ABSTRACT
Developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have shown that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of the death of gods and religion were greatly exaggerated. Religion survived the onslaught of modernization and secularization, evincing its characteristic and almost infinite capacity to adapt to and absorb extrareligious influences. Not only did religion not quietly fade away, but it thrived and multiplied, producing more religions and new religious movements, especially in the decades after World War II, than scholars could keep track of. And at least some of these religions and NRMs expressed resistance-even virulent resistance-to modernization, or to other cultures and religions, or to “the world” as we commonly know it.
