Numerous new religious movements have formed in the United States. A new religious movement (NRM) is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. There is no single, agreed-upon criterion for defining a "new religious movement".
Prior to the American Civil War, new movements included Mormonism, led by a prophet; Adventism, which used biblical scholarship to predict the Second Coming of Jesus; New Thought, which promised that mental powers could provide health and success; and Spiritualism, which offered communication with ghosts or spirits. By 1900, flourishing movements included the Jehovah's Witnesses, a group that emerged from Bible tract publishing; Theosophy, whose leader claimed to be in telepathic communication with Masters of the Ancient Wisdom; Christian Science, which promised spiritual healing; and Black Hebrew Israelites, built on a revelation that African Americans are descendants of the Biblical Hebrews. The 20th century saw the rise of black nationalism groups like Moorish Science and Nation of Islam; anti-Christian groups like Thelema, a magic-based movement involving sex rituals and worship of the Whore of Babalon; Scientology, a Thelema-inspired movement whose founder reportedly identified himself with the Antichrist; and Satanism, a movement that encompasses both theistic worshipers of Christian villains and individualist atheists who re-appropriate Christian imagery. The 20th century also saw the rise of the explicitly-atheistic Objectivism movement.
New Native American movements in these eras include the Longhouse Religion, Purification movement, the Ghost Dance movement, the Native American Church and the Indian Shaker Church.
Overview
Revivalism influenced such diverse movements as Joseph Smith's Mormonism (1830), William Miller's Adventism (1831) and Parham and Seymour's Pentecostalism (1900). Adventism in turn influenced Charles Taze Russell's Jehovah's Witnesses.
Mesmerism influenced Phineas Parkhurst Quimby's New Thought Movement. One of Quimby's patients, Mary Baker Eddy, later founded her own new religious movement, Christian Science. E. W. Kenyon and the Word of Faith movement synthesized New Thought with Pentecostalism, while Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking incorporated New Thought doctrines into a blend of Methodism and Calvinism. Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science was influenced by New Thought and in turn influenced Wallace Fard Muhammad's Nation of Islam.
Swedenborgism influenced the Fox Sisters's Spiritualism as well as Joseph Smith's Mormonism. Spiritualism influenced Paschal Beverly Randolph founder of Fraternitas Rosae Crucis, and Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy. Blavatsky was influenced by the work of Éliphas Lévi. Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons's Thelema were influenced by Theosophy and Levi. Thelema influenced Anton LaVey's Satanism and L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology.
Ayn Rand's Objectivism, though explicitly atheist, has been studied through the framework of new religious movements.https://books.google.com/books?id=VK0Inb75
Antebellum movements
Purification movement
Around 1805, Tenskwatawa, a town drunk, reportedly experienced a stupor so deep that he believed he was dead. According to Tenskwatawa, he visited "the Master of Breath" and was shown Heaven with game and honey for those who lived virtuously and traditionally. Tenskwatawa denounced Euro-American settlers, calling them offspring of the Evil Spirit, and led a purification movement that promoted unity among Native Americans.
By 1808, Tenskwatawa and his brother Tecumseh established a village that the Americans called Prophetstown, and the movement included thousands of followers. On November 7, 1811, while Tecumseh was away, Tenskwatawa ordered the pre-dawn attack on a U.S. military force that initiated the Battle of Tippecanoe. Tenskwatawa's followers retreated after a two-hour engagement and abandoned Prophetstown, which the military burned to the ground. This event was a catalyst for the War of 1812, as the United States blamed the British for providing financial support and ammunition to the Prophetstown community.
Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, and the resistance movement did not recover and was eventually defeated. Tenskwatawa remained in exile in Canada for nearly a decade. After the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, he returned to the United States in 1824 to assist the U.S. government with the Shawnee removal to reservation land in what is now Kansas. The aging Prophet arrived at Shawnee reservation lands in 1828 and faded into obscurity. Tenskwatawa died in Argentine, Kansas, in 1836.
Latter Day Saint movement
On March 20, 1826, a 20-year-old tenant farmer named Joseph Smith was arrested on charges of being "a disorderly person and an imposter" in Bainbridge, New York.. According to court records, Smith said "he had a certain stone which he had occasionally looked at to determine where hidden treasures in the bowels of the earth were; that he professed to tell in this manner where gold mines were a distance under ground".
Starting on September 22, 1827, Smith reported that he had recovered a set of ancient plates and a pair of magical "spectacles".; . Smith refused to allow anyone to view the plates, though some people were allowed to heft them or feel them through a cloth.; ; . On March 26, 1830, Smith published the Book of Mormon, a purported translation of the ancient plates, which told the story of ancient Hebrews who traveled to the Americas with the aid of a divinely-provided compass. Thereafter, Smith began directly issuing revelations.
