Blackwell Reference Online

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[ iv ] Each generation has its own ‘new religious movements’, but the term came to be applied particularly to those that developed in a period of cultural ferment in the 1960s and 1970s. At mid-century Americans were pictured as seeking religious conformity, as being content with Protestant, Catholic and Jewish as their spiritual contexts. In the years of the John F. Kennedy and early Lyndon B. Johnson presidencies, the national mood was characterized by a passion for practical politics and some measure of progressivism, usually in a secular setting. Then, suddenly, reaction set in and in the course of the late 1960s and then through the 1970s any number of new religious movements took shape ( see N ew religious movements in the west ). Many of these elaborated on themes from ancient and O ccult wisdom, for example from Egypt in the period of the P yramids. More was imported and transformed in passage from H indu and B uddhist or other Asian sources. There were also importations and revivals of African spirituality; or from Caribbean and South American religions other than Christianity. However, numbers of particularly intense movements drew also on Christian sources. The best known was the U nification C hurch , a blend of Korean Christianity, S hamanism and the personal vision of Dr Sun Myung Moon, introduced in 1972. The most notorious was the People's Church (P eople's ... log in or subscribe to read full text