When I say religion, I don’t just mean where some church followers disagree with some practices so found a new church that gains a lot of adherents. I mean divine revelation, where the founder of the religion claims to have received word directly from the deity him or herself, as Abraham, Joseph Smith, and Mohammed claimed.
And by major, I mean one million adherents or more. I realize that’s arbitrary, but I don’t want to count some of the odder belief systems with only a few followers, like the Hale Bopp comet cult.
One bonus question: is it possible to start a major religion in this day and age? It seems to me that unlike thousands or even one hundred years ago, it’s impossible for someone to claim they heard God’s voice and get millions to believe them. Is it possible that the next Catholicism, Hinduism, or Islam-level major religion has yet to be founded? Or was that strictly a relic of a time when such claims were impossible to verify?
That would be my first thought - even Mormon is technically an offshoot of Christianity - it has the ‘new’ scrolls aspect, but its still ‘functionally’ christian.
Limiting yourself to at a million adherents, this will give you this list you have to work with:
Both Tenrikyo and the Baha’i faith arose in the 19th century, and can be considered bona-fide religions if you wish to disallow Scientology, Juche, Rastafarianism, etc.
Mormonism counts because didn’t Joseph Smith claim to have received divine revelation?
Scientology I don’t know about, didn’t Heinlein freely admit that they were just his ideas? For the purpose of my question, I’m only counting claims of divine revelation, not philosophical musings on the universe that gain followers.
They claim a fairly ridiculous number of adherents, but polling has put the number of self-identitified Scientologists in the low hundred thousands. I don’t think they count.
I’ll nominate Cao Dai. It was founded in the 1920’s, so is newer the Mormonism and Tenrikyo, its founders claimed to be communicating relevations they received directly from God and most estimates I can find of its size put in the in the low millions of followers.
Yes - Joseph Smith claimed to have recieved divine revelation - so do the JW and many other ‘off shoots’ of Christianity - I don’t classify it as ‘new’ for that reason.
Scientology was created by L.Ron Hubbard - not Heinlein - since many of his beliefs/etc are based on spiritual stuff, he had to get that reveleation from ‘something’. Thats about the end of my knowledge of it, other than knowing that alot of it comes from his "Dianetics’ and self-help stuff.
excerpt from Wikipedia -
[QUOTE=Church of Scientology - Wikipedia]
The Church of Scientology promotes Scientology, a body of beliefs and related practices created by L. Ron Hubbard, starting in 1952 as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics.[21]
Scientology teaches that people are immortal spiritual beings who have forgotten their true nature. The story of Xenu is part of Scientologist teachings about extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in Earthly events, collectively described as space opera by Hubbard.[22] Its method of spiritual rehabilitation is a type of counseling known as “auditing”, in which practitioners aim to re-experience consciously painful or traumatic events in their past, in order to free themselves of their limiting effects.[23] Study materials and auditing courses are made available to members in return for specified donations.[24] Scientology is legally recognized as a tax-exempt religion in the United States[25] and other countries,[26][27][28] and the Church of Scientology emphasizes this as proof that it is a bona fide religion.
[/QUOTE]
There’s Falun Gong which was developed in the 1980’s. While the number of practitioners is not clear, it’s certainly over a million.
More arguable is whether it’s a religion. It can be a hard call to make with some Asian movements like Falun Gong, Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Juche. They straddle the line between what westerners would call philosophy and religion.
The reason I count Mormonism, and also Seventh Day Adventism, is because the aspect of revelation of new things makes them almost different religions, even though they came from Christianity.
Whereas, many mainline Protestant sects, they started over simple doctrinal disagreements. John Smyth, the founder of the Baptist denomination, simply had different opinions on baptism rather than claiming that God revealed to him new truths.
We are all spiritual children of a loving Heavenly Father who sent us to this earth to learn and grow in a mortal state. As Mormons, we are followers of Jesus Christ. We live our lives to serve Him and teach of His eternal plan for each of us.
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It’s newer than Scientology, being founded in 1954, is based on an appearance of Jesus, and claims 3 million members, although that number is surely inflated.
I’d say 1954 is in “this day.” You need some time to get to a million members, so probably nothing started in the 21st century could count yet. What does verifying claims have to do with anything? That’s antithetical to the concept of religion. Religion is still a majority of the world’s population so faith remains the prime mover. Nothing whatsoever has changed in that regard.
How 'bout that New Agethingy? Wikipedia sez it developed in the 2nd half of the 20th century; presumably post 1950. Not sure of the number of adherents, but they must be pretty numerous.
Also Wicca, which Wikipedia (the Wicca Wiki?) says was "introduced to the public in 1954.
SS
Yeah, but aren’t those just people thinking up theories about how things are and calling it a religion?
To me, making up a religion is no different than idolatry. You’re just building an idea that you thought of and calling it God. No different from building something with your hands and calling it God.
IMO, the key to a religion being legitimate is divine revelation, unless it’s purposely marketed as a philosophy, like Buddhism or Taoism. A guy says he saw God, God gave him a book, and we should follow that book. Impossible to disprove, so some people end up believing it. But when you just write down your own ideas and base a faith around it, that’s not religion, IMO. That’s D&D.
What I was wondering is if anyone would be believed today if they said they saw God, to the point where they’d gain legions of adherents and become a mainstream faith.
In other words, is it possible that the next mainstream faith, with millions upon millions of adherents, doesn’t exist yet? Or will the ancient religions always be the dominant ones?
Cite that claim, then we’ll talk. Otherwise, I have it on very good authority that it wouldn’t be accurate to lump JW’s in with Mormons, etc.
In keeping with the OP’s question, I’m not 100% sure based on the definition of “major”, but JW’s have almost 8 million baptized members, and almost double that if you count non-baptized “associates” (people who go to Kingdom Halls for services but have not yet been baptized). So that’s fairly large; also fairly recent, considering it was the late 1800’s when the rumblings began, and it was somewheres around 19-teens that the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” was adopted.
I knew that was a problem, so I just pulled a decent-sized number out of my butt. Jehovahs Witnesses seems like a major religion to me. I just didn’t want to include small followings like Hale Bopp or the Branch Davidians. New religions like that pop up seemingly every week.
The OP specifically said the religion had to be based on “divine revelation, where the founder of the religion claims to have received word directly from the deity him or herself.”
The problem with including Wicca is that there is no central authority, no specific founder, and no claim that the religion began from divine revelation. Wicca is so decentralized that they don’t even all agree on whether they are monotheistic or duotheistic – when various covens disagree there’s no mediator to settle the matter.
I’m not going to debate the claim - I believe I’ve done that before on this board - they claim to be ‘God’s mouthpiece’ and his ‘chosen organization’, that pretty much sums up claiming to get orders or information straight from GOD - which is pretty much the very definition of “divine revelation” - So much so that they have claimed (and still do ) that you cannot come to the truth thru the bible alone - you must follow the society’s teachings.
The name "Jehovah’s Witnesses’ was officially adopted in 1931 by Rutherford, the society’s second president. He ‘took over’ after Russel’s death in 1916 - there was a split in the ‘organization’ at that time - before then they were called ‘Bible Students’ and there are some of that organization still around today.
Regardless of all of the above - they are still ‘just another sect’ of christianity - there is nothing new or even truly ‘unique’ about them.
