Hostage to granny

The hermeneutical (and historiographical) challenges faced by new religious and spiritual movements

The so-called ‘granny story’, a (usually fictitious) tale of initiation by an elderly relative or other vaguely defined elder, is a staple of new religious and spiritual movements. The granny story is, in essence, a way of legitimating new religious movements by showing that they are not actually new at all, but the continuation of centuries-old ‘underg…