Assess the view that deprivation is the main reason for the growth or new religious movements.

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Assess the view that deprivation is the main reason for the growth or new religious movements.

Membership of established mainstream churches has dropped dramatically. However affiliation with other religious organisations (including penticostal, Seventh-Day Adventists and Christian sects) has risen just as noticeably. It is estimated that there may now be as many as 25,000 new religious groups n Europe alone.

In attempting to classify new religious movements, Wallis identified three main kinds of NRM. World rejecting, world affirming, and world accommodating.

World affirming groups are usually individualistic, life-positive and aim to release human potentials. They tend to accept the world as it is, but involves techniques, which enable the individual to participate more effectively and gain more from their worldly experience.  Research suggests that these are more common amongst middle-aged, middle class groups- often disillusioned and disenchanted with material values and in search of new positive meanings.

World affirming sects appeal to those who are likely to have finished education, are married, have children and have a mortgage. Weber had suggested the modern world is one in which rationality dominates- this is, one in which magical, unpredictable and ecstatic experiences are uncommon. Further more, there is a tremendous pressure to become materially, emotionally and sexually successful. According to Bird, world-affirming sects provide a spiritual component in an increasingly rationalised world. They provide techniques and knowledge to help people become wealthy, powerful and successful. They provide techniques and knowledge, which allow people to work on themselves to bring about personal growth. There are common issues, which motivate both the young and the old. They both live in societies where there is great pressure to succeed and therefore great fear of failure. Religious movements can provide both groups with a means to deal with the fear of failure by providing techniques that lead to personal success. Younger members may join because they feel that they have lost touch with, or are deprived of, a sense of what matters in life, intimacy and love and how to form relationships. In order to help achieve their desired ends in life these people may join world affirming NRMs as they provide a means of coping with personal inadequacy and help members to achieve individual success. This therefore agrees with the statement that deprivation is one of the main reasons why people join NRMs.

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World rejecting groups are similar to sects in so far as they are always highly critical of the outside world and demand significant commitment from their members. Many young people are no longer children but lack adult commitments such as having their own children. Being unattached is an outcome of the increasing gap between childhood and adulthood which as Willis has argued, has been further extended by the gradual lengthening of education and wider accessibility of higher education. It is to these unattached groups that world-rejecting movements appeal. They try to provide some certainty to a community of people ...

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