Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Scientology, scripture, and sacred tradition
- 2 “He may be lying but what he says is true”: the sacred tradition of don Juan as reported by Carlos Castaneda, anthropologist, trickster, guru, allegorist
- 3 The invention of sacred tradition: Mormonism
- 4 Antisemitism, conspiracy culture, Christianity, and Islam: the history and contemporary religious significance of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
- 5 The invention of a counter-tradition: the case of the North American anti-cult movement
- 6 “Heavenly deception”? Sun Myung Moon and Divine Principle
- 7 “Forgery” in the New Testament
- 8 Three phases of inventing Rosicrucian tradition in the seventeenth century
- 9 A name for all and no one: Zoroaster as a figure of authorization and a screen of ascription
- 10 The peculiar sleep: receiving The Urantia Book
- 11 Ontology of the past and its materialization in Tibetan treasures
- 12 Pseudo-Dionysius: the mediation of sacred traditions
- 13 Spurious attribution in the Hebrew Bible
- 14 Inventing Paganisms: making nature
- Index
- References
5 - The invention of a counter-tradition: the case of the North American anti-cult movement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Scientology, scripture, and sacred tradition
- 2 “He may be lying but what he says is true”: the sacred tradition of don Juan as reported by Carlos Castaneda, anthropologist, trickster, guru, allegorist
- 3 The invention of sacred tradition: Mormonism
- 4 Antisemitism, conspiracy culture, Christianity, and Islam: the history and contemporary religious significance of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
- 5 The invention of a counter-tradition: the case of the North American anti-cult movement
- 6 “Heavenly deception”? Sun Myung Moon and Divine Principle
- 7 “Forgery” in the New Testament
- 8 Three phases of inventing Rosicrucian tradition in the seventeenth century
- 9 A name for all and no one: Zoroaster as a figure of authorization and a screen of ascription
- 10 The peculiar sleep: receiving The Urantia Book
- 11 Ontology of the past and its materialization in Tibetan treasures
- 12 Pseudo-Dionysius: the mediation of sacred traditions
- 13 Spurious attribution in the Hebrew Bible
- 14 Inventing Paganisms: making nature
- Index
- References
Summary
Although the implications of their positions differ dramatically, scholars ranging from Marx and Freud to Durkheim and Berger have held that humans create the gods they worship rather than the reverse. In both religious studies and the sociology of religion, of course, this assertion is better regarded as a foundational assumption than as a discovery, since the empirical basis of these disciplines admits to no other solution. From a social-constructionist standpoint, transcendent power must be envisioned, empowered, and mystified through the invention of myth and ritual. Despite a general agreement among social-science and religious-studies scholars that religious traditions are invented, however, it is significant that little systematic attention has been paid to the invention process and its implications. The result is that the construction of religious reality has been privileged in ways granted to no other social form. From our perspective, religious myths and rituals through which socially constructed transcendent power is sacralized constitute one type of ideology – as Ann Swidler puts it, “a highly articulated, self-conscious belief and ritual system, aspiring to offer a unified answer to problems of social action.” On one hand, mythic systems provide the largest cultural canvas on which human history and the human condition are depicted as linked to a transcendent source of power. On the other, ritual systems create the means by which transcendent power is realized, accessed, and negotiated.
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- The Invention of Sacred Tradition , pp. 96 - 117Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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