Abstract
Historians of religions have long recognized that stories about the creation of the world and of human beings can play potent roles in religious groups. By dramatizing elements of human nature and sketching out both the origins and future direction of history, stories about creation shape both the worldviews and ways of life of religious groups. That holds true for many new religious movements. By adopting familiar creation stories, such as the ones from the opening chapters of the book of Genesis, as their own, new religions can embed themselves in traditions that already enjoy substantial legitimacy and broad public acceptance. But by also developing innovative understandings of those familiar stories, new religions can emphasize the ways in which they are different from and superior to the mainstream religions in their social contexts. Not all new religious movements offer innovative understandings of the creation of the world and human beings, but many do. The creation accounts of Genesis are particularly important for both the Raelians, the group founded by the former Claude Vorhilon after his unanticipated meeting with extraterrestrial ambassadors in 1973, and the Unificationists, the movement founded by the Korean Reverend Sun Myung Moon in South Korea in 1954. In each case, the founder set out an innovative understanding of the purpose of creation, the nature of human beings, the meaning of history, and the imperatives for human action in the present and near future.
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Notes
Vorilhon translates Elohim as “those who came from the sky” and uses “Eloha” for a single one of the Elohim. See Raël (Claude Vorilhon), Intelligent Design: Message from the Designers (np: Nova Distribution, 2005), p. 11.
On the rhetorical strategy of the self-effacing narrator, see Stephen O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 78.
See Rodney Stark, “How New Religions Succeed: A Theoretical Model,” in David G. Bromley and Phillip E. Hammond, eds., The Future of New Religious Movements (Mercer, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), pp. 11–29, quotation from p. 13;
see also Rodney Stark, “Why Religious Movements Suceed or Fail: A Revised General Model,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 11 (1996): 133–146.
On the concept of “charismatic persona,” see David G. Bromley and Rachel S. Bobbit, “Challenges to Charismatic Authority in the Unificationist Movement,” in James R. Lewis and Sarah M. Lewis, eds. Sacred Schisms: How Religions Divide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 129–146;
David G. Bromley, “Making Sense of Scientology: Prophetic Contractual Religion,” in James R. Lewis, ed., Scientology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 83–101.
Susan Palmer notes that the date of the first contact, December 13, 1973, is the feast of Saint Lucy, whose name means “light.” See Susan J. Palmer, Aliens Adored: Raël’s UFO Religion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), p. 35.
See Raël, Yes to Human Cloning: Eternal Life Thanks to Science (np: Nova Distribution, 2001) and the news stories archived at Raëlianews.org.
See Qur’an 13:38; 43:1–4; 85:21–22; see also Geo Widengren, The Ascension of the Apostle and the Heavenly Book (Uppsala: A. B. Lundequistska, 1950).
For English translations of the collection of Gnostic texts found in 1945 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt see Marvin Meyer, ed., The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The Revised and Updated Translation of Sacred Gnostic Texts Complete in One Volume (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).
For a sustained treatment of ancient Gnosticism as a new religious movement, using many of the ideas developed by Rodney Stark and his collaborators, see Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
George D. Chryssides, The Advent of Sun Myung Moon: The Origins, Beliefs and Practices of the Unification Church (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 24.
Michael L. Mickler, “The Unification Church/Movement in the United States,” in Eugene V. Gallagher and W. Michael Ashcraft, eds., Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in the United States, 5 vols., (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006), vol. 4, pp. 158–183, quotation from p. 166.
Sun Myung Moon, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen (Washington, DC: The Washington Times Foundation, 2009), p. 22.
As quoted in Joseph H. Fichter, ed., Autobiographies of Conversion (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), p. 145. Fichter simply gives first names for each of the converts whose accounts he provides.
Sun Myung Moon, Divine Principle (New York: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1973), p. 9, see pp. 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 131, 152, 533.
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© 2014 Eugene V. Gallagher
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Gallagher, E.V. (2014). Aliens and Adams: Reimagining Creation. In: Reading and Writing Scripture in New Religious Movements. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137434838_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137434838_5
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