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There are always people, whenever and wherever they are, who are not content with the existing life style and mental state and thus would try out new ways in search for new solutions. This also applies to the modern society, where traditional religions are doubted, conventional values are challenged, an intermediary social organization is absent between the extremes of individual and nuclear family, the state and big corporations, and tool rational and utilitarianism dominate the modern life while integrity of individual personality is overlooked. There have emerged a number of new cults and new religious groups, which, in the changing situation of the modern society, work to fill the complete picture of modern men's mentality. No matter whether they can achieve this or achieve to what extent, they will inevitably appeal to some people. This shows that emergence of any new cult or new religion is always based on a need for it in the society. In other words, their presence is a manifestation of the spirit of diversity in the arena of belief. In a word, these new religions are products of a diversified age, whose emergence and development is closely related to the social environment.IWhen we examine the emergence and development of new worshipping groups and new religions, we find that turbulence and transformation of the society plays a key part in it. This is also true about today's China, which is undergoing drastic social changes. These changes will in turn be a breeding ground for new religions and their development.Such changes first occur in the economy: in the forms of ownership and business operation—besides owned-by-all-the-people, there are now various forms of ownership, such as collective ownership, joint ventures, wholly-foreign-owned enterprises and private ownership; at the same time, the planned economy is gradually replaced by the market economy. Such transformation has injected great vitality to the nation's economy; however, with an un-restrained power system also in place, various social problems have occurred, for example, a huge gap between the rich and the poor and widespread corruption. Though China has been much more prosperous since the adoption of the reform and open-up policy, the society has also become "broken", with "a power group having a large amount of resources" (mostly including mid-and-high-level government officials and entrepreneurs of large-or-medium-sized private enterprises) at one extreme and "a massive group of poor people" (mainly composed of workers, farmers, migrant workers and laid-off workers in cities) at the other. Some in the latter group are even "pushed outside the social structure, who are even less well-off to stay at the bottom of the structure".1 For many of them, they don't have the basic social rights, even the necessities for life. By the end of 2006, there were still 21.48 million people who were absolutely poor.2 And for "the weak" staying at the bottom of the society, they have no right to speak or proper channels to make themselves heard. Social injustice is prevalent, which is sure to lead to various social problems. The social problems in turn will further aggravate the masses. It is in such situations that new beliefs or religions may become a way to let out their discontent.Religion has been missing for a long time in the social life of China, in fact, for nearly thirty years it was taken as something opposite to the social values. Labeled as "opium" or "superstition", religion is not only far away from social life but also from the thinking for most people. It seems that people don't need religion. Nevertheless, such absence is merely superficial: the ideas of praying to god, driving away the ghosts and worshiping ancestors have never been missing in people's heart. That is, what have been missing are merely organizations or groups with religious functions; traditional customs and belief have become private matters. Another thing to note is that with few sources to understand religion (for many years, there were few books on religion and believers were afraid to show their identity), people don't really understand the orthodox religions that have a history of more than 1000 years, let alone know how to differentiate between the true and the pseudo. Therefore, when thinking and culture, like what has happened in the economic area, tend to diversify after several decades of domination, there will be enough space for various new thoughts and ideas. The traditional belief and ideas that have been restrained by the administration will also be let free.Take publication as an example, many books on religion that were banned before 1978 (the year when China adopted the policy of reform and open-up), got published in the 1980s. These include academic books as well as popular ones targeted at readers of various levels. Many of the books written by new cults or elaborating teachings of new religions and their leaders, for instance, are translated into Chinese and published: Dianetics—The Modern Science of Mental Health by Hubbard, leader of Scientology (Beijing Sanlian Book Store 1989), the "Life Sayings" series by Osho, leader of Rajneesh Meditation Center (Oriental Press 1996), Hidden Harmony (Shanghai Sanlian Press 1996), Secret of Wisdom (Xuelin Press 1996), Science of the New Age (Jiangxi Education Publishing House 1999) and others.Besides these two factors, there are another two that are worth mentioning: desires to pursue monetary interests and fame, both of which become important driving forces behind the emergence of new worshipping groups and new religions. Some people establish new religious organizations to accumulate wealth, for example, Wu Yangming, the leader of "Appointed King", asks followers to donate 1/10 of their assets as "offerings ", which will be used by God to "save human beings". In addition, leading a sect or religion may also satisfy a desire to be idolized, to have power and status to do whatever he/she wants. These two factors are, without doubt, related to the current money-oriented