Like new religious movements historically, new religious movements during the 19th century took inspiration from larger sociocultural and religious processes, were both the product and the producer of social change, and in some cases led to enduring forms of Christianity and alternative Christianities. The advent of western modernity (which overturned medieval theology and authority), the Renaissance, the age of reason through the Enlightenment, the age of revolutions, romanticism, and western industrialization had all given rise to significant social ferment by the 19th century, for new religious thinking, democratization, and movements. By the mid 1800s, with Darwinism, the sciences had been set forth as a foundation for the hegemonic epistemology of modernity. This is not to say that religion was supplanted by secularism wholesale, but rather that competing modern epistemologies were to provide the impetus for new religious responses, both in terms of Christianity's involvement with modernity and western imperial designs, and in new religious movements.
Jehovah's Witnesses are one of the new religious movements that claim to restore primitive Christianity, emerging from the long shadow of the Second Great Awakening in North America, with an active missionary corps engaged in worldwide proselytizing. The movement was founded by Charles Taze Russell, a former Presbyterian influenced by the millennialism of American Adventism. Russell first published Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence in 1879. The faith took as its official name the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in 1896, incorporating in 1956. With authority centralized in New York, the publishing houses print literature in 180 languages and distribute 15,000 tons of publications annually (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1993). Today's most popular bimonthly publication, The Watchtower , is distributed in 235 countries. According to the annual 2006 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses , attendance at the 2005 worldwide Memorial Service was 16,383,333. In 2005, 6,613,829 active “publishers” conducted missionary work resulting in 247,631 new baptisms around the world.
Joseph Smith Jr. was the first “prophet, seer, and revelator” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church. Founded as a separatist new religious movement in 19th century North America, Smith's church is now considered a mainstream Christian faith, with nearly 13 million members worldwide.
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