INSIGHTS ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
--Excerpts from Various Authors on Controversies Currently Surrounding the New Religious Movements
--Compiled August 1992
INTRODUCTION
The four Gospels and the Book of Acts describe and document a new religious movement (NRM) of the first century--Christianity. Most subsequent emerging denominations throughout the following 19 centuries have also been classified as NRMs during their inception. Although The Family is considered an NRM by sociologists and professors of religion, if one looks at the writings and actions of The Family, it may be more accurate to say that not only are our beliefs a return to the basics of the Early Church, but the reaction of our critics, and especially the anti-cult movement, parallels that of the persecutors of Jesus and His apostles. The anti-cult network (ACM), along with some elements of the media, have sought to portray the NRM phenomena as a threat to the public. They have voraciously attacked not only The Family, but also other NRMs. Fortunately, there are intelligent and fair-minded observers and analysts who have--perhaps more quietly--published their findings. It is from the books and articles of such academics and professionals that we present another view of many of the controversies currently surrounding the NRMs.
This material consists of excerpts from 17 publications (listed below), organised in the following manner:
1) A "Rough" Topical Index (explained below).
2) Outlines--This is the mini-"table of contents" of the Excerpt which follows. The book's title, author(s), publisher information, etc., is given, along with chapter and subheading titles. Keywords are provided in these outlines to describe the content of each chapter or subheading. These will help you locate relevant topics without having to read or reread through the whole excerpt.
3) Excerpts--Following each outline is the excerpted text, which also includes the book's title, author(s) publisher information, chapter and subheading titles. Information about the author, if available, and page numbers for each section, and footnotes are included.
The "rough" index, lists keyword topics (and subheadings), followed by the book no., chapter (a Roman numeral), and subheading (a capital letter). Thus the topic "Deprogramming" would be found in Bk#1, chapter I, also in chapter I.'s subheadings A. and B., chapter II, and under chapter II's subheading A.; Bk#7, chapter II's subheading B.; Bk#8, chapter I's subheadings C. and D.
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LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
(These are arranged alphabetically, not according to their importance or relevance.)
1. THE CHRISTIAN LEGAL ADVISOR, by John Eidsmoe, Baker Book House, 1984
2. CULT CONTROVERSIES, The Societal Response to the New Religious Movements, by James A. Beckford, Travistock Publications, 1985 [Scholarly analysis of the NRMs and `anti-cult movement', concentrating mainly, but not exclusively, on the UK.]
3. THE CULT EXPERIENCE: Responding to the New Religious Pluralism, by J. Gordon Melton and Robert L. Moore, The Pilgrim Press, New York, 1982 [Overview of the movements with a section on how to react to a child becoming a member of an NRM.]
4. CULTIC STUDIES JOURNAL, Vol.2, No.2, 1986
5. CULTS, CONVERTS AND CHARISMA, by Thomas Robbins, Sage Publications, 1988 [Detailed and perceptive analysis, commentary and review of the literature by an American scholar who has specialised in the sociology of NRMs for over 20 years.]
6. CULTS, CULTURE, AND THE LAW: Perspectives on New Religious Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins, William C. Shepherd, and James McBride, Scholars Press, 1985
7. THE FUTURE OF NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS, edited by David G. Bromley and Phillip E. Hammond, Mercer University Press, 1987
8. MIND-BENDING: Brainwashing, Cults, and Deprogramming in the '80s, by Lowell D. Streiker, Doubleday, 1984 [General introduction, critique and advice from executive director of the Mental Health Association of California.]
9. MONEY AND POWER IN THE NEW RELIGIONS, edited by James T. Richardson, Edwin Mellen Press, 1988 [Collection of essays about how a number of different NRMs collect and use money.]
10. NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS, A Practical Introduction, by Eileen Barker, HMSO, London, 1989
11. NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS AND THE CHURCHES, Report and papers of a consultation sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches, Free University, Amsterdam, September 1986, edited by Allan R. Brockway and J. Paul Rajashekar, WCC Publications, Geneva, 1987 [Papers (and responses) by theologians, academics and anti-cultists at a 1986 WCC consultation. Also included are some questions and recommendations concerning the pastoral challenge of the NRMs.]
12. THE NEW VIGILANTES: Deprogrammers, Anti-Cultists, and the New Religions, by Anson D. Shupe, Jr., and David G. Bromley, Sage Publications, 1980 [Two sociologists describe the anti-cult network in America.]
13. THE ODYSSEY OF NEW RELIGIONS TODAY--A Case Study of the Unification Church, by John T. Biermans, The Edward Mellen Press, 1988 [The UC's response to the ACM and persecution.]
14. STRANGE GODS, The Great American Cult Scare, by David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe, Jr., Beacon, 1981 [General introduction by academics writing in a popular style.]
15. TO SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY, American Constitutional Law and the New Religious Movements, by William C. Shepherd, Crossroads Publishing Company, 1985
16. UNDERSTANDING CULTS AND NEW RELIGIONS, by Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986
17. UNDERSTANDING THE NEW RELIGIONS, edited by Jacob Needleman and George Baker, Seabury Press, 1978
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"ROUGH" TOPICAL INDEX TO "INSIGHTS"
-- A --
Accusations--sexual or behavioural deviancy:
Bk#1: I.
ACM now attacking evangelicals:
Bk#1: I.A.
ACM (anti-cult movement) semantics:
Bk#8: I.A.
ACM (anti-cult movement) advocates repression:
Bk#1: I.
ACM (anti-cult movement) in U.S.:
Bk#1: I.A.
ACM ideology:
Bk#6: II.G.
ACM IS a cult:
Bk#1: I.C.
ACM deception:
Bk#6: II.F.
ACM (anti-cult movement)--Justifying defectors' problems:
Bk#5: II.A.
ACM's anti-Christian and anti-missionary element:
Bk#8: I.A.
ACM's (anti-cult movement) main targets:
Bk#7: I.A.
Anti-cult literature:
Bk#1: I.
Anti-cult professionals:
Bk#1: I.A.
Anti-cult legislation:
Bk#7: II.B.
Article 18, Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Bk#1: I.
Atrocity stories:
Bk#1: I.A., II., VI.A., VII.A., VII.B.
Attributes of joining NRMs:
Bk#1: IV.
-- B --
Benefits of NRMs:
Bk#9: I.A.
Benefits of NRM membership:
Bk#1: I.A.
Bigotry and hatred:
Bk#6: II.C.
Brainwashing Theory Repeatedly Discredited (Section C):
Bk#1: I.C.
Brainwashing:
Bk#1: I.A., I.B., I.C., III.A., IV.B., VII.B., VIII.A.; Bk#3: I.; Bk#6: I.B.; Bk#8: I.C.
Buzz-words:
Bk#6: II.F.
-- C --
Case history of ex-COG member utilizing his COG training in secular world:
Bk#9: I.A.
Charges of `coercion' exonerates defectors:
Bk#1: VIII.B.
Child abuse charges:
Bk#7: II.C.
Church and state:
Bk#6: I.
Coercion to join group:
Bk#3: I.
Coercion:
Bk#1: IV.A.; Bk#2: I.A.; Bk#3: I.; Bk#6: I., II.
Coercive Deprogramming--Ex-members and the ACM (anti-cult movement):
Bk#5: I.A.
Coercive Deprogramming--Deprogrammers:
Bk#5: I.A.
Coercive Deprogramming--Brainwashing:
Bk#5: I.A.
COG's use of funds for evangelising:
Bk#1: VI.A.
COG's (Children of God) use of funds:
Bk#1: V.A.
Commitment:
Bk#1: VIII.A.
Communist brainwashing in Korean War:
Bk#1: I.A.
Condition of ex-members:
Bk#1: IX.
Conservatorship:
Bk#1: I.B., II.
Constitutional freedom of religion:
Bk#1: I.
Contracting deprogrammers:
Bk#1: VIII.
Control:
Bk#6: II.A.
Conversion experience:
Bk#1: V.
Conversion:
Bk#1: I.A., I.B., VII.A.; Bk#3: I.
Conviction of deprogrammers:
Bk#1: VIII.
Cost of deprogrammings:
Bk#1: VIII.
Counter-brainwashing:
Bk#1: II.C.
Court case of questioning competency of deaf mute who converted from Judaism to Christianity:
Bk#1: I.A.
Criminal law is adequate to regulate NRMs:
Bk#1: II.
"Cult"--a buzz word:
Bk#1: III.
"Cult scare":
Bk#1: I.
Cult-awareness education:
Bk#1: I.C.
Cults and Churches--Judaism's attitude toward NRMs:
Bk#5: II.A.
Cults and Churches--Why some denominations oppose/support NRMs:
Bk#5: II.A.
Cults and Clinicians--Brainwashing:
Bk#5: II.A.
Cults and Clinicians--Deprogrammers and exit counselors:
Bk#5: II.A.
Cults and Clinicians--Some are understanding of NRMs:
Bk#5: II.A.
Cults and Clinicians--Some social workers and mental health professionals are jealous and therefore hostile to NRMs:
Bk#5: II.A.
-- D --
Dangers of legislative commission on religion or thought:
Bk#6: III.
Deconversion:
Bk#1: I.C, I.D.
Definition and attributes of a "cult" according to ACM:
Bk#8: I.A.Delgado, Richard--Professor of Law, UCLA:
Bk#1: II.
Deprogrammed ex-members:
Bk#1: VII.A.
Deprogrammees join ACM (anti-cult movement):
Bk#1: VIII.B.
Deprogrammees:
Bk#1: VIII.B.
Deprogrammers:
Bk#1: VII.B.; Bk#6: II.
Deprogramming is un-Christian (and anti-Christian):
Bk#1: I.C.
Deprogramming converts to mainstream religions:
Bk#1: VIII.
Deprogramming denies choice & identity:
Bk#1: I.C.
Deprogramming of Jews from Christian groups:
Bk#8: I.A.
Deprogramming fees and description--enticing, kidnapping, violence, deprivation, mental torture, ex-members:
Bk#1: I.D.
Deprogramming:
Bk#1: I., I.A., I.B., II., III.A.; Bk#7: II.B.; Bk#8: I.C., I.D.
Deprogramming--spiritual gang rape:
Bk#6: II.E.
Dissimulation--deception: Jesuits:
Bk#1: I.
-- E --
Early history and organisation of the ACM:
Bk#7: II.A.
Error of applying Communist brainwashing to explain the conversion experience:
Bk#1: I.B.
Evangelical intolerance of NRMs (new religious movement):
Bk#1: I.A.
Evangelicals next target of ACM (anti-cult movement):
Bk#6: I.A.
Evidence that members of NRMs are normal people:
Bk#6: IV.
Evidence Against Brainwashing--From ex-members:
Bk#1: I.B.
Evidence Against Brainwashing--From members:
Bk#1: I.B.
Evidence Against Brainwashing--From parents:
Bk#1: I.B.
Evidence Against Brainwashing--From sociologists:
Bk#1: I.B.
Evil eye--brainwashing and mind control--Mormons, ex-members, Salem witchcraft trials:
Bk#1: I.
Ex-member surveys:
Bk#1: VII.A.
Ex-members against deprogramming:
Bk#1: VIII.
Ex-members and the ACM:
Bk#1: IX.
Ex-members:
Bk#1: I.A., I.B., II., III.A., VI.A., VII.B., VII.B., VIII.A.; Bk#2: I.A.; Bk#6: I.B.
Ex-members' atrocity stories:
Bk#6: II.D.
Expert witnesses:
Bk#7: II.B.
Expert witnesses--mental health professionals:
Bk#6: I.B.
Extermination:
Bk#6: II.H.
-- F --
Family conflicts in historical perspective:
Bk#4: I.B.
Favorable parents of NRM members:
Bk#1: II.
Fight bigotry of ACM:
Bk#6: II.I.
First Amendment:
Bk#6: III.
Five anti-cult myths exposed:
Bk#3: I.
Forced treatment really means punishment of religious deviants:
Bk#1: II.
Four journalistic anti-NRM (new religious movement) myths:
Bk#1: I.
Freedom of religion:
Bk#6: I.
Freedom of thought and religion:
Bk#6: III.
Friend-of-the-court briefs:
Bk#1: I.B.
-- G --
Government and Churches response to deprogramming:
Bk#1: VIII.
Group leadership:
Bk#3: I.B.
Groups cause mental/emotional disorders of members:
Bk#3: I.
Guardianship:
Bk#1: II.
-- H --
Half-way houses:
Bk#1: I.D.
Historical example--burning of Ursuline convent in Boston, 1839, as result of an anti-Catholic book:
Bk#1: I.
History of American religious persecution:
Bk#1: VIII.A.
History of American intolerance to NRMs:
Bk#1: I.
-- I --
Idealism:
Bk#1: I.A.
Ideology of ACM:
Bk#7: II.A.
Incarceration in mental institutions:
Bk#1: I.A.
Influences the ACM doesn't agree with:
Bk#8: I.B.
Influencing others:
Bk#8: I.C.
Information disease:
Bk#1: II.B.
Intolerance:
Bk#6: II.H.
-- J --
Jewish hostility to conversion to Christianity:
Bk#1: I.B.
Jim Jones was NOT a member of a minority religion, but an ordained minister of the mainstream denomination, Disciples of Christ:
Bk#3: I.B.
Joining NRMs:
Bk#1: III.B.
Judaism and the ACM:
Bk#6: I.A.
Judicial regulation of NRMs (new religious movements):
Bk#1: II.
-- K --
Kidnapping:
Bk#1: VIII.
-- L --
Legal and legislative initiatives of ACM:
Bk#1: I.B.
Legislation adequate:
Bk#1: I.
Legislative and legal initiatives of ACM:
Bk#1: I.A.
-- M --
Mainline religious affliation with ACM:
Bk#7: II.B.
Manipulation:
Bk#6: II.B.
Media hype:
Bk#1: I.A., II.A., VI.A.; Bk#3: I.B.
Media attacks on NRMs:
Bk#1: II.
Media:
Bk#1: VI.A.
Medical care:
Bk#7: II.C.
Medical model--main thrust of ACM:
Bk#6: I.B.
Members of groups are mentally imbalanced:
Bk#3: I.
Membership in a group means isolation from former family & outside world:
Bk#3: I.
Mental Health vigilantes:
Bk#1: VIII.A.
Mental breakdowns:
Bk#1: VIII.A.
Mental health of members and ex-members:
Bk#1: VII.A.
Mental health:
Bk#1: I.A.
Mental health of members of NRMs:
Bk#8: I.A.
Mental health charges by ACM:
Bk#8: I.D.
Mind control:
Bk#1: I.C., I.D., II., III.A., IV.A., IV.B., VII.B.; Bk#2: I.A.; Bk#3: I.; Bk#6: I., I.B., II.; Bk#8: I.C.
Minnesota Supreme Court decision: state-sanctioned deprogrammings:
Bk#1: II.
Mormon persecution:
Bk#1: I.
Motives of apostates:
Bk#1: VII.A.
Move from adolescence to adulthood:
Bk#3: I.A.
Myth of mind control and brainwashing:
Bk#6: IV.
Myths of NRM (New Religious Movement) Leadership:
Bk#6: IV.
-- N --
Nature of Deprogramming (Section A):
Bk#1: II.A.
New converts:
Bk#1: V.
NRMs can be of God:
Bk#1: I.
NRMs vs. ACM:
Bk#7: II.B.
NRMs blamed for parent/child differences:
Bk#8: I.C.
NRMs (new religious movements) at odds with society:
Bk#1: II.A.
-- O --
Open minded psychologists:
Bk#1: II.
Organized Opposition to New Religions--Public opposition:
Bk#1: II.B.
Organized Opposition to New Religions--Church opposition:
Bk#1: II.B.
Organized Opposition to New Religions--Government opposition:
Bk#1: II.B.
Other ACM (anti-cult movement) myths:
Bk#6: IV.
-- P --
Parens patriae:
Bk#1: II.
Parents of members:
Bk#1: VIII.A.
Parents of new members:
Bk#1: V.
Parents of members of NRMs:
Bk#6: II.
Parents of NRM members:
Bk#6: IV.A.
Parents:
Bk#1: I.A., I.B.Patrick, Ted:
Bk#1: I.C., VIII.; Bk#8: I.C.
People joining groups lose freedom of choice and free will:
Bk#3: I.
People's Temple (of Jim Jones) was NOT branded a "cult" until after the tragedy:
Bk#1: II.A.
Persecution of NRMs:
Bk#1: I.D.
Personality changes explained:
Bk#3: I.A.
Personality change:
Bk#3: I.
Plight of deprogrammees:
Bk#1: II.
Present tactics of ACM:
Bk#7: II.C.
Professional psychologists of religion vs. Freudian psychologist/psychiatrists who are generally anti-religious:
Bk#3: I.C.
Professionals join:
Bk#7: II.B.
Proselytzing:
Bk#1: II.
Proving mental competency:
Bk#1: II.
Psychiatry as toll of persecution:
Bk#1: I.D.
-- R --
Reasons for ex-members' disorientation:
Bk#3: I.A.
Recruiting ex-members:
Bk#7: II.B.
Regulatory role over religious practices:
Bk#7: II.C.
Religious freedom:
Bk#1: II.
Religious liberty infringements:
Bk#1: I.D.
Religious liberty vs. "rescuing", ex-members:
Bk#1: I.C.
-- S --
Semantics:
Bk#1: I.E., VI.A.; Bk#6: I., II.F.; Bk#7: II.A.
Separation from the world:
Bk#4: I.C.
Shell shock:
Bk#1: I.A.
Slavery:
Bk#1: II.
Sources of Horror Stories--Ex-members:
Bk#1: II.B.
Sources of Horror Stories--American history of religious exposs:
Bk#1: II.B.
Sovietization of medicine:
Bk#1: II.
Standards of society: What is `normal'?:
Bk#1: V.
Strategy of Medicalization--Deprogramming:
Bk#5: II.A.
Strategy of Medicalization--Medical modeling (to justify deprogramming, legislation, etc., against NRMs):
Bk#5: II.A.
Strategy of Medicalization--Brainwashing, mind control:
Bk#5: II.A.
Strategy of Medicalization--Mental health professionals:
Bk#5: II.A.
Subversion myth--threat to public order: Catholics, Quakers, Puritans:
Bk#1: I.
Suicide statistics: Society and NRMs:
Bk#1: VI.A.
-- T --
Therapeutic state:
Bk#1: II.
Thirteenth amendments applied to NRMs:
Bk#1: II.
Types of ex-members:
Bk#1: IX.
-- U --
Unsuccessful deprogrammings:
Bk#1: VIII.A.
-- V --
Vigilantes:
Bk#1: II.
-- W --
Why negative reactions to NRMs:
Bk#6: IV.A.
-- Z --
Zeal common to religion:
Bk#4: I.A.
Zealots not zombies:
Bk#1: I.A.