trend, which emerges after removal of bans on the economic, thinking and cultural areas.IIWe may conclude from the above analysis that in the current society of China, the emergence of new cults or new religions is virtually inevitable. Therefore, we don't need to start panicking the moment we see them. More importantly, we should try to understand them well and decide their nature by examining what they do so that proper guidance will be achieved.Generally speaking, new cults and new religious markets in the world share two noticeable features: intermingling of good and bad and a rather unstable state. By the first feature, we mean that the diversified new beliefs and new religious products are intermingled with something bad, something that is harmful to the society, people's health and mind. It takes time for people to pick them out. The second feature refers to the dynamic state most of these new beliefs and new religious products are in. However, their constant changes may have opposite implications for the society: under certain conditions they will move in a positive direction while they may also become negative forces, which we call "cult"."Xie (cultic or evil)" is derogatory in Chinese: both Sea of Words and Contemporary Chinese Dictionary define it as "wrong" or "abnormal". Besides, words with "xie" are also derogatory, for example, "xie nian (evil thought)", "xian qi (evil emanation)", "xie shuo (heresy)", "xie men (crooked means)" or "xie dao (evil ways)". In traditional Chinese medicine, "xie" also means pathogenic factor, for instance, "feng xie (pathogenic factor resulted from exposure to wind)" and "nan xie (pathogenic factor resulted from exposure to cold)". Then derives from this another meaning: something that will bring disaster to people, as in "zhong xie (meet demon)". Thus "xie jiao (cult)" is by all means derogatory in China. In fact, the Chinese are familiar with this word, as it can be found in many of the classic literature and people from early on started using the term to describe ideas, teachings or groups that are improper, immoral or harmful. This description, however, does not take into account the religious nature of them.What I'd like to stress here is that "xie (cultic)", which is derogatory in Chinese, is not so in other languages. In the west, cult was always used to describe new religions. In this description, it was derogatory; however, it was derogatory in the sense that this new religion was condemned from the perspective of an opposing religion. Nowadays, however, as the separation of church and state has been legalized and become a consensus in the west, they would not name any voluntary religion or belief "cultic religion (or cult)" because that would be against the freedom of belief. Besides, religion, unlike in China, is hailed as the main spiritual support in the west and is thus sacred; it would then be contradictory if any religion is labeled as "cultic". As mentioned earlier, the derogatory sense of cult is largely based upon the perspective of Christian orthodox. So it would be inappropriate to translate cult, a word that may cover a number of objects, into "xie jiao (cultic/evil religions)" in Chinese as China is not set against the background of Christian culture. Another important implication is in law. In western countries whose population is dominated by Christians, many of the Christian believers strongly oppose cult as a religion. However, they would not advocate interfering with activities of new beliefs or new religions as a majority of them still respect beliefs of other people. The government also remains neutral: it would not interfere with religious activities that are not against the law or get involved in any religious debate concerning "orthodox" and "cultic". It will only present itself when religious groups (any religious group) or believers violate the law. Even though new religions are mostly found in western societies, no religion has ever been officially or by the government named "cult (cultic/evil religion)" there. Only when the judiciary departments take actions against violation of law by religious groups or believers, which are then comprehensively covered by the media, will derogatory terms appear.Generally speaking, the cults that become "cults" are few and only represent the exceptional ones among the great diversity of them. These are, among the hundreds of thousands of new cults and new religions, the minority that violate laws and humanism and isolate themselves from the world. Of course, we can not deny that for some of these groups or organizations, they cultivated factors that would lead to the commission of crime. Even for some groups that were rather normal, they might divert toward "abnormal" or "vicious" driven by some internal factors or external conditions. Without doubt, any of these changes takes time to develop. New cults and new religions, from the day they were born, have been on constant changes. Nothing would stay static.In spite of some alarming "cults" since the 1970s, the majority of new beliefs and new religions, as many sociologists who have been looking closely at them note3, are in a normal state and would barely turn into "cults". In other words, "cults" are by no means the normality or majority of the new religious movement.Though cults represent the minority, the harm they have done should by no means neglected: they pose a threat to social stability. After examining the "cults" in the world, we summarize their harm into the following:1, A leader with charisma: such leaders claim that they are divine or endowed with special skills and thus, based on their power and privileges, require absolute compliance from followers. Such leaders can be an individual or the core members of a leading group.2, Control on thinking: coercive exhortation and change of behavior are adopted even before asking members for their opinion; individuals have no right to choose or explain, Individualism is forbidden and all the members are to be trained into the same model.3, Cheat: evil motives are hidden behind the recruitment of members