion flattens the E-meter’s effectivity and does not account for its authoritative role within the church. Understanding the E-meter as an omniscient presence within its social context offers a new way of “reading” the device and its potential to affect the lived and felt experience of those who use it. Written from the perspective of a former second-generation member of the Church of Scientology, this paper will mobilize a psychoanalytic and autoethnographic perspective to discuss my childhood perception and conceptualization of the E-meter as an omniscient and agentic presence, and to examine how my interactions with the device contributed to my experience as a young Scientologist.
The new religious movement Unicult, founded in 2012 by Unicole Unicron, blends New Age spiritual teachings, abundance practices, and an intensive engagement with popular culture. Unicult is also one of the few new religious movements to call itself a “cult,” its founder a “cult leader,” and its proselytizing “brainwashing.” Given the negative association of these terms, I ask why? By examining Unicult material across multiple media, I argue that the group does so for multiple reasons: to seek attention, as a form of culture jamming and cultural critique, and for ideological reasons internal to the group. I also argue that the group’s cult rhetoric subverts the very concepts of cult and brainwashing, and reveals the latent tensions present in popular discourse about “cults.”
The Shincheonji Church of Jesus is a new millenarian Korean Christian movement that is widely referred to as a “pseudo” religion (saibi jonggyo) in South Korean media and accused of heresy (idan) by mainstream Protestant churches. Since at least the early 2000s, news and entertainment media, Protestant theologians, and anti-cult activists in South Korea have accused The Shincheonji Church of Jesus of deceiving people into joining their religion and often refer to members as “victims.” In this paper, I will first use data collected during my doctoral research through a combination of digital ethnography and media content analysis to illustrate the diverse ways in which Shincheonji members join this new Christian movement and their reasons for leaving Protestantism. I will then explain how the assertions that Shincheonji has only grown through dubious methods reveal greater anxieties about South Korea’s changing religious landscape, particularly regarding the decline of mainstream Protestantism.