Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1991, Page 3
Conversion, Religious Change, and the Challenge Of New Religious
Movements
Johannes Aagaard, Ph.D.
Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark
Abstract
Conversion in the biblical sense is concerned with a change in faith and one's
personal relationship with God. It is a personal experience. Religion is the
orientation, the code, that undergirds cultures. Religious change refers to the
process by which this underlying code is altered. Religious change and
conversion are related but distinct. Contemporary culture is undergoing a
marked religious change in the direction of the "Pacific paradigm," a trans-
syncretism that fuses eastern mysticism and western capitalism. Traditional
churches are largely unaware of this shift and are derelict in their duty to
challenge the new religious movements (NRMs) that represent the paradigm.
Those who do challenge it --the "anti-cult movement --tend to focus on
illegal and evil deeds of NRMs, rather than their creeds. Scholars who form
an "anti-anti-cult movement," however, also pretend to credal neutrality.
Professor Kirsten Haastrup, "Mission and Murder: The Christianization of Iceland in the Year
1000" (Jordens Folk, 1987), concludes:
Religious change in the year 1000 was something entirely different from
conversion from one faith to another. It was not the Christian message that
was the central theme in the religious change. It was rather the recognized
need for a new "code." The new era was colored by the Christian world view
much more than the faith. (p. 75)
The distinction between religious change and conversion has much significance as a model
for understanding Europe and North America in the 90s. While conversion in the biblical
sense is concerned with a change in faith and one's personal relationship with God, religious
change is a process which revolves about the "decoding" of existence, that is, with
cosmology. Cosmology in this sense is not a matter of science or knowledge as much as a
question of explaining and interpreting the world (however, cosmology often professes to be
a kind of science).
Conversions occur at any time, but when they take place in a time of cultural transition to a
new era, conversions as religious transformations become decisive acts. This happens when
two cosmologies are in conflict and one overcomes the other. During such a movement a
change in the understanding of life's meaning takes place, and this change will color a
personal conversion in a decisive way. The conversion includes a change in one's whole
religious outlook and not simply a personal conversion.
One should not assume that a certain number of conversions gradually create a religious
change and the adoption of a new code, nor that religious change is the precondition for
conversions. The two are related but distinct phenomena.
The religious change of a human grouping --i.e., a culture, whether it includes a whole
people or a local community --is a very complex process, and on a large scale it is not
carried out consciously. This does not mean that it happens without awareness, but it is not
necessarily understood as religious change, for its simple elements are not seen as part of
the whole to which they belong.

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1991, Page 4
A religious change deals specifically with that orientation without which people cannot live.
When a culture loses its orientation and is confused about its values it has little chance to
survive unless it is buttressed by very strong external supports.
All cultures are religiously oriented but not in the same way. Even ostensibly secular
cultures, e.g., Communist Russia, have religion in the sense described here. The various
religions are the expression of the common cultural orientations which hold together human
life. Religion holds together that social totality of which the religion is registered only as a
part. For this reason one religion confronts another just as one society confronts another.
Thus, society has religions. Individuals, however, are religious. It is "my religiosity," but it
is "our religion." When confusion arises in a society, so that it is disoriented in its
understanding of life, then it loses its religion yet the members of society are still religious,
though there may be much vagueness about the significance and meaning of that
religiosity, for the significance and meaning of religiosity derives from a religion.
Religion then, is something we have in common, but religious is what a person is as a
human being. Secularization may be understood as the disorientation which arises when a
particular religion loses its grip on people and becomes subordinated to a secular
cosmology. Secularization and religion, however, by no means necessarily contradict each
other. Indeed, one can find religious forms of secularism, such as Communist Russia, in
which all religion was branded as an opiate for the people while communism became more
and more cultic and of the nature of a religion.
If a society has many different religions within its borders, this will not only lead to rivalry
and the possibility of mutual antagonism it can at its worst lead to religious war. Attempts
at neutralization, however, may also occur, and a "civil religion" may arise and combine
elements of the various competing religions in a sort of secular, ersatz religion. This appears
to have happened in the United States, for example.
Pseudoreligions in Competition with Traditional Religions
More passionate and confrontational than civil religions are the secular, pseudoreligions of
nazism, fascism, and communism. These ideologies have developed as systems that
appropriate, or seek to appropriate and mold, the citizens' religiosity in competition with
traditional religions. Their dismal failures are interesting. In the long run, after the
orchestrated parades are over, they become so boring that they can no longer inspire, much
less attract to themselves the people's true religiosity.
In part, their failure results from their lack of concern regarding the individual's need to
understand the meaning of life. Only genuine and honest religions have dealt with the
problem of the meaning of life in such a way that the religious passion expresses itself in a
full interpretation of life and death.
Humankind has three great problems: death, love, and boredom. Only religions which take
all three seriously can make a go of it. The secular, pseudoreligions are bankrupt because
they provide inadequate explanations for death, do not stimulate love, and do stimulate
boredom. Indeed, boredom is perhaps the most serious illness which can attack a culture.
When time becomes something that one "kills," then the culture itself is moribund.
Religions, on the other hand, are largely concerned with making life exciting, attractive, and
fanciful.
Through love people affirm the values and rules that give a necessary orderliness to human
life. Love says "this is worth defending." Morality elucidates the rules needed to defend that
which is loved. The eternal conflict between religion and sexuality, therefore, is not by
chance. Sexuality, though having an intrinsic value of its own, is the most conspicuous and
pervasive moral factor that can threaten the orderliness required to defend that which is