The Irrational Growth of New Religions

Research is showing today that new religions are started often after a scripture has been reinterpreted. The Mormon religion with its Book of Mormon, for instance, was started this way by Joseph Smith. To prevent the growth of new religions, many current religions try to prevent such reinterpretations. But, the prevention of such reinterpretations is counter to the freedom that God gave us. It is also counter to science, the continual development of our language systems, and our need to increase continually our knowledge of God and the universe.

Reinterpretations are thus a major religious problem today. And, there seems to be no known way to solve this problem because all scriptures are fixed linguistically in time because religions view their scripture as divine and sacred. Thus, religions do not want to modernize their scriptures or bring all of them under a single world language. So, this religious problem stays on the front burner of social life, especially in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But, this problem is also heating up in the USA, the first free nation in which religions, speeches, the press, etc. are free.

The growth of new religions in the USA can be examined in the Nova Religio, the Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions at the University of California Press. Click. Then, click onto “Online Access.” There, you can examine detail religious data from 1997 through 2006. For instance, click onto ‘current issue’ and you will see the titles of papers written by people. One is “The Study of UFO Religions.” Now, click on Vol. 10, Number 1, August 2006 and scroll through the papers that deal with the Mormon religion and the paper titled “New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism.” Examining all of them (1997-2006) should wake up all Americans and the leaders of the big Western World religions — Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Obviously, it is time for these leaders to talk. And, they should not stop talking until they have solved the problem of scriptural interpretations and reinterpretations. Without these talks, the growth of new religions under one God will become more and more irrational as time passes.