Is It Good To Be A “New Religion”? Mormonism and the Status Politics of Novelty

Abstract

Is It Good To Be A “New Religion”?: Mormonism and the Status Politics of Novelty John‐Charles Duffy Since the 1970s, new religion has been the preferred scholarly nomenclature for a category of movements that American sociologists had earlier referred to as “cults,” often as part of a Troeltsch‐derived classification of “church,” “sect,” and “cult.” In this tripartite scheme, “churches” were established, elite religions; “sects” were groups that had broken out of the churches; and “cults” were more dramatically innovative movements lacking a direct genetic link to either churches or sects. Cult became a problematic term for scholars from the 1970s forward as a result of its deployment by the anti‐cult movement, advocacy organizations which sought to mobilize public opinion and state power against groups they labeled “cults.” As a result of these organizations’ usage of the term, cult became very negatively charged, leading many scholars to favor new religion or new religious movement (NRM) as neutral, even positively tinted, alternatives (Melton ). For scholars who use new religion in this way, the term is not pejorative. But how is it viewed by groups to whom it is applied? For such groups, the term has the potential to be problematic because it locates them, however, neutrally in intent, on the cultural fringes. Like its predecessor cult, new religion designates movements that enjoy less social respectability than either churches or sects. It is telling that when scholars went looking for a term to replace cult, other candidates were alternative religion and fringe religion. Those terms would have indicated more clearly than new religion the perceived marginality of the groups in question. Yet new religion has the same function, albeit more obscurely: that is, scholars use new religion to gesture to groups that the scholars understand as occupying the margins of a cultural landscape. As NRMs scholar J. Gordon Melton () puts it, “new religions” are defined by their having been “assigned outsider status” within their cultural milieu (p. 28). Therein lies the potential problem. Adherents who recognize their group as standing outside the mainstream might be pleased to see scholars redescribe them with a term that gives their outsider status a neutral‐to‐positive cast, as new religion is meant to do. This reaction is especially likely if the group recognizes new religion as a salutary alternative to cult. However, if a group desires to shed outsider status—that is, if the group is trying to move closer toward the cultural center—then being labeled a new religion might displease adherents if they recognize that the term pushes them back to the margins, into the company of “alternative” or “fringe” religions. Mormons are such a group. Mormonism is one of the movements that scholars, since the 1970s, have baptized a “new religion.” However, from their movement's formative period, Mormons have displayed ambivalence toward outsiders characterizing theirs as a “new religion.” Mormons have warmed to the description to the extent that they perceive it to aggrandize their movement—that is, when they understand the label as acknowledging that Mormonism is worthy of attention and admiration. But Mormons have resisted the way that designating their movement as “new” complicates their efforts to claim a place within Christianity and thus within a religious mainstream. In the late twentieth century, this ambivalence can be seen primarily in Mormons’ responses to the work of two American scholars, sociologist of religion Rodney Stark and religious historian Jan Shipps. In examining Mormon reactions to the “new religion” label, I am elucidating the status politics of novelty. That is, I am clarifying what a religious group perceives itself to gain or lose in terms of its cultural location (mainstream or marginal) when it is designated “new.” Mormons are a particularly attractive case for this investigation for two reasons. One is that since the 1970s—that is, during the same period that new religion has become a standard term of analysis in scholarship—Mormons have struggled to secure a more mainstream status. What I am calling the status politics of novelty has been part of that struggle. A second reason for using Mormonism as a case study is practical: extensive electronic databases of Mormon publications exist, with coverage going...