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In 1912 Émile Durkheim wrote that he expected a new religion...

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"In a word, the old gods are growing old or already dead. [...] But this state of incertitude...
sunandshadow

sunandshadow

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"In a word, the old gods are growing old or already dead. [...] But this state of incertitude and confused agitation cannon last forever. A day will come when our societies will know again those hours of creative effervescence, in the course of which new ideas arise and new formulae are found which serve for a while as a guide to humanity... [...] There are no gospels which are immortal, but neither is there any reason for believing that humanity is incapable of inventing new ones." - Émile Durkheim, P. 428 of The Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life, Swain translation. Durkheim goes on to say that he doesn't know what this future religion will look like, except it won't be science because science doesn't provide the psychological and social effects religions do. (BTW The Swain translation is the one available on Project Gutenberg because it's the oldest, but it's also known as "the racist translation", because when Durkheim is trying to talk about religions of a lower level of complexity or earlier level of cultural evolution this translation decided to refer to them as "inferior". And other similar bad terminology choices. So if you have a Cladis or Fields translation available, it's probably better.)

So, clearly this didn't happen, there hasn't been a big new religion that swept the world at some time after 1912. There were at least 8 cultural movements over the last 107 years that had some religious tones in them and could have developed into a religion, probably more. But hardly any of them lasted more than 2 decades before getting their cultural foundation weakened by shifts in economics, wars, or even technology. So, here's the "What if?" challenge for you all. Pick one interesting cultural movement of the past century and describe what it would look like if it had developed into a full-fledged religion.
 
God I wish anarcho-communism spread as well as Marxism-Leninism.

A Catalonian and Ukrainian Anarchist-Commune would be interesting to see.
 
Cloak&Dagger said:
God I wish anarcho-communism spread as well as Marxism-Leninism.

A Catalonian and Ukrainian Anarchist-Commune would be interesting to see.
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So what would that look like as a religion? I assume communes would celebrate holidays of some kind. Would they have any services, rituals, storytelling to communicate community morals to children...?
 
I doubt anything past the High Middle Ages could become a world religion on the scale of the Abrahamic and Dharmic religions, but I do think there's some potential for large regional religions to emerge or consolidate. The Afro-American religions are the best bet this late in history in my view. They have enough similar beliefs that I could see them consolidate into one organized religion, if a compelling enough figure arose with the intention of uniting them, while also being capable of appealing to multiple nationalities and ethnic groups. I may be biased here from researching the Afro-Americans religions, and their predecessors in coastal West Africa, for a planned 'domesticated zorses kick-start political consolidation in West Africa' timeline.

As for how it would develop, I expect the Yoruba religion and its descendants (Santeria, Candomble Ketu, Umbanda, etc.) and the Fon religion and its descendants (Candomble Jeje, Vodoun, Vodou, Vudu, Vodu, Voodoo) would be the primary bases for a consolidated Afro-Syncretic faith. The end result would depend primarily on which tradition the person consolidating them started in. A consolidation started by a santero (Santeria) would be different from one started by a pai-de-santo (Candomble) which would in turn be different from one started by a houngan (Vodou).

I think I can predict a few key features though: an impersonal and unknowable creator god (Olodumare, Bondye), subordinate spirits/angels that act as intermediaries on behalf of said god (Orishas, Loa), the ability of these spirits to influence people taking part in ceremonies possibly to the point of possession if Vodou influences are strong, a separation of these spirits into multiple pantheons/nations/families with different traits, and a moral code focusing on communitarian virtues and acting in accordance with destiny.

I could see this consolidated Afro-Syncretism spreading throughout the Caribbean, parts of Brazil and Guyana, and possibly into West Africa, New Orleans and parts of Latin America.

A more successful Ghost Dance might also qualify, although it's 30 years early and I'm not as informed about that one. There's also the various New Age and UFO religions, but I wouldn't give them good chances of becoming mass movements.
 
