Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vocal bomb here if, as Karl Mark suggested, religion
Speaker 1: is the opium of the people. We live on a
Speaker 1: planet where nobody needs to walk too far down the
Speaker 1: street to get drugs. Each year, hundreds of new religious
Speaker 1: movements are born. They're all over the place if you
Speaker 1: know where to look. Never mind that only a tiny
Speaker 1: fraction of them will survive. There's more where they came from.
Speaker 1: So who starts new religions and why Starting a new
Speaker 1: religion is actually a lot like rolling out a new
Speaker 1: social media app. Hundreds of these things appear out of
Speaker 1: thin air every year, created by go getters with some
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial spirit, egoism, creativity, ambition, and flair for presenting an idea.
Speaker 1: But dumb luck and good timing play a part two.
Speaker 1: Sometimes an idea comes along that speaks to people's needs
Speaker 1: and concerns at a particular moment in history. When this happens,
Speaker 1: some buzzes generated, people get curious, and maybe, just maybe,
Speaker 1: the whole thing blows up and we end up with
Speaker 1: snapchat or scientology. Religious scholars avoid the word cult when
Speaker 1: describing new religious movements because the term is so Latin
Speaker 1: with value judgments, but every new religious sect or spiritual
Speaker 1: movement essentially begins the same way as a cult. We
Speaker 1: spoke with Reza Aslan, a religious scholar and author of
Speaker 1: best selling books about the beginnings of both Islam and Christianity.
Speaker 1: They said, the big joke in religion is that cult
Speaker 1: plus time equals religion. Christianity was a cult for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years before it became the official religion of the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire. To this day, there are Americans who call
Speaker 1: Mormonism occult in spite of the fact that it's one
Speaker 1: of the most thriving religions in the world. The truth is,
Speaker 1: at some point, most of the world's great religions were
Speaker 1: what most people would call cults, started by upstarts like
Speaker 1: Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha. We also spoke with Lauren Dawson,
Speaker 1: a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the
Speaker 1: University of Waterloo and author of Comprehending Cults, The Sociology
Speaker 1: of New Aigious Movements. Dawson pointed out that while many
Speaker 1: of these motivational leaders have the drive to start a
Speaker 1: new spiritual group, precious few have the wherewithal to manage
Speaker 1: it through the awkward early stages without mismanaging finances, alienating
Speaker 1: their followers, or otherwise letting their egos get the better
Speaker 1: of them. Dawson said cults have a bad reputation because
Speaker 1: corruption is pretty common within these groups, but in many cases,
Speaker 1: these charismatic leaders are really trying to help people. Research
Speaker 1: shows in many of these new religious movements, people adherents
Speaker 1: are successfully overcoming drug or alcohol addiction, family problems, et cetera,
Speaker 1: because the religions really do provide new, stabilizing influences in
Speaker 1: their lives. There are so so many religions out there.
Speaker 1: There are hundreds of offshoots of Tibetan Buddhism, different forms
Speaker 1: of Mormonism, Ufo religions, and countless reconceived notions of every
Speaker 1: form of Christianity that you can think of. One Christian
Speaker 1: sect might follow a preacher who believes in the polygamous marriage,
Speaker 1: while another might have very specific rules on to baptize somebody.
Speaker 1: You name it, it's available. According to Dawson, reliable estimates
Speaker 1: put the number of officially recognized religions currently operating in
Speaker 1: the United States around two thousand, five hundred the US
Speaker 1: is a very religious society compared to Europe or Canada,
Speaker 1: which each currently has only a few dozen new religions.
Speaker 1: Africa also seems to be a hotbed of new religiosity.
Speaker 1: Dawson said Africa was the last place to be penetrated
Speaker 1: by European religion, and primarily by Islam and Christianity. There
Speaker 1: have been loads of conversions away from native practice just
Speaker 1: in the past one hundred years. As so often happens,
Speaker 1: when people convert, they usually combine their beliefs with some
Speaker 1: elements of Catholicism. In the case of Africa, this has
Speaker 1: been in the midst of economic upheaval, new diseases, and
Speaker 1: a lot of disruption. It's ripe for new profits to
Speaker 1: show up and say I've got the new truth. We're
Speaker 1: all going to be okay. This is not to say
Speaker 1: these new religions are okay with the establishment, though. One
Speaker 1: back to the land spiritual movement on the island of
Speaker 1: Borneo called Mila Abraham was in the news in seventeen
Speaker 1: because its leader was jailed for blasphemy in Indonesia for
Speaker 1: claiming to be the actual son of God. The movement
Speaker 1: has over fifty thousand followers, and the Indonesian government is
Speaker 1: not happy about it. The country recognizes six different religions,
Speaker 1: and Mila Abraham is not one of them. If a
Speaker 1: new spiritual movement makes it out of the awkward beginning stages,
Speaker 1: if enough people are committed to giving their time and
Speaker 1: money to the cause, it needs to develop institutionalized control.
Speaker 1: A rigid hierarchy, and clear cut guidelines about the difference
Speaker 1: between correct and incorrect beliefs tend to attract true believers
Speaker 1: and keep out the freeloaders of people who take advantage
Speaker 1: of the essential do gooderishness of a religion without being
Speaker 1: invested in helping it succeed. The Church of Scientology is
Speaker 1: a good example of a new, very successful religion that
Speaker 1: did a great job in its mid twentieth century beginnings
Speaker 1: of laying down some clear cut guidelines for the levels
Speaker 1: of commitment expected of its believers. In return, Scientology promised
Speaker 1: a new powerful identity, a better type of salvation than
Speaker 1: anyone else was offering, as well as prosperity and luck.
Speaker 1: But as the religion has grown, something new and one
Speaker 1: percent expected happened. The followers of Scientology have begun to
Speaker 1: want to define the religion for themselves. Aslan said, for
Speaker 1: the first time, scientology is having to confront sex scientologists
Speaker 1: breaking off from the Church, but not the religion. They're
Speaker 1: seizing for themselves, the power to define scientology for themselves.
Speaker 1: The Church says they aren't allowed to do this, but
Speaker 1: that's the same argument every religious institution makes. That's what
Speaker 1: the Vatican said when Luther nailed his theses to the
Speaker 1: church door. Only we can define what isn't isn't Christian
Speaker 1: and we know who on that argument. So all those
Speaker 1: stricter religions are generally more successful. The five largest world religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism,
Speaker 1: and Hinduism all have one thing in common. They've made
Speaker 1: themselves strong enough to survive continual dissension over atodoxy and
Speaker 1: evolve with the changing needs of their communities. Oslan gave
Speaker 1: this for an example. In the US, both slave owners
Speaker 1: and abolitionists used not only the same Bible to justify
Speaker 1: their argument, they used the exact same verses. When that's
Speaker 1: the kind of scripture that you have, you know it's
Speaker 1: going to last. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler clang. Visit our online story te
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Speaker 1: for more on this and lots of other topics with
Speaker 1: staying power, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot
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