ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of global culture and its relationship to new religions. New religions complicate this picture. The global aspect of new religions is there for all to see. Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam have always been global cultures. The ideal of these religions, however, was to spread a religious metaculture that was perfectly capable of remaining identifiable while being absorbed by local cultures. The global nature of new religions is significantly different from that of charismatic Christianity. The strict accommodation between a local religious culture and the metaculture of a world tradition is absent in new religions. Europe was the home of industrialism. It took root in Britain in the eighteenth century and spread to Germany and America. Only in the late eighteenth century did self-consciously modern religious movements emerge. Throughout the nineteenth century, America was a hotbed of new religions.
