Recent years have observed significant change in the landscape of American religious/spiritual environment and religious/spiritual groups called new religious movements (NRMs) have developed as an alternative for many individuals to engage in religious/spiritual beliefs and practices outside the traditional religions. It was unclear if participation in NRMs provide adherents with similar mental health benefits as participation in traditional religious groups, or whether there might be important differences. The current study examined the link between participation in NRMs and relevant social and psychological outcomes including mental health symptoms, emotional well-being, attachment style, and social relationships. I recruited participants from three groups: (1) NRMs, (2) traditional religious groups, and (3) no religious/spiritual identification. I explored group differences in five key areas of mental health and well-being: (1) mental health symptoms, (2) subjective well-being, (3) attachment, (4) social belonging, and (5) meaning in life. The overall results suggested that NRM participants showed relatively few differences compared to traditional religious participants in regard to the above psychological profile. NRM participants reported more differences compared to participants who were neither religious nor spiritual. In this regard, NRM involvement was associated with some positive outcomes, including positive emotional well-being and meaning in life, and some negative outcomes, including anxious adult attachment, low sense of belonging compared to non-religious individuals, and higher rates of depression. Limitations, suggestions for future research, and practical applications are discussed.

1 Název diplomové práce v anglickém jazyce, abstrakt v anglickém jazyce a tři klíčová slova v anglickém jazyce Legal aspects of New Religious Movements in the Czech Republic Abstract The main purpose of this master's thesis is a critical analysis of Czech legislation of New Religious Movements. This thesis should describe a legal relationship between New Religious Movements and Czech legal order. This thesis focuses on the topic while studying public and private law's aspects. It also focuses on sociological considerations. New Religious Movements are a necessary part of a religious development of every society. There is a lot of different religious movements. Therefore, it is especially challenging to make legislation related to them. The legislator should consider religion a private part of everyone's life. Act No. 3/2002 Coll., which is the most important piece of legislation for New Religious Movements, does not distinguish terminologically between New Religious Movements and the traditional churches. A long tradition in the Czech Republic and a lot of members have for example Seventh-day Adventist Church, Jehovah's Witnesses and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Being a member of a New Religious Movement can particularly affect man's life. Conflicts between New Religious Movements and...

<p>The purpose of this study was to try to develop a better understanding of the process that being a member in a new religious movement might imply, and to find out how the identity of a defector changes from the time upon entering the movement, while they are within the movement and after leaving the movement. We also wanted to examine what kind of help and support would be needed around a defection. The study focuses on identity and our questions were: How does the defector describe him/herself and his/her identity before joining the new religious movement until the period after defecting? What demand for support and help may there be when defecting from new religious movement? The theoretical starting point was The Identity Theory, Structural Role Theory and KASAM. A qualitative method was used and four defectors from new religious movements were interviewed. The findings were that they described themselves as ”seekers” and ”lost” when they entered the movement and within the initial phase they repressed their personal identity whilst their social identity increased in strength. In due course, doubts began to arise and these continued to grow until the time of defection with mental instability as a result. The process led to the creation of a new selfidentity. Primarily support and help with strengthening the personal identity was needed. It would be advantageous if this support could be given by someone that had defected previously and with whom they could identify.</p>

The purpose of this study was to try to develop a better understanding of the process that being a member in a new religious movement might imply, and to find out how the identity of a defector changes from the time upon entering the movement, while they are within the movement and after leaving the movement. We also wanted to examine what kind of help and support would be needed around a defection. The study focuses on identity and our questions were: How does the defector describe him/herself and his/her identity before joining the new religious movement until the period after defecting? What demand for support and help may there be when defecting from new religious movement? The theoretical starting point was The Identity Theory, Structural Role Theory and KASAM. A qualitative method was used and four defectors from new religious movements were interviewed. The findings were that they described themselves as ”seekers” and ”lost” when they entered the movement and within the initial phase they repressed their personal identity whilst their social identity increased in strength. In due course, doubts began to arise and these continued to grow until the time of defection with mental instability as a result. The process led to the creation of a new selfidentity. Primarily support and help with strengthening the personal identity was needed. It would be advantageous if this support could be given by someone that had defected previously and with whom they could identify.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how two former members of the Church of Scientology describe their lives and the process from member to non-member. This will be achieved by answering how they describe their lives within the church and how they describe their process leaving the church. Also, by analyzing what crucial factors influenced their decision to leave the church. The study uses a qualitative text analysis to analyze two biographies written by two former members, Miscavige Hill and Tunedal. The study concludes that the two former members lives in the church differ. Of that reason that one of them grew up in the movement and the other joined as an adult. Also, one of them were an ordinary member of the movement and the other were a member of the very exclusive “sea organization” within the Church of Scientology. Furthermore, the result of the study shows that the process from member to non-member is a lengthy process, and that there are a number of factors that contributed to the members decision to leave the Church of Scientology, such as the church demands for donation and the church control over its members. The study demonstrates the need for source criticism, and to be critical of stories from both members and former members. Not everyone has the same experience of new religious movement and each member has an individual experience. Whereby there will always be different versions of “the truth”.

