716. Wallis, Roy. "Ideology, Authority and the Development of Cultic Movements." Social Research 41, 1974: 299-327.
On the process whereby cults may become sects. This is a specialty of Wallis's; see the listings below for detail.
717. ---. "The Cult and Its Transformation." In Sectarianism: Analysis of Religious and Non-Religious Sects edited by Roy Wallis. New York: Halsted, 1975a: 35-49.
Cults and sects are deviant with regard to established religion; the cult differs from the sect in its pluralistic legitimacy: it allows a variety of ways to salvation, where sects insist on their own unique legitimacy.
718. ———. "Scientology: Therapeutic Cult to Religious Sect." Sociology 9, 1975b: 89-99.
The process of transformation of a cult to a sect involves the assumption of authority over the individualism of the cultic milieu and is often a strategy adopted to increase the manageability of the group.
719. ———. "The Aetherius Society: A Case Study in the Formation of a Mystagogic Congregation." In Sectarianism: Analyses of Religious and Non-Religious Sects edited by Roy Wallis. London: Peter Owen, 1975e: 17-34.
Dr. George King typifies Weber's mystagogue--a mystical magician: he had a monopoly on the means of revelation within his UFO group called the Aetherius Society. He had been a mystic and healer but came to drop his magical practice to concentrate on participation in "cosmic events."
720. ———. "Relative Deprivation and Social Movements: A Cautionary Note." British Journal of Sociology 26 (3), 1975f: 360-63.
Beckford (1978d: item 73) says this work points out the essential need for control groups in accurate assessment of religious movements; without them, how do we know that the characteristics detected are unique to the group? This article attacks Graham Allan (1974: item 11) as well as Aberle (1962: item 2), Glock (1964: item 294), and Stark for indiscriminate use of relative deprivation, especially in jumping to the conclusion that members of a movement experienced it prior to joining. Important questions go unanswered: if converts experience this, and everyone does to some extent, do they feel it more acutely than others who fail to convert? The concept is capable of proliferation to fit any movement. The type is based on the movement's dogma: if the movement offers X, then it follows that its members join to get some, hence they were deprived of it before. Users of the theory look for this subjective characteristic in objective circumstances, on one hand, and in dogma, on the other. The movement is viewed as essentially unambiguous, offering the same reward to all, and this is obviously inaccurate. No one demonstrates that members actually felt this postulated deprivation. Motivation is probably an ultimate unknowable.
721. ---. "Observations on the Children of God." Sociological Review 24, November 1976a: 807-28.
A critique of Kanter, 1972b (item 384) and Beckford, 1975a and b. The history and development of the Children of God refute their view that social organization precedes eschatology; a sketch of the group's history and of its prophet's (D.B. Berg) career is included.
722. ———. Salvation and Protest: Studies of Social and Religious Movements. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979a.
A collection of Wallis's papers examining the transition from cult to sect and its failure in various British groups.
723. ———. "Yesterday's Children: Cultural and Structural Changes in a New Religious Movement." In The Social Impact of New Religious Movements edited by Bryan Wilson. New York: Rose of Sharon Press, 1981: 97-132.
An analysis of structural changes occurring within the Children of God and their bearings on charisma and the process of its institutionalization.
724. ———. "The New Religions as Social Indicators." In New Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society edited by Eileen Barker. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982a.
Proposes a typology as the basis of a theory of origins and description of features. NRMs give insight into society because they either react against or celebrate its features. The types are world rejecting and world affirming. This article essentially repeats Wallis, 1984: item 727.
725. ———. "Charisma, Commitment and Control in a New Religious Movement." In Millennialism and Charisma edited by Roy Wallis. Belfast: Queen's Univ. of Belfast Press, 1982d: 73-140.
Charisma is often misunderstood and rarely demonstrated. Certain ambiguities in the career of Moses David Berg can best be understood in the light of a proper application of the term.
726. ———. "Introduction: Millennialism and Charisma." In Millennialism and Charisma edited by Roy Wallis. Belfast: Queens Univ. Press, 1982e: 1-12.
Millennialism is
"a form of belief and its associated movement which anticipates a total and supernatural transformation of the physical world, with the elimination of its present evils and indignities and, characteristically, the elevation of believers to the status of an elite [while charisma] deriv[es] from the idea that an individual is possessed of supernatural powers; that he is the direct agency of transcendental intervention in human affairs; or that he is in some other way the possessor of exceptional powers or qualities ... regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary" (pp. 1-2).
The two are closely but not necessarily associated. When the millennialist idea is an important part of tradition, charismatic leadership may not be required as among the Millerites in late nineteenth century America. Charismatic leaders may propose quite different ideas. Weber's "exemplary prophet" type is unlikely to announce the imminent End; instead he is likely to offer a way of personal transformation.
727. ———. The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life. Boston: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1984.
Paul Heelas's (1985) review finds serious faults with Wallis's typology: it is incoherent and fails clearly to distinguish types; it is not exhaustive and thus specific movements cannot be successfully classified within it. All new religions combine elements of his types.