Bassoe said:
Ghost Dance was doomed ever since it made readily disprovable claims it couldn't back up. No difference from any apocalypse cultist claiming the world is going to end on X date waking up on X + 1 day with egg on their face. Short of it somehow actually working and causing magical effects to counter european imperialism, it was inevitably going to discredit itself.
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Except religious groups survive failed prophecies all the time. The Adventists are still around after the Great Disappointment, after all. The Ghost Dance was doomed because it encouraged its followers to resist colonialism, which got most of them killed.

EDIT: To answer the question in the OP, Spiritism/the New Age could make claims to being a century long at least quasi-religious movement that has hung around.
 
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mesonoxian said:
Except religious groups survive failed prophecies all the time. The Adventists are still around after the Great Disappointment, after all. The Ghost Dance was doomed because it encouraged its followers to resist colonialism, which got most of them killed.

EDIT: To answer the question in the OP, Spiritism/the New Age could make claims to being a century long at least quasi-religious movement that has hung around.
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Of things in the past century that have come closest to becoming new large-scale religion, I'd include New Age, Wicca, and western remixes of... should I call it Buddhism without the Buddha? Basically a reincarnation and meditation centered religion connected to recently-popular ideas of mindfulness and flow. Maybe with some feng shui blended in there for the domestic/happy life side of things, since Have to disagree with @FoxFondue though, I think the waning of Catholicism is evidence that a creator deity with a staff of angels or saints isn't what people are looking for any more. Though certainly African and Afro-american religions have a lot of interesting elements with development potential.
 
sunandshadow said:
"In a word, the old gods are growing old or already dead. [...] But this state of incertitude and confused agitation cannon last forever. A day will come when our societies will know again those hours of creative effervescence, in the course of which new ideas arise and new formulae are found which serve for a while as a guide to humanity... [...] There are no gospels which are immortal, but neither is there any reason for believing that humanity is incapable of inventing new ones." - Émile Durkheim, P. 428 of The Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life, Swain translation. Durkheim goes on to say that he doesn't know what this future religion will look like, except it won't be science because science doesn't provide the psychological and social effects religions do. (BTW The Swain translation is the one available on Project Gutenberg because it's the oldest, but it's also known as "the racist translation", because when Durkheim is trying to talk about religions of a lower level of complexity or earlier level of cultural evolution this translation decided to refer to them as "inferior". And other similar bad terminology choices. So if you have a Cladis or Fields translation available, it's probably better.)

So, clearly this didn't happen, there hasn't been a big new religion that swept the world at some time after 1912. There were at least 8 cultural movements over the last 107 years that had some religious tones in them and could have developed into a religion, probably more. But hardly any of them lasted more than 2 decades before getting their cultural foundation weakened by shifts in economics, wars, or even technology. So, here's the "What if?" challenge for you all. Pick one interesting cultural movement of the past century and describe what it would look like if it had developed into a full-fledged religion.
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sunandshadow said:
So, clearly this didn't happen, there hasn't been a big new religion that swept the world at some time after 1912.
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sunandshadow said:
So, clearly this didn't happen
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o_O
Err... lolwat?

Scientology was founded in 1953.
LaVeyan Satanism was founded in 1966.
The Satanic Temple was founded in 2013 (and yes it is very different to LeVeyan Satanism).

And that's just off the top of my head. The first two are still going strong, while the last is fairly new but still officially recognised. All three have global reach.

There's also the Norse Revivalists, The Church of Jedi and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster who are all existent religious groups pushing for official recognition as well, all of which have global reach. Admittedly, that last one is more of a parody religion, but still ticks off all the boxes to be a religion and is trying to be recognised as one.
 