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OUTLINE No.1:
THE CHRISTIAN LEGAL ADVISOR, by John Eidsmoe, Baker Book House, 1984
I. The Christian and the Cults (Chapter 18)
A. Guardianship
Incarceration in mental institutions
Court case of questioning competency of deaf mute who converted from Judaism to Christianity
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EXCERPTS No.1:
THE CHRISTIAN LEGAL ADVISOR, by John Eidsmoe, Baker Book House, 1984.
[John Eismoe is both lawyer and an ordained minister.]
I. The Christian and the Cults (Chapter 18)
A. Guardianship
Of course guardianship proceedings can pose a danger to Christian liberty. In the Soviet Union and other Communist countries, Christians and other "enemies of the people" are routinely confined to insane asylums since religiosity is a sign of mental illness and anti-social attitudes.
This has happened even in the United States. Eighteen-year-old Robin Polin, the daughter of Jewish parents in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is of above-average intelligence but since birth has been unable to hear or speak. In 1982 another deaf person, using sign language, told her about Jesus Christ. She wanted to know more, and the other person referred her to a Baptist minister, who led her to accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.
Outraged by this, her parents tried to dissuade her from Christianity and her father finally told her she must either live by his rules which include the virtual disassociation with her Christian friends and ceasing to worship Jesus in the home, or leave home. She sorrowfully chose the latter.
Her parents then filed a petition with the District Court of Tulsa County asking that Robin be declared incompetent and that they be made guardians over her.
In a five-day trial, the court heard testimony from both sides. A school psychologist who was a friend of Robin's parents testified that Robin functioned socially and interpersonally as a nine-year-old child, according to a test she administered. However, this psychologist had not interviewed Robin for over a year, did not know sign language, and therefore could not communicate with Robin except by pantomime or in writing. Other qualified professionals who had experience working with deaf and mute persons testified that Robin was competent. Testimony established that Robin could drive, had above-average intelligence, had been allowed to travel out of state, was planning to go to a Christian college in the fall, and prior to her conversion had contemplated an unaccompanied tour of Israel with her parents' approval.
Nevertheless Judge Robert D. Frank, a Unitarian, ruled in favor of Robin's parents. In a decision that many believe displays strong bias against fundamental Christianity, Judge Frank ruled Robin incompetent and placed her under the guardianship of a non-Christian sister, despite Robin's vehement and tearful protests. The order provided that she be allowed freedom to practice Christianity if she so desired, but her guardians have sometimes refused to allow her to attend church services. To gain her freedom, Robin had to appeal to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which on November 29, 1983, ruled in her favor. Chief Justice Donald Barnes reversed Judge Frank's decision, calling it a "chilling infringement" on Robin's religious freedom. So Robin is now free, but the traumatic court battle disrupted over six months of her life. (In the Matter of the Guardianship of Robin Andrea Polin, No.60342. Supreme Court, Ok. November 29, 1983; Oklahoma Bar Journal, Vol.54, No.46, p. 3085.)
Guardianship proceedings have an appropriate place in the legal system. But both the mental health profession and the legal system are so subjective today that they can easily be misused. Where issues of religious freedom are involved, guardianship proceedings should be used only with great caution. Pages 336-337.
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OUTLINE No.2:
CULT CONTROVERSIES, The Societal Response to the New Religious Movements, by James A. Beckford, Travistock Publications, 1985
I. Disengagement and Controversy
A. Exit and Controversy
Mind control
Coercion
Ex-members
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EXCERPTS No.2:
2. CULT CONTROVERSIES, The Societal Response to the New Religious Movements, by James A. Beckford, Travistock Publications, 1985
[James A. Beckford: A Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Durham University. The book draws on the author's interviews with ex-members and their relatives in order to explain the controversial aspects of recruitment to, and defection, from the main types of new religious movements in Britain, France, the U.S.A. and West Germany]
I. Disengagement and Controversy
A. Exit and Controversy
From the point of view of anti-cultists, the parents or other close relatives of ex-members of NRMs are vitally important evidence in support of the main theories of "cult control" and "coercive conversion". The fact that some people leave the UC [Unification Church], return to the parent home, and eventually become "normal" again is sometimes used as proof that they must previously have been deliberately manipulated. The reasoning is that, if an authentic religious conversion had taken place, recruitment would have been a slower process and disengagement would not have taken place at all. In other words, the combined effect of swift induction and equally peremptory withdrawal is believed to be an indictment of the UC's authenticity. The logic of the reasoning is not at issue here. What matters is that the testimony of people who had witnessed the whole process from start to finish has great moral and tactical value for the anti-cult movement. Pages 205-206.
* * *
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OUTLINE No.3:
THE CULT EXPERIENCE: Responding to the New Religious Pluralism, by J. Gordon Melton and Robert L. Moore, The Pilgrim Press, New York, 1982
I. Understanding the Cultist: Snapping or Transformation? (Chapter 2)
Conversion
Personality change
Brainwashing
Mind control
Coercion
Five anti-cult myths exposed
1) Coercion to join group
2) Members of groups are mentally imbalanced
3) Groups cause mental/emotional disorders of members
4) Membership in a group means isolation from former family and outside world
5) People joining groups lose freedom of choice and free will
A. Elements of Liminality [personality maturation and transformation] in the Cult Experience
Move from adolescence to adulthood
Personality changes explained
Reasons for ex-members' disorientation
B. The Power-Hungry Guru
Media-hype
Group leadership
Jim Jones was NOT a member of a minority religion, but an ordained minister of the mainstream denomination, Disciples of Christ
C. Summary and Conclusions
Professional psychologists of religion vs. Freudian psychologist/psychiatrists who are generally anti-religious
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EXCERPTS No.3:
THE CULT EXPERIENCE: Responding to the New Religious Pluralism, by J. Gordon Melton and Robert L. Moore, The Pilgrim Press, New York, 1982
[J. Gordon Melton is the author of Encyclopedia of American Religions and other books, and is director of the Institute of the Study of American Religion in Evanston, IL. Robert L. Moore is an associate professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and the author of John Wesley and Authority: A Psychological Perspective.]
I. Understanding the Cultist: Snapping or Transformation? (Chapter 2)
Are typical members of contemporary cults really brainwashed zombies? That the need to address this issue is pressing is an indication of the impact of the hysterical oversimplification that has characterized too much of the recent response to the new religions. Much has been made of the sudden personality change that comes over seemingly well-behaved and "normal" young people when they enter such groups. Something seems to have "snapped"--there appears to be an abrupt discontinuity between the personality before and after crossing the threshold into the life of the cult. Parents commonly find the new personality unrecognizable in many ways: uncooperative, aloof and remote emotionally, gravitating away from family values, aspirations, and life-style. The language of these persons changes, not only by the use of phrases and formulas apparently based on some esoteric religious teachings, but also by the way they relate to the phrases as they utter them. Ideas that seem incredibly garbled and irrational to the parents are treated by the young people as though they carried some magical power or significance.
When attempts are made to convince the young people that these strange, alien ideas are unworthy of the energy and devotion they are lavishing on them, a more disturbing change occurs in the pattern of communication between the parents and their children: the aloofness increases, and the communication of the cult members becomes more evasive and less frequent and is characterized by defensiveness and sometimes duplicity and deception.
That the cultists' consciousness and behavior depart from previous patterns is a point that has been emphasized in the literature on the cults. Besides the changes noted above, cultists often dress and/or wear their hair differently--sometimes unconventionally. Books of esoteric doctrine may be offered as better alternatives to the parents' choice of scriptures, and the young people may practice some form of ritual magic and chant in strange tongues to even stranger gods and goddesses. The bizarre impression that cult members make on others--intentionally or not--is best symbolized by the assertion that there is something strange about the eyes of such persons. They are, depending on whom you talk with, hypnotic or appear to be hypnotized. They are alternatively blank, empty, glassy, robot-like, possessed, wild, secretive, and so on.
As if the above were not enough, cultists sometimes behave as if the world were in fact sacred geography, the locus of cosmic struggles that only the initiated can understand and deal with effectively.2 Urgency permeates the life-world of the cultist, and she or he seems determined to engage with great commitment in activities that appear to the outsider to be at best a waste of time and at worst downright self-destructive and/or antisocial. These activities range from lengthy sessions of meditation, esoteric ritual, and the like to the aggressive evangelistic and fund-raising activities of such groups as the Unification Church and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Many accusations have been made concerning the alleged way in which cult members have been brainwashed--robbed of their autonomy by techniques that have been cynically designed to do away with the free will of the individual involved. Trying to get by on an inadequate diet--usually vegetarian--and prevented by the leaders from getting adequate sleep, the person reaches the state of exhaustion and becomes more vulnerable to the teachings and influences of the group.
Further, the prevalent popular interpretation goes, once this person has been deceived by the cult into thinking its activities are authentically religious, and once a cynically planned schedule of activities has brought on exhaustion, then the next step--the destruction of ties with the outside world, especially the family--can be taken. To effect this change, attempts are made to destroy the ties that bind the individual to his or her precult existence. Survival of the precult identity loses meaning for the individual, and family, friends, previous work roles, property owned before joining all come to be viewed as dangerous baggage that must be jettisoned so the new life offered by the group may come to fruition. The outside world, then, and especially anyone and anything that tempts the individual to return to the previous life, may begin to seem dangerous or demonic to the individual and may be interpreted as such by the group leaders. Now, so the popular interpretation goes, the individual is, in effect, a prisoner of the group--tricked into joining the group, subjected to techniques of brainwashing that destroy the autonomy of the individual, and then progressively isolated from the outside world while the cult takes everything and gives little in return.
A number of assumptions underlie the kind of interpretation of the personality of the cult member sketched above. The balance of this chapter seeks to offer a more complex, more accurate, and in some ways more hopeful interpretation of the cultist personality. Our interpretation differs from the above in a number of ways, and to differentiate our point of view from the above, at the outset we challenge the following assumptions:
1. Cult members are usually coerced into joining groups against their wills or are usually deceived into joining. Although some instances of questionable evangelistic techniques have occurred, there is little or no evidence to suggest that members have not freely chosen entry into the groups. What is clear is that entry into such groups contradicts the parents' perceptions of the pregroup personalities of the cultists. Our experience, however, has been that communication between these young people and their parents usually had deteriorated before their exposure to the evangelistic efforts of the groups--and that often the facade the young people had been presenting to their parents had been deceptive for a substantial length of time. It should be clear here, however, that such deception of parents by their children is not always--even usually--a manifestation. of hostility or antagonism toward the parents. Often it masks intense feelings of shame on the part of the individuals that they have not yet been able to get it together, to find their vocations, appropriate marital partners, etc. Such deception of parents by young people often stems from a desire to spare the parents knowledge of the intensity of the pain and despondency their children may be feeling.
Some young adults have parents who give them good reason to be less than forthright about their real feelings, fears, and aspirations. Many times, while seeking to restore communication between family and cultist, we are aware immediately of why the distance has been sought by the cultist: authoritarian and intrusive styles on the part of the parents. To those with no experience in family counseling this may seem harsh. It remains, nevertheless, a common pattern in the families of "troubled" youth, and we have found that it recurs time and again in the families of cult members. Usually such parents have great difficulty recognizing the ways in which they made developing independence a problem for their children. No "Archie Bunkers," such parents have chosen impressive, successful futures for their children--often providing in a package acceptable professions, college majors, and a list of preferred schools. One can understand that parents might feel their children would have to be brainwashed into rejecting such a promising agenda, but the children of such parents are often clearer than they are about the nature of the vicarious ambitions commonly embodied in such pressures and agendas. Youth pay great prices to feel in control of their own agendas, and will--although usually with substantial guilt feelings--sacrifice early a frank and honest relationship with hopeful, ambitious but insensitive parents.
This is not to say that parents assuming their children have been brainwashed may not have observed some strange behaviors that merit concern and require responsible attention. ... It is important for us to point out that an apparent radical personality change ascribed to deception and brainwashing by a cult may in reality be an attempt by the young person to be more honest about his or her real feelings, values, and commitments in the face of parental concern, pressure, and/or disapproval. In this way the movement into an alternative religious group may be a significant step toward independence from the primary family.
2. A cult member is, by virtue of cult membership, in some pathological state. How any responsible and informed professionals could come to such a conclusion is difficult to understand, unless they have already written into their assumptions, unwittingly or not, a simplistic dogmatic religious or secularist point of view. If one has a religious stance that assumes a person of another faith is either deluded by false teachers or inspired by demonic forces, then a negative interpretation of a person's involvement in a religious group that is outside the national religious consensus is guaranteed. This kind of stance is, of course, the standard fare of religious bigotry and is the same attitude that previously was applied in much the same manner to Judaism and Roman Catholicism.
The secularist assumption is more difficult to spot, particularly for those who lack sophistication with regard to the antireligious bias of much contemporary social and behavioral science. For example, sociologist James Richardson has noted that recent psychosocial interpretations of the alternative religions have been dominated by Freudian conceptions of conversion which have tended to view religious conversion as a regressive phenomenon.4 With the exception of Erik Erikson's work and that of other recent psychoanalytic ego psychologists, the tendency has been for psychologists of a Freudian persuasion to mistake a psychopathology of religion for a balanced psychology of religion.5 The key issue is whether conversion and other intense religious experiences are seen as normal accompaniments of transition states--and particularly of the transition from adolescence to early adulthood. We need only note that the point of view expressed in such a book as Snapping reflects a militantly secularist reductionistic and regressive reading of religious experience characteristic of classic Freudian and other hostile interpretations of religion in general and conversion in particular.
If an interpreter of the new religious movements adopts the assumptions about religious conversion that view conversion as pathological by definition, then converts and devotees of the alternative religions will undoubtedly be assessed by such an interpreter as manifesting psychopathology. Another tendency we have noted is for psychological clinicians who have treated a number of current or former cult members in their psychotherapeutic practices to generalize on the basis of this inadequate sample and to conclude that experience of participation in the new religions is pathogenic. That this bad logic receives any credence is incredible. Using the same approach one could sample the persons in a psychiatrist's office at any given time, give them psychological tests, and on discovering psychopathology, conclude that going to a psychiatrist's office causes emotional disorders!
3. If a young person manifests symptoms of psychopathology during or after involvement in an alternative religion, the group caused the disorder in a person who was without emotional difficulties before joining. This is an elaboration and expansion of the preceding assumption, which noted that participation is evidence of pathology. Now this is extended to conclude that participation caused the pathology. This assumption forms part of the foundation that, in the militant anti-cult movement, justifies the use of questionable tactics not only to remove young people from minority religions, but to legislate and otherwise act against the existence of religions that deviate from the national consensus. Richard Anthony and Thomas Robbins have discussed this quasi-scientific justification for action against minority religions in detail in their articles and papers.7 Anthony and Robbins are social scientists who have concluded that this movement toward the "medicalization of deviant religions" constitutes not only a misuse of scientific constructs for political ends, but that involvement of the mental health establishment in the suppression of alternative religions constitutes a substantial threat to civil liberties.
At this point it is important to emphasize that we are not suggesting that the alternative religions are free of members with emotional difficulties. We have observed emotional disturbances of varying degrees of severity among the membership of various alternative religions. Here, however, we must discipline ourselves to approach these deviant groups evenhandedly. For example, what pastor of a local church in any major denomination will not find some members with neurotic, borderline, and even frankly psychotic symptoms (if he or she possesses the clinical skills to discern them)? The answer obviously is that all religious groups--not just the deviant ones--have within them persons with severe emotional problems. The pastoral-care movement of recent decades has emphasized that this is where troubled persons should be! Our point is that, contrary to current popular treatments, not only is there little reason to believe that members of alternative religions are significantly more emotionally disturbed than persons in more established denominations, but claims that the groups damage persons emotionally are not substantiated by any careful quantitative empirical studies. In fact, participation in these groups often has a therapeutic impact on the personalities of group members.8
Let us return to the person who is a member of one of the alternative religions and does manifest frank, severe psychopathology. Most of the evidence regarding the genesis of emotional disorders places the origins of such difficulties early in the developmental process--long before any encounter with an alternative religion. Understandably, the family of an acutely disturbed cult member would prefer to project the causes of the young person's problems on another agency. This is the phenomenon of scapegoating, and however understandable it must be seen for what it is. If indeed a young person in a group is so decompensated that he or she appears to be a zombie, the chances are far better that the pathology was brought with the person to the group than that the group caused the disorder. That the so-called anti-cult groups which allegedly are so pro-family have made so little of the literature on family systems theory and family therapy should at least make parents hesitant to accept the preferred explanations of the sources of their children's difficulties. Below we discuss further the implications of family systems theory for understanding both entry into a group and possible therapeutic response.
What, then, is one to make of the observations of parents and others that the onset of symptoms in disturbed cult members coincides with entry or participation in a group? First, the sudden personality change frequently touted in popular discussions of snapping and the like is often the result of a normal transition state, not psychopathology. A maturing young adult, moving toward independence from the primary family, often manifests behaviors that are different from those to which the family is accustomed. Second--and more important here--that a young adult may manifest symptoms of psychopathology at the point at which he or she is moving toward independence is not proof that some agent external to the family matrix is responsible for the emotional disorder. On the contrary, it is a psychological commonplace that deficits in the capacity for psychosocial adaptation may not appear until the severe strain of separation from the primary family system is encountered. The psychodynamic origins of such adaptive deficits occur much earlier in the developmental process, usually--if not always--in childhood.9
4. Once a person enters the sphere of influence of an alternative religion this person is forever lost to his or her family and to life outside the group. This assumption is frequently used by deprogrammers to sell a deprogramming to distraught family members. If the person is not forcibly removed from the group, the prognosis for return to the family and what it conceives of as "ordinary" existence is deemed guarded if not hopeless. One of the saddest effects of this widely marketed assumption is the panic it tends to induce in the families of persons joining a minority religious group. Families who are led to believe this become easy prey for entrepreneurs who play on their love for their children to sell the coercive tactics of deprogramming. The fact is that the majority of person entering alternative religions leave voluntarily in a period ranging from a few months to a few years. The complex dynamics underlying this are discussed below. Here it suffices to note that it is important that families not be given hysterical misinformation concerning the prognosis for the return of their sons or daughters to life outside the groups. Families can respond more judiciously to such a crisis if they are not panicked by misinformation.
