Revisiting New Religions, Attitudes and Policies in the United States and Central-Eastern Europe between the 1960s and 2010s

Abstract

Contemporary new religious movements—originating from early in the 1960s—gained substantial following in the past half century. Rooted in an era characterised by accelerated social and technological advancements, as well as major historical events, these movements incorporated meanings and qualities anchored in Cold War internal and external tensions. Effects of globalization and rapid urbanization, alongside novel—and in large part still unsolved—challenges posed by individual and collective alienation and the decline of conventional micro, meso, and macrosocial structures affirmed a gradual depletion of inherited collective identity, which was even more apparent in highly urbanized settings. Early societal reactions towards these new constellations—emerging from said turbulent and transitory times—varied greatly by regional and cultural contexts. While in the United States, an initial, generally inclusive, and pluralistic attitude was detectable—overshadowed by a short lived, yet intense cult and moral panics period—in the ‘future post-Soviet’ countries of Central and Eastern Europe the opportunities to deal with the challenges and congested social arrears by history were not available until the early 1990s. After the demise of the Soviet Union, simultaneously with the immediate and pressing challenges of regaining—and retaining—national identity, the opening towards an often-idealized Western world and the appearance of new religious movements brought about even more complex issues. This article provides a brief interpretation of the contexts of new religious emergence, and their receptions in United States around from 1960s. Through outlining region-specific traits of Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, the authors contribute to a parallel understanding of new religious attitudes and of the inherent differences between the two regions.