and accumulation of fund. Cheating in the name of love, intensive disturbance and torture are used. A high degree of sense of guilt is induced in those recruited.4, Separation: Emphasis is put on the new "home" of the organization, forcing members to separate from their families, friends and the society. Sometimes they even intentionally cut off the connection between members and their families, friends and colleagues, during which time individuals experience sudden but subtle changes in personality and values.5, Exploitation: this can be financial, physical or psychological exploitation.They may put pressure on followers to force them to hand in their assets, pay exorbitant fees for the courses, attend special activities that are overloaded, indulge in improper sex, even abusing children.6, Disseminating a world view of totalitarianism: they teach that the group is superior to individual. They promote goodness and at the same time endorse immoral acts.7, Direct challenge toward the authorities: many of these challenges stem from the discontent of religious groups with the status quo, their treatment or government policies. Some groups even see it as their mission to fight against the status quo and the current government.8, Violation of public morals: for example, promoting that "sex" is the No. 1 driving force of life, and allowing public immoral sex within the group.9, Create "persecution": when members are sued and regarded as dangerous people for violation of law, such as smuggling, trafficking or fraud, leaders of these groups would start protesting, seeing the punishment as persecution on them by the society or the government.10, Control of life: they would claim that they are "the only group that will be saved", in an effort to control all the time of the followers.These are the harms that extreme cults may have on the society and their members and they are also key for us to tell them apart from normal new religious groups. Of course, we still need to understand them against a larger background.When looking at the new cults and new religions, we may adopt any of the four perspectives: from the perspectives of academic research, cognition, the holistic view and social action. For the first one, when we do academic research on these groups or religions, we should examine them against the background of the process of social history—modernization, secularization and globalization—looking at them dialectically not separately, dynamically not statically. With the help of methodologies in history, philosophy, sociology and psychology, we should study these new religions from a cross-cultural or global cultural view so that we may finally discover the complete picture and provide rational information to the public for a complete and correct understanding.From the second perspective of cognition, we need to first understand that the society is very complex and there are limits on people's ability to know. This is why new religions appeal to some young people, even those who are well educated. In this age of specialization, people's knowledge becomes more specialized and thus narrow: an expert in a certain field may be no different from common people when they are faced with the complexity of society and life.4 By understanding this, we will no longer feel too surprised when we see that some experts of science and technology are fascinated with leaders with charisma. We may also renew our understanding of the importance of social sciences and humanities. Education in these areas need to be strengthened so that people, especially the youngsters, will be better prepared toward such issues and achieve an overall development.From a holistic view, new cults and new religions are both part of the society: they are subsystems of the great society. Therefore, they interact with and influence other subsystems. However, within the greater whole, a subsystem may change under influences of the parent system or other subsystems. That is, an organization, under external pressure, may become more united and even walk further toward the other extreme. So we need to understand that whether a new religion or a cult may develop toward a positive direction is, to a certain extent, determined by the social environment, as well as the understanding of them by all the members in the society and relevant government departments and actions that are based on this understanding. Only when we look at them from such a holistic view will we prevent, in formulation and implementation of our policies, from driving them toward the wrong direction or getting more united.In terms of social action, we should follow the principle of rule of law, with a set of just laws to deal with such problems and following them strictly in implementation. However, before these special laws are enacted, the Constitution and relevant laws that are already in place should be complied with. We should, on one hand, safeguard the citizens' freedom of religion, belief, holding religious activities or living religious life; on the other hand, we should also stop and punish any commission of crime in the name of religion so that rights of all the citizens, besides religious rights, will be protected. It is important to note that the following principles should be upheld: all are equal before the law, all citizens enjoy equal rights, laws should be in compliance with the Constitution and laws should first be promulgated before they can be implemented. This is because religion and belief may be a personal choice but maintaining the social order is relevant to everyone in the society.IllChina's religious circle turned their eyes onto new religions from late 1980s. At that time, with more active academic exchange with the outside world, many researchers went abroad and were deeply impressed with what was going on in this field, They came back home with a lot of relevant materials, Meanwhile, some "cultic" new religious groups shocked the world with astounding tragedies, This is how new religions became topics for Chinese researchers,China's research on new religions can be roughly