5. Alternative religious groups are merely machines for pseudo-religious manipulation of persons who have lost their capacity to choose, and therefore participation in these groups is not to be considered an expression of an authentically religious impulse. Contrary to popular treatments, existing research by sociological investigators indicates there is no reason to believe that entry into an alternative religion evidences any different decision-making processes than entry into other voluntary associations and activities common to a comparable population.10 One of the fascinating and disturbing aspects of this controversy is the manner in which some theorists--arguing from a deterministic mechanistic and/or positivistic philosophical anthropology--lament the alleged loss of the capacity for free will and free choice of a person who has joined a religious group, although their own deterministic assumptions exclude any basis for free will in the human organism. As noted above, a militantly secularist point of view often takes a reductionistic stance toward any religious commitment, not just commitment to an alternative religion. It is then only a short step to considering the phenomenon of conversion to be not a legitimate religious phenomenon, but an expression of "information disease"--of snapping, in short, of a pathological failure of the human organism. We have discussed the pluralistic context of contemporary American religious life. The tendency to depreciate the religious involvements that are not in groups sanctioned by the national religious consensus is understandable, given our discussion of the anxieties occasioned by a quantum jump in religious pluralism in a culture. Nevertheless, such easy dismissal of unfamiliar religious systems and practices is in fact a current expression of religious bigotry. In our interviews with young members of the alternative religions we have found it was often the lack of authentic religious commitment on the part of parents that led the young persons to leave the religious traditions of their families and look elsewhere for religious guidance. Rather than being an expression of some sinister factor indicative of a failure of personality and of malignant influences, the intense religiosity of late adolescents and young adults is a normal characteristic human development and an expression of their healthy religious interests and expressiveness.
The difficult fact for people to face is that they may have been such poor representatives of their own religious traditions that their children--however mistakenly--feel they must look elsewhere for practical guidance for living religiously serious lives.
Popular treatments of the cult experience have been characterized by gross oversimplification. Worse, some approaches have been based on assumptions which inevitably conclude that any conversion experience is suspect, that any intensive religious commitment entailing sacrifice and asceticism must be evidence of either brainwashing or psychopathology or both. We have argued that these assumptions must be examined carefully to discern the logical fallacies and distortions that issue from them.
We have not, however, claimed that there is no evidence of emotional disorders among persons who are or have been involved in alternative religions. On the contrary, we have suggested that although there is indeed some evidence of psychopathology, there is not sufficient empirical quantitative research evidence to justify the assumption that the incidence of disorders is significantly higher than in mainline congregations. With regard to the genesis of the emotional disorders which do exist, we have suggested that it is highly unlikely the difficulty is rooted chiefly in the groups, but rather in early childhood development and family dynamics within the primary family system.
To return to the phenomena discussed at the beginning of this chapter, we want to make it very clear that we are not denying that "strange" or "spacey" behavior may be observed among some members of alternative religions. Certainly, sudden changes in a person's behavior, diet, ideas, attitudes toward work, ethical assumptions, values, and other related aspects of his or her life may seem incomprehensible to family and friends. We argue that this type of extraordinary personality change need not be seen as characteristic solely of those group members who are suffering from psychopathology, but that such phenomena, rightly understood, may be seen to be normal expressions of ideation and behavior common to transition states in human personality. Pages 36-46.
Notes:
2 For an analysis of the human experience of the eruption of the sacred into the ordinary world, see Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, translated by Willard Trask (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968.)
4 Professor Richardson's ideas on this topic were shared with a working group on the "new religions" held at a recent meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
5 See the extensive literature from the various perspectives on the psychology of conversion listed in Donald Capps, et al., eds., Psychology of Religion: A Guide to Info Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1976). A careful examination of this bibliography will also help the reader to understand the complexity of issues in this field of study and the necessity to consult specialists before offering generalizations for public consumption. We have also included a number of the most important books on the topic in our selected bibliography.
7 See Robbins' bibliography on the topic, Civil Liberties, "Brainwashing" and "Cults" (Berkeley, CA: Program for the Study of New Religious Movements in America, 1979).
8 See, for example, the report of research by Marc Galanter et al. in "The `Moonies': A Psychological Study of Conversion and Membership in a Contemporary Religious Sect," American Journal of Psychiatry, vol.136, no. 2 (February 1979), 165-70.
9 We recommend the discussion of personality development and the origins of psychopathology in Gertrude Blanck and Rubin Blanck, Ego Psychology: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), and Ego Psychology II: Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).
10 By far the best discussion of these issues may be found in the book by David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe Jr., two sociologists who have made an outstanding contribution to rational analysis of the cult experience. Their book Strange Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981) is required reading for anyone seeking understanding of this phenomenon.
A. Elements of Liminality in the Cult Experience
Various forms of asceticism that appear to be irrational and extreme are also usually characteristic of liminal states. Keeping to a strenuous monastic regimen; working long hours on fund-raising and other seemingly thankless tasks without concern for personal finances; disregard for current standards of personal appearance; eating a minimal, possibly vegetarian diet--all these much-touted evidences of the pathology of group life are in fact normal, standard procedures in liminal states.
Compare, for example, a related strategy for entering a liminal state and being initiated into adulthood: joining the military. A young Marine recruit undergoes ritual humiliations that dwarf anything any religious group can muster. Total obedience and totalism in life-style, hyper-receptivity to the "sacred instruction," acceptance of pain and suffering, long hours, overwork, dangerous activities-many of the common liminal characteristics are present. From our point of view, some join the Marines, some join the Moonies. The reasons and the results are often similar.
Again, notice that in liminal states kinship rights and obligations are suspended. That an individual in such a state seeks to cut off ordinary relationships with his or her family is a natural part of a natural process and need not always be seen as evidence of lack of love, a snapped personality, or a malignant influence. This person may feel that tempting by family members (or their agents) to return to the previous life is "demonic" and may in fact reflect an intuition by the person that such a return might be psychosocial regression. Failed transitions do reflect regression. The only healthy way out of a transition state is the movement to a new adaptation, not a regressive return to a previous state of affairs.
This fact is an extremely important one to ponder before engaging in deprogramming or any other attempt to coerce a person out of a liminal state. Margaret Singer, in her article "Coming Out of the Cults," outlines what she believes to be the problems specific to young persons who have either left a group voluntarily (25% of her sample group) or involuntarily through deprogramming and related activities (75% of her sample). According to Singer, some residues that some of these cults leave in many ex-members seem special: slippage into dissociated states, severe incapacity to make decisions, and related extreme suggestibility derive ... from the effects of specific behavior--conditioning practices on some especially susceptible persons.
Noting that "almost all" her informants take from six to eighteen months to "get their lives functioning again," Singer admits that "personal and family issues left unresolved at the time of conversion" remain to be faced, now without the support of the group and its members. Some act out in sexual adventures, whereas others continue their ascetic avoidance of sex. These persons, Singer believes, are characterized by such traits as depression, indecisiveness, slipping into altered states, blurring of mental acuity, and uncritical passivity. From our point of view, this postcult behavior is clear evidence that liminal states are difficult-and dangerous to terminate forcibly. The behavior Singer reports as characteristic of the ex-cultist and that she blames on the behavior-conditioning practices of the groups is further expression of a continuing state of liminality, one which has not been terminated by simply leaving or being coerced into leaving the group. Like grief, this process cannot be terminated at will.
Here again the conclusion is that the traits reported to be present are not only the fault of the religious group, but that the traits reflect psychopathology. We certainly agree that an intensive religious group context is often the locus of liminal experiencing, but to conclude that it is necessarily its cause is another matter. Such an allegation is an empirical claim and calls for substantive empirical research evidence to support it. Such evidence does not in fact exist. Given the realities of social psychology, particularly the felt need of the ex-member to justify previous behavior with a rationale that exempts him or her from personal responsibility, most researchers agree that testimonies of ex-members as to the causes of their behavior are extremely suspect and should not be presented with the aura of scientific evidence. ...26
Regarding the effects of membership in an alternative religion, there is, contrary to popular assumption, some evidence that participation in one of these religious groups may be beneficial to the participants' psychological and emotional health. Discouraged young people entering alternative religious groups may, for example, feel like social and interpersonal failures, having experienced many disappointments in relationships in their lives before joining. The close, supportive atmosphere common to many groups offers a less threatening environment in which social skills may be tested and practiced. The experience of communities shared in such a setting deemphasizes competition and emphasizes acceptance, both factors that encourage new attempts at risk-taking in close relationships. Others find such distasteful activities as fund-raising helpful in overcoming fears of meeting strangers, engaging in conversation with them, and dealing with rejection when it is experienced. The environment in such a supportive group may be likened to what is known as milieu therapy. In the latter a controlled environment, with supportive participants, is used to create a situation in which the patient can experience small successes in living--the small successes without which one cannot move toward confronting the real challenges of the outside world. Scholars have noted the ways in which participation in intensive religious groups and movements has led to effective organizational and leadership behaviors in the secular realm, as participants moved out into worldly pursuits. Rather than ruining their members for a future of success in worldly adaptation, the groups may be helping them prepare to deal effectively with the outside world.28 Pages 55-59.
Notes:
26 Examine, for example, the treatment by Anson D. Shupe Jr. and David Bromley in The New Vigilantes (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Press, 1980).
28 Compare the case of John Wesley and the early Methodist movement as discussed in Robert L. Moore, John Wesley and Authority: A Psychological Perspective (Missoula, Mt: Scholars Press, 1979).
B. The Power-Hungry Guru
Along with the assumption that members of minority religions are brainwashed zombies comes the image of their leaders as power-hungry gurus. "My child could not possibly have chosen to join this group on her own. ... She must have been mesmerized, brainwashed, by a hypnotic fanatic guru." As before, we do not question that there are insincere, manipulative, greedy individuals among the ranks of the leaders of minority religions--individuals who have something to gain by keeping members in the group, by fostering dependency and discouraging individual initiative and independent thinking. We do, however, want to challenge the way in which media-hype and those who benefit from it have sought to make it seem that the minority religions have a corner on such unlovely individuals. Anticlerical writers have long performed the service of calling attention to such persons, before and after Elmer Gantry. Pastoral-care specialists have for years called attention to the possible uses and misuses of "transference phenomena" in the relationship between minister and members of the congregation. Even among the most well-meaning group of ministers the temptation toward ego-inflation and related abuses stemming from inadequate understanding of and response to the inevitable personal and group fantasies of a given congregation are an ever-present threat to a responsible professional ministry. The sexual exploitation of parishioners by clergy is a manifestation of the same dynamics and is a recurrent problem in all major denominational groups.
Although such destructive behavior is commonly engaged in by well-intentioned, naive but otherwise normal clergy, leaders who are of a different, destructive genre do exist: pathologically narcissistic characters who feed on their flocks and consider all independent initiative a personal "blasphemous" threat against their rule by "divine right." Clearly, such individuals are dangerous to parishioners and other living things. They should be challenged and, if possible, deposed by their followers or, if the law has been broken, by the proper authorities. Why not more legislation against such leaders? Trying to legislate more specifically against such a phenomenon, as some have proposed, would be an exceedingly difficult and dangerous task. One faction's power-hungry guru is another's dynamic leader. We have more to say about the threat of both antireligious and religious bigotry later. Here it should suffice to note that recent religious bigotry toward and discrimination against Roman Catholics were grounded on the same arguments against nondemocratic leadership styles that are now offered as grounds for legislating against minority religious groups. The complexities of these and related religious liberty issues make it unlikely that dealing with "sick" religious leaders will be made easier by legislation.
The question we must ask as leaders in the American religious establishment is this: How well have we handled the problem of the occasional powerful, successful, pathologically narcissistic pastor, priest, or rabbi in our own organizations? Only after we have given this question careful scrutiny and an honest answer can we see clearly to get the "mote" out of the eyes of the minority religions on this issue. No research exists that indicates such pathological leaders are more common in minority religions than in establishment religious groups, or that indicates establishment religious groups are more effective in winnowing out such individuals from the ranks. Jim Jones was not a member of a minority religion; he was an ordained minister in good standing with the mainline Disciples of Christ. Furthermore, secular institutions--including business, government, the military, and the professions--have given little evidence of being able to handle this kind of leader any more effectively than religious institutions. If the American Medical Association and similar professional groups, for example, have such difficulty in protecting clients from incompetent or unscrupulous practitioners, one should hardly be surprised that religious leaders as well sometimes are guilty of abusing power and trust. Pages 60-62.
C. Summary and Conclusions
Some theoretical positions in this discussion are based on the assumptions that secular is better, religious is suspicious, and conversion is snapping of the mind or some other pathological process that should be stamped out at all costs--even, as we shall see, at the cost of religious liberty in America. Professional psychologists of religion have come to no such consensus regarding the nature and dynamics of the conversion experience or of the process of entry into minority religions. Of course, persons with machine models for the functioning of the human psyche are likely to believe much more quickly in the scenarios of mind control, brainwashing, and the like. Similarly, psychologists and psychiatrists of Freudian persuasion tend to share Freud's negative assessment of religion in general and intense religious experience and commitment in particular. Such positions contain a priori metatheoretical assumptions that make negative assessments of much religious experience and behavior before the examination of any concrete data in a given case. In fairness to contemporary psychoanalytic ego psychology, we note that since the work of Erik Erikson there have been many more positive assessments of conversion and other intense religious experiences among latter-day revisionist Freudians. Thus a consistently negative interpretation of conversion experiences is not even regnant within the ranks of scholars and clinicians who are psychoanalytic in theoretical persuasion. One should therefore be suspicious when presented with strident, simplistic characterizations of the impact on young adults of membership in minority religions. If such characterizations are not demonstrated to be based on either the best in contemporary religious scholarship or social scientific research, then one must carefully examine what interests are being served by such gross overgeneralization and consequent irresponsible slandering of thousands of normal--perhaps misguided, but normal--young adults. Page 70.
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OUTLINE No.4:
CULTIC STUDIES JOURNAL, Vol.2, No.2, 1986
I. Objectionable Aspects of "Cults": Rhetoric and Reality, by Thomas Robbins
A. Emotional Manipulation
Zeal common to religion
B. Breaking Up Families
Family conflicts in historical perspective
C. Defending Our Culture
Separation from the world
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EXCERPTS No.4:
CULTIC STUDIES JOURNAL, Vol.2, No.2, 1986
I. Objectionable Aspects of "Cults": Rhetoric and Reality, by Thomas Robbins
[Thomas Robbins, Ph.D, a sociologist, is the author of numerous papers and editor of several books on the sociology of religion.]
A. Emotional Manipulation
The attack against intense religion, which is now alleged to be insidiously infiltrating respectable denominations (Robbins, 1985b), reflects a secularist premise that only a deracinated intellectualist religion which does not control one's practical activities is legitimate. Intense involvements with highly generalized symbolic realities which cannot be verified by rational-empirical criteria but which have empirical consequences for controlling behaviour are interpreted as evidence for an induced neuro-pathological syndrome, e.g., "information disease" (Conway and Siegelman, 1978; see also Robbins et. al.1983). But any emotionally fervent religion will be susceptible to the charge of emotional manipulation, since rituals and meanings evoking emotions will be socially organized. What is being demanded is really an emotionless and/or totally privatized religion. Page 360.
B. Breaking Up Families
"If any man come to me, and hate not his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren, and sisters yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). Members of the Children of God and other sects are exposed to this and similar biblical texts (e.g. Matthew 10:35-36) to justify the shifting of devotees' loyalty from biological relatives to spiritual brethren (Rosenzweig, 1979). However, there is evidence that many religious sects throughout history, including first and second century Christianity, had a divisive impact on the families of converts. This accusation was made against Christianity by Celsus, a second century Platonist who saw in Christianity "an attempt to subvert society, to destroy family life" (Frend, 1982:63). Christian proselytizers would not dare to say a word in the presence of respectable adults, "But, when they get hold of the children in private, and silly women with them, they are wonderfully eloquent, to the effect that the children must not listen to their father, but believe them, and be taught by them" (quoted in Frend, 1982:63). Deception was also implicated in Christian "anti-family" missionary propaganda. Christian teachings were concealed from the parents and masters of youthful potential recruits, who would be told that the missionaries did not feel comfortable in the presence of wicked and benighted parents and school teachers; but the youngsters, "should leave father and their school masters and go a long with the women and little children who are their playfellows in the wooldresser's shop, that they may learn perfection. And by saying this, they persuade them" (quoted in Africa, 1965:187).
Messianic movements operating in an initially hostile or indifferent environment tend to be divisive in their impact on the existing families of converts and potential converts. This is the sociological truth underlying Matthew 10:35, "For I have come to part asunder a man from his father, and a daughter from her mother. ..." Ultimately, the anathematizing of this divisiveness entails the view that there ought not to be messianic movements! Yet our Judaeo-Christian Culture", which some want to defend against intolerant sects, is in part the product of a messianic movement! Pages 361-362.
C. Defending Our Culture
Michael Langone (1985) and others complain that "alien and intolerant" groups undermine Judaeo-Christian culture and provoke the "valid cultural outrage" of some persons, whose reactions and countermeasures may sometimes be too extreme. The view is widely held that the legal system should explore moderate ways to incline toward defense of the culture rather than the intolerant anti-cultural sects.
It is interesting that throughout western history the view "that uncompromisingly affirms the sole authority of Christ over the Christian and resolutely rejects culture's claim to loyalty" has been a fundamental motif which has appeared many times and "is widely held to be the typical attitude of the first Christians" (Neibuhr, 1951:45). Implicit in the beliefs of early Christians was "the thought that whatever does not belong to the commonwealth of Christ is under the rule of evil" (Neibuhr, 1951:50). Thus, the line was sharply drawn between the "new people" and the old society.
Apart from the New Testament writers, the outstanding "Christ-against-culture" figure in the early church was Tertullian. "We turn our back on the institutions of our ancestors" Tertullian wrote in 197. For Tertullian, "Service to Christ...demanded rejection of the world which belonged to Satan" (Frend, 1982:80). His attitude toward the dominant hellenic culture of the Mediterranean world was expressed in his famous question, "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Page 364.
Notes:
Robbins, T. (1985b). "Religious Deprogramming and `Uncivil Religions'." Thought, in press.
Conway F., and Siegelman, J. (1978). Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change. New York: Delta.
Robbins, T., Anthony, D. and Swartz, P. (1983). "Contemporary Religious Movements and the Secularization Premise." In J. Coleman and G. Baum, New Religious Movements, New York: Seabury, 1-8.
Rosenzweig, C. (1979). "High Demand Sects: Disclosure Legislation and the Free Exercise Clause." New England Law Review, 15, 128-159.
Frend, W.H.C. (1982). The Early Church. Philadelphia: Fortress.
Africa, T. (1965). Rome of the Caesars. New York: John Wiley.
Langone, M. (1985). "Cultism and American Culture." Unpublished manuscript.
Neibuhr, H.R. (1951). Christ and Culture. New York: Harper and Row.
