The five papers in this panel use innovative research techniques and sources to analyze understudied aspects of the development and spread of new religions. Topics include an examination of how I-Kuan Tao used “polycentric globalization” to spread the movement across Asia, North America, and Europe, an analysis of how media saturation coverage of the 1987 Harmonic Convergence event helped to create the “Spiritual But Not Religious” identity, a study of the role of Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics in the development of Scientology’s Theta-MEST theory, a study of the religious underground of the 1980s and 1990s using zines and other alternative media available in a Denver Public Library archive, and an analysis of how David Koresh’s trips to Israel shaped Branch Davidian theology using sources including Hebrew language newspapers. Taken together, these papers show how the use of lesser-known sources and the examination of operational details can reveal critical information about the development and spread of new religions.
David Koresh’s visits to Israel were crucial in shaping his theological development, self-conception, and apocalyptic prophecy. With each journey, both Koresh’s sense of purpose and the trust his followers placed in him intensified. His increasingly cohesive apocalyptic vision intertwined spiritual salvation with a radical political agenda.
Despite the significance of these events, the specifics of what transpired during each visit remain inadequately understood. My research addresses this by both synthesizing the dispersed primary evidence and incorporating previously unutilized sources, including Hebrew-language publications and interviews with individuals who met Koresh during his visits.
In this paper, I will present my preliminary findings to construct a coherent picture of how Koresh’s pilgrimages not only solidified his self-conception as the Messiah but also delineated a striking political dimension in his vision – one that cast the modern State of Israel and the United States as pivotal players in an unfolding cosmic drama.
This paper examines an understudied dimension of "zine" culture of the 1980s and 1990s, namely, the religious theorization going on between NRMs across America and England. While zines are often discussed for their do-it-yourself ethics, aesthetics, and ‘subterranean’ politics (often attached to a music “scene”), little room has been devoted to analysis of those deriving from the religious underground. My analysis is centered around an archive housed at the Denver Public Library, that of Tom Hallewell—zine author, music promoter, and figurehead of the American network of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. Hallewell’s archive brings together numerous small-press publications from a range of NRMs such as Satanists, O.T.O. branches, Gnostics, and magickal organizations. Communication between zine creators, and the shared ideas spawned within the pages of their zines, is illustrative of a unique kind of religious theorization stemming from the margins of culture rather than from academic discourse.
This paper brings new insight to academic understandings of the bricolage of ideas L. Ron Hubbard assembled in his development of Scientology as a syncretic religion. It demonstrates that, in addition to having been influenced by science fiction, popular psychology and Western esotericism, as has been explored in the existing literature (Melton 2000, Lewis 2009, Urban 2011, Frenchkowski 2016), Hubbard was also influenced by certain popular post-WWII ideas about science, technology and the universe. In particular, the research presented here demonstrates that Hubbard’s 1951 development and introduction of the foundational Scientology doctrine known as the Theta-MEST theory, which establishes the religion’s basic metaphysical propositions as well as its soteriological logic, relied on ideas connected with the then-new field of cybernetics and explicitly drew from the work of the mathematician and author credited with naming and popularizing the field, Norbert Wiener.
Religious globalization is commonly interpreted through two paradigms: centralized missionary expansion or diaspora transmission tied to ethnic community reproduction. This paper argues that I-Kuan Tao represents a third configuration: polycentric globalization within a transnational religious field. Originating in China and consolidated in Taiwan, the movement now operates across Southeast Asia, North America, Europe, and beyond without a singular governing center. Decentralized regional associations maintain ritual continuity and shared cosmological narrative while exercising contextual autonomy. Authority circulates through relational networks rather than hierarchical command. Drawing on scholarship on transnational religion, mobility, and networked governance, the study analyzes how ritual standardization, multidirectional flows, and negotiated coherence enable expansion beyond diaspora while preserving institutional stability. The case challenges assumptions that globalization necessitates either centralization or fragmentation and proposes polycentric governance as a distinct mode of contemporary religious expansion.
This presentation argues that the 1987 Harmonic Convergence—the first globally synchronized meditation event—played a pivotal but under‑recognized role in creating the conditions that enabled the rise of the “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) identity. Through an analysis of media saturation across newspapers, syndicated comics, and late‑night television, I show how ambivalent coverage—mixing fascination, irony, and critique—performed essential work of discursive normalization. Drawing on Foucault’s “field of the sayable”, I demonstrate how ubiquity generated familiarity, which generated intelligibility, and ultimately allowed SBNR to emerge as a socially intelligible identity. Constant coverage, in other words, ensured that the ideas and practices embodied in the Convergence—and later, SBNR identity—would become part what Stalnaker refers to as “the common ground”. By tracing how public talk circulated across media, this paper reframes the Convergence not as a failed New Age prophecy, but as an essential inflection point in understanding the exponential rise in SBNR identities.