Understanding the New Religions/Science and Scholarship/A Time for Consideration
Haggerty, Brian A.
Sympathetic, hostile, uncritical UNDERSTANDING THE NEW RELIGIONS Jacob Needleman and George Baker The Seabury Press, $17.50, 314 pp. SCIENCE, SIN AND SCHOLARSHIP Irving Lows Horowitz The MIT...
...Not all the contributions to the collection are as openly favorable to the Moon move23 May 1980: 313 ment as those cited...
...Warren Lewis favorably describes Moon's theology as "a systematic theology like that of Thomas or Barth...
...The "documentation structure," using superscript numbers for one type of reference and numbers in brackets for Commonweal: 312 another, is awkward and initially confusing...
...Despite the large number of essays on an almost equally large number of topics, Understanding the New Religions possesses a unity and integrity often lacking in such collections...
...By far the best of the three books is Understanding the New Religions , edited by Jacob Needleman and George Baker...
...A Time for Consideration, subtitled "A Scholarly Appraisal of the Unification Church," lays no claim to impartiality...
...Understanding the New Religions fulfills it...
...On the whole, however, Science, Sin and Scholarship is seriously flawed by unevenness in the quality and tone of the individual contributions which suggests a flaw in the conception of the collection itself...
...Her concluding sentence is not atypical: "Today the `spiritual movement' of womanidentified women is not finally a `religion' — with its root etymology of `binding' —but is rather the set-loose power/process/perception of radical feminist consciousness...
...Such flaws notwithstanding, Needleman and Baker have provided new religious searchers and researchers as well as interested observers with an impartial yet sympathetic account of "a crucial aspect of the profound cultural change through which American civilization is now passing...
...The introduction sets the tone for the whole...
...Three recent books examine some of the latest productions...
...SCIENCE, SIN AND SCHOLARSHIP Irving Lows Horowitz The MIT Press, $12.50, 290 pp...
...Most of the essays are revised versions of papers presented at the National Conference on the Study of New Religious Movements in America held in Berkeley in June 1977...
...For example, Richardson offers "A Brief Outline of Unification Theology" and concludes "the Unification Church is both more orthodox and more creative in dealing with Scripture and the Christian tradition than many other contemporary churches...
...Like most collections of essays on a broad theme, this one ranges far and wide...
...The other two books examine one of the new religions—Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church...
...Commonweal: 314...
...It comprises twenty-four essays by scholars in the fields of church history, religious studies, sociology, psychology and theology...
...The essays, according to Needlemam, are intended "to respond in some measure to the obvious and pressing need for ongoing, impartial Commonweal: 312 thought about these movements and what they represent...
...Thus, James T. Richardson, Mary W. Stewart and Robert B. Simmonds describe the problems they encountered and the methods of investigation they used in researching a fundamentalist commune...
...Science, Sin and Scholarship, edited by Rutgers social scientist Irving Horowitz, includes texts of speeches by the Reverend Moon, analyses and critiques of Moon's teaching, testimony and commentary about Moon's alleged dealings with the South Korean government and its CIA and speculation about Moon's business dealings and personal finances...
...Emily Culpepper's assessment of the "spiritual dimensions of radical feminist consciousness" may further the ends of feminism, but it will do little to further good, clear writing...
...Frederick Bird analyzes the ritual patterns he has discovered in a variety of new religious movements...
...In his introductory essay, Horowitz, who does not disguise his misgivings about the Moon movement, suggests that this book represents an effort "to develop a balanced perspective on the Reverend Moon and his Unification Church...
...Some essays deal with the new religions in general, such as historian Sidney Ahlstrom's effort to provide a framework within which religious movements new to America may be fruitfully interpreted...
...Brian A. Haggerty INCE NEANDERTHAL PEOPLE con- S ducted the first known funerary rites in Iraq sixty-thousand years ago, humankind, according to anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace, has produced some one hundred thousand religions...
...One of the most worthwhile essays is Richard DeMaria's "A Psycho-Social Analysis of Religious Conversion" which seeks simply to provide a "frame of reference from the social sciences and from the history of spirituality which may be useful to those who, for one reason or another, are concerned about membership in this new movement...
...There are a few points of criticism...
...In their introduction, editors M. Darrol Bryant and Herbert W. Richardson unabashedly compare Moon to Martin Luther and propose the Protestant Reformation as a "fruitful historical analogue for understanding the Unification movement...
...Others examine specific new religious movements, such as Mark Juergensmeyer's description of Radhasoami, a guru movement from northern India...
...For example...
...The majority of the eleven contributions by nine essayists, including the editors, are fundamentally pro-Moon...
...Some essayists are interested primarily in research methods appropriate for investigating the new religions...
...In the end it appears as if the selection of the contributions, only two of which are published for the first time here, was dictated largely by what was available and influenced by the editor's own bias...
...In his contribution to Understanding the New Religions, Donald Stone suggests that a carefully executed study of new religious groups corrects biases by "providing a variety of vantage points from which the new religions can be interpreted...
...Bryant describes the church as "a vital, highly energized, theologically open and focused community...
...Some contributions, such as that of Barbara Hargrove and of Thomas Robbins and his colleagues, are worthy of note...
...Science, Sin and Scholarship and A Time for Consideration pay lip service to his criterion...
...Other essayists share the results of their research...
...The essays take the new religious movements seriously and attempt not only to provide information about them but also to suggest the meaning they might have for life...
...A TIE FOR CONSIDERATION M. Darrol Bryant and Herbert W. Richardson The Edwin Mellen Press, $9.95, 317 pp...
...Barbara Hargrove, whose discussion of integrative and transformative modes of religion provides subcategories useful in the study of the new religions, was unfortunately left off the concluding list and description of contributors...
...The results of scholarly research are found side by side with pieces of popular journalism and transcripts of courtroom dialogue or testimony before a House of Representatives subcommittee...
...Also worth reading is Rodney J. Sawatsky's comparison of the Moon movement with the Mormons and the Mennonites, groups against which action was taken "principally in response to perceived social deviance rather than to error in belief alone...
...But with the exception of two of Moon's own speeches, the remaining selections—fourteen of them—are skeptical, if not highly critical, of Moon and his church...
Vol. 107 • May 1980 • No. 10