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OUTLINE No.5:
CULTS, CONVERTS AND CHARISMA, by Thomas Robbins, Sage Publications, 1988
I. Conversion, Commitment and Disengagement (Chapter 3)
A. Defection and Deconversion
1. Coercive Deprogramming
Deprogrammers
Ex-members and the ACM (anti-cult movement)
Brainwashing
II. Social Conflicts over NRMs [new religious movements] (Chapter 6)
A. Cults and Competitors
1. Cults and Clinicians
Some social workers and mental health professionals are jealous and therefore hostile to NRMs
Some are understanding of NRMs
Brainwashing
Deprogrammers and exit counselors
2. Cults and Churches
Why some denominations oppose/support NRMs
Judaism's attitude toward NRMs
3. Strategy of Medicalization
Medical modeling (to justify deprogramming, legislation, etc., against NRMs)
Mental health professionals
Deprogramming
Brainwashing, mind control
4. The ACM [Anti-Cult Movement]
Justifying defectors' problems
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EXCERPTS No.5:
CULTS, CONVERTS AND CHARISMA, by Thomas Robbins, Sage Publications, 1988
[Thomas Robbins received a doctoral degree in Sociology from the University of North Carolina. He has taught or held research appointments at Yale University, Queens College of the City University of New York, Central Michigan University, the Graduate Theological Union and the New York School of Social Research. He has published numerous articles on religious movements in sociology and religious studies journals. Concentrating on research on movements in the U.S.A. and Western Europe, he analyses theories relating the growth of new religions to sociocultural changes, the dynamics of conversions to and defection from movements, patterns of organisation and institutionalization, and social controversies over cults.]
I. Conversion, Commitment and Disengagement (Chapter 3)
A. Defection and Deconversion
1. Coercive Deprogramming
Notwithstanding the element of physical coercion, there are clearly elements of negotiation in the deprogramming process which produces relatively `successful' deprogramming outcomes:
In order for a person to agree with the deprogrammers and decide to leave a group of which they were a member, a justificatory or excusatory account must be developed to explain why a person joined in the first place. It is not in the interest of the deprogrammers and parents to promote the idea that the person was stupid and made a dumb mistake when they joined the movement. This type of approach would not be acceptable to many deprogrammees. Instead, an account must be negotiated that is acceptable to all concerned, the member, the parents, and other significant others (Richardson et al., 1986:110).
A similar point is made by Skonovd (1983) who studied defectors from totalistic movements and who discusses how deprogrammers promote the social reintegration of the ex-devotee of an unconventional communal group by providing the deprogrammee with an alternative interpretive framework for his involvement with a stigmatized movement:
After inducing dissonance...deprogrammers typically present a `brainwashing model' of conversion and membership in religious `cults'. This is a type of `medical model' which absolves individuals of responsibility for their own conversions, for remaining in the group. and for behaving in `abnormal' ways while in, based upon the argument that they were brainwashed into converting and then manipulated by mind control. The `brainwashing model' also holds out the promise of `health'--the promise of a viable existence apart from the movement in which the individual can experience independence and intellectual freedom once again. This facilitates apostasy in a way similar to that of adopting a competing religious world view. Such a model or paradigm provides a cognitive structure with which individuals can interpret the cultic world view and their respective experiences in it, as well as anticipate a life outside it (Skonovd, 1983: 101). Page 95.
The recrimination against cults for brainwashing converts has derived much of its popular plausibility from the accounts of ex-members, who have often become ACM activists. Research by sociologists has revealed that there is really a wide range of attitudes to be found among ex-converts, and recriminative attitudes are exhibited primarily by ex-members who have been deprogrammed or have otherwise been involved in ex-member support groups and therapeutic programs linked to the ACM (Beckford, 1985a; Lewis, 1986; Skonovd, 1981; Solomon, 1981; Wright, 1984). Voluntary defectors sometimes appear confused or ambivalent and unwilling to contribute to public discourse over cults (Beckford, 1985a), in contrast to deprogrammed ex-devotees who may appear to confidently `know the answers' and to be themselves committed to working as deprogrammers or exit counselors and to speaking out against cults, etc.
It can readily be seen that contact with the anticult movement, either at the point of exit or subsequent to that time, serves an important reference-group function for former members searching for a framework within which to view their experiences. It is also influential in defining postexit attitudes and values. It is indeed ironic that this function is in many ways similar to the role played by the [Unification] Church in providing recruits with a new view in which to perceive their past and present lives (Solomon. 1981: 293). Pages 96-97.
II. Social Conflicts over NRMs (Chapter 6)
A. Cults and Competitors
1. Cults and Clinicians
Therapeutic and `helping' professionals such as psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers may be predisposed to be hostile to NRMs. Mental health professionals are naturally concerned with the negative consequences for mental health which have surely developed in connection with some persons' participation in new religions. Although the frequency and intensity of mental injuries associated with `destructive cultism' may be debatable (Kilbourne and Richardson, 1982, 1984a), the reality of divided and traumatized families is palpable. Mental health professionals often tend to define their clientele as families as well as individuals. They are therefore naturally predisposed to view conflicts between cults and families from the standpoint of the concerned relatives and to perceive engagements with cults as similar to drug use and other `deviant behaviors' which undermine familial relationships, career prospects and general social adjustment. Middle-class families feel increasingly dependent upon health professionals for assistance and support, and they are therefore attracted to quasi-medical and social scientific metaphors such as mind control to account for the apparent desertion of their children. Families have implicitly surrendered much of their authority to clinical and social welfare professionals, although they are nevertheless still held `responsible' for their children's development (Keniston, 1977). By accepting a medical-psychiatric mode of explanation they hope to mobilize the support of those professionals on whom they feel dependent and to whom they have ceded their authority (Anthony and Robbins, 1981b).
The conflict between health professionals and cult leaders is heightened by the hegemonic desires on the part of both groups. NRMs and licensed therapists are `competitors in the therapeutic and experiential marketplace' (Kilbourne and Richardson, 1984a). Competing with conventional psychotherapists, gurus may benefit from the inadequacies of the standard medical model in coping with the routinization of psychotherapy as a conventional life experience for `normal' persons (Anthony et al., 1978). It is in this competitive context that established psychiatry must oppose `cults, quacks and non-professional psychotherapists' (Singer and West, 1980).
It is notable that the intense agitation over `destructive cultism' creates the basis for the elaboration of an opportunity structure whereby certified professional helpers can develop new and prestigious roles as counselors and rehabilitators of `cult victims' (Kilbourne and Richardson, 1984a; Robbins and Anthony, 1982b; Shupe, 1985). Therapy and counseling have been urged for cultists, ex-cultists and families traumatized by the involvement of a family member with a cult (Galper, 1982; Schwartz and Kaslow, 1982). Some clinicians have been activist crusaders in this area (Bromley, 1988b; Richardson, 1987).
Different kinds of therapists and mental health workers may, however, have different orientations towards cults and the prospects of therapeutic intervention. In a widely cited, but perhaps overly simplistic article, Robbins and Anthony (1982a) appeared to equate several items: the medical model (discussed below), allegations of cultist `brainwashing', the practice of deprogramming and the interests and predispositions of clinicians. A reader could easily conclude that clinicians tend generally to view cults as pathological (i.e. to impose a medical model), as well as supporting brainwashing theories of conversions to NRMs. This analysis may downplay the role of therapists who are either sympathetic to NRMs (Coleman, 1985a,b) or otherwise at variance in their analyses from anti-cult demonology (Kuner, 1983; Gordon, 1988; Ungerleider and Wellisch, 1979).
Upon closer inspection there appear to be two distinct medical models of cultist pathology. The familiar controversial model affirms the operation of mind control processes and suggests that cultist indoctrination and rituals create psychopathological conditions in converts (Conway and Siegelman, 1978; Clark, 1979; Shapiro, 1977; Singer, 1979; Singer and West, 1980; see Ch. 3). Clinicians who are associated with this approach have often been supportive of coercive deprogramming (Shapiro, 1977; Singer, 1979). Yet some articles appearing in prominent psychiatric journals seem to represent a distinctively different version of the medical model of cults which emphasizes the tendency for cults to become `refuges' for persons who are already disturbed or maladjusted, i.e. involvements in cults are created by existing psychopathological conditions in converts (Maleson, 1981; Spero, 1982). Exemplars of this approach consider cults to represent an essentially pathological phenomenon susceptible to (non-coercive) therapeutic intervention, but they are skeptical of brainwashing theories, which are said to function as rationalizations for ex-devotees. This variant of the medical model may appeal to therapists with backgrounds in personality theory and family therapy, who may sense that the brainwashing model, as an extreme situation-centered approach, implicitly devalues their own clinical expertise in family problems, personality disorders and developmental psychology. Clinicians may also sense competition from marginal and specialized anti-cult `exit counselors' (Sullivan, 1984a). On NRMs and mental health, see also Kilbourne and Richardson (1984a,b), Richardson (1980) and Rochford et al. (1988). Pages 170-172.
2. Cults and Churches
Certain church leaders have been active in attacks on cults. Other church spokesmen have been active in the defense of the rights of cults. The competitive relationship between conventional churches and unorthodox religious movements is obvious. Some dynamic NRMs have succeeded in eliciting from devotees an intense and diffuse commitment which most conventional non-evangelical church organizations have not been able to match. Among evangelical and fundamentalist groups there is a long tradition of fulmination against cults, which are often designated as satanic. The Kingdom of the Cults (Martin, 1968) is a classic but moderate example of this genre which castigates the `cults' of the 1960s--Baha'i, the Nation of Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, etc. Contemporary televangelical presentations frequently feature attacks on cults, particularly `New Age' movements and witchcraft-satanist groups. But some church leaders are sensitive to civil liberties issues and are quick to perceive threats to the `free exercise of religion' and `church autonomy' (Robbins, 1985e) from any governmental intervention.
It is worth noting that for a while Jewish leaders appeared to be highly conspicuous among anti-cult activists. Jewish youth have been alleged to be disproportionately represented among cult recruits, although this may represent merely a preponderance of urban intelligentsia or persons from nominally Jewish secularist backgrounds (Stark, 1981). Judaism does not generally proselytize and therefore Jewish leaders may be more likely to perceive interfaith conversion as intrinsically pernicious. On Jewish participation in NRMs, see Richardson (1988b). Pages 172-173.
3. Strategy of Medicalization
Key allegations against contemporary NRMs entail notions of `mind control' and allied constructs which implicitly identify involvement in a cult as entailing mental pathology induced through trauma and conditioning, i.e. the pathological syndrome of `destructive cultism' (Shapiro, 1977; see Ch. 3). Persistent involvement in a cult is thus viewed as essentially involuntary--a kind of disease process from which helpless `cult slaves' must be rescued and healed (Ottinger, 1980). On this basis arguments have been made for enhancing the regulatory authority of mental health professionals (and of the state via parens patriae) over religious movements (Robbins and Anthony, 1982a). Page 174.
The application of an `involuntarist' medical model also serves the needs and interests of various groups which are antagonistic to cults: mental health professionals, whose role in the rehabilitation of `cult victims' is highlighted; parents, whose opposition to cults is legitimated; ex-devotees, who find it meaningful to reinterpret their prior involvement with highly stigmatized groups as basically passive and unmotivated; and clerics, who oppose cults but are concerned to avoid appearing to persecute competitors.
The employment of a medical model thus highlights those controversies over cults which relate primarily to the psychological process through which individuals enter, become committed to and exit from new religious movements. These sensational issues initially overshadowed more mundane issues concerning the tax privileges of diversified religious movements or the regulation of their commercial, political, financial, social service and employment policies, although legal outcomes pertaining to these latter areas may ultimately be more crucial to the continued viability of new movements (Moore, 1980; Robbins, 1985a, 1988b).
The medical model of cultist brainwashing has been associated with the practice of deprogramming (Robbins and Anthony, 1982a). There have been numerous studies of deprogramming by social scientists (Barker, 1983b; Kim, 1979; Langone, 1984; Shupe and Bromley, 1980a; Shupe et al., 1978; Skonovd, 1981; Solomon, 1981; see Ch. 3). Although the legal situation with respect to coercive deprogramming is still ambiguous (Bromley, 1983; Robbins, 1985f, 1986c), the practice waned in the middle 1980s in part due to the decline or cessation of growth of the notorious `destructive cults' of the 1970s such as the Unification Church, Children of God, Hare Krishna, etc. On the other hand, the range or variety of groups targeted may have increased in the 1980s with the increasing concern about eccentric born-again groups (Robbins, 1985f).
The sensational medical model of cults--the model which pinpoints `destructive cults' as a dynamic pathogenic force disrupting the lives of `cult victims' and producing disease states--has gained particular prominence in the popular media (Beckford and Cole, 1987; Van Driel and Richardson, 1988) and has moreover recently been enshrined in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSMIII) of the American Psychiatric Association (see Kilbourne and Richardson, 1984b for a vigorous critique of the relevant DSM formulations). Pages 174-175.
4. The ACM [Anti-Cult Movement]
Shupe and Bromley see the `brainwashing ideology' as honorably explaining ex-devotees' past deviant episodes without implying either innate individual derangement or prior social pathology such as deep family conflicts. Page 176.
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OUTLINE No.6:
CULTS, CULTURE, AND THE LAW: Perspectives on New Religious Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins, William C. Shepherd, and James McBride, Scholars Press, 1985
I. New Religious Movements on the Frontier of Church and State, by Thomas Robbins
Freedom of religion
Church and state
Mind control
Coercion
Semantics
A. Cults and Conflicts
Evangelicals next target of ACM (anti-cult movement)
Judaism and the ACM
B. Strategy of Medicalization
Expert witnesses--mental health professionals
Medical model--main thrust of ACM
Mind control
Ex-members
Brainwashing
II. New Religions and "Deprogramming": Who's Brainwashing Whom? by Lee Coleman
Parents of members of NRMs
Mind control
Deprogrammers
Coercion
A. Milieu [environment] Control
Control
B. Mystical Manipulation
Manipulation
C. The Demand for Purity
Bigotry and hatred
D. The Cult of Confession
Ex-members' atrocity stories
E. The "Sacred Science"
Deprogramming: spiritual gang rape
F. Loading the Language
Semantics
Buzz-words
ACM deception
G. Doctrine over Person
ACM ideology
H. The Dispensing of Existence
Intolerance
Extermination
I. Conclusion
Fight bigotry of ACM
III. The Legislative Assault on New Religions, by Jeremiah S. Gutman
First Amendment
Freedom of thought and religion
Dangers of legislative commission on religion or thought
IV. The "Deformation" of New Religions: Impacts of Societal and Organizational Factors, by James T. Richardson
Myths of NRM (New Religious Movement) Leadership
Myth of mind control and brainwashing
Other ACM (anti-cult movement) myths
Evidence that members of NRMs are normal people
A. The Sociological Context
Parents of NRM members
Why negative reactions to NRMs
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EXCERPTS No.6:
CULTS, CULTURE, AND THE LAW: Perspectives on New Religious Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins, William C. Shepherd, and James McBride, Scholars Press, 1985
I. New Religious Movements on the Frontier of Church and State, by Thomas Robbins.
[Thomas Robbins is a sociologist of religion who has written numerous articles on new religious movements for leading sociological and religious studies journals. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.]
Issues involving the relationship between church and state and the constitutional guarantee of "free exercise, of religion" are likely to become increasingly salient in the 1980s. A significant aspect of contemporary discussions of church and state relations in America entails questions arising from controversies over stigmatized unconventional religious and therapeutic, movements or "cults."/1/ There are controversies and allegations against cults in a variety of areas, inciting tax evasion, financial mismanagement, unauthorized practice of medicine, child abuse, exploitative employment policies, and commercial fraud. The most persistent allegations, however, concern the use by cults of techniques of "mind control" and "brainwashing" to enslave converts, break up their families, and imprison members in pathological mental states. These controversies raise a number of vital issues including the authority of the government to regulate spiritual movements and scrutinize individual consciousness. On one level these are legal issues; their full analysis, however, requires an understanding of the role of "new religions" in modern America, the needs to which these movements respond, the cultural and social conditions in which they are flourishing, and the psychological processes which operate within them.
In our view, controversies surrounding cults are closely related to an emerging general crisis of church and state relations as well as to significant currents of social transformation in the United States. However, this relation has been obscured by the way in which controversial discourse over cults has been patterned. Primary attention has been directed toward the question of how people become converts, and, in particular, whether they are victims of "forced conversions," accomplished and sustained through "mind control." The most vigorous critics of "cults" have attempted to define the issues and conflicts surrounding cults as constituting primarily a mental health problem. Defenders of cults have argued that, in actuality, esoteric beliefs and rituals have been arbitrarily transvalued and interpreted as "coercive" and as pathological mind control. As one civil liberties lawyer complains: "A religion becomes a cult; proselytization becomes brainwashing; persuasion becomes propaganda; missionaries become subversive agents; retreats, monasteries, and convents become prisons; holy ritual becomes bizarre conduct; religious observance becomes aberrant behaviour; devotion and meditation become psychopathic trances. Pages 7-8.
Notes:
/1/ The term "cult" has no commonly accepted meaning. For our purposes, it may be said to denote stigmatized, unconventional spiritual groups. Such groups are usually, though not always, characterized by the following: (1) Authoritarian and centralized leadership revolving around a charismatic figure; (2) Communal and "totalistic" organisation; (3) Aggressive proselytising; (4) Systematic indoctrination processes; (5) Recent development or importation to the United States; and (6) Largely middle class and youthful clientele.
A. Cults and Conflicts
Liberal Protestant church leaders have been foremost in defending cults against repression; however, the attitude of conservative evangelicals may be crucial. Evangelicals often tend to interpret the rise of cults in demonic terms, and some evangelicals have displayed some concern over governmental scrutiny of (putatively irregular) church finances, an area where some evangelical groups may be vulnerable. The diversification of some evangelical movements renders them dependent upon broad interpretations of religious liberty and church autonomy. There are presently some indications that the professional opponents of cults, including deprogrammers, are increasingly turning their attention to independent Christian fellowships or even to established fundamentalist groups.
Finally, it is worth noting that Jewish leaders appear to be particularly conspicuous among anti-cult activists. Allegations have risen that Jewish youth are disproportionately represented among cult recruits, although this may represent merely a preponderance of urban intelligentsia or persons from secularist backgrounds, often nominally Jewish. Since "Jewishness" is an ethnic as well as religious property, the detachment of young persons from the fold through conversion to other faiths is particularly resented by many Jews. In general, Judaism does not proselytize and therefore Jewish leaders may be less inhibited in denigrating interfaith conversion as an insidious and harmful mind control process. Page 14.
B. Strategy of Medicalization
Of the groups antagonistic to cults, psychiatrists and psychologists have played a particularly vital role. In most cases in which the opponents of cults have scored important legal victories "expert" testimony has been offered to the effect that cultist rituals and indoctrination processes are injurious to mental and physical health and tend to destroy participants' free will. On this basis, adult devotees have been removed from communal religious groups and placed in the legal custody of relatives. Parents and their agents who have seized and imprisoned devotees without obtaining custody orders have been spared legal penalties; cults have occasionally been forbidden to open spiritual retreats; and cults have been defeated in civil litigation.
Although some charges against cults center around concerns for the physical health of members, an important group of objections springs from notions of "mind control" and allied constructs which implicitly identify involvement in a cult as a mental pathology induced through planned trauma and conditioning, i.e., the pathological syndrome of destructive cultism." Persistent involvement in a cult is thus viewed as essentially involuntary--an inexorable disease process from which helpless "cult victims" must be rescued and healed. On this basis an argument can be made for increasing the regulatory authority of mental health professionals (and of the state via parens patriae) over religious movements.
