Jon Emont, www.theatlantic.com
State persecution, aided by religious authorities, is in fact a major reason why new faiths fail in parts of the world where government polices religious doctrine. “New religions have always existed; they are an organic phenomenon like weeds in a garden. In some societies they are considered weeds and will be uprooted; in other societies they will be allowed to grow and take root and become plants,” said Palmer, the scholar of new religion.
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Even new faiths originating in countries with tolerant and non-repressive governments have a difficult time gaining significant traction. Palmer wrote a book on Raëlism, a religious movement founded in France in the mid 1970s by Claude Vorilhon, a former French race car driver whose faith held that humans were “scientifically” created by aliens millennia ago. The religion states that the aliens have decided to leave human beings to their own devices, but that once “embassies” are built to welcome back the aliens, the aliens will help advance human technology and even contribute to human immortality. Raëlism has gone international, with active membership in North America, Europe, and Japan, but it’s only a minor faith, with followers numbered in the thousands rather than the millions. Scientology, another faith that believes aliens had a deep influence on the human condition (they deposited their humanity-haunting souls here after a hydrogen-bomb powered volcanic explosion 75 million years ago) has claimed to have around 10 million members worldwide. But Scientology has struggled recently, as former high-level members of the faith described the immense sums of money required to advance within the Church hierarchy, as well as threatening actions the Church takes against dissenters. The faith’s founder, science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, aggressively recruited Hollywood celebrities to promote the faith in a successful bid to generate publicity. But despite all the glitz and glam, many celebrities once linked to Scientology have disavowed it. All signs point to a declining membership, and today the faith is independently estimated to have as few as 50,000 members worldwide.
Not all new faiths fall flat on their faces, however. Santa Muerte—Our Lady of Holy Death—is the rare example of a new religious movement that appears to be steadily gaining followers in the Americas. The Lady, represented as a female skeleton, is believed to have power over life and death. She’s become popular among people living in parts of Latin America and North America ravaged by drug violence, who can pray to her for things that it would be inappropriate to request of Jesus—such as revenge, or that a drug shipment arrives safely. Andrew Chesnut, an author who has written a book about the vibrant new faith, suggests that as many as 10 million people may worship Santa Muerte, though as with most new religious movements numbers are difficult to verify, and other scholars I spoke with said that figure may be inflated. “It’s a very informal religious movement, it’s not institutionalized,” said Stefano Bigliardi, an assistant professor at Akhawayn University in Morocco, who spent years researching Santa Muerte in Mexico. Still, the faith has only been above-ground since 2001, suggesting a rapid gain in influence.
Santa Muerte raises another question that comes up in relation to many other new religious movements: How far off from an established religion does a new movement have to veer before it’s considered its own separate religion? Many worshippers of Santa Muerte still attend Mass and consider themselves Catholic, merely praying to Santa Muerte as they might to another saint. Some priests and nuns grudgingly accept their parishioners’ decisions to make offerings to Santa Muerte, but others harshly condemn it. It’s quite clear that the Catholic Church is alarmed by the rise of Santa Muerte, with the Vatican’s representatives condemning worship of her as “blasphemous.” So is Santa Muerte distinct enough from mainstream Catholicism that it should be considered a new religious movement?
For scholars of new religions, there is no easy way to answer this question. Mayer grappled with it in a paper in 2000, when he asked how best to classify Mormons, who say they received new, distinct revelations in the Book of Mormon, but worship Jesus and identify as Christian: “Is it an autonomous new religion, or rather a new tradition within the wider Christian fold? Did it really depart from traditional Christianity as much as Christianity departed from Judaism?” Ultimately, Mayer concluded that there is no foolproof way to determine whether a new movement should be classified as distinct from the old faith tradition, though certain moves, like developing new sets of scripture or radically changing ritual practices, indicate that a new religious movement is making a radical break from the past.
Regardless of how scholars classify it, efforts to stamp out Santa Muerte—the Mexican government has been bulldozing roadside shrines, perhaps out of concern over the faith’s association with narco culture—haven’t been enough to keep it from acquiring a following among marginalized communities in the Americas. Still, even with Santa Muerte’s relative success, 10 million followers is a pittance relative to any of the big four faiths.
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I asked Palmer if a reason why new faiths typically struggle to gain adherents is that we tend to laugh when we hear claims about fantastic and miraculous events that occur in the present day—such as when Vorilhon, the founder of Raëlism, claimed he learned about humanity’s origins after being abducted by aliens. “This is true,” she said. “We’re capable of accepting Muhammad’s claims of hearing God and Jesus’s claims of being the son of God, because it happened 1,000 or 2,000 years ago. The mist of time lends its authenticity. If someone today says these things, we’ll say he used to be a vacuum salesman or something.”
But the religion scholars I spoke with said that perhaps the biggest reason that new faiths like Scientology, Raëlism or Millah Abraham have failed to take off is the lack of state sponsorship. A major turning point for classical Christianity was when Constantine the Great decided to halt the persecution of Christians in the Empire, instead embracing elements of the faith. Over the next few centuries Christianity became the dominant religion in the Empire. Christianity wasn’t the only major religion to be boosted this way: Islam also spread by the sword, with armies sweeping forth to conquer and convert North Africa and Spain in the centuries after Muhammad’s death. Throughout their history both Buddhism and Hinduism have been powerfully lifted by state patronage.