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mesonoxian said:
Except religious groups survive failed prophecies all the time. The Adventists are still around after the Great Disappointment, after all. The Ghost Dance was doomed because it encouraged its followers to resist colonialism, which got most of them killed.
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Eh, but in those cases it were mostly followers who stuck around because cognitive dissonance. They had vested everything into the prophecy being true, so their way of coping with the disappointment was, well, basically ignoring it happened. No new followers are won after such disappointments anymore.

Mgunh1 said:
o_O
Err... lolwat?

Scientology was founded in 1953.
LaVeyan Satanism was founded in 1966.
The Satanic Temple was founded in 2013 (and yes it is very different to LeVeyan Satanism).
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Emphasis on "big". Those are fringe phenomenon, even Scientology - the others aren't even fringe of fringe. There has been no new Christianity, no new Islam, no new Buddhism.
 
New religious movements are extremely commonplace. There are likely hundreds of millions globally who adhere to a modern creed, however the fractured landscape makes any accurate count an exercise in futility. Durkheim was not wrong, but he was naive to assume that these new ideas would congeal into a single cohesive movement. The overall trend instead is one of fission, innovation, and the diminishment of traditional spiritual authority.
 
mesonoxian said:
Except religious groups survive failed prophecies all the time. The Adventists are still around after the Great Disappointment, after all. The Ghost Dance was doomed because it encouraged its followers to resist colonialism, which got most of them killed.

EDIT: To answer the question in the OP, Spiritism/the New Age could make claims to being a century long at least quasi-religious movement that has hung around.
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So potential premise for Reformed Ghost Dance-ism, move the goalposts and claim the original ritual actually worked, citing that modern america screws native americans considerably less than 129 years ago as evidence?
 
Susano said:
Emphasis on "big". Those are fringe phenomenon, even Scientology - the others aren't even fringe of fringe. There has been no new Christianity, no new Islam, no new Buddhism.
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You're asking for religious organisations that total numbers in the million plus in less than 100 years.
You really think Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism did that? Christianity took multiple centuries to get out of Italy.
Those three I mentioned? In mere decades they have global reach with members in the thousands. The Satanic Temple is only 6 years old and already has several thousand members.

So yeah, I think they qualify.
 
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Mgunh1 said:
You're asking for religious organisations that total numbers in the million plus in less than 100 years.
You really think Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism did that? Christianity took multiple centuries to get out of Italy.
Those three I mentioned? In mere decades they have global reach with members in the thousands. The Satanic Temple is only 6 years old and already has several thousand members.

So yeah, I think they qualify.
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ITALY? Christianity originates in Judea (or Israel for a modern reference), by AD64 (about 30 years after the crucifixion) they were numerous enough in Rome that Emperor Nero could blame them for the great fire. By 110 AD Pliny the Younger complained to Trajan that Asia Minor was filled with these Christians and that they had spread to every class, every sex, and every area from cities to the countryside.

Say what you will about early Christianity, but it had an explosive growth early on.

But you know what? Let us look at Mormonism, started in 1830 and by 1860 has about 60 000 members. Not as fast a growth rate as early Christianity, but still FAR more impressive than any of the other groups you mention.
 
Mgunh1 said:
...LaVeyan Satanism was founded in 1966.
The Satanic Temple was founded in 2013 (and yes it is very different to LeVeyan Satanism)...
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Being super glib,
I kind of feel like that's when Satanism become a "real religion" -- when they had a schism over personality clashes in the leadership that were tied to super-arcane points of theology that basically nobody cares about.


Anyway to answer the question more seriously,
I kind of feel like I don't understand how kinda the, native religions of China worked before Mao stamped 'em all out? And that there's a lot of room for that to grow back into the ancestor-worship animism melded with statism or whatever they kinda generally had.

Falun Gong is the future of China LOL
 
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Mgunh1 said:
And that's just off the top of my head. The first two are still going strong, while the last is fairly new but still officially recognised. All three have global reach.
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With the ease of worldwide communication, having global reach hardly makes a religion major; I would argue that none of these religions can be categorised as one the world's major religions, especially as all three of them have focused more on getting attention, fame, money and endorsements from the rich and famous rather than laying the groundwork for wide-scale proselytising.
 