Although controversies over cults rage in other countries besides the United States, particularly in Western Europe,/24/ the situation in the United States is unique with respect to the degree to which the medical model is applied and the allegations against controversial movements are formulated in medical and psychiatric terms. This probably reflects in part the greater importance and prestige of psychiatry in the United States. However, lesser reliance on the medical model in anti-cult agitation in France and Germany may also reflect the weaker norms of religious tolerance in Europe where there is no stringent civil libertarian tradition requiring circumvention by the raising of the medical and mental health claims. In Europe, it is possible to attack cults directly because they are viewed as anti-social and subversive of dominant social values.
In the United States, however, in the context of the constitutionally grounded guarantee of the "free exercise of religion," it is difficult for those who feel disturbed or threatened by cults to proceed effectively against them directly for being totalistic, authoritarian or multifunctional, or for competing with other institutions. The focus of the attack accordingly shifts to the allegation that the processes of indoctrination in cults in effect "brainwash" converts so that the latter are not really voluntary participants and their involvement does not entail a truly "free" exercise of religion. The "cult problem" thus becomes medicalized such that the inflicting of "involuntary harms" through traumatic and pathologenic processes of coercive persuasion is deemed by some legal authorities to constitute grounds for governmental intervention against cults which is compatible with general norms of religious freedom.
The application of a medical model to controversies over cults also serves the needs and interests of various groups which are antagonistic to cults: mental health professionals, whose role in the rehabilitation of "cult victims" is highlighted; parents, whose opposition to cults and willingness to use forcible methods to "rescue" cultist progeny is legitimated; ex-converts, who find it meaningful to reinterpret their prior involvement with highly stigmatized groups as passive and unmotivated (something done to them rather than something they did); and clerics, who are concerned to avoid appearing to persecute or harass competitors. A powerful anti-cult coalition of these groups depends upon medical and mental health issues being kept in the forefront. The medical model is thus utilized in a manner which allows the opponents of cults to disavow any intent to persecute minority beliefs and to stress the healing of involuntary pathological conditions.
The employment of a medical model has had another important consequence, it keeps in the forefront those controversies over cults which relate primarily to the social psychological processes through which individuals enter, become committed to and exit from new religious movements, i.e., controversies over "mind control." These sensational issues continue to overshadow more mundane issues concerning the tax breaks of diversified religious movements or the regulation of their commercial, political, financial, social service and employment policies, although legal outcomes pertaining to these latter areas may ultimately be more crucial to the continued viability of new organizations. It is as if the public, including the critics of cults, agreed with the statement in Justice Jackson's famous dissent in the Ballard case that, "the chief wrong which false prophets do to their following is not financial ... the real harm is on the mental and spiritual place ... the mental and spiritual poison they get." There seems to be far less agreement, however, with Justice Jackson's conclusion that the "mental and spiritual poison" disseminated by false prophets "is precisely the thing the Constitution put beyond the reach of the prosecutor."/28/ Pages 14-16.
Notes:
/24/ James Beckford, "Cults, Controversy and Control: A comparative analysis of the problems posed by the new religious movements in the Federal Republic of Germany and France, "42 "Sociological Analysis 3."
/28/ U.S. v. Ballard, 332 U.P.S. 78 (1944).
II. New Religions and "Deprogramming": Who's Brainwashing Whom? by Lee Coleman
[Lee Coleman is a psychiatrist practicing in Berkeley, California. His longstanding interest in the problems of psychiatry and law has led to two dozen articles in professional and lay journals, as well as the recently published book "The Reign of Error: Psychiatry, Authority and Law" (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984).]
Disapproving parents, in order to justify the forcible removal of their adult son or daughter from a religion they do not like, frequently claim that the young religious convert has been brainwashed. The use of force is justified, it is claimed, because the person's independent thinking has already been stolen by the mind-control techniques of the "cult." /1/
Such an argument could not long sustain itself without the backing of "expert" opinion from mental health professionals. This is because more and more people now recognize that terms like "brainwashing" can be used to invalidate any unpopular idea or activity. (Civil rights advocates, for example, were accused by white southerners in the early 1960s of being brainwashed by northern liberals.) The "anti-cult" movement has indeed been able to gather around it a small but vocal group of mental health professionals who regularly claim before courts, professional meetings, and the media-to have found evidence of such "mind-control."/2/
This discussion will focus on one particular source of such alleged academic support, namely psychiatrist Robert Lifton's book Thought Reform and the Psychology Of Totalism. /3/ Despite the fact that Lifton in his book is clearly critical of the use of force and total environmental control to change coercively a person's opinion, Thought Reform is being used to justify precisely this kind of force and control. In other words, those who call themselves "deprogrammers"/4/ and use Thought Reform supposedly to back up their claim that "cults" use brainwashing" "mind control," or coercive persuasion," are themselves guilty of employing the very tactics so well described and criticized in Dr. Lifton's book.
Lifton tells us in Chapter 22, that he wants to consider "the psychology of human zealotry," and he offers a set of criteria against which any environment may be judged a basis for answering the ever-recurring question: Isn't this just like "brainwashing"? It is this chapter which has been frequently used by "deprogrammers" to argue that cults" are employing "mind-control". Let us look more closely at this chapter. I will argue that the activities of the kidnappers ("deprogrammers") bear far more resemblance to brainwashing" than do those of new religious movements. Page 71.
Notes:
/1/ The author considers the word "cult" to be highly derogatory and will only use the term in the context of its use by parties hostile to certain religions.
/2/ For an expert opinion of this phenomenon, and a valuable critique of such "expert" opinions from mental health professionals, see Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony, "Cults vs. `Shrinks' in New Religions and Mental Health, ed. Herbert Richardson (New York: Edward Mellen Press, 1980).
/3/ Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. A Study of "Brainwashing" in China (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1961)
/4/ Just as with "cult," I will use the word "deprogramming" only to demonstrate its basically fraudulent nature.
A. Milieu Control
"The most basic feature of thought reform environment," Lifton writes, "is the control of human communication." Such control is clearly most intense when the individual cannot escape from the continuing influence of the controllers, i.e., when he is a prisoner./5/ Who, then, is more guilty of the "milieu control" described by Lifton as the "most basic feature" of coercive thought reform?
Religious recruits may be subjected to intense pressure to adopt a new world view. They are, however, not held as physical captives or prisoners. The clearest proof of this is that even the "anti-cult" movement alleges that the mind, not the body, is being imprisoned. Take, for example, a lawsuit currently being filed against the Unification Church. "False imprisonment" is claimed, yet under oath (deposition testimony) the plaintiffs had to admit that no one ever constrained them from leaving.
"Deprogramming," on the other hand, involves--by definition--the use of imprisonment, followed by a continuous barrage of pressure to renounce one's current activities. Overt physical violence is required to initially carry off the person, and there is always enough "muscle" present to maintain the lockup. Anyone doubting the potential for great bodily harm which is associated with such activities should read the unabashed accounts in Ted Patrick's book Let Our Children Go./6/ Page 72.
Notes:
/5/ The other major work on "brainwashing" is Edgar Schein's Coercive Persuasion. A Socio-Psychological Analysis of the "Brainwashing" of American Civilian Prisoners by the Chinese Communists (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1961). As much as Lifton, Schein stresses that physical confinement or captivity is an essential ingredient of "coercive persuasion." Schein writes of the persons studied: "they were subjected to unusually intense and prolonged persuasion in a situation from which they could not escape; that is, they were coerced into allowing themselves to be persuaded" (18). Generalizing from these studies of American POWs in Korea, he states that coercive persuasion is "applicable to all instances of persuasion or influence in which the person is constrained by physical, social or psychological force from leaving the influencing situation" (269). It seems obvious that the greater the constraint, the more that "coercive persuasion" is taking place.
/6/ Ted Patrick with Tom Dulack, Let Our Children Go (New York: Ballantine Books, 1976).
B. Mystical Manipulation
Lifton is talking here about "extensive personal manipulation" of a "no-holds-barred character." The totalist feels he has a "higher purpose" which gives him the right to go to extremes, even if such activities "supercede all considerations of decency or of immediate human welfare."
While it is understandable that parents of young adults might feel, with some justification, that their sons and daughters have been the victims of manipulation by the religion, it seems obvious that with "deprogramming" such manipulation is vastly greater because physical confinement is used.
While the recruit to a new (or old) religion may be subject to guilt-inducing pressures if he considers leaving the movement, the kidnapped and imprisoned victims of "deprogramming" cannot leave. A favorite tactic of Ted Patrick and his proteges is, in fact, to tell the person he will be held as long as necessary until he renounces his faith and his church.
Lifton discusses the "psychology of the pawn" in which the captive, "feeling himself unable to escape from forces more powerful than himself ... subordinates everything to adapting himself to them. ... This requires that he participate actively in the manipulation of others, as well as in the endless routine of betrayals and self-betrayals which are Once again, Lifton's incisive words fit the situation of the imprisoned victim of "deprogramming" far more closely than that of a religions recruit. Held in a motel room or perhaps the parents' home, the person is made to feel exquisitely guilty. He is made to feel that his current activities are a rejection of parents and family. in fact, the person may have no such hostile feelings towards his family, but in the setting of a "deprogramming," only outright rejection of the "cult" will satisfy the family and their hired helpers.
Another element of the manipulation of the person is the encouragement to deny responsibility for his choices. If only he will acknowledge that he is brainwashed and did not truly choose--by his own free will--to join the "cult," all will be forgiven. All family resentment will then be focused on the "cult," which is solely responsible for any disapproved behavior. This is too tempting for some persons to resist, and it is from such persons that the anti-cult movement recruits its crusading members.
At this point it is well to remember that during the Salem witch hunts, under the pressure of interrogation, many women accused of being witches finally broke down and "admitted" that they indeed were witches. Some even admitted to having fornicated with the devil.
Claims of "brainwashing" by some former members of new religions should, in other words, not be considered "neutral." Studies have shown that while many persons freely leave new religious movements because they no longer desire to continue, it is only those subjected to forced deindoctrination who speak of "brainwashing" or "mind-control."/8/ Such persons have indeed succumbed to Lifton's "mystical manipulation" at the hands of parents and their allies.
Notes:
/8/ See, for example, T. Solomon, "Integrating the `Moonie' Experience: A Survey of Ex-Members of the Unification Church," in In Gods We Trust: New Patterns of Religious Pluralism in America, ed. Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981). Solomon writes that "contact with the anticult movement influences the degree to which one relies on explanations of brainwashing and mind control to account for attraction to, and membership in the church" (288).
Cults, Culture, and the Law, Perspectives on New Religious Movements, by Thomas Robbins, William C. Shepherd, and James McBride, 1985, Pages 72-73.
C. The Demand for Purity
For those who practice ideological totalism, the world, Lifton writes, is sharply divided into the pure and the unpure, into the absolutely good and the absolutely evil." As a result, "anything done to anyone in the name of this purity is ultimately moral." Hostile parents and their allies repeatedly have raised charges that "cults" are regularly guilty of deception, fraud, and a host of other illegal activities, because, it is claimed, the "cult" feels it possesses such a higher mission. Such charges, to be taken seriously, should be directed not at "cults" but at a specific group, backed up by specific factual proof. While in some instances such facts have been forthcoming, it has been the very lack of such proof which has forced the anti-cult movement to rely so heavily on the allegations of "mind control."
"Deprogramming," however, is unmistakably an example of the end justifying the means. Crimes (kidnapping and false imprisonment) are committed and then justified as necessary in order to "rescue" the brainwashed convert. I maintain that persons engaging in or condoning such criminal behavior have no solid moral platform on which to make their allegations against new religions movements. They must first renounce their own vigilante tactics.
Lifton has given a brilliant description of another aspect of what may happen to a person subjected to such totalism. He writes:
The individual thus comes to apply to the same totalist polarization of good and evil to his judgments of his own character ... he must also look upon his impurities as originating from outside influences. ... Therefore, one of his best ways to relieve himself of some of his burden of guilt is to denounce, continuously and hostilely, these same outside influences. The more guilty he feels, the greater his hatred, and the more threatening they seem.
Such feelings, Lifton aptly warns, encourage "mass hatreds" purges of heretics, and "political and religious holy wars."
Is this what happens to Unificationists, Scientologists, and Hare Krishnas? From what I have seen--and I have known hundreds of Scientologists and dozens of practicing Unificationists--such hatred has not been present, either for their family or others outside the church.
What Lifton's perceptive analysis does seem to describe with remarkable accuracy is the attitudes, statements and tactics of those ex-members who have, after being subjected to a period of ideological totalism (deprogramming), joined the ranks of the anti-cult movement. They are now considered experts who "have been there." Back in the arms of Mom and Dad, freed of all responsibility for whatever choices they made, they are ready to further legitimize their new stance by attacking others who have strayed from the path of purity./9/ Pages 73-74.
Notes:
/9/ As Solomon writes in "Integrating the `Moonie' Experience," persons forcibly removed "will often arise from the ashes with new-found friends (other ex-members), a rejuvenated parent-child relationship, perhaps a new avocation (deprogramming) and definitely a new reference group and cause celebr--the anti-cult movement" (293).
D. The Cult of Confession
Ideological totalists require, Lifton tells us, that the person being indoctrinated "confess crimes one has not committed, to sinfulness that is artificially induced, in the name of a cure that is artificially imposed." While it is quite apparent that many religions, both old and new, include confession as an important ritual, the totalistic type of confession described by Lifton fits remarkably well with the statements and demeanor of those ex-members who have been forcefully de-indoctrinated and then successfully recruited into the anti-cult movement. Such persons, once their will to resist has been broken, may then "confess" not only that they were brainwashed but that they brainwashed others in the now-hated religion.
As Lifton says, "The sharing of confession enthusiasms can create an orgiastic sense of oneness, of the most intense intimacy with fellow confessors and of the dissolution of self into the great flow of the movement. ... In their enthusiasm to discredit their former churches, and vindicate themselves before their families, ex-members joining the ranks of anti-cultists have, unfortunately, contributed massively to the wave of religious bigotry which is now growing in the United States and elsewhere.
Sociologists Anson Shupe and David Bromley have captured the essence of the pressures which lead some victims of "deprogramming" to manufacture "atrocity stories." Shupe and Bromley write:
... to admit that they had made a mistake and to declare no further interest in the given movement was not enough. Consider that the parents had been humiliated by the offspring's often hostile and sometimes thorough rejection of parents' lifestyle and goals in the time preceding deprogramming as well as at least during the initial phases of the deprogramming itself. Consider the often substantial fees paid for deprogramming and the trouble to arrange it. Consider also the possible risk of civil and even of criminal prosecution that all--parents and deprogrammers alike--faced. These factors dictated that the price of re-entry into conventional society had now risen, and only public admission of having been brainwashed as well as testimony about other allegations of heinous cult outrages would suffice to pay for it. Thus, public contrition for having abandoned parental values became the cost of re-admission into the mainstream community./10/ Pages 74-75.
Notes:
/10/ Anson Shupe and David Bromley, "Apostates and Atrocity Stories: Some Parameters in the Dynamics of Deprogramming," in The Social Impact of New Religious Movements (New York: Rose of Sharon Press, 1981), 195.
E. The "Sacred Science"
Here Lifton is talking about the way that ideological totalists transform their opinions into "scientific truths." Because the totalist is so sure his beliefs are more "correct" that those of the person requiring reform, he feels justified in using force to make the person "see the light."
If we ask once again who is more guilty of such thinking--the religions currently being attacked or those who promote what theologian Dean Kelly has called the "spiritual gang rape" of deprogramming--the answer is clear. All religions teach that they have found the best way to the moral life, but none that I know of--including the currently attacked religions like the Unification Church or Scientology--are guilty of the degrading tactics of the anti-cult movement. So sure are they of their moral "correctness" that anti-cultists are quite willing not only to imprison a religious convert but also to defile his religion.
Take, for example, the lurid examples which fill the pages of the deprogrammer's bible, Let Our Children Go, by Ted Patrick. After Hare Krishna Ed Shapiro was imprisoned in his parents' home, Patrick described what happened next:
`Get me a pair of scissors,' I said.
`Scissors? What for?'
`First thing we're going to do is cut that knot of hair off his head.'
`What? Who are you? What right do you have to go cutting my hair? I have a right to wear this. It's part of my religion. I'm a legal adult. I'm twenty years old.'
`Shut up and sit down, just shut your mouth and listen.'
`I won't listen. I don't have to listen. I want to leave.'
`Well, you're not going to leave. Where's the scissors?'
Patrick then says, "Four of his relatives held him down and I cut off the tuft of hair they all wear on the back of their heads and I removed the beads from around his neck." Ed reacted by smashing whatever objects he could lay his hands on. Next, Patrick says, "I took him by the arms and flung him into a corner up against the wall, and I said, `All right, you hatchet-head son of a bitch, you move out of there and I'll knock your goddamned head off!'... I had a picture of Prabhupad and I tore it up in front of him and said, `There's the no-good son of a bitch you worship. And you call him God!'"
Such tactics are, Patrick assures us, "the usual line of approach." Pages 75-76.
F. Loading the Language
The anti-cult movement, particularly a small but vocal cadre of mental health professionals, has repeatedly leveled the charge that the "dangerous cults" are guilty of what Lifton called "loading the language." Lifton writes, "The language of the totalist environment is characterized by thought-terminating clich. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases." "No compunctions," Lifton continues "are felt about manipulating or loading it in any fashion; the only consideration is its usefulness to the cause."
Are the new (and old) religions under attack using language in a reductionistic fashion? Of course they are. As Lifton points out, "this kind of language exists to some degree within any cultural or organizational group, and all systems of belief depend upon it. It is in part an expression of unity and exclusiveness."
But if we wish to see "loading the language" at work in the totalistic way that Lifton is describing, it is the anti-cult movement itself which has developed a vocabulary of deception of remarkable proportion. This has been necessary for one main reason-overt criminal activity had to be rationalized and justified.
Thus, a kidnapping, frequently requiring violent bodily force, becomes a "rescue." The coercion, intimidation, and indefinite confinement which follows becomes a "deprogramming". This bit of linguistic fraud simultaneously implies that a person is a mindless victim of "programming" (robot, zombie) while it diverts attention from the illegal activity taking place.
Adult citizens, clearly of majority age, become "children," as in Let Our Children Go. This legitimises the use of force by parents and their allies and also further implies that the religious recruit is a helpless victim of deception who requires protection.
This list of such manipulative buzz-words is long, but one more will suffice. The very use of the word "cult" is the most obvious example of loading the language. Rather than criticising each religion as a separate entity, something which requires hard facts, the use of the word "cult" allows all groups under attack to be lumped together. This, of course, is an old strategy of bigotry. Words like "nigger", "kike", "wop", and "greaser" serve as a similar purpose. What is remarkable, however, is the case with which the "anti-cult" movement has been able to inject such loaded words into the vocabularies of otherwise well-meaning persons.
