Anti-Modernism, Modernism, and Postmodernism: Struggling with the Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements

Is the emergence of new forms of religious life in North America indicative of significant changes in the nature and role of religion in our society or changes in the character of our culture as a whole? Calling on a divergent array of theoretical frameworks sociologists have recurrently sought to e...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dawson, Lome L. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Oxford Univ. Press 1998
In: Sociology of religion
Year: 1998, Volume: 59, Issue: 2, Pages: 131-156
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Summary:Is the emergence of new forms of religious life in North America indicative of significant changes in the nature and role of religion in our society or changes in the character of our culture as a whole? Calling on a divergent array of theoretical frameworks sociologists have recurrently sought to explain the broader implications of the study of NRMs by aligning them, in whole or in part, with various perceived anti-modernist, modernist, and post-modernist tendencies in our society. In a critical overview of some of this disparate literature, this paper argues that certain unnoticed convergences in the positions taken, point to a reading of the cultural significance ofNRMs that transcends the inaccurate tendency to identify NRMs too exclusively with one side of various essentially invidious dichotomies (e.g., pre-modem and modem, anti-modem and modem, conservative and liberal, modem and post-modem).
ISSN:1759-8818
Contains:Enthalten in: Sociology of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.2307/3712077