Part 1: Social Justice's Religious Sects - Setting the Stage

The analysis of radical social justice activist groups as de-facto religions or quasi-religions is increasing. Back in 2015 I tended to get a lot of push-back on the idea. Now it is increasingly entering into common discussions (like this recent Globe & Mail article).

Jonathan Haidt was the first to really popularize the idea. He did so via his Two Teloses lecture series. Of course the idea of applying religious labels to non-traditional religious like group dynamics isn't new. Demerath had an organizational science book on this in 1998.  I used this logic in my 2008 Master's work on systemic change designs. Although, I must say, I did so with a fair bit of pushback. At that point, the Science of Religion hadn't yet come of age. That disciple was still fairly nascent and  was still coming to terms with the New Atheist movement.  From my perspective, pushback against the New Atheist's growing evangelical-esque dynamics really pushed innovation in the Science of Religion. At the same time evolutionary tools were slowly seeping into the social sciences. The Science of Religion's adoption of gene-cultural tools has, in my mind, made a huge difference it what it can say about the grey areas of quasi-religious behaviour and behavioural groups.

In this post I'll look at (informally theorized) trajectories of new religious movements. I'll then use that to look at radical activist social justice groups. Will they match up? Will this process produce any novel insights, or is it just a futile exercise is bigotry justification and straw-manning?

• Part 1: Trajectories of new religious movements
• Part 2: Social Justice sects
• Part 3: Social Justice sect coherence
• Part 4: Do social justice sects match new religious counterparts
• Part 5: Grand conclusions
• Part 6: Further validation testing

TRAJECTORIES OF NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

My general sense is that new religious movements tend to fall into a limited number of formulations / concentrations. Unfortunately classifications seem mainly based on intuition rather than any rigorous  phylogenetic work. But perhaps I'm just not up to date on the literature...

There is the sociological classification of new religious movements. Campbell's old cult classification may be the most relevant for my ends. This includes:

1. a mystically-oriented illumination type
2. an instrumental type, in which inner experience is sought for its effects, and
3. a service-oriented type, which is focused on aiding others.

Cambells work is focussed on orientational intentions. I tend to favour a bit more behaviouralism. For example, where would Campell classify Amish or Hutterite Luddites? Probably in 2. Where would millennial doomsday cults fit in? Probably in 2. Hence, I think that it is just too big a category. So here is my sense of the break down:

Millennials

• These are fairly concerned about ushering in a new utopia. In a decent number of cases, the ends justify the means. Mormonism had a heavy millennial influence during the 1840’s-60’s. Jehovah Witnesses had a heavy millennial phase, which I believe, climaxed around WW1.

Luddites

• The main idea with these groups is that the benefits of progress are outweighed by its costs it. Cost benefit analysis is almost always done via social system calculations. Some movements just freeze society at a technology point near their departure time. Other movements retrench backward in time a ways. Amish and Hutterites are classic examples of Luddites. Mennonites are much more mixed. Popular attacks against North American Christianity and Christian dominated politics is often framed as retrenchments back to an imagined golden social age. In effect, they are attacked as weak social Luddites. In our era, a not insignificant number of people reject technology in Luddite like ways. Ludditism is almost exclusively technological in nature. But, I’m sure some radical social versions with moderate technological throttling would fit the bill too.

Cults

• New Religious Movement (NRM) studies of the 80's were fascinated with the phenomenon of cults.  There was lots of hysterical pressure put on legal and political institutions in this regard. Remember all the cases of Satanist daycare worker abusing kids? Sounds like #metoo hyper-hysterics, no? Basically cults are largely defined as groups with super steep in-group out-group gradients who also happen to express a lot of the dynamical factors which characterize religion. They're usually based on, and driven by, charismatic leaders. But this isn't always true. A few cults manage to survive the inevitable charismatic leadership succession crises which most undergo and morph into reasonably legitimate religions. A host of religions from the 1830’s great awakening managed this feat. Most do not. Many cults are "millenialistic" (albeit frequently in new-age rather than classical ways). Most of the sects listed here are cultish on their fringes. While the cult category need not be separate, I think they’re behaviourally unique enough to warrant their own dimension spanning category rather than simply being a term used to describe the radical fringes of any given category.