This dissertation investigates the rhetorical constitution of a religio-political social collective which has come to be understood as Christian Reconstruction (CR). CR is guided by conservative Calvinism (Reformed theology) and upholds the ideas of theonomy, postmillennialism, and presuppositional apologetics. Some of the leaders associated with CR are R. J. Rushdoony, Gary North, Gary DeMar of American Vision and Doug Phillips of Vision Forum. A few of its key practices are homeschooling, the father ‘returning home,’ and having as many children ‘as God will allow,’ (a vision aligned with the Quiverfull movement). It is primarily a national movement within the United States, not limited to a singular geographical location or denomination. This study provides a comprehensive overview of CR, illustrating how the grammars of CR are animated, embodied, and upheld in peoples’ lives and practices. Through the observation of conferences and events, and the collection and examination of media materials, this analysis takes a constructivist approach to piecing together the discursive fragments that constitute CR. CR grammar is richly embedded in a web of interaction, media, technology, images, bodily adornment, performance, music, games, and consumer culture. My theoretical framework utilizes the work of critical cultural theorists (Gramsci, 1971; Butler, 1990; Hall, 1976, Laclau, 2005) in combination with theories of constitutive (Burke, 1950; Charland, 1987; McGee, 1975) and visual rhetoric and display (Olson, Finnegan & Hope, 2008; Prelli, 2006; Selzer & Crowley, 1999) to examine the types of social, cultural, and political subjectivities, practices and institutions that are constituted within the CR community. It focuses primarily on the patriarchal identities within CR families as well as the focus on nationalistic teaching about Christian American history as methods for changing the culture of America. I consider the hegemonic machinations of CR grammars in constituting these identities. Finally, this study makes available a methodology and method for the study of dispersed “peoples” and their discursive lives. I demonstrate that multi-sited ethnography, combined with the theories of constitutive and visual rhetorics and critical cultural studies provides a systematic heuristic with which to inquire into a people, its culture, activities, identities, and how they constitute themselves.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T19:20:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Claudio Alvarez Ferreira.pdf: 963163 bytes, checksum: 8b18e683f55c54595243bb4a894fc010 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-10-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The Brazilian religious movement known as the Santo Daime, was born at the suburb of Rio Branco, state of Acre, during the 1930`s. Its founding father was Raimundo Irineu Serra, from the state of Maranhão. This religious movement has its ritual s foundation stone in the ingestion of a sacred beverage known as Santo Daime. Because of its peculiarities and for its expansion around Brazil and the world, the Santo Daime stood out nationally and internationally in the religious scenery. During its formation process, various religious sources had been melted and reelaborated, such as: Christianism, amazon xamanism, esoteric currents, the kardecist spiritism and african-brazilian religions. Considering the xamanic source as the most important, most of the academic papers regards The Santo Daime religion as a xamanic movement, taking into account ecstatic experiences of participants in the Santo Daime rituals, leaders being compared to xamans and the healings attributed to the sacrate beverage. However, what has been observed, considering the doctrinary assemblage and the daimistic symbols, is that there is a central Christian axis which guides all the symbolic reelaboration that constitutes the Santo Daime. Therefore, even more than a xamanic movement, the Santo Daime is a Christian movement, stablishing a much more peculiar way of following the Christian principies, deeply influenced by the praxis and symbols from the Brazilian popular Catholicism. In this direction, The Daime de Guarda, a particular category of the holy beverage s private usage, approaches copiously the domestic saints cult in the Catholic popular praxis in Brazil / O movimento religioso brasileiro, conhecido como Santo Daime, nasceu na periferia de Rio Branco, estado do Acre, durante a década de 30, do século XX. Fundado pelo maranhense Raimundo Irineu Serra, esse movimento religioso tem como eixo central de sua ritualística a ingestão de uma bebida sagrada conhecida como Santo Daime. Em decorrência de suas peculiaridades e pela sua expansão pelo Brasil e pelo mundo, o Santo Daime se destacou no cenário religioso nacional e internacional. Durante seu processo de formação, foram sendo fundidas e reelaboradas matrizes religiosas das mais diversas, como o cristianismo, o xamanismo amazônico, correntes esotéricas, o espiritismo kardecista e as religiões afro-brasileiras. Considerando a matriz xamânica como a mais importante, boa parte dos trabalhos acadêmicos sobre o tema interpreta o Santo Daime como um movimento xamânico, levando em conta as experiências extáticas dos participantes dos rituais daimistas, as lideranças comparadas aos xamãs e os processos de cura com a bebida sagrada. Entretanto, o que se observa, considerando-se o conjunto doutrinário e de símbolos daimistas, é que existe um eixo central cristão que norteia todo processo de reelaboração simbólica na constituição do Santo Daime. Portanto, mais que um movimento xamânico, o Santo Daime é um movimento cristão, estabelecendo uma forma muito peculiar de seguir os princípios do cristianismo, profundamente influenciada pelas práticas e símbolos do catolicismo popular brasileiro. Neste sentido, o Daime de Guarda, uma categoria particular de utilização privada da bebida sagrada, se aproxima amplamente do culto doméstico aos santos nas práticas católicas populares do Brasil