By 1840, Joseph Smith and thousands of followers founded a settlement which Smith named Nauvoo, Illinois. Smith simultaneously served as the prophet of the nascent church, mayor of the city, chief justice of the local court, and general of the city's 2,500-man militia (the "Nauvoo Legion"). In 1844, Smith began a campaign to be elected President of the United States, and by April 1844, a Mormon council had declared Smith to be a king. On June 18, 1845, Smith declared martial law in Nauvoo and called out the Legion. Smith and his brother were arrested on charges of treason; a mob killed both before being brought to trial.
As of December 2019, the most-populous Latter Day Saint denomination reported having 16 million members worldwide.
Adventism
William Miller was a prosperous farmer, a Baptist lay preacher, and student of the Bible living in northeastern New York. In 1832, Miller submitted a series of sixteen articles predicting Christ's return (or "advent") sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. Estimates of Miller's followers—the Millerites—vary between 50,000, and 500,000.
After March 21, 1844, passed without incident, the prediction was revised with a new date of April 18. After that date passed without Christ's return, Millerites settled upon a third date of October 22. After the failure of Miller's expectations for October 22, 1844, the date became known as the Millerites' Great Disappointment.
Following the Great Disappointment, most Millerites simply gave up their beliefs. Some did not, and viewpoints and explanations proliferated. Miller initially seems to have thought that Christ's Second Coming was still going to take place—that "the year of expectation was according to prophecy; but...that there might be an error in Bible chronology, which was of human origin, that could throw the date off somewhat and account for the discrepancy."Everett N. Dick, William Miller and the Advent Crisis Berrien Springs: [Andrews University] Press, 1994, 27. Miller never gave up his belief in the Second Coming of Christ.
Miller's legacy includes the Seventh-day Adventist Church with over 19 million members and the Advent Christian Church with 61,000 members.
New Thought
In 1838, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby attended a lecture about Mesmerism by French mesmerist Charles Poyen. Quimby followed Poyen's tour for the next two years, studying Mesmerism.Fuller, 1982, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press During this time, Quimby encountered an uneducated youth who was particularly susceptible to Mesmerism and developed a tour of his own, demonstrating Mesmerism in front of large crowds.Dresser, A.G. (1899). The Philosophy of P.P. Quimby. Boston: George H. Ellis Co.
Quimby claimed to heal people of ailments that doctors could not cure. Quimby told his patients that diseases were caused by false beliefs and that the cure was in explaining this. Scholar William James used the "mind-cure movement" to refer to Quimby and his successors. Quimby is commonly seen as the founder of the New Thought movement.
New Thought publishing and educational activities reach approximately 2.5 million people annually.Goldberg, P. (2010) American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West. Random House Digital, Inc. p 62. The largest New Thought-oriented denomination is the Japanese Seicho-no-Ie."Masaharu Taniguchi." Religious Leaders of America, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008. Other belief systems within the New Thought movement include Christian Science, Religious Science, Jewish Science, Moorish Science, Centers for Spiritual Living and Unity. Past denominations have included Psychiana and Father Divine.
Spiritualism
The Fox sisters were three sisters from New York who played an important role in the creation of Spiritualism. The two younger sisters used "rappings" to convince their older sister and others that they were communicating with spirits. Their older sister then took charge of them and managed their careers for some time. They all enjoyed success as mediums for many years.
In 1888, Margaretta confessed that their rappings had been a hoax and publicly demonstrated their method. Margaretta attempted to recant her confession the next year, but their reputation was ruined, and in less than five years, they were all dead, with Margaretta and Kate dying in abject poverty.
By 1897, Spiritualism was said to have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe, mostly drawn from the middle and upper classes. Spiritualism flourished for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, attaining cohesion through periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and the missionary activities of accomplished mediums. Many prominent spiritualists were women, and like most spiritualists, supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage. Spiritualism is currently practiced primarily through various denominational spiritualist churches in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Fraternitas Rosae Crucis
The Fraternitas Rosae Crucis (Latin for Brothers of the Rosy Cross) was founded by Paschal Beverly Randolph in 1858. Their first lodge was established in San Francisco in 1861, and it remains the oldest Rosicrucian organization in the United States, dating back to the era of the American Civil War. Randolph had long used the pseudonym "The Rosicrucian" for his Spiritualist and occult writings. Though Randolph had an interest in sex magic, it is not practiced by the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis. His magico-sexual theories and techniques formed the basis of much of the teachings of another occult fraternity, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.Godwin et al., 1995.