Evangelicals

• I probably shouldn't use this name for this purpose, but common parlance now broadly defines evangelical religions as those highly focussed on proselytization tinged with a decent amount of “we were warned you” sentiment. Evangelical formulations usually stabilize when they're combined with an easily demarkable "red pill" like conversion experience. This might be a born again confession, getting a testimony, or some similar dramatically profound change-act ritual.

Gnostics / Mystics

• Gnosticism is largely characterized by a severe rejection of materialism and an extreme focus on mystical experience. In some ways, it can be imagined as the classic cultist who sits humming mantras to themselves while pursuing aesthetic ideals in order to get more in touch with mystical planes. While I was initially uncertain about the validity of this sub-set, Cambell has convinced me otherwise.

Revelatory (added in after going through the validation process)

• This religious trajectory is probably best characterized via the purposeful addition of what is interpreted as "fact" based knowledge additions. The process is usually via prophetic traditions, but need not be so. Catholicism systemic theology approach wouldn't be considered revelatory because of it rational logic focus. Revelatory religions are much more dynamic with knowledge acquisition. Often this produces too much revelation which then inspires infighting and validation / authorization issues. Historically, many new religious movements are energized in a revelatory phase and then, if they survive, tone things down. Revelatory knowledge has heightened epistemological value. Often it is responsive to timely existential angst issues. It is not fully shamanistic, but certainly intersects with that tradition.

Obviously these categories aren’t mutually exclusive. Campbell’s and other’s definitions are much better here. But the accuracy that comes from the necessary generalized parsing required by non-overlapping categorization probably poorly serves our analytical purposes.

VALIDATION

Instead of jumping right into social justice analysis, let’s take some time to look at some fringe religions and see how well they fit into our categorization.

Branch Davidians

• Obviously religious. Clearly millenialistic. Also cultish.  I would probably think the millennialistic behaviour rules over the cultish. Everyone can be cultish, and non-Luddite separation from society didn’t quite seem to be their main game.

Scientology

• Obviously religious. It seems to have started out as a cult, but managed to transition quite quickly to religious status. As history shows, producing scripture seems to aid this process. But, I don’t think any of my categories really match it. I suspect I need a new category for “revelatory” sects, whose main focus is on communication new information of divine importance.

Atheism +

• As I understand it, atheism + is a social grouping that utterly denies the factual validity of supernaturalism, but recognizes the evolutionary importance of ritual and moral-based association. Their dynamics generally aren’t overly religious. The movement has a hard time retaining members. Proselytization tends to be very weak. Atheism+ is clearly not mystic. Rationalism isn’t overly concerned with the sublime. Neither is it millenialistic. It might strive for a better world via an aggregation of individual behavioural consequences, but it is a stretch to say it is focussed on ushering in a new world. Some atheist+ may envision and hope for a societal phase change via enough religious implosions to enable a more thorough secular phase change. But, generally the purpose of individual behaviour isn’t to effect a phase change, but to keep environmental degradation to a minimum, and to maximize their own well-being. Atheist+ is clearly not cultish. Thus, it fits no sect categorizations and should not be considered a religion nor on a religious vector.

Proud Boys

• While I don’t know too much about their specific ideology, as far as I can tell, this group is mainly about defending the right of people to voice and choose political incorrect political leaders. Thus it is probably mainly a protest and counter-protest group. It has no millenialistic tendencies (unless you count status quo maintenance as millenialistic).  It is not Luddite. It may want to preserve social status quo. But even then, the group is somewhat anti-racist (via color blind goals at least). It is neither gnostic nor evangelical. The closest fit would be cultish. 
• The group does fit a lot of the behavioural dynamics of religion. It has ritual, costly sacrifices, a grand narrative, and sacred values. It really doesn’t have much of a Big Brother though. Obviously this point could be argued. But, it seems more like a political cooperative than a group whose norms have such sacred value that there is a sense that going against them is wrong towards some bigger essence or semi-embodied group agent. Thus, Proud Boys really can’t be considered religious - even though their dynamics seem to hit a number of classic points. Their behaviour is also not reflective of any of the sect categorizations listed. 
• My opinion could be change with more information on Big Brother roles, in-group out-group gradients, increased moral theorizing, or more mysticism or more millennialism. This suggest I had better make up a rating scale to see what cut-off scores would be sufficient for me to categorize a group as religious. In the past I've used Scott Atran’s work to tease out what is and isn't religious.