A typology, like B. Wilson's (1973: item 752) based on the relationship of the movement to the world: it may be accepting, rejecting, or accommodating. These are ideal types into which few movements fall precisely, since they will combine elements but nonetheless are, he says, highly predictive. Both the accepting and rejecting type tend toward the accommodating over time. However this applies only to NRMs in the West since World War II. Movements may shift their orientation. Wallis's typology has only a general similarity to Yinger (1970b), but this schema is intended to be less broadly descriptive, and includes some of Yinger's categories and excludes others.
Secularization theories: Wallis rejects Westley (1978) because the individualist religions do not seem to provide a "common core of values" with which to integrate society as Durkheim argues they must. Wallis also disputes Campbell (1978: item 152), arguing that spiritual and mystical religion reflects a response to secularization, because many NRMs are neither secular or sectarian nor as tolerant as Troelsch predicts. Stark and Bainbridge (Stark, 1981; Bainbridge & Stark, 1979; Stark & Bainbridge, 1980a and b: see items 653, 36 and 649 ff.) argue that secularization is self-limiting because people strive for compensators (like I.O.U.s, promising remote rewards treated as though they were tangible, postulations of rewards "according to explanations that are not readily accessible to unambiguous evaluation, intangible substitutes for a desired reward") when rewards fail. They may be specific (healing) or general (a better world tomorrow). Naturalistic (rational) systems cannot compete with these. So secularization limits itself and supernaturalism replaces churches. Churches always secularize, with success, which leads to revival (synthetic process) and innovation (cult formation). Thus the "amount" of religion remains constant. Innovation follows the ultimate failure of revival, and a new religion will arise.
The crucial question is how many of the disaffected will be recruited to the new movements? The evidence suggests that the unchurched remain indifferent. NRMs do not take up the slack as they should in this view. The world-affirming types may attract many but only to the most tenuous and short-lived commitments. Compensators are not essentially different from the rewards they are supposed to replace. Bainbridge and Stark have also reified the notion of reward itself in an economizing of spirituality. Future rewards, like life everlasting, need not be a substitute for anything at all but may be valued in and for themselves. In sum, this is reductionist.
Bellah's (1970: item 81, 82, 1975) American Civil Religion theory is sponsored by Anthony and Robbins and Tipton: NRMs respond to a crisis in "American Civil Religion," a vague notion. There are dualisms and monisms: reaffirming traditional elements and offering "relativistic and subjectivistic moral meaning systems," respectively. But these claims show little familiarity with the actual groups and offer no evidence that they are actually responses to this suppositious crisis. Civil religion is ambiguous, and no evidence is offered that certain ritual events have any connection with whatever it is. There is no demonstration that the ritual is in any way systematic; there is no visible feedback loop by which failure of the rituals to achieve integration affect their performance [Wallis is simplistic on this point, but it seems well taken.] This is mystification. The reasons people give for performing their rituals are adequate explanations, and there need be no single unifying theme to them. Tipton's (1979, 1982 a & b: items 680 f.) attempt to advance "making moral sense" and Bird's (1979: item 101) claim that alleviation of moral accountability are primary motives are both over-simple in view of the facts.
Brian Wilson (1976: item 755) sees those least affected by routinization and rationalization to be most susceptible to NRMs, which demonstrate the meaninglessness of religion. They are not significant reactions to secularization but part of it. This does not seem to fit the world-affirming movements. They embrace the modern world and its secularity. They cannot resacralize the world.
The comfortable are unlikely to join movements fostering change, and deprivation as a motive is powerful where it is common. But marginality is never sufficient. Intervening factors include age and hope. The middle class recruits of the sixties had elected marginality and been nudged into it. World-rejection demands a very high price unless the recruit is thoroughly alienated. The collectivism of rejecting movements follows from their breadth of purpose and segregation from the evil world. In rejecting movements, both membership and ideology are clear-cut, defined by leadership fiat. The truth must be protected from contamination. Social implosion (Bainbridge, 1978: item 39) may occur also in an accepting movement when a central cadre forms, dedicated entirely to the movement, without affecting the movement as a whole, which continues to draw upon a large market. This is endemic to rejecting movements as wholes. They are characteristically sectarian and exclusive, exercising rigid control over the purity of its truth. Their isolationism forces them to recruit publicly. "Paranoid" leadership is common (often with good reason, since the message and style of these movements generally entail hostility).
728. ———. "Figuring Out Cult Receptivity." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 25 (4), 1986: 494-503.
Stark and Bainbridge's (item 648) theory on the appearance and proliferation of cults is weak. While cults do grow where churches are weak as Stark and Bainbridge claim, they are especially prevalent in Protestant immigrant societies, even where church attendance continues high. People are most likely to participate where they are not strongly constrained from doing so as in secularized Protestant societies. The compensators theory is based on assumptions, not evidence. There is no proof that people seek compensators, failing rewards, that political and religious movements provide these, or that people who want them will take them in those forms.
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