Factors of joining to the New Religious Movements in the contemporary Iran (Case Study: Eckankar)

New religious movements are, generally speaking, a very diverse series of social-religious facts arose in the recent decades in many societies. Such movements have created considerable changes and impacts in some aspects of their followers’ lives and, as a result, in the society. That is why issues such as “existence” and “knowledge” of new religious movements as well as “Factors of joining” to them have turned to most important scientific concerns in the field of studies of religions and sociology of religion or, more precisely, the general field of “study of religion”. Many theories have been posed to explain factors of people’s of joining to new religious movements the most important among which are theories of secularism, “resacralization theory”, “rational choice” and “attempt to find meaning and belonging”.After describing the above-mentioned theories, the present study chooses deprivation theory of two sociologists of religion, Glock and Stark as a theory explaining people’s inclination to new religious movements, and discusses and analyses it when applied to the Iranian society.

One of such new religious movements is Eckankar which, after being founded in the US, penetrated in other parts of the world and entered Iran about 1991. Having chosen Eckankar as a case study, the present study discusses factors of joining to the new religious movements in the contemporary Iran focusing on deprivation theory and under its five parts including: psychic deprivation, organismic deprivation, economic deprivation, ethical deprivation, and social deprivation. And in this way, attempts have been made to show whether or not our compatriots’ inclination to Eckankar has some relation to their sense of deprivation. Having gone through hard and time-consuming barriers, the author managed to have qualitative interviews with some Iranian members and masters of Eckankar and find their most important factors of joining to Eckankar based on the their truest and sincerest replies.The present study is classified under deep qualitative researches based on the standard of deepening value. Also, in terms of its objective in the field of applied research, tools used to gather data, observations and interviews, the present study is deeply qualitative.Research field covers various parts of Tehran and sampling method is snowball sampling. Twelve followers of Eckankar (three masters and nine members) are included in the sample. Study’s results show relation and between “sense of deprivation” and “inclination to new religious movements”. According to findings, all five kinds of deprivation have been of influence on Iranians’ inclination to Eckankar.