Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain stuff, Lauren vocal bomb here if, as Karl Mark suggested, religion is the opium of the people. We live on a planet where nobody needs to walk too far down the street to get drugs. Each year, hundreds of new religious movements are born. They're all over the place if you know where to look. Never mind that only a tiny fraction of them will survive. There's more where they came from.
So who starts new religions and why Starting a new religion is actually a lot like rolling out a new social media app. Hundreds of these things appear out of thin air every year, created by go getters with some entrepreneurial spirit, egoism, creativity, ambition, and flair for presenting an idea. But dumb luck and good timing play a part two. Sometimes an idea comes along that speaks to people's needs
and concerns at a particular moment in history. When this happens, some buzzes generated, people get curious, and maybe, just maybe, the whole thing blows up and we end up with snapchat or scientology. Religious scholars avoid the word cult when describing new religious movements because the term is so Latin with value judgments, but every new religious sect or spiritual
movement essentially begins the same way as a cult. We spoke with Reza Aslan, a religious scholar and author of best selling books about the beginnings of both Islam and Christianity. They said, the big joke in religion is that cult plus time equals religion. Christianity was a cult for hundreds of years before it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. To this day, there are Americans who call Mormonism occult in spite of the fact that it's one
of the most thriving religions in the world. The truth is, at some point, most of the world's great religions were what most people would call cults, started by upstarts like Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha. We also spoke with Lauren Dawson, a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo and author of Comprehending Cults, The Sociology
of New Aigious Movements. Dawson pointed out that while many of these motivational leaders have the drive to start a new spiritual group, precious few have the wherewithal to manage it through the awkward early stages without mismanaging finances, alienating their followers, or otherwise letting their egos get the better of them. Dawson said cults have a bad reputation because corruption is pretty common within these groups, but in many cases,
these charismatic leaders are really trying to help people. Research shows in many of these new religious movements, people adherents are successfully overcoming drug or alcohol addiction, family problems, et cetera, because the religions really do provide new, stabilizing influences in their lives. There are so so many religions out there. There are hundreds of offshoots of Tibetan Buddhism, different forms of Mormonism, Ufo religions, and countless reconceived notions of every
form of Christianity that you can think of. One Christian sect might follow a preacher who believes in the polygamous marriage, while another might have very specific rules on to baptize somebody.
You name it, it's available. According to Dawson, reliable estimates put the number of officially recognized religions currently operating in the United States around two thousand, five hundred the US is a very religious society compared to Europe or Canada, which each currently has only a few dozen new religions. Africa also seems to be a hotbed of new religiosity. Dawson said Africa was the last place to be penetrated
by European religion, and primarily by Islam and Christianity. There have been loads of conversions away from native practice just in the past one hundred years. As so often happens, when people convert, they usually combine their beliefs with some elements of Catholicism. In the case of Africa, this has been in the midst of economic upheaval, new diseases, and a lot of disruption. It's ripe for new profits to show up and say I've got the new truth. We're all going to be okay. This is not to say
these new religions are okay with the establishment, though. One back to the land spiritual movement on the island of Borneo called Mila Abraham was in the news in seventeen because its leader was jailed for blasphemy in Indonesia for claiming to be the actual son of God. The movement has over fifty thousand followers, and the Indonesian government is not happy about it. The country recognizes six different religions,
and Mila Abraham is not one of them. If a new spiritual movement makes it out of the awkward beginning stages, if enough people are committed to giving their time and money to the cause, it needs to develop institutionalized control. A rigid hierarchy, and clear cut guidelines about the difference between correct and incorrect beliefs tend to attract true believers and keep out the freeloaders of people who take advantage of the essential do gooderishness of a religion without being
invested in helping it succeed. The Church of Scientology is a good example of a new, very successful religion that did a great job in its mid twentieth century beginnings of laying down some clear cut guidelines for the levels of commitment expected of its believers. In return, Scientology promised a new powerful identity, a better type of salvation than anyone else was offering, as well as prosperity and luck. But as the religion has grown, something new and one
percent expected happened. The followers of Scientology have begun to want to define the religion for themselves. Aslan said, for the first time, scientology is having to confront sex scientologists breaking off from the Church, but not the religion. They're seizing for themselves, the power to define scientology for themselves. The Church says they aren't allowed to do this, but
that's the same argument every religious institution makes. That's what the Vatican said when Luther nailed his theses to the church door. Only we can define what isn't isn't Christian and we know who on that argument. So all those stricter religions are generally more successful. The five largest world religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism all have one thing in common. They've made themselves strong enough to survive continual dissension over atodoxy and
evolve with the changing needs of their communities. Oslan gave this for an example. In the US, both slave owners and abolitionists used not only the same Bible to justify their argument, they used the exact same verses. When that's the kind of scripture that you have, you know it's going to last. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by Tyler clang. Visit our online story te public dot com slash brain Stuff to find pillows, phone cases, kids, shirts,
and more, and every purchase supports us directly. And of course, for more on this and lots of other topics with staying power, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com