The aim of this essay is to investigate if there exists any relation between what is generally considered Britain’s foremost elite military unit, HM Royal Marines and a manipulative religious sect. With theoretical data defining a manipulative religious sect, and empirical data gathered from interviews with a number of former royal marines, this essay looks at the attributes common to these two very different organisations. Interestingly, even though the experiences of members of such organisations seemed to bare some resemblance; the motivation for any comparability was quite different. This phenomenon seemed to affect the whole study, and the findings did not confirm any substantial relation between the two organisations in accordance with the strict definitions applicable to a manipulative religious sect.

Too often women have a secondary place in religious institutions, with no possibility to influence or come into leading positions. This thesis aims to understand women’s empowerment by searching for such examples in Neo-Paganism, a growing New Religious Movement (NRM) in the west. Grace Jantzen’s development of Foucault’s power theory is utilized to analyze and understand the results. A mixed method is used; four interviews are conducted with Wiccan and Druid women, a survey of 332 women is analyzed, and literature and studies on Neo-Paganism are analyzed. I draw the conclusion that Neo-Paganism can empower women in different ways, however, this can be influenced by socio-cultural factors, as empowerment can look very different in different countries. The result is meant to provide us with an understanding of women’s needs in a religious and spiritual context, so that women may become empowered within their religious communities.

This work takes as its central issue the existential movement as it appears in the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard. There appears to be relatively little secondary literature on this topic, so it is a very fruitful area to explore. The texts explored include Kierkegaard's 'psychological' books, in particular Concept of Anxiety and Sickness unto Death. These provide our work with the crucial concepts of innocence, guilt, despair, anxiety, existence and spirit. From the more traditional philosophical works, Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus have been utilised. These texts inform the work mostly on the meaning of movement, doubt, contradiction and absolute paradox. From the more lyrical works, this work is informed by Fear and Trembling and Repetition. Inquiry into these texts combined will provide a picture of existential movement as it is presented by Kierkegaard. This work attempts to capture the 'becoming subjective' which is so central to Kierkegaard's thought, through the reconstruction of the existential stages. It is also the purpose of this work (in the process) to treat areas of Kierkegaard's thought that are usually left untreated. The latter are for example, the problematic of the leap of sin, the unclear status of the...