G. Doctrine over Person
Ideological totalism, Lifton points out here, insists on "the subordination of human experiences to the claims of doctrine." "When the myth becomes fused with the totalist sacred science," Lifton continues, "the resulting logic can be so compelling and coercive that it simply replaces the realities of individual experience. Consequently, past historical events are retrospectively altered, wholly rewritten, or ignored to make them consistent with the doctrinal logic."
To the extent that the theology of any religion requires acts of faith, such faith requires that official versions of truth be accepted, even if this deviates from "the realities of individual experience." This, however, does not amount to ideological totalism because the individual is free to accept or reject such faith.
But when, as in "deprogramming," force is used to intimidate a person into giving up his religious ideas and practices and adopting a new kind of dogma, "doctrine over person" is clearly at work. There is, indeed (quoting Lifton), "the demand that character and identity be reshaped, not in accordance with one's special nature or potentialities, but rather to fit the rigid contours of the doctrinal mold."
Here is a typical way anti-cult tactics may "rewrite" family history. A person who was not particularly close to his family joins an unpopular religion. Becoming concerned, the family tries to initiate far more contact than previously, but it is contact of a very negative sort. Charges of "brainwashing" begin to fill the air, and the person is degraded by being told that he has lost control of his mind. When the person then shuns such contact, the family then portrays their past relationship as an ideal one which was only destroyed by deliberate cult manipulations. The family's own invalidation of the person's choices is completely ignored. And finally, hostility generated towards family because of an actual or threatened kidnapping is laid at the feet of the "cult."/11/
Totalists, it seems, can do no wrong. With their doctrine that "kids" are being "rescued" from "destructive cults" which practice "mind control," they seem quite capable of denying the fundamental insults they are hurling at their own sons and daughters. Page 77.
Notes:
/11/ I have personally talked with several members of new religions movements who have described such a course of events. In one case, the father sued the church, claiming that it was not his incessant charges of "brainwashing" which finally forced his daughter to withdraw from him but instead the "mind control" techniques of the church.
H. The Dispensing of Existence
Ideological totalists feel so sure of the rightness of their position that they may seek to deny the very right to existence of those whom they see as "destructive." "Totalists thus feel themselves," Lifton," states, "compelled to destroy all possibilities of false existence as a means of furthering the great plan of true existence to which they are committed."
Do the new religions seek to deny the very existence of other, more traditional religions? I have seen no evidence of such an attitude in either Scientologists or Unificationists.
Do, on the other hand, anti-cultists seek to destroy all churches they consider "dangerous cults"? They do indeed. Not satisfied with kidnapping individual members or seeking conservatorships based on flimsy allegations of "sudden personality change," the anti-cult movement has repeatedly vowed to destroy these religions outright. They are convinced, as true ideological totalists, that what they find unacceptable should cease to be, even if the traditions and laws of a free and open society must be violated in the process. Page 78.
I. Conclusion
Despite the clear evidence that the anti-cult movement's use of Lifton's Thought Reform is fraudulent, and that it is they who are guilty of ideological totalism, this in no way guarantees that our society will see through the deception. It is up to the rest of us, having penetrated the deception, to educate others about the simple facts about who is and who is not guilty of using force to promote orthodoxy. For this we need no locked doors, no attacks on personal belief, and no denials of constitutional freedoms. If bigotry triumphs, as it did in Nazi Germany and could here, too, it will be because not enough of us thought clearly and spoke out courageously. Page 78.
III. The Legislative Assault on New Religions, by Jeremiah S. Gutman
[Jeremiah S. Gutman is the President of the New York Civil Liberties Union, a Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and former Vice President, Executive Committee Member, and Chairman of the Privacy Committee of the New York Civil Liberties Union. A graduate of City College of New York and New York University, he has practiced law in federal jurisdictions throughout the country for over 30 years.]
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States does provide not only for free exercise of religion but protects the rights of all people to think as they will and to express those thoughts as individuals or as participants in peaceful assemblies, whether those expressions be oral or written. It would be difficult to formulate a more fundamental and vicious attack upon the freedom of thought than to create a legislative commission instructed to find out how the people of the state are thinking and how their thoughts are being affected by the exercise of free religion, speech, press, and assembly rights of others. Presumably, once the state had such data, it could draft legislation to limit what it perceived as defects in thought, flaws in philosophy, and errors in judgment, so that the minds of the citizens could be controlled and kept within limits acceptable to their legislators.
To some people, it is a symptom of poor mental health to accept on faith without proof assertions concerning any factual matter, such as the existence of a god or gods, the origin of life and matter, and miraculous performances by saintly people. Some of the people with a view of this kind are members of psychiatric and allied professions and have been heard to diagnose such disorders as religions syndrome. There are others who, while they themselves may not be adherents of any religion, recognize that the First Amendment and basic human dignity, even in the absence of the First Amendment, require that an individual be permitted to believe without interference by the state or any agency of the state what appears best to that individual. Even those who perceive an inconsistency between rational thought and faith can recognize the right to faith. Civil libertarians insist upon such a right, and the First Amendment guarantees it. Pages 103-104,108.
IV. The "Deformation" of New Religions: Impacts of Societal and Organizational Factors, by James T. Richardson
[James T. Richardson is Professor Sociology at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he has taught since receiving his Ph.D. from Washington State University in 1968. He has authored and edited three books in the area of new religions, and written over 30 journal articles focusing mainly on conversion processes, but also treating new religions from a social movements perspective.]
There is a strong tendency when discussing social movements, including religious ones, to focus on selected internal factors to the near exclusion of external factors that might be of considerable import in explaining what happens to a social movement and its "member" organizations. Thus there is usually a great deal of attention paid to the beliefs of the movement, to the type of people who join, and particularly to the leadership of movement organizations. Concern is also sometimes expressed about how the organizations making up a movement support and maintain themselves, but even that concern is usually focused on what individuals do in this regard.
This psychologizing of the problem is well-illustrated in the area of new religions. There is a great deal of concern in our society about the rapid growth of new religious movements. Some even claim that a major crisis exists because of the development of new religions. Much of the attention in this area has been given to group leadership, and many commentators claim there is considerable authoritarian leadership in the new religions. There is much speculation about why otherwise well-to-do, well-educated youth would take such a drastic step of cutting ties with society by affiliation with a new and strange group. Thus "brainwashing" and "mind control" myths have evolved and are circulated as supposedly adequate explanatory devices to understand why people join, why they stay, and implicitly, why the movement organizations are successful (a movement cannot be successful without members).
Supposedly, under these myths, a leader who is interested in financial gain, sexual favors, or just plain power starts a new group using some extraordinary powers of hypnosis or mind control. He somehow "zaps" potential converts simply by looking them in the eye and uttering a few magical phrases, or by tricking them into participating in a high pressure group recruitment process. Thus the recruit falls completely under his command, and becomes a deployable robot, also, interestingly, imbued with this magical power to trick people into joining. These new converts go out and convert even more people through similar processes, and the new group is off and running. This process allegedly will cause the group to continue growing until it is huge and threatening to society. The membership is controlled via some type of ESP, and through this mental power all the members do the masters' bidding for eighteen hours a day or more. The organization continues to grow because this power of the leader, even if passed on through member evangelizers, is so strong as to defy efforts by the converts to leave. Thus, so the myth goes, once a Moonie (or Hare Krishna, or Divine Light Mission, or Children of God) recruiter "looks you in the eye," you are a "goner," destined to live out your life as virtually a slave to the omnipotent group leader./1/
This mythology about why and how new religions start and succeed is very appealing, particularly to those who feel somehow threatened by the growth of new religions. Such myths furnish ammunition for fighting the growths of new religions. Thus deprogramming, legislative action, and governmental bureaucratic controls of various kinds (using the brainwashing myth as a justification) may be visited upon new religions. The myth is, as Anthony, Robbins, and McCarthy have said, a "social weapon" to use against unpopular groups./2/ The myths abound because they serve a serious function in our society, that being social control of deviant groups with their strange belief systems and practices. However, these myths are almost totally useless as explanatory devices about why social movements start, grow, and maintain themselves (or die out) over time. Carried to their logical conclusion the myths suggest that everyone in a society would, if the powers of the leaders and his or her agents are as claimed, be compelled to join a given movement. The obvious fact that this is not the case with new religions, and that most of the new groups are really quite small and growing slowly, if at all, puts the lie to the myth. The high attrition rates that scholars have found in the new groups undercut the myth, and instead support more "normal" explanations about why and how people join such groups and why they also leave./3/
Some still insist that the myths of brainwashing and mind control "work" by pointing to the small cadre of full-time and long-term members in the group, implying that "obviously" no one would remain in such strange groups for any length of time if they were really acting out of their own volition. Thus the high attrition rates are dismissed, on the grounds that only a minority of people are susceptible to the brainwashing and mind control, but that brainwashing still works with that minority and thus the groups should still be controlled or even stamped out completely. Such claims refuse to address the solid evidence accumulating from scholars administering personality assessment tests to members of various new religions, resulting in the finding that members are fairly normal people, and, further, that they are not mentally ill or unable to function normally./4/ Pages 163-164.
Notes:
/1/ This admittedly overdrawn mythological interpretation of new religions is illustrated in the work of Richard Delgado, a legal scholar, and of Margaret Singer and John Clark, two prominent psychiatrists associated with the Anti-Cult Movement. See Richard Delgado, "Limits to Proselytizing," 17(3) Society 25 (1980); John Clark, "Cults," 24(3) "Journal of the American Medical Association 281 (1979); Margaret Singer, "Coming Out of the Cults," 12 "Psychology Today" 72 (1979).
/2/ Dick Anthony, Tom Robbins, and Jim McCarthy, "Legitimating Repression," 17(3) Society 39 (1980).
/3/ See Fred Bird and Bill Reimer, "Participation Rates in New Religious Movements and Para-religious Movements," 21(1) Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 1 (1982); James T. Richardsons, "Conversion, Brainwashing, and Deprogramming," 15(2) The Center Magazine 18 (1982); David Bromley and James T. Richardson (eds.), The Brainwashing/Deprogramming Controversy (Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983).
/4/ See Marc Galanter, "Psychological Induction Into a Larger Group: Findings from a Modern Religious Sect," 137 American Journal of Psychiatry 1574 (1980); Marc Galanter, R. Rabkin, J. Rabkin, and A. Deutsch, "`The Moonies': A Psychological Study," 136 American Journal of Psychiatry 165 (1979); Thomas Ungerleider and D.K. Wellisch, "Coercive Persuasion (Brainwashing), Religious Cults and Deprogramming," 136 American Journal of Psychiatry 279 (1979); J.T. Richardson, "Psychological and Psychiatric Studies of Members of new Religions," in New Perspectives in Psychology of Religion, ed. L. Brown (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983); Anne-Sofie Rosen and Ted Nordquist, "Ego Developmental Levels and Values in a Yogic Community," 39(b) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1980).
A. The Sociological Context
To see a friend or offspring accept a strange set of beliefs is one thing, but to see them get involved in a totalistic communal living situation is worse, at least from the point of view of some members of society. And, in an economic situation in which well-paying jobs are rare, many parents are upset to see their children leave the competition for jobs and opt for life as a chanting Hare Krishna member or as a fund-raiser for the Moonies. Some of the parents simply cannot believe that their children would, of their own volition, choose such a life. To admit such a choice is to admit that their son or daughter rejected them, their values, and perhaps more importantly, the hope and plans that those parents had for the offspring in terms of education and occupation. This insight about the concern of many parents over affiliation helps explain why there had developed such a strong critique of the new movements in the media, and why the so-called "anti-cult" movement has gained such impetus in our society./11/ Some relatively affluent parents of members are located strategically within society in terms of access to resources that can be used to combat the new religions. Thus there has been, as one important result, an encouragement of the expansionist state by a number of parents and anti-cult organizations. The strong demand that government (at various levels) "do something about the cults" has been aided by media attention to the new religions.
The confluence of these and other conditions have resulted in the new religions encountering a general negative response from some major institutions within society. This may seem surprising since America is renown for its propensity to select religious solutions to problems of personal or social disorganization, and past waves of revivalism have not usually met with such strong animosity. But that same American religious consciousness has revealed some remarkably intolerant episodes, such as a reaction to certain practices of Mormons. Similarly, the oddness of some of the new religions' beliefs and practices has contributed to a reaction against them, and that reaction has been compounded by the tendency for the expansionist state and other key segments of society to adopt a general negative position vis a vis the new religions. Thus the various levels and some segments of the state and of major institutions, such as organized religion and the psychiatric and "helping" professions, have joined together to defend against the encroachment of the new religions into their hard-won territory.
This generally negative reaction has become a fact of life for many new religions, and has helped shape them into different kinds of organizations than they might have become otherwise. Those that have attracted the most attention have become "deformed" by virtue of their having to invest considerable resources in defensive capabilities. Pages 167-168.
Notes:
/11/ Anson Shupe, Jr., and David Bromley, The New Vigilantes (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980).
/12/ See Brock Kilbourne and J.T. Richardson, "Psychotheraphy and New Religions in a Pluralistic Society," American Psychologist (1983) for one analysis of this conflict between institutions in our society. See also J.T. Richardson, "From Cult to Sect: Creative Eclecticism in New Religions," Pacific Sociological Review 139 (1979), for another discussion of general external pressures on new religions.
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OUTLINE No.7:
THE FUTURE OF NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS, edited by David G. Bromley and Phillip E. Hammond, Mercer University Press, 1987
I. The Development of Hare Krishna (Chapter 8), by E. Burke Rochford, Jr.
A. Sources of Tension
ACM's (anti-cult movement) main targets
II. The Future of the Anticult Movement (Chapter 15), by David G. Bromley and Anson Shupe
A. Formative Stage
Early history and organisation of the ACM
Ideology of ACM
Semantics
B. Expansionist Stage
Professionals join
Expert witnesses
Anti-cult legislation
Recruiting ex-members
Deprogramming
Mainline religious affliation with ACM
NRMs vs. ACM
C. Institutional Stage
Present tactics of ACM
Child abuse charges
Medical care
Regulatory role over religious practices
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EXCERPTS No.7:
THE FUTURE OF NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS, edited by David G. Bromley and Phillip E. Hammond, Mercer University Press, 1987
I. The Development of Hare Krishna (Chapter 8), by E. Burke Rochford, Jr.
A. Sources of Tension
There can be little question that the Unification Church, Hare Krishna, the Children of God, and the Church of Scientology have been at the heart of the cult controversy in America over the past decade. These four groups have been the major targets of the anticult movement as well as the center of media attention regarding the new religions. Furthermore, these groups have been the major target of deprogramming efforts, legal action, and a variety of other measures meant to suppress their influence in America. As a result, these groups have been forced to rely largely on covert strategies to recruit new members and to mobilize other resources.
THE FUTURE OF NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS, Page 113.
II. The Future of the Anticult Movement (Chapter 15), by David G. Bromley and Anson Shupe
The ACM could become a major interest group possessing the capacity to influence in a significant way the definition of "legitimate" and "illegitimate" religion, or it may lapse into relative obscurity as have many countermovements that have opposed earlier waves of new religious groups.
A. Formative Stage
The ACM originated from the individual, localized efforts of family members of recruits to new religious movements during the early 1970s. Initially such complaintants concerned themselves with the Children of God (a Jesus-movement offshoot founded in the late 1960s), but soon a network of persons concerned about sons/daughters/siblings recruited into other groups such as the Unification Church, the Hare Krishnas, Scientology, and the Divine Light Mission formed (Shupe and Bromley, 1980). During the formative stage, the ACM grew from a collection of individual families with no previous contact to dozens of regional groups, composed of parents and family members, linked in a loosely organized national network. One major factor in the coalescing of these persons was the mass media, which found the families' stories of sudden transformation and alleged "psychological kidnapping" (for example, brainwashing) good sensationalistic press. It was through such press accounts that parents learned of their common plight. However, the countermovement at this point was still difficult to mobilize for any concerted efforts. It was, for example, fragmented in terms of ideology regarding the freedom of will that individuals possessed when they were drawn to such groups (for example, evangelical--which theologically posited an element of free choice--versus secular, which maintained that no reasonable person would voluntarily join a "cult" except through being a victim of a combination of guile, seduction, and brainwashing) as well as by the means appropriate for "rescuing" "cult" members (for example, coercive kidnapping/ deprogramming versus noncoercive dialogue). Furthermore, proponents of the secular mind-control theory had yet to delineate precisely how this control was achieved and maintained. There was a motley and often inconsistent set of explanations: sensory deprivation and sensory overload, denial of food and improper dietary mix, physical subversion through drugging and mental subversion through hypnosis.
Organizationally, the ACM's component groups were fragile and small. They were often operated more on the basis of zeal and ideology than from any sound organizational expertise. For example, the membership base was usually limited (de facto) to the family members (and a few sympathetic friends) of young adults who had become involved in controversial religious groups, in large measure because the ACM limited the range of issues it addressed and the linkage of those issues to more general public concerns. Since many new religious groups had a fairly high turnover of members, ACM groups likewise faced unstable membership and commitment problems as well as lack of organizational continuity. Further the financial resources of such ACM groups were closely tied to the voluntary donations of members (which were often pitifully inadequate). There were few systematic membership fees or other ways of raising money. A number of groups, including some we researched, never survived this formative stage.
These internal features that lent ACM groups organizational precariousness were complicated by several other factors. First, the ACM had persistent difficulties in attaining a viable national coalition. Many small local groups jealously guarded their autonomy. There were frequent disagreements over whether to centralize or federate in setting up any umbrella organization. A number of attempts at unification failed because no consensus (and the accompanying financial support) for such a large group could be reached. Second, ACM leadership was part-time and voluntary, analogous to that found in community service groups. Often, organizational effectiveness was achieved only when some crusading individual assumed personal responsibility for most group functions. Likewise, the questionably legitimate "deprogrammers" who operated in vigilante fashion (and typically had no formal connections to ACM groups) were either amateurs who assumed this role for a limited time or were individuals who tried to carve out a career but eventually experienced serious legal difficulties as a result of their exploits. Third, the ACM had not yet built up a legion of angry ex-"cult" members to testify as to "cult" "atrocities," and the journalistic media had not yet peaked in focusing attention on certain groups. Indeed, as we found in our analysis of early 1970s press coverage of the Unification Church, reporting of the "Moonies" was laudatory and uncritical, Moon being often portrayed as a benign Korean version of Billy Graham (Bromley and Shupe, 1979: 149-67). There was a delay of several years between ACM formation and the full-scale negative media coverage of "cults" that eventually ensued.
