ABSTRACT
As conceptualised in this volume, new religious movements (NRMs) are those with a first-generation membership base. This definition, of course, implies that the constituent social elements of these religious movements – myth, ritual, leadership, organisation – also are new. Since all the core elements of what becomes the movement structure are new, they are all simultaneously ‘in play’ as the movement develops. The histories of NRMs suggest that the development of these elements is likely to include considerable serendipitous experimentation, as opposed to formal or strategic planning (Robbins and Bromley 1993). New movements experiment with alternatives, make discoveries through their lived experiences, follow out the implications of ongoing revelatory moments and react to societal efforts to define and control them. Movement development, therefore, does not follow a rational, organisational planning model and often changes rapidly, and sometimes radically, during the initial period of movement mobilisation. Nonetheless, at some point in the movement mobilisation process the major constituent elements of an NRM have taken visible shape and become the sociocultural reality within which members function. Even if this moment is in actuality an imaginary point in space and time, it is analytically useful to distinguish between the processes of developing a movement structure and responding to the internal and external consequences of that development.
