Social Movements
A social movement is any social group with leadership, organization, and an ideological commitment to promote or resist social change.
Does the term as accurately describe the efforts of liberals to elect a Democrat to Congress as it does the efforts of peace activists to end war? The answer is no. According to Perry and Pugh, "Social movements are collectives with a degree of leadership, organization, and ideological commitment to promote or resist change." Meyer adds that social movements "challenge cultural codes and transform the lives of their participants."
A political campaign cannot usually be described as a social movement, because its purpose is not to fundamentally alter the status quo. Antiwar protesters, on the other hand, are usually trying to change cultural support of war as an accepted means of solving disputes. We can safely say that most of the institutions with which we are familiar began as social movements.
Social movements are intentional efforts by groups in a society to create new institutions or reform existing ones. Social movements are much more organized and goal driven than crowd fad behaviors. They typically organize to promote or resist change at some level of society. They also tend to have the same intensity of organizational leadership that might be found in a government or business organization.
There are many different types of social movements. One type of movement that does not tend to involve large numbers of people, but yet tends to make a major impact in the media is a messianic movement. They make an impact in the media because often the followers will unquestioningly follow their charismatic leader, even to the point of suicide.
Messianic movements seek to bring about social change with the promise of miraculous intervention.
Charisma means having an outstanding personality that magnetically attracts others to you.
Almost always of these movements are led by a rather charismatic leader and followed by people inclined to need or want to be a part of something exceptional in their lives. In recent years, there have been three very similar messianic movements whose charismatic leaders were born and raised in the U.S., but were not very successful in their individual lives and ended up leading large numbers of people to their mortal demise.
Examples of Messianic Movements
Look over each title to learn more about the events surrounding the movement.
The Jonestown massacre
- 1978
-People's Temple religious cult
-About 900 people involved
-Cohesive social movement
-United against the senseless state of the world
-Isolated themselves far away from homeland
-Sexual relations issued rules of behavior
-Killed US Congressman Ryan and 4 others
-Levels of average member belief and commitment to goals of social movement was at its highest
-All 909 members voluntarily drank cyanide-laced sedative
-Leader was apocalyptic visionary
The Waco Standoff
1993
-Branch Davidian religious cult about 10 miles outside of Waco, TX
-300 to 400 people were involved
-United in preparation of millennium (movement)
-Davod Koresh overtook the original founder
-Isolated selves
-Sexual relation issues between Koresh and the girls/women
-Locked selves in siege after law enforcement tried to arrest (for 51 days)
-Levels of average members at mid-level, some defected and helped authorities
-76 of the original group died, some were killed by Koresh
-Leader was Messiah-type with command of Bible scripture
The Heaven's Gate Mass Suicide
1997
-Haven's Gate religious cult in Rancho Santa Fe, CA
-93 people were involved
-Millennial social movement
-Suicide in efforts to have souls transported in tail of Hale-Bop comet (by aliens)
-Isolated in a luxury mansion
-Levels of average member belief and commitment to goals very high among those who stayed, some left
-39 of the original 93 suicided by arsenic, cyanide, and alcohol wearing Nike tennis shoes and sports apparel
-Leader was Messiah-type with galaxy connections to aliens who captured souls in spaceship behind comet
Although the details vary, these movements are very similar in terms of what was accomplished and in terms of how their end was voluntarily self-destructive. Many people feel threatened by social change, especially when their definition of what keeps society together, of what makes a "good" society, or what God would be happy or unhappy leads them to distrust the collective direction of their main stream society.
In the three cases described, Jimmy Jones and the People’s Temple, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and Marshal Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate groups all had similar social processes at play, even though there was no apparent connection between leaders of one group and the others.
