Spiritual Stories and The Growth of New Religious Movements

Abstract

In the following publication I examine the spiritual or religious stories narrated by certain new religious movements (NRM). It is long argued in scientific literature that telling a story is a more efficient form of proselytism than approaching people in a direct way. In this work I will attempt to find statistical evidence to prove this, based on the NRMs examined herein. I shall analyse the effects of such works and the content itself according to contemporary views of legal philosophy. The centerpiece of this analysis is the spiritual anime titled Laws of Eternity, although other religious narratives and teachings will also be examined with similar methods. The other two important examples which this work details are the Order of the Solar Temple and the Missionary Church of Kopimism. The reason for examining this phenomenon lies in the increasing importance of newer religions, as well as the desire to shed light to the modern methods of spreading religious ideas. This research follows a multidisclipinary approach which can be placed between sociology, law, philosophy, and the broader spectrum of social sciences. One part of the work provides a descriptive analysis of these stories, the others deal with finding statistical correlation between the stories and the change in the number of believers. The hypothesis that I am trying to prove in this work is that narrating and publicizing these stories is a way to achieve faster growth for these religious organizations. The final conclusion is that - although the current research is far from being representative - the given examples confirm that there is a correlation between growth and storytelling.