The most important single development during the formative stage was the focusing of ACM ideology on one overriding explanation of how otherwise exotic, authoritarian "cults" could attract America's allegedly best and brightest youth. This was the resilent "thought control/brainwashing" explanation resurrected from the Korean War era. Despite the fact that little evidence has been produced that Communist persuasion and coercion resulted in any significant number of defections, there is a substantial scientific literature investigating the phenomenon, as well as a widespread public belief in and fear of brainwashing. Thus, the brainwashing explanation provided families with a superficially plausible model of seemingly "bizarre" behavior that did not place any stigma on either themselves or their errant ("cult") family members, and it came embellished with the legitimacy of science. Even more importantly, it created the basis for placing a diverse array of new religious groups under the rubric "cults." Groups referred to as "cults" had as their first and foremost alleged characteristic manipulative recruitment and socialization practices. This combination of "cult" and "brainwashing" as the basis for ACM ideology allowed the coalition of distraught family members to coalesce around what appeared to be a common problem. Pages 221-224.
B. Expansionist Stage
The changing composition of its membership base was one such sign. Originally, members were almost exclusively parents, siblings, and other relatives of young adult converts to unconventional religions. Gradually, however, there was the creation of a membership corps that included other than directly affected parties: lawyers, clergy, mental health professionals, and social scientists, among others. The professionals in this network were particularly important, for they provided the expertise in drafting anticult legislation, offering expert testimony when former members brought legal suits, and providing exit counseling. While this sympathetic contingent never grew large relative to the majority of family-related ACM constituents (and its members were never representative of the views of their respective professions), it nevertheless was to play a significant part in helping to legitimize and encourage the entire countermovement. Another such sign was the discovery of new and diverse financial bases such as civil suits, corporate and charitable grants, sales of materials, raffles, dues and subscriptions, and workshop fees. The combination of payments to deprogrammers, attorneys' fees for lawyers successful in handling civil suits, proceeds to ACM members from workshops on "destructive cultism," and consulting fees for expert witnesses helped to sustain the network of ACM members in the face of a still inadequate organizational resource base.
The ACM also refined the crude "brainwashing" ideology (for example, in terms of "cult-imposed personality syndromes," "self-inducted personality regression," and "destructive cultism"). The easily disconfirmed allegation of drugs being placed in food and the allegation of spot hypnosis (originated by Ted Patrick, the "father" of deprogramming) gave way to more clinically based conceptions of mind control. These latter conceptions facilitated participation of sympathetic social scientists and mental health practitioners on the ACM's behalf and created the appearance of a strong scientific basis for ACM ideology. In time this brainwashing ideology was widely accepted by many mainstream leaders in both politics and religion (see Boettcher and Freedman, 1980; and Shupe, Bromley, and Oliver, 1984:51-80) as well as by the public at large.
One of the most important developments during the expansionist stage was the aggressive recruitment and cultivation of "apostates" (that is, ex-"cult") members who often had been forcibly abducted from their respective deviant groups, held involuntarily for a time, and eventually convinced to recant their religious memberships and to testify that these previous memberships had never been of their own choosing. Such persons provided the popular media with images of innocent, idealistic youth transformed into fanatical zombies. These ex-members served an invaluable function for the ACM as they were able to provide the firsthand "smoking gun" "evidence" that life within "cults" was indeed as horrible as outsiders (particularly their families) had imagined (Shupe and Bromley, 1981). The simple fact that deprogrammers could physically abduct and confine members of new religious groups and that within a few days (or sometimes a matter of hours) these individuals would renounce the group and testify that they had been brainwashed lent powerful credence to the brainwashing allegations. In this way they added immeasurably to the ACM's credibility and stoked the fires of public concern. Apostates often were brought into deprogrammings to achieve a rapport and common experience base with the deprogrammee that many "professional" deprogrammers could not. These apostates were very effective in recruiting new members for deprogramming teams once they had been convinced of the error of their previous ways. Meanwhile. a series of frustrated attempts to create a national umbrella ACM organization, either centralized or confederated, continued throughout the 1970s (Shupe and Bromley, 1980:87-120). So although the loose confederation of regional groups continued (with each monitoring and opposing the activities of "cults" within its specified territory and on occasion cooperating in unified lobbying and publicity efforts with its allies but not pooling critical financial resources), during this time there was a process of selective survival. The American Family Foundation and the Citizens Freedom Foundation became the dominant organizations within the ACM. New initiatives such as seeking grant funding, establishing a research base, and beginning a dialogue with opponents represented efforts to move the ACM away from its parochial, isolated position. Many of the small regional anticult groups struggled on in relative obscurity or disappeared altogether, never solving the dilemmas of high membership turnover and narrow reliance on memberships and gifts.
At the same time, a number of important alliances portending an indefinite future existence for the modern ACM were forged. Various religious groups (for example, fundamentalist Christians, some representatives of mainline denominations, and many Jewish associations) as well as some sympathetic politicians at state and federal levels supported ACM complaints by offering workshops and conferences, holding public hearings, and even proposing legislation dealing with the "cult" problem. The newer religious groups targeted by the modern ACM also became incorporated into the older conservative Christian category of "cults," linking the new countermovement to a much older sectarian one. Thus it was not unusual by the early 1980s to find anticult books dealing simultaneously with the Unification Church, the Hare Krishna movement, the Church of Scientology, and the defunct People's Temple as well as Christian Science, Mormonism, and Jehovah's Witnesses.
It is ironic that, as the ACM began its period of aggressive expansion during the mid-1970s, many of the highly visible groups it opposed had either leveled off in growth or even entered a state of decline. This is true not only for the more radical millennial groups such as the Children of God, which divorced itself from the more conventional Jesus Movement, but also for visible groups such as the Unification Church, the Hare Krishnas, and the Divine Light Mission (see Bromley and Shupe, 1981:26-46; and Pilarzyk, 1978). Such developments in these religious groups occurred partly for internal reasons but also in large part because of the news media's discrediting reports about their activities. The media disseminated in uncritical fashion ACM claims and apostate accounts to create widespread public acceptance of the "mind-control" and "cult" stereotypes. Although toward the end of the ACM's first decade of operation, there could be seen a gradual trend toward "balanced coverage" (as anticultism alone ceased to be newsworthy), the news media were still dominated by negative images of many religious groups.
The overall result of a decade of skirmishing has been a standoff. Each side has had its share of victories and defeats, and neither has any immediate prospects of winning a decisive triumph. Both sides have moderated their stances to enhance their public respectability. New religious groups have accommodated to conventional society in a number of respects, and the ACM has begun backing away from its vigilante-style tactics. Still, the ACM has continued to hold the upper hand. There is widespread public perception that indeed a "cult problem" exists. The fear and mistrust of "cults" has led to a continuing barrage of negative media coverage, governmental investigation, litigation, and "educational" campaigns, all of which have kept these groups on the defensive. Although the conflict no longer occupies the center stage of public attention, new religious groups continue to operate under the onus of public stigma. Pages 225-229.
C. Institutional Stage
The ACM's ideological underpinnings are vulnerable, as the "brainwashing" explanation for "cult" membership finds little confirmation in a mounting body of social science research findings. Finally, current ACM ideology and practice run afoul of recent judicial trends. Arguments that "cults" are pseudoreligions, for example, run counter to recent Supreme Court decisions that broaden the range of beliefs and practices accorded religious status, and the justices remain reluctant to construct a definition of religion. Up to the present, at least, all of the major "cults" whose status as religious groups has been challenged have passed court tests. Brainwashing and deprogramming cases also indicate that the ACM faces significant legal problems. Despite ACM claims that both brainwashing and deprogramming are neutral procedures and bear no relation to the substantive content of religious belief and practice, in fact both challenges to recruitment/socialization techniques and attempts to induce members of"cults" to renounce their affiliations inevitably involve inquiry about or challenge to religious beliefs and practices. Federal courts in particular have stood firm in not allowing erosion of fights in this area.
There is some evidence that the ACM is exploring alternative strategies that offer greater potential for broadening its influence while avoiding some of the pitfalls of its current strategies. Some ACM proponents have begun focusing attention on abuse of children, spouses, and elderly members in small religious groups, with child abuse the dominant issue (Rudin, 1982). Although this new focus is still very tentative, it offers the ACM a clearer field to exploit. There is widespread American mistrust of "radical" religion (as a result of the legacy of Jonestown, the excesses of the Islamic revolution, and the rhetorical hubris of the new Christian right) that is relatively independent of concerns about "cults." By emphasizing specific practices that might be regulated rather than attempting to define certain groups as pseudoreligions or "cults," the ACM could harness and channel these concerns. Child abuse has become a high-visibility issue in the United States, and recently there has been considerable media coverage of child "abuse" based on religious tenets ("Matters of Faith and Death," Time, 16 April 1984, 42; "Seven Million Dollar Lawsuit," The Utah Evangel, May, 1984; "The Rod of Correction," Time, 11 June 1984, 33). In addition, this new strategy offers the prospect for regulating behaviors irrespective of their avowedly religious context. There is already precedent, for example, to limit parental control over medical care given to children even when religious precepts govern parental decision making. So, for example, members of Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Science may refuse medical treatment for themselves, consistent with their religious beliefs, even in life-threatening situations; but they may not refuse treatment for their children in similar situations. Finally, regulating specific practices of this genre offers the possibility for confronting a large number of groups not now designated as "cults." In fact, since practices and not groups are the ostensible target, mainline churches could be involved as well.
This single issue, of course, would not be sufficient to sustain the ACM; however, there is reason to believe that such a new agenda could be broadened once it is established. If, for example, present trends in social welfare thinking continue, abuse will involve psychological as well as physical components; such an expansion would offer virtually limitless opportunities to regulate family practices based on religious tenets. Pages 230-232.
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OUTLINE No.8:
MIND-BENDING: Brainwashing, Cults, and Deprogramming in the '80s, by Lowell D. Streiker, Doubleday, 1984
I. Brainwashing and Deprogramming (Chapter 10)
A. Defining Destructive Cultism
ACM (anti-cult movement) semantics
Definition and attributes of a "cult" according to ACM
ACM's anti-Christian and anti-missionary element
Deprogramming of Jews from Christian groups
Mental health of members of NRMs
B. What Is Brainwashing?
Influences the ACM doesn't agree with
C. Brainwashing and the Anticult Network
NRMs blamed for parent/child differences
Brainwashing
Influencing others
Mind control
Deprogramming
Ted Patrick: deprogrammer
D. Information Disease and Sudden Personality Change
Deprogramming
Mental health charges by ACM
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EXCERPTS No.8:
MIND-BENDING: Brainwashing, Cults, and Deprogramming in the '80s, by Lowell D. Streiker, Doubleday, 1984
[Lowell D. Streiker is the founder and Executive Director of Freedom Counseling Center in Burlingame, California. He lives in Foster City, California, a suburb of San Francisco.
He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University. After teaching religion at Temple University for eight years, he served as a member of the national campaign staff of United States Senator Henry M. ("Scoop") Jackson. In addition, he was co-producer and moderator of the television series "Counterpoint" on WCAU-TV (CBS) in Philadelphia. From 1976 to 1979, he was Executive Director of the Mental Health Association of San Mateo County, California. Previously, he was Executive Director of the Mental Health Association of Delaware. In Delaware, he assisted in the rewriting of mental health statutes and spearheaded efforts for the renovation or closing of inhumane treatment facilities.
Raised in a religiously uncommitted Jewish home, he converted to Christianity at college. He is the author, co-author, and editor of ten books.]
I. Brainwashing and Deprogramming (Chapter 10)
A. Defining Destructive Cultism
In the early seventies, the major ACN issue was cults. What was a cult? According to the ACN literature of that period, a cult was a missionary religious group based on the allegiance to a leader with absolute power. A cult engaged in witnessing, proselytizing, and solicitation of funds. A cult had beliefs and rituals (such as chanting, speaking in tongues, prayer, meditation, etc.). Cults were described further as sexually immoral, life-denying, thought-disparaging, law-breaking, brainwashing, controlling, and violent. Cult converts, it was claimed, were recruited through deception, were hypnotized or brainwashed into becoming glassy-eyed robots or zombies, and underwent incredible personality and behavioral changes. Cult members were said to labor long hours for no wages, to dress in peculiar costumes, to eat unnourishing food, to be deprived of sleep. Anticult psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists described cultists as suffering from thought control, coercive persuasion, mindlessness, loss of freedom of choice, thought reform, trancelike states, damaged health, limited self-concepts, impaired logical reasoning, and regression to the level of childlike dependence. Such persons would readily abandon school and family relationships, sell everything and give the money to their cult leaders, and assume a new identity.
In sum, a cult was a high-demands religious sect which brainwashed its members. The three essential elements were "religious," "demanding," and "brainwashing." However, anticultists who were themselves religious--e.g., Catholics, Jews, and born-again Christians--subtly removed the religious dimension by redefining cults as "pseudo-religions." If a cult is not religious at all but only pretends to be, then we are left with "demanding" and "brainwashing" as the necessary and sufficient definers of cultism. So any group which brainwashes the unwary into joining and brainwashes its converts into doing as they are told--that is, acceding to the demands of the group or leader--is a cult.
There were other reasons for removing the characteristic "religious" from the list of obnoxious traits. It is quite possible for a young adult to convert to a movement which, in the eyes of established religious "authorities"--even authorities respected by the convert's parents--is theologically orthodox yet unacceptable on other grounds. Many leading ACNers are Jews who are opposed to missionary movements which encourage young adults to leave Judaism. Yet many of these movements are accepted and supported by large segments of the evangelical Christian community--America's most influential religious population. My own history, which has led from religiously uncommitted Judaism to evangelical Christianity to a middle-of-the-road denominational Protestantism, is just as threatening to such Jewish ACNers as conversion to the Hare Krishnas. In fact, deprogrammings of Jews from evangelical groups such as Jews for Jesus, Crossroads, and Maranatha are commonplace.
In a society which tolerates cross-cultural changes of religious allegiance, how can Jewish parents engage in forcible counter-conversion of converts to Christianity? The solution has been the dropping of religious criteria from the definition of "cult".
In reality, the ACN has become the anti-brainwashing league, an association of parents who have attempted to deal with their children's disavowal of parental attitudes, values, and moderation with immoderate rhetoric and radical intervention. Why? Because a mental dysfunction or a brain disease or a thought disorder placed their children (who average about twenty-three years of age) in grave jeopardy, annulled their civil rights, and necessitated extreme remedial actions. Pages 148-150.
B. What Is Brainwashing?
I am in total agreement with the "antipsychiatry psychiatrist" Thomas Szasz, M.D., on this point. As Szasz has written:
The critical question thus becomes: What is "brainwashing"? Are there, as the term implies, two kinds of brains: washed and unwashed? How do we know which is which?
Actually, it is all quite simple. Like many dramatic terms, "brainwashing" is a metaphor. A person can no more wash another's brain with coercion or conversation than he can make him bleed with a cutting remark.
If there is no such thing as brainwashing, what does this metaphor stand for? It stands for one of the most universal human experiences and events, namely for one person influencing another. However, we do not call all types of personal or psychological influences "brainwashing." We reserved this term for influences of which we disapprove. ... ("Some Call It Brainwashing," The New Republic, March 6, 1976.) Page 153.
C. Brainwashing and the Anticult Network
I wonder how seriously the first applications by the ACN of the concept of brainwashing to religions cultism were? When people are upset with one another's stubbornness, they often accuse each other of being brainwashed--particularly when a third party is seen as an influence. But they rarely mean that the third party has obtained attitudinal conversion through physical brutality, psychological pressure, intensive interrogation, etc., in a totally regimented and controlled environment. Such loose usages have been commonplace for thirty years. And "brainwashing" has been frequently applied both popularly and academically to religious phenomena. The critics of revivalism have often accused Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, tent evangelists, Campus Crusade for Christ, et al. of brainwashing. British psychiatrist William Sergeant explored the parallels between mass evangelism and North Korean brainwashing in his 1957 book, The Battle for the Mind, and at about the same time, D. A. Windermuller, a Boston University doctoral candidate, compared and contrasted Communist brainwashing techniques with the methods used to induce religious conversion during the eighteenth-century evangelical revivals. The scholarly examinations left me with the impression that there are techniques for making people feel uncomfortable and ways to offer them the adoption of a new identity as a means of escaping that discomfort. The techniques are not all that mysterious--they have been used by salesmen, politicians, prophets, and pimps for centuries. "Brainwashing" is a term of opprobrium, which indicates that the speaker does not approve of the consequences of the process upon the subject. "Conversion" and "reform" are terms which indicate the speaker's approval of the results.
Ted Patrick gained notoriety for seriously applying the term "brainwashing" to religions cults and for the coercive methods which he justified on the basis of such alleged brainwashing. Patrick's world is as dualistically black and white as any cultist's. The universe is divided into heroes and villains. The villains have mysterious "ESP mind control" powers which enable them to hypnotize or brainwash gullible youth on the spot. During the indoctrination phase, the brainwashers implant posthypnotic suggestions which continue to control the recruit for the rest of his or her life. Through deprogramming, the mind is forced to return to life and work once more like a recharged automobile battery. The key element in the reversal of brainwashing is the skillful use of interrogation, asking the cult "victim" questions which he or she cannot answer on the basis of the cult-formatted programming. But the implanted suggestions continue to threaten the deprogrammee, causing him or her to "float" between cult and post-cult identities. The solution is to isolate the deprogrammee from possible cult influences, redirect his or her attention away from possible cues which would retrigger the posthypnotic suggestions (e.g., Patrick discourages deprogrammees from reading the Bible), inundate the subject with affection, attention, and entertainment, and involve him or her in deprogramming activities as soon as possible and for as long as practical. This summary of the Patrick approach is derived from his book Let Our Children Go, various interviews which have appeared in the media, and my own conversations with him and members of his organization.
Patrick is a semi-literate, virtually uneducated former truck driver who is totally unfamiliar with scholarly/professional examinations of hypnosis, mental illness, conversion phenomena, family therapy, etc. He is not a theorist but an activist, a self-appointed warrior against dark forces. He believes that American religious cultism is the creation and pawn of Communism, a means of overthrowing America by subverting the minds of the young. He is a conspiracy theorist who believes that virtually all tragedies of the past generation (political assassinations, mass murders, terrorism, and the like) were deliberately caused by "the Communists" and are the direct result of Communist experiments in mind control. Now that his repeated convictions for kidnapping and the huge costs of his defense attorneys' fees have diverted him from active involvement in snatch operations, he is advertising that he has developed a new, improved treatment for brainwashed victims which does not require coercion, takes only forty-five minutes to four hours, can readily be taught to anyone, and will soon be made available in reasonably priced seminars. He described the innovative approach in remarks made before the 1982 national conference of Citizens Freedom Foundation. "It's simple," he explains. "All you have to do is locate the hypnotic suggestion, reach into the mind, and remove it." Pages 154-156.
D. Information Disease and Sudden Personality Change
The most influential (and to date the sole) book-length exposition of the hypothesis that cults use brainwashing which can only be reserved by deprogramming is Snapping by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman.
The term "snapping" is used by Ted Patrick and other deprogrammers to refer not only to sudden conversion but to sudden deconversion. When the cultist becomes aware that he has been had by the cult leader's brainwashing, he is said to have snapped, "like a light switch being turned on."
