Anti-Modernism, Modernism, and Postmodernism: Struggling with the Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements
Author(s)
Dawson, Lorne L.
Abstract
Is the emergence of new forms of religious life in North America indicative of significant changes in the nature and role of religion in our society or changes in the character of our culture as a whole? Calling on a divergent array of theoretical frameworks sociologists have recurrently sought to explain the broader implications of the study of NRMs by aligning them, in whole or in part, with various perceived anti-modernist, modernist, and post-modernist tendencies in our society. In a critical overview of some of this disparate literature, this paper argues that certain unnoticed convergences in the positions taken, point to a reading of the cultural significance of NRMs (New Religious Movements) that transcends the inaccurate tendency to identify NRMs too exclusively with one side of various essentially invidious dichotomies (e.g., pre-modern and modern, anti-modern and modern, conservative and liberal, modern and postmodern) .
