Numerous new religious movements have formed in the United States. A new religious movement (NRM) is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. There is no single, agreed-upon criterion for defining a "new religious movement".
Prior to the American Civil War, new movements included Mormonism, led by a prophet; Adventism, which used biblical scholarship to predict the Second Coming of Jesus; New Thought, which promised that mental powers could provide health and success; and Spiritualism, which offered communication with ghosts or spirits. By 1900, flourishing movements included the Jehovah's Witnesses, a group that emerged from Bible tract publishing; Theosophy, whose leader claimed to be in telepathic communication with Masters of the Ancient Wisdom; Christian Science, which promised spiritual healing; and Black Hebrew Israelites, built on a revelation that African Americans are descendants of the Biblical Hebrews. The 20th century saw the rise of black nationalism groups like Moorish Science and Nation of Islam; anti-Christian groups like Thelema, a magic-based movement involving sex rituals and worship of the Whore of Babalon; Scientology, a Thelema-inspired movement whose founder reportedly identified himself with the Antichrist; and Satanism, a movement that encompasses both theistic worshipers of Christian villains and individualists atheists who re-appropriate Christian imagery. The 20th century also saw the rise of the explicitly-atheistic Objectivism movement.
New Native American movements in these eras include the Longhouse Religion, Purification movement, the Ghost Dance movement, the Native American Church and the Indian Shaker Church.
Overview
Revivalism influenced such diverse movements as Joseph Smith's Mormonism (1830), William Miller's Adventism (1831) and Parham and Seymour's Pentecostalism (1900). Adventism in turn influenced Charles Taze Russell's Jehovah's Witnesses.
Mesmerism influenced Phineas Parkhurst Quimby's New Thought Movement. One of Quimby's patients, Mary Baker Eddy, later founded her own new religious movement, Christian Science. E. W. Kenyon and the Word of Faith movement synthesized New Thought with Pentecostalism, while Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking incorporated New Thought doctrines into a blend of Methodism and Calvinism. Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science was influenced by New Thought and in turn influenced Wallace Fard Muhammad's Nation of Islam.
Swedenborgism influenced the Fox Sisters's Spiritualism as well as Joseph Smith's Mormonism. Spiritualism influenced Paschal Beverly Randolph founder of Fraternitas Rosae Crucis, and Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy. Blavatsky was influenced by the work of Éliphas Lévi. Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons's Thelema were influenced by Theosophy and Levi. Thelema influenced Anton LaVey's Satanism and L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology.
Ayn Rand's Objectivism, though explicitly atheist, has been studied through the framework of new religious movements.
Antebellum movements
Purification movement
Around 1805, Tenskwatawa, a town drunk, reportedly experienced a stupor so deep that he believed he was dead. According to Tenskwatawa, he visited "the Master of Breath", and was shown heaven with game and honey for those who lived virtuously and traditionally. Tenskwatawa denounced Euro-American settlers, calling them offspring of the Evil Spirit, and led a purification movement that promoted unity among Native Americans.
By 1808, Tenskwatawa and his brother Tecumseh established a village that the Americans called Prophetstown and the movement included thousands of followers. On November 7, 1811, while Tecumseh was away, Tenskwatawa ordered the pre-dawn attack on a U.S. military force that initiated the Battle of Tippecanoe. Tenskwatawa's followers retreated after a two-hour engagement and abandoned Prophetstown, which the military burned to the ground. This event was a catalyst for the War of 1812, as the United States blamed the British for providing financial support and ammunition to the Prophetstown community.
Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, and the resistance movement did not recover and was eventually defeated. Tenskwatawa remained in exile in Canada for nearly a decade. After the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, he returned to the United States in 1824 to assist the U.S. government with the Shawnee removal to reservation land in what is now Kansas. The aging Prophet arrived at Shawnee reservation lands in 1828 and faded into obscurity. Tenskwatawa died in Argentine, Kansas, in 1836.