NRMs; Guru Movements; New Age
AoL East and West - A Study of the Art of Living Foundation - Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen [+]
University of Tromsø.
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen is currently a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Tromsø. Her research interests include new religious movements (especially Indian-oriented movements) and the New Age, religion and gender, and religion and nature. She has published a number of articles (including on Art of Living) and book reviews in international academic journals, and has several articles forthcoming. Additionally she is co-editor of the forthcoming Nordic New Religions (Brill),
Milda Ališauskienė [+]
Vytautas Magnus University
Dr Milda Ališauskienė is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. She has published more than thirty social scientific research articles on religion in contemporary Lithuania and the Baltic States and contributed to collective monographs and studies on the social exclusion of minority religions and Lithuania’s secularization process.
James R. Lewis [+]
Wuhan University
James R. Lewis is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University. He is well-published in the field of new religious movements. His publications and edited volumes include The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, Controversial New Religions (with Jesper Petersen), Scientology, Children of Jesus and Mary (with Nicholas Levine), and, most recently, Violence and New Religious Movements.
Description
The first chapter is mainly be theoretical in scope, but with references to AoL throughout that place the organization within broader analytical categories that have been developed within religious studies. It surveys contrasting definitions of religion and new religious movements, as well as current discussions of secularism/secularization and of the ‘New Age’ category – both in India and in the West. It further examines the broader influence of Hinduism on Western NRMs and the Western New Age. It is interesting to note that in the Indian context, Hindu or neo-Hindu ‘guru movements’ are not technically what would be called new religious movements in Western countries.