ISKCON and immigrants: The rise, decline, and rise again of a new religious movement

This article examines the impact of Indian immigration on the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly known as Hare Krishnas. After its emergence and initial growth as a new religious movement in the 1960s, ISKCON entered a period of decline and withdrawal in the 1980s because of second-generation problems and a series of financial and sexual scandals. A case study of the Chicago ISKCON temple shows that, since then, Indian immigration has provided ISKCON with new resources and a new target population for conversion. This has led to the reemergence of ISKCON as a religious movement, but one that differs in both its membership and its actions from the seeker movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The resurgence of ISKCON\u27s movement activities is a product of congregational-level transnational interactions. The emergence of new religious movements, thus, must be seen in the context of broader historical dynamics as well as local microcosmic interactions. To the extent that these interactions are transnational in character, we should expect new religious movements to have an impact on the global religious economy with more rapid diffusion of religious innovations. © 2008 Midwest Sociological Society

Straining at the Tie That Binds: Congregational Conflict in the 1980s

Studies of intrachurch conflict have emphasized such variant explanations as liberal/conservative divisions, external pressures that exacerbate internal cleavages, clergy/laity differences, & demographic changes as the cause(s) of church conflict. Most of these studies rely on either survey data or single-case ethnographic data. Here, these studies are reviewed & critiqued, & it is recommended that comparative conflict events be analyzed to identify causes that operate in specific circumstances. Drawing on interviews with the top clergy of 15 (of a total of 20) churches & synagogues in a midwestern urban community, conflict events are analyzed. Results indicate that none of the perspectives found in the literature was predominant; instead, it is proposed that the new voluntarism thesis (see Roof, Wade Clark, & McKinney, William, American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future, New York: Rutgers U Press, 1989) can enlighten understanding of intracongregational conflict