Conversion, Religious Change, and the Challenge Of New Religious Movements

Johannes Aagaard, Ph.D.
Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark

Abstract

Conversion in the biblical sense is concerned with a change in faith and one's personal relationship with God. It is a personal experience. Religion is the orientation, the code, that undergirds cultures. Religious change refers to the process by which this underlying code is altered. Religious change and conversion are related but distinct. Contemporary culture is undergoing a marked religious change in the direction of the "Pacific paradigm," a trans-syncretism that fuses eastern mysticism and western capitalism. Traditional churches are largely unaware of this shift and are derelict in their duty to challenge the new religious movements (NRMs) that represent the paradigm. Those who do challenge it -- the "anti-cult movement -- tend to focus on illegal and evil deeds of NRMs, rather than their creeds. Scholars who form an "anti-anti-cult movement," however, also pretend to creedal neutrality.

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This article is an electronic version of an article originally published in Cultic Studies Journal, 1991, Volume 8, Number 2, pages 91-103. Please keep in mind that the pagination of this electronic reprint differs from that of the bound volume. This fact could affect how you enter bibliographic information in papers that you may write.