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level
Sacred values (volume)
Sacred values (significance lvl)
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)
Costly commitments
Clean hand actions
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient

Arkeon

• To find some other fringe religious movements, I consulted google. I tossed out the ones that seemed to be obvious offshoots of existing religions and did some superficial reading. Arkeon fit the bill, although as an offshoot of Reiki, I may be pushing things a little.
• This is basically a charismatic movement that appears to be focussed on creating community feelings via rites of passage and ancestral history. Without much to go on, I’d suggest it’s mainly a mystical movement that doesn’t reject materialism. From the reaction of the Italian authorities, it’s probably fairly cultic. Without more information I really can’t classify it. But, if I was forced to, it seems religious. It’s NRM trajectory appears to either be that of a cult or a concretized mysticism.

Looking at my rough multi-factor rating scale analysis, it looks like 16/27 or so is a threshold value. Traditional religions are probably scoring 24 or 25 and above (out of 27). Supernaturalism, priesthood authority, and identity fusion seem to be the biggest areas of differentials compared to fringe religious movements.  According to my rating scale, fringe movements probably get a religious score (16+/27) via

• strong moral big brothers, or 
• via sacred values (the two really intertwine), or 
• via cult like identity-fusion and steep in-group out-group gradients.

Atheist+

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother			X
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level				X
Sacred values (volume)			X
Sacred values (significance lvl)			X
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)			X
Costly commitments				X
Clean hand actions				X
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion			X
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient				X

Sum = 5/27

Proud Boys

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother			X
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level			X	x
Sacred values (volume)		X
Sacred values (significance lvl)			X
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)		X
Costly commitments			X
Clean hand actions			X
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion		X
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient			X

Sum = 12/27

A Proud Boys Version I’d Just Barely Label Religious (PB v1)

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother			X
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level			X
Sacred values (volume)	X
Sacred values (significance lvl)	X
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)		X
Costly commitments			X
Clean hand actions	x
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion		X
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient			X

Sum = 17/27

A Proud Boys Version I’d Just Barely Label Religious (PB v2)

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother	X
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level			X
Sacred values (volume)		X
Sacred values (significance lvl)			X
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)		X
Costly commitments		x
Clean hand actions			X
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion		X
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient		X

Sum = 16/27

Arkeon

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother		?	?
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level	?	?
Sacred values (volume)			?
Sacred values (significance lvl)		?
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)	?
Costly commitments		?
Clean hand actions			?	?
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion	?
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient	?

Sum = 18.5/27

SOCIAL JUSTICE’S FIT

Now that the stage has been set, it may make sense to try my rather imperfect rubric to see how “Social Justice” might score from your perspective.

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level
Sacred values (volume)
Sacred values (significance lvl)
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)
Costly commitments
Clean hand actions
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient

Social Justice (generalized based on radical activist actors, i.e. the top quartile of Critical Theory majors))

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother	X
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level			X
Sacred values (volume)		X
Sacred values (significance lvl)	X
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)		X	X
Costly commitments		X
Clean hand actions	X
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion	X
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient		X	X

Sum = 20/27

When I did this, I got a generalized social justice score of 20/27. That was higher than the Arkeon cult! It was much higher than my threshold levels for Proud Boys. I have to admit, I was expecting something in the range of 14 to 18. Maybe I’m just really biased? Or, maybe there really is something to Social Justice as a religion? Or maybe my amateurish rating scale is crap?

When combined with other work analyzing Social Justice as a religion:

• the good - James Lindsay, Haidt and more Haidt, Peterson,
• the mediocre - Sullivan & Corey,  Lee
• the indifferent - Patheos, McWhorter, Campell,

this point of inquiry seems genuine. The way our current great religious awakening is likely to intertwine governance and religion via “Social Justice” in a possible 3rd major religious evolutionary transition is a potentially very significant occurrence. Arguably nations (via the justice of immigration and the criminalization of hate dissent) are breaking apart as a result of this. Europe has already fractured over it. The topic of understanding this phenomenon seems rather sanguine.

Onto It

This analysis is not intended to show that Social Justice is a religion. Rather, the purpose it to investigate its potential sects. If none of its sub-groups match up with standard new religious movement sect categories, it is pretty unlikely that Social Justice itself as an umbrella group is religious. Similarly if most of its sub-groups match up with one or two closely related sect categories, then it may be likely that Social Justice itself will orient to those cultural wells. Something about its future trajectory may therefore be inferred or attempted to be inferred.

Part 2 will be the analysis of social justice sects