The Hare Krishna and the Counterculture in the Light of the Theory of Divergent Modes of Religiosity

Abstract

The religious roots of the Hare Krishna movement, officially known as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), are in Indian (Bengali) Vaishnavism, but the organization was founded in New York in 1966 by a charismatic Indian monk named A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada1 (1896-1977). The Hare Krishna movement has often been presented as a paradigm case of the new religious movements that emerged in the wake of the counterculture of the 1960's (see e.g. Bellah 1976, 344; Daner 1976; Johnson 1976; Judah 1974; Yinger 1982: 39; 239-240). Therefore the analysis of the movement in the light of the more comprehensive theories of religious social organization is also a crucial test case for our understanding of the whole phenomenon of the new religious movements in the West.2 In this paper, I will analyze the Hare Krishna movement in light of the modes of religiosity theory developed by Harvey Whitehouse (1995; 2000; 2002; 2004) and I shall present some suggestions of how the modes theory might be refined or sharpened in light of the preceding discussion.