Contemporary Religions and the Public Arena:

Abstract

James Beckford is well-known in Japan for his studies on New Religious Movements and cult controversies. He has also presented an important paper examining the relationship between New Social Movements and spirituality in the sociology of religion. Already in the 1960s, Thomas Luckmann discussed the emergence of new religious trends replacing organizational religions. Luckmann considers that humans always need a comprehensive value system; in other words, they need a worldview to relate their own self to the world. In traditional religions in Japan, Shinto nationalist elements are more important than elements from other religious organizations. This trend can be understood as the re-sacralization of social spheres in which secularization would have seemed to have prevailed, or as a phenomenon occurring in the social sector and problem areas in which secularization has hardly developed. Religious discourses, vocabularies and motivations are making inroads into public institutions through medical care, nursing care, welfare services, therapies, and education.