THE GOSPEL OF WE

  Sharday Mosurinjohn, a Queen’s University assistant professor in School of Religion, and Emma Funnell-Kononuk, a graduate student and elementary school teacher who has been involved with WE events, have been studying its spiritual aspects. They describe it a “new secular spiritual movement,” or NSSM, which deliberately connects it to the category of “new religious movements,” an academic sociological concept popularly known in the context of cults and “alternative spiritualities” that arose in the post-war “seeking culture.”
   They argue WE meets all five proposed criteria proposed to define new religious movements: a claim to esoteric knowledge, loose organization, charismatic leadership, and “ecstatic or transfiguring experience.” The latter can be seen in the WE Day arena shows.