Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, or the Hare Krishna movement) has generally been studied as a Western new religious movement (NRM) with a sociological genesis in the 1960s American counterculture. At the same time, ISKCON's claim to a genealogical heritage in the venerable Bengali Vaisnava tradition in India has been supported by many NRM scholars. The question concerning ISKCON's origins – Indian or American, old or new – has had political, legal and sectarian consequences throughout the life of the movement. This article revisits the question of ISKCON's cultural genesis byproviding a brief overview of the movement's cross-cultural development from the 1960s to the present. It shows how the discovery of Gaudiya Vaisnavism by Western Krishna converts has been a gradual, often tense, yet highly productive process of cross-cultural encounter and theological exchange, ultimately leading to the sectarian affirmation of ISKCON's distinct religious identity over and against the claims of the Indian tradition.

The Church of Scientology’s 1982 Mission Holders’ Conference is a pivotal event for understanding the schisms the Church of Scientology (CoS) experienced in subsequent years. As with most other schisms, it is relatively easy to point to a specific incident that triggered the split. However, the more significant factors for understanding the schism are less apparent, rooted in the structure of the organization. The analysis in this paper will examine how the context in which the conference took place was decisive for subsequent schisms. With the founder and leader of CoS, L. Ron Hubbard, out of the scene, access to means of legitimation shifted from one (Hubbard) to many, something that facilitated the exit of so many otherwise dedicated Scientologist. Moreover, I will argue thatthere are certain mechanisms within Scientology which give movement leaders tools that can be used to compel dissidents into either silence or defection. The way in which Church leaders applied these tools against their own members set in motion disenchantment with CoS that later spawned schisms. Had the situation been handled with more care, fewer people would have defected.

This article focuses on neo-shamans in a “medialized” setting. Using the Norwegian celebrity shaman and medium Gro-Helen Tørum, other mediapractitioners from media and my own field-work as examples, I focus on the case of female shamans in particular. They often appear as mediums and clairvoyants in addition to their role as shamans, and demonstrate various ways of relating to or employing the “ethnicity” of shamanism as a way of widening their scope of action. Their staging of themselves as shamans or “users of shamanistic techniques” gives clues to understanding the interplays of popular religion and spirituality, tradition, media, and gender.

The Jesus People movement’s influence on Christian music and charismatic practices was profound. Alongside the interdenominational musical reformation came changes in how the charismata—God’s spiritual gifts to Christians—were performed and celebrated in church services. Embraced at first as bodily manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s presence, controversies arose over time concerning what should count as charismata and how central these practices ought to be in church services. This article explores three such controversies, how they were handled by church leaders and how they would come to shape the Calvary Chapel and Vineyard movements’ denominational identities.

This article addresses controversies in Transcendental Meditation (TM) and its history in the West (and especially in North America), chronicling periods of less or more mainstreaming on TM’s part – moving from world peace and psychedelics in the Beatles era to science as a way of attracting the ‘Average Joanna’ practitioner in later years. Furthermore, as schisms in New Religious Movements (NRMs) tend to be controversial, I examine the Robin Carlsen case and, notably, that of the Art of Living Foundation (AoL) schism. AoL has become a global NRM in a few years. In addition to exploring the likelihood of schisms from AoL, I also assess controversial (and non-controversial) interactions between AoL, TM and the mass media.

This essay will discuss the religious creation of the Frenchman Claude Vorilhon, currently known as his holiness Raël. Following an alleged encounter with an extraterrestrial in 1973 he founded the Raëlian religion. The main tenets of his religion are the notions that humankind is the creation of a group of extraterrestrial scientists; that bodily sensuality and sexuality is something positive; that immortality can be achieved through scientific means; and that if we prove ourselves worthy and rid our world of all destructive tendencies we will inherit the knowledge of our creators and become able to continue the creative cycle by creating life elsewhere in the cosmos. The present article will situate this religion within the context of ancient astronaut theories.