56 Peter Beyer
for the differentiation of the religion beyond giving its name a certain public symbolic
prominence.
There is, of course, another side to the state giving form to religions, and this in-
volves the already mentioned efforts of states to regulate religions and control what
counts as religion. In most countries around the world, religion and religions have be-
come a political issue in this sense. Some states, such as Indonesia, China, and to a lesser
extent Russia, currently expressly limit what may count as religion to a restricted list. In
Indonesia, only Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism are rec-
ognized religions. In China it is the same list, only Daoism substitutes for Hinduism. In
Russia, under current law, only religious organizations that had established themselves
in Russia by a certain date count as legitimate religions. In most other countries, what
counts as one of the religions is not that clearly spelled out, but disputes over new and
marginal religious movements in countries as varied as Japan, Argentina, and France
point to at least an implicit model of religion in operation, one that favors heavily the
“world religions” and those with a long history in the country in question.
3. Social Movement Religion
Turning to the social movement as another way of giving form to religion, analysis re-
veals this as another supplementary form which is nonetheless sufficiently independent
to warrant separate treatment. Exactly what constitutes a social movement is a much
debated issue. For the present purposes, the description of certain common features
can serve to delimit what is at issue. As the word indicates, social movements “move”:
They consist in the mobilization of people, ideas, and material resources to bring about
change in existing social arrangements or to generate new ones (e.g., Klandermans
et al. 1988; Zald and McCarthy 1987; Williams, Chapter 22, this volume). As such,
in the contemporary world, they typically have organizations closely associated with
them, but they are not simply coterminous with them. One thinks, for instance, of post-
1960s social movements in the West such as the women’s or environmental movement.
Although each has organizations identified with it, such as the American National
Organization of Women or Greenpeace, it is movement events like protests, diverse
publications and public discussions, lobbying efforts, and other symbolic gestures that
also give these movements their concrete social presence, to such an extent that it is
these more than the organizations that call for names by which they can be called.
Unlike organizations, the action that typically constitutes them is not so much mem-
ber action as action by anyone that furthers and reproduces the movement. Social
movements are thereby comparatively amorphous, lacking clear form, but they are
nonetheless real as concerns social importance and effect. Movements, by contrast
with organizations, rely far more on the symbolic possibilities of space and time, or
particular places and particular times, than they do on particular people.
Most of those things commonly called religious movements in the sociological liter-
ature, especially the new religious movements, are in fact not social movements in the
sense just described, but rather organizations that are founded at a particular time and
seek to spread in terms of membership. This is the case with new religious movements
such as the Brahma Kumaris, the Church of Scientology, Falun Gong, the Unification
Church, or Soka Gakkai, religious organizations originating in India, the United States,
China, Korea, and Japan, respectively. There are, however, other religious movements