summarized into three stages. The first stage is from mid 1980s to late 1990s, during which time a few books on this topic got translated and published,5 The Institute of World Religions of China Academy of Social Sciences also carried out a key project sponsored by the National Social Science Foundation,6 At the same time, the three most important journals in religious research, Studies in World Religions, The Religious Cultures in the World and Modern Religious Study published from now and then articles concerning new religions, In a word, research during this period was focusing on introducing relevant materials from abroad rather than the research results in foreign academia. This feature is easy to understand: relevant research had just started, what was happening inside China could not offer valuable resources for research, and the social environment they were in did not leave much room for research on this topic.The Falungong incident in 1999 spurred research on cults and new religions. Besides religious research institutes and relevant departments in universities, legal experts, media and police also got involved. As a result, the number of publications soared.7 Reports and articles about cults and new religions also mushroomed. At the same time, many government departments, from the central to local levels, set up project teams or research centers specially devoted to research on cults and Falungong. A number of seminars were also held and delegations were sent abroad to learn how other countries dealt with such problems. The state poured in a large sum of money and this involved a large number of intellectuals.Research during this period was inevitably centered on Falungong, much of which was not wholly academic. In fact, nearly all relevant studies were focusing on the macro level—briefing, analysis and criticism—and no quantitative research was done in sociology and no in-depth exploration was made in the so-called cults and new religious groups. However, an academic question did attract the attention of researchers: how to define "cult". Though consensus was still far away in the academia (this of course is a questions that is hard to reach consensus), this did show that part of the research was done in a highly serious and academic manner. Meanwhile, when discussing the reasons for the emergence of cults and new religions, more and more researchers turned their eyes toward psychology and social psychology factors. If this period is counted as the second stage, then it ended in 2004 when the central incident Falungong ceased to be a news focus.Research in the third stage, which is still going on. is more rational, In other words, research has returned to a more rational and academic approach, back from the more sensational and movement-like one. Of course, this new stage has just started. The Southeast Asian Studies Center of Peking University and Religious Studies Center have jointly held two international conferences, and there was also a seminar on cults in Shenzhen. All these have laid a foundation for further research on new religions.To summarize, research on new religions in foreign countries, especially Europe and America, is mainly done by sociologists, and thus methodologies in sociology are the main tools. However, research in China has mostly concentrated in humanities, like textual, history and philosophy approaches, and sociological studies have not really started yet. Sociological methodologies, like hypothesis, choosing variables, sample survey, questionnaire, statistics analysis and regression analysis, are not yet adopted.New religions have become a cultural phenomenon across the world. Research on it has just started in Mainland China. Although there are still some negative factors and methodologies are far from diversified, we have made the first step and relevant research is sure to continue. 1 Sun Liping: Unbalance: Logic Operation of a Broken Society, p. 5, 22. Social Sciences Academic Press, 2004. Special Report (Agriculture) for the NPC and CPPCC meeting in 2007, CCTV 1, March 15, 2007.3 "Interview with Robert Bellah ", 21st Century, 1995, Issue 30. Also Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe, "New Religions as the World Culture", 21st Century, 1995, Issue 30.4 Many people are confused about the fact that many of the followers of new religions are well educated and still more shocked when they discover that some experts in chemical engineering and computer science are involved in some "cults". However, an expert in chemistry may not necessarily be one in society; and a well-educated person may not necessarily score high in terms of values. We may also look at WWII for an answer, during which time a lot of scientists and specialists used to work for Nazi and militarism.5 These include Inside Story of the People's Temple (Changjiang Art Press, 1986). The Mystery of the "Modem Religious Mania" (Workers Press, 1989). Books that give a brief review arc General Study on Religious Sociology (Sichuan University Press, 1992). The Religious Mania of Today's World (Hvaxia Publishing House, 1995), Theory and Practice q/'Soka Cakkai (China Social Sciences Press, 1995), End-of-the- Millennium Mania—Exploration into Cults in the West (World Affairs Press, 1996), Religious Sociology (Peking University Press, 2001), etc.6 Research results arc Modem New Religions (Oriental Press, 1999) and Preliminary Study1 on New Religions (Hong Kong Institute of Sino-Christian Studies, 2001).7 These include Falungong and Cults (Religious Culture Publishing House, 1999), On Cults—Collection of Papers Presented at the First International Seminar on Cults (Guangxi People's Publishing House, 2001), Analysis and Comments on Falungong (Social Sciences Academic Press, 2001), and Cults in the World and Anti-Cult Study (Religious Culture Publishing House, 2001). Translated books are Anti-cull Handbook (Central Compilation and Translation Press, 2001), Fascination with Cults—The Essence, Ways to Prevent and Deal with Cults (Xinhua Publishing House, 2001), etc.
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