Last Updated on September 9, 2026 by Karl Thompson
World accommodating new religious movements sit between the other two types, and they are the ones students most often forget in the exam. Their orientation to the outside world is neither rejection nor embrace but something closer to indifference: the world is simply not what the movement is about.
This is one of three types of new religious movement identified by Roy Wallis in The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life (1984), alongside world rejecting and world affirming movements. The material is part of the Beliefs in Society option and comes up on Paper 2 (7192/2).
[IMAGE: this post currently has no image. A mind map of Wallis’ three types, or an image illustrating Neo-Pentecostal worship, would work here. Alt text: “World accommodating new religious movements: Roy Wallis’ typology for A-level sociology”]
Examples of world accommodating new religious movements
Neo-Pentecostalism is the standard example, and the one to use in an exam answer. Wallis also placed a number of charismatic renewal movements within mainstream Christianity in this category — groups which sought a more intense spiritual experience without leaving the parent church behind entirely.
Key features of world accommodating new religious movements
These movements are typically offshoots of an existing religion. Neo-Pentecostal groups, for instance, developed out of Protestantism and Catholicism. They break away not because they want to change society but because they believe the parent organisation has lost something — and their aim is to recover it.
What they are usually trying to recover is spiritual purity. The complaint is that the large established churches have become bureaucratic, formal and spiritually cold, and that genuine religious experience has been squeezed out of them. The movement exists to put it back.
The focus is therefore inward. What these movements offer members is what Wallis called spiritual solace: a way of coping with ordinary life, and a deeper interior sense of spirituality and commitment to God. Not escape from the world, and not advancement within it.
The practical consequence is that members of world accommodating movements live ordinary lives. They hold down jobs, send their children to school and participate in mainstream society in every visible respect. Unlike members of world rejecting movements, they are not asked to withdraw from anything. If you met one at work you would probably not know.
The distinction students most often blur
The contrast with world affirming movements needs stating precisely, because it is the one that goes wrong in exam answers. Both types are compatible with ordinary life, so students frequently treat them as much the same thing. They are not, and the difference lies in what is being promised.
World affirming movements promise to help you get more out of the world — more success, more money, more of what mainstream society already values. World accommodating movements promise to help you bear it. One is about advancement, the other about consolation.
A quick test that works in an exam: ask what a member would say they had gained. If the answer sounds like a promotion, it is world affirming. If it sounds like peace of mind, it is world accommodating.
Relationship to the older categories
Because they usually begin as breakaways from an established organisation, world accommodating movements sit closest to Niebuhr’s category of the denomination (1929). Niebuhr’s argument is worth knowing alongside Wallis’ typology, because the two connect: Niebuhr described how sects, over a generation, tend to compromise with the world, abandon their more extreme positions and settle into denominational respectability.
Read together, that gives you a useful dynamic account rather than a static one. A movement which begins as world rejecting may, once its founding generation dies out, end up looking distinctly world accommodating. See churches, denominations, sects and cults for the full classification.
How this differs from the other two types: world rejecting movements are hostile to wider society and demand withdrawal from it, and world affirming movements embrace its goals and promise success within them. The full comparison table is on the world affirming page, along with an evaluation of the typology as a whole.
Evaluation
The general criticisms of Wallis’ typology are set out in full on the world affirming page. Two are worth noting here specifically.
The world accommodating category is the least clearly defined of the three, and it is fair to say it does some work as a residual box for movements that are obviously neither of the other two. Where world rejecting and world affirming movements are defined by a strong positive orientation — against the world or towards it — this one is defined largely by an absence.
It is also the category most vulnerable to the movement over time problem. Since Niebuhr’s sect-to-denomination process pushes movements towards exactly this position, a good number of world accommodating movements are really world rejecting movements that have aged. Whether that makes it a type or a stage is a genuine question, and one worth raising in a 20-mark answer.
Signposting and Related Posts
This post has been written primarily for students studying the Beliefs in Society option, as part of the AQA’s A-level sociology course (7192/2).
The other two types in Wallis’ typology are covered separately: world affirming new religious movements, which carries the full account of Roy Wallis, the comparison table and the evaluation of the typology, and world rejecting new religious movements, which also covers why people join and includes a 10-mark exam answer.
For the older classification of religious organisations, see churches, denominations, sects and cults.
For more A-level sociology exam questions and answers see my page on exams, short answer questions and essays.
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