One thing I could plausibly imagine would be a christianity spinoff for a post-peak oil, post-climate apocalypse future based around the idea that forget comparatively irreverent piece of fruit, Original Sin was knowing what was going to happen to civilization, having developed theoretically viable technological workarounds to save it and not using them until it was too late. Basically take Borlaug-style techno-optimists who accurately believe that technological progress makes life better, put them in a world where their ideology literally can't work* and have them accurately observe that their ancestors could've prevented this but didn't because the consequences wouldn't hit during their lifetimes.

* All the necessary readily accessible natural resources essential for building machines and infrastructure were expended generations ago and without preexisting machines and infrastructure, the inaccessible sources of resources can't be extracted.
 
I think there's a good chance that a new religion could overtake Christianity and/or Islam for dominance on the global stage, but it's not an overnight process. Christianity didn't really eliminate Paganism in Europe until the 1400s. Islam only spread as quickly as it did because of the Islamic conquest and the pressure that put on conquered peoples to convert, but Egypt at least was majority Coptic for several hundred years after it was conquered by the Rashidun caliphs.

I think Baha'i is certainly a contender for world religion status, it's the second largest minority religion in Iran, Panama, and a couple other Latin American Countries. It's been growing pretty rapidly in the Middle East as well, I think something like 9% per year in some Persian Gulf states. There are a wide variety of Hindu and Buddhist cults in India with millions of followers all over the world. Mormonism is still growing faster than the rate of global population growth, though its slowed in recent years.

Anyway, I don't think anyone can really predict what the future of religion can look like. For all I know it'll be Zensunni Buddhism and Orange Catholicism. On that note it would be interesting to see how a new wave of colonialism effected religious movements, if they'll scatter to the far corners of the solar system to create their own little utopias.
 
daniel_gudman said:
Being super glib,
I kind of feel like that's when Satanism become a "real religion" -- when they had a schism over personality clashes in the leadership that were tied to super-arcane points of theology that basically nobody cares about.
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Satanism is far older than LaVey - or to be more precise Howard Stanton Levey, the brilliant put-on artist who reinvented himself as Satan's publicity agent and got close to entire US media industry[1] to take his made-up biography and parodic devil religion at face value - and it cycle in popularity over decades. Satanism is real religion, but a niche one.

[1] to be sure most journalists just wanted a hot story of scandal, sex and taboo violation and LaVey knew that tendency very well and exploited it ruthlessly.

daniel_gudman said:
Anyway to answer the question more seriously,
I kind of feel like I don't understand how kinda the, native religions of China worked before Mao stamped 'em all out? And that there's a lot of room for that to grow back into the ancestor-worship animism melded with statism or whatever they kinda generally had.

Falun Gong is the future of China LOL
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Future of China is public communism. Speaking of which, if we go by the sociology of religion and discuss one of my favourite sociology papers - Robert Bellah's paper "Civil Religion in America", paradigm-shifting in 1967 when it was published. Before that time, most definitions of religion had presupposed that something could be assigned to that category only if it involved belief in at least one deity. Challenging this notion, Bellah pointed out the existence of a class of widely accepted belief systems that had all the hallmarks of religion except such a belief. Borrowing a turn of phrase from Rousseau, he called these "civil religions," and the example central to his paper was the system of beliefs that had grown up around the ideas and institutions of American political life.

While Americanism was the focus of Bellah's paper , it was and is far from the only example of the species. Communism is the most important religious movement of XX century bar none - Communism was (and can be argued to still be - given China' state cultural monopoly) the most successful modern world's civil religions.

Now, the civil religions have a flaw in that their kingdom is wholly of this world. This is to say, they are brittle and subject to mass disillusionment as the Soviet Union demonstrated. Ah, sic transit gloria mundi...
 
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