But whatever the merits of Snapping, its overall effect has been insidious. For it popularizes the notion that if your progeny adopt a lifestyle at variance with your values, then it may safely be inferred that your offspring are suffering from a mental illness and that you have the right and the obligation to have them kidnapped and deprogrammed, preferably by Ted Patrick. Notice also how the Conway-Siegelman jeremiad spreads from religious cults to the human potential movement to est to the Manson family to the Son of Sam to evangelical Christians to television viewing. Anything which reaches above the threshold of boredom is suspect. Obviously there is a whole lot of brainwashing going on, and very little of it by the handful of religious sects lambasted by the ACN. Pages 163-166.
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OUTLINE No.9:
MONEY AND POWER IN THE NEW RELIGIONS, edited by James T. Richardson, Edwin Mellen Press, 1988
I. Use of Money by New Religions, by James T. Richardson
A. Spending in Specific New Religions
Benefits of NRMs
Case history of ex-COG member utilizing his COG training in secular world
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EXCERPTS No.9:
MONEY AND POWER IN THE NEW RELIGIONS, edited by James T. Richardson, Edwin Mellen Press, 1988
I. Use of Money by New Religions, by James T. Richardson
A. Spending in Specific New Religions
If an organization spends money that directly or indirectly results in its members learning trades and skills which are of long-term benefit to the members, then such should be noted by those discussing the economic policies and practices of the new religions. 4
Notes:
4I have had several conversations with a man who joined the COG [Children of God] several years ago after he found out his planned entrance into law school was impossible because of his low scores on the entrance exam. He spent several years traveling for the COG, during which time he learned several languages fluently. Currently, although he still has some connection with the Church, he is a language instructor at an overseas language institute, a job obtained directly because of his language skills gained while serving as a COG missionary. Such situations are by no means rare and serve to illustrate the training and reintegrative functions of some of the new religious groups, (See Robbins, Anthony, and Curtis, (1975); Richardson, et. al., (1979:97-99); Mauss and Petersen, (1974); Richardson, et. al., 1986; and Beckford, (1978), for discussions of reintegration issues.) Page 153.
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OUTLINE No.10:
NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS, A Practical Introduction, by Eileen Barker, HMSO, London, 1989
I. Introduction
NRMs can be of God
II. Some Characteristics of New Religious Movements (Chapter 1)
A. Socio-economic status and age of membership
People's Temple (of Jim Jones) was NOT branded a "cult" until after the tragedy
III. Conversion or Mind Control? (Chapter 2)
A. The brainwashing thesis
Brainwashing
Mind control
Deprogramming
Ex-members
B. Conversion processes and techniques of persuasion
Joining NRMs
IV. What Do New Religious Movements Offer Potential Converts? (Chapter 3)
Attributes of joining NRMs
V. The New Convert (Chapter 4)
New converts
Standards of society: What is `normal'?
Conversion experience
Parents of new members
VI. Areas of Public Concern (Chapter 5)
A. Assessing `atrocity tales'
Media
Atrocity stories
Ex-members
Semantics
Suicide statistics: Society and NRMs
Media hype
VII. Effects on the Individual (Chapter 6)
A. Mental health
Conversion
Mental health of members and ex-members
VIII. Forcible Deprogramming (Chapter 11)
Contracting deprogrammers
Kidnapping
Deprogramming converts to mainstream religions
Ted Patrick
Government and Churches response to deprogramming
Ex-members against deprogramming
Conviction of deprogrammers
Cost of deprogrammings
A. Consequences of `failure'
Unsuccessful deprogrammings
Mental Health vigilantes
Mental breakdowns
B. Consequences of `success'
Deprogrammees
Charges of `coercion' exonerates defectors
Deprogrammees join ACM (anti-cult movement)
IX. Leaving a Movement (Chapter 13)
Condition of ex-members
Types of ex-members
Ex-members and the ACM
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EXCERPTS No.10:
NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS, A Practical Introduction, by Eileen Barker, HMSO, London, 1989
[Eminent in her field, Eileen Barker is a sociologist of religion at the London School of Economics and the only non-American to be elected President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. She is well-known throughout her publications (such as the award-winning The Making of a Moonie), her media appearances, and as the founder of INFORM which, with the support of mainstream Churches and the Home Office, has helped numerous enquirers in this controversial area.]
I. Introduction
The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelizations wrote in its Report "Reaching Mystics and Cultists":
There are thousands of [new religious] groups of which there is no doubt that they are of satanic origin. But, praise be to God, there are also thousands of new church movements in which, in spite of syncretism, the Spirit of God is at work. Where one ends and the other begins will require discernment that only God can give.22 Page 6.
Notes:
22 Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (1980), p.4.
II. Some Characteristics of New Religious Movements (Chapter 1)
A. Socio-economic status and age of membership
It is, incidentally, interesting to note that the People's Temple was not branded as a "cult" or classified as a new religious movement until after the tragic death of its members in Guyana in 1978. Page 15.
III. Conversion or Mind Control? (Chapter 2)
A. The brainwashing thesis
One of the most popular explanations that is given for people join an NRM is that they have been brainwashed or have undergone some kind of `mind control'. There are various reasons for the popularity of such an explanation, not the least of which is that it tends to absolve everyone (apart from the NRM in question) from any kind of responsibility.
The brainwashing explanation can also provide the rationale for "deprogramming"--the illegal kidnapping and holding of members of an NRM in an `involuntary setting' until they manage to escape and return to their movement, or they convince their captors, in truth or out of desperation, that they have renounced their faith and are "deprogrammed". Deprogramming is discussed in more detail in a later chapter.
There are those, such as deprogrammers with a financial interest in propagating the brainwashing thesis, who continue to ignore or dismiss such statistics, but they do so without providing any contrary evidence beyond the testimonies of a small number of ex-members, several of whom will have been taught, while undergoing forcible deprogramming, that they were brainwashed. Page 17-19.
B. Conversion processes and techniques of persuasion
Furthermore, serious research suggests that many of the processes involved in becoming a member of an NRM differ little, if at all, from the sorts of processes that occur in the family, the school, the army, or indeed, some traditional religions. There are those who have argued that adult conversion involves less control by others than that which is involved when a child is born into a family with a strongly held religious tradition. The Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada, in response to a request from the Ontario Government to state their reactions to the NRMs and the possibility of introducing new legislation to control their activities, came out strongly against the suggestion for a number of reasons, including the argument that:
Non-physical persuasion is already a widely experienced thing in our society. We ourselves practice it, in our evangelism and in our teaching, commonly with all Evangelical churches. Politicians practice it...Authorities in government practice it...And parents practice it in the ordinary processes of raising their children.44 Pages 19,20.
Notes:
44 Hill (1980), p.428.
IV. What Do New Religious Movements Offer Potential Converts? (Chapter 3)
Converts may claim that they have been freed from drug dependency, that they have been given self-respect when they had felt worthless, or direction when they had felt aimless. Others may claim that they had gained freedom to develop after years of having been constrained by those around them or by society in general. Furthermore, many of those who leave after a substantial period in an NRM will continue to insist that they gained much from their time in the movement, even if they eventually reached a point when they no longer felt it was for them. (See section on "Leaving a new religious movement" [Chapter 13, page 125].) Pages 25,26.
V. The New Convert (Chapter 4)
Those who join NRMs are by no means always, or even usually, the pathetic, weak, or susceptible characters that it is sometimes assumed they must be. Furthermore, the vast majority of members are unlikely to become pathetic, weak or susceptible characters. Members of NRMs are human beings who happen to be in a movement that is considered, both by them and by outsiders, to be `different'. It can be argued that people who believe unusual beliefs and who engage in unusual practices must be unusual people. But if `unusual' is being defined as unlike the majority of people in contemporary Western society, then it has to be admitted that most human beings living today, and almost all of those who have lived in the past, could be classified as `unusual'. Both history and anthropology clearly illustrate that what one group of people considers to be `natural' or `proper' behaviour, another group is quite capable of thinking bizarre, insane, `unnatural', `improper' or dangerous.'70 Just because a movement is `different', it does not mean that its members are of a different species. Changes in beliefs and behaviour need not be worrying just because they are changes. They could be changes for the worse; they could be changes for the better, most likely, they will be a mixture of both.
So far as the converts are concerned, there may have been a particular moment when suddenly they `saw the light'. Their life is likely to become defined and interpreted according to the `before' and `after' periods, both of which are likely to be seen in the `new light'--with, quite probably, `before' being miserable, worthless or evil and `after' being blissful, valuable or godly. Both the movement and the convert may (consciously or unconsciously) expend quite a lot of effort in reinforcing such an interpretation. Relatives and friends may also feel the need to interpret everything that has happened to the convert in `before' and `after' terms--although their evaluation of these two periods may differ quite radically from that of the convert.
The changes that the converts report vary enormously. ...
Although a conversion experience can appear quite dramatic, and some of them certainly are dramatic, there is, as mentioned earlier, usually both a period of preparation before, and a period of consolidation afterwards. It is during the period following an apparently sudden conversion that the convert is likely to be pretty open to suggestion both from the movement and from relatives, friends and others. Previous beliefs and values will have been questioned, but the new set of beliefs will not yet have been "lived".
There are several reasons why new converts might appear to be more frighteningly changed than they really are. Quite apart from the fact that they may have cut their hair and exchanged shabby jeans for flowing robes or a suit and tie, and quite apart from the fact that they may be giving up a course of' study or a promising career, the new converts may not themselves be entirely certain about, or completely understand, the new stand that they are taking. They are, therefore, likely to be on the defensive, particularly if' one of the reasons for their joining the movement was that they had felt the need to make a gesture of independence. Indeed, Saul Levine concluded, as the result of fifteen years of work with members of movements and their families, that the need to make a gesture of independence was the primary reason why the young adults whom he had studied joined an NRM.74
Because their new beliefs will not yet have become an integrated part of their everyday thinking, new converts are liable to suffer from an inability to be flexible in answering questions. This means that they often resort to the movement's incomprehensible jargon and sound as though they are spouting meaningless rubbish in a parrot-like fashion. They `know' that it makes sense at some level that they have glimpsed, but they are not yet able to explain it to others. Students often suffer the same disability before they have got `on top of a subject. It is also possible that the converts are so excited by the new truth which they believe they have discovered that they are eager to share this with others--especially those whom they most love. As a consequence, they may shower their bewildered parents with zealous admonitions to see the light as they themselves see it.
Outright rejection or ridicule by the parents in such a situation can lead to withdrawal by the son or daughter and the start of a downward spiral of mutual misunderstanding and recrimination. This process is greatly exacerbated if the parents are also frightened by sensational media reports, or they have been otherwise persuaded that their child is now a brainwashed robot who is incapable of independent thought. The parents might then start to `see' signs that their children are indeed `not themselves'. It is, however, unlikely that the converts will have been drastically manipulated by sinister techniques of mind control--and extremely unlikely that they will be suffering from any lasting (or even temporary) physiological damage. It is also very unlikely that they will be suffering from any lasting (or even temporary) psychological harm. In any case, it certainly does not help if converts are repeatedly told that they no longer have a mind of their own.
This is certainly not to suggest that parents may not notice some very real changes in their offspring's behaviour. Parents will, after all, have known their child since his or her birth, and it would be worrying if they were not to notice that their son or daughter was behaving differently. The very fact that converts have converted and taken on a new way of life will mean that they are more than likely to have changed in some ways. What conversion calls for has been described as:
a death and rebirth, the turning away from the darkness to walk in the light, a putting off of the old self to put on the new.75
Saint Paul was not the same after his journey on the road to Damascus. `Born again' Christians who take Jesus into their heart are unlikely to be the sorts of people that they were before conversion - they may have stopped drinking, taking drugs, swearing or sleeping around.
In other words, it is being suggested that relatives and friends of those who join NRMs should not immediately assume that all changes are to be interpreted as signs that something sinister has necessarily happened to the convert. Pages 33-36.
Notes:
70 See, for example, Mary Douglas Purity & Danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo, London: Routedge and Kegan Paul, 1966; and R.G. Collingwood An Autobiography, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1939, for discussions about `cultural relativism' from, respectively, an anthropological and a philosophical perspective.
74 Levine (1984).
75 J. Hanigan "Conversion and Christian Ethics", Theology Today, vol.40, no.1, p.25.
VI. Areas of Public Concern (Chapter 5)
A. Assessing `atrocity tales'
There are sections of the media, some individuals, and some groups that concentrate on relating `atrocity tales' with which they aim to demonstrate the essential evil of the cults.77 Several points ought to be borne in mind when assessing these accounts. First, they may be completely untrue. For example, a young man who claimed that he had been drugged, abducted, and held captive by members of ISKCON has recently been given a three-year suspended sentence in Dublin for making a false statement. The police had carried out an extensive investigation into the movement and the accusations brought against it, and had been able to prove that the whole fantastic story was little more than a figment of the young man's imagination. But the investigation took place only after the young man had made a number of sensational appearances and claims on Radio Telefts Eireann. He was reported to have been encouraged by a local priest who was "concerned at young people being subjected to the degenerate wiles of loony sects".78 There are further examples of `exposs', frequently by ex-members, which, upon investigation, have turned out to be fabrications, with the would-be exposer eventually admitting that he or she had made up the story.79
More commonly, an action may be described in such a way that it is being clearly labelled as `bad', while exactly the same action may be labelled as laudable when described in different words. For example, `conversion', `recruitment', `re-education', `secondary socialisation', `mind control', `menticide' and `brainwashing' may all be used to refer to the one process, but each term carries a very different nuance. Similarly, a life-style that is described as one of obedience and sacrificial devotion by one person may be described as one of authoritarian exploitation by another. Depending on the context in which they are used, words such as dedication, discipline, surrender and submission can be imbued with very different values.
And, as suggested earlier, the word `cult' has come to carry all manner of negative connotations which may not be at all appropriate when applied to certain organisations that are labelled by the term. In a study of media coverage of NRMs, van Driel and Richardson found that:
Before Jonestown, the various NRMs had been treated as idiosyncratic religious movements existing at the periphery of society. But after the profuse outpouring of information about the incident at Jonestown, the label of `cult' was firmly attached to a wide variety of movements, and they were all thrown, for a time, into a single, heavily stigmatized category.81
In a public opinion survey carried out in Washington D.C. shortly after the mass deaths of members of the People's Temple in Jonestown, over a quarter of the respondents expressed an unfavourable attitude towards a non-existent `spoof cult'.82
More subtly, when reporting some bad news or malpractice concerning an NRM, the story is often presented in such a way as to suggest that the occurrence is more typical of NRMs than it would be of the rest of society. If, for example, a member of an NRM commits suicide, attention is almost certain to be drawn to his or her affiliation to the movement, with the implication that the movement was responsible for the suicide. If, on the other hand, Methodists or Anglicans commit suicide, it is most unlikely that their religious identity will be mentioned. For all anyone knows, the suicide rate might be higher among Methodists or Anglicans than among Brahma Kumaris or Scientologists. Not surprisingly, the NRMs themselves are more likely to argue that they prevent people from committing suicide--there are certainly converts who claim that they would have killed themselves had they not found their new religion. One well-known NRM makes the point that the only one of its members who has committed suicide in Britain did so some time after having been `successfully' deprogrammed.
To try to resolve the truth of the matter it would be necessary (although not sufficient) to make a careful comparison of suicide rates among people of a similar age and background in the different groups. Unfortunately this information is not readily available--it is known that the number of suicides actually recorded in Britain in 1987 was 4,508, but as it is common practice for compassionate coroners to give an open verdict if there is any possibility of doubt, the actual number is likely to be considerably higher.83
Similarly, with regard to other issues, nothing but confusion is likely to arise from noticing only those cases that happen to have been brought to one's attention by the media or a person or group that is interested only in `atrocity tales'. In the same vein, it should be remembered that the breaking up of a family usually occurs without any NRM being involved, and that the numbers of young people who have no connection with any cult but are involved in drugs, violence, sexual promiscuity or who just `drop out' far exceeds the total numbers of people involved in such practices in all the NRMs put together.
None of this is to suggest that a tragedy is not a tragedy, or that a malpractice is not a malpractice--whenever it occurs. It is, however, to suggest that it might be sensible to look carefully at the facts before concluding that just because something worrying happens in an NRM it is necessarily because it is in an NRM that it has happened.84 There may be other reasons, and it may be that the NRM is being used as a convenient way of avoiding examining and coming to terms with those other reasons.
But why, one may still ask, is it that the NRMs are associated with atrocity tales? Is it because middle-class parents with high aspirations for their children do not like the idea of their child giving up a promising career to sell literature on the street, coupled with the fact that middleclass parents tend to be in a position to make a fuss when their child does just that? Is it because to talk about `my son the Moonie' or `my daughter the Scientologist' is seen in our society as a shameful admission of failure, while to talk about `my son the rabbi' or `my daughter the nun' is more acceptable?
Is it because certain sections of the media and the uninvolved public like a juicy story and exhibit a ghoulish pleasure in expos-type gossip about the `exotic', the `bizarre', the `sinister' and the `threatening'? Is it because, almost without exception throughout history, new religious movements (including early Christianity, Methodism, and the Salvation Army) have been treated with fear, mistrust, suspicion and hostility? Is it because the movements' criticisms of the Churches and of the secular, materialistic rat-race are seen to pose a threat to the establishment?--Or because the `alternative' therapies that they offer are seen as a threat to the professions whose conventional wisdom they scorn? Is it because professional deprogrammers can make tens of thousands of pounds by persuading people that they ought to be scared stiff?
There could be some truth in all these reasons. But there are also plenty of reasons that arise out of the actions of the movements themselves, rather than out of the reactions that they have elicited from others. Pages 39-42.
Notes:
77 For a discussion on the concept of `atrocity tales,' see Bromley & Shupe (1981); Beckford (1985); Shupe & Bromley (1980); and these authors in Barker (ed.) (1982).
78 See The Irish Times. 16 December 1988; The Irish Independent, 16 December 1988; and The Sunday Independent, 18 December 1988.
79 Melton (1986), p.243.
80 This was suggested in an article in La Suisse, 12 July 1988.
81 Barend van Driel and James T. Richardson "Print Media Coverage of New Religious Movements: A Longitudinal Study" Journal of Communication, 36/3 Summer 1988, p.54. See also James A. Beckford and Melanie A. Cole "British and American Responses to New Religious Movements" in Dyson and Barker (eds) (1988) pp.209-225.
82 Gillian Lindt and Albert Gollin in an unpublished paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Public Opinion Research, June 1979, p.18.
83 John Sweeney "The Marconi Mystery", The Independent Magazine, 5 November 1988, pp.25-7.
84 A more detailed discussion of the methodological procedure necessarily involved in a responsible examination of such issues, and an example of some unexpected differences that were revealed through a comparison of (i) members of the Unification Church, (ii) people who attended Unification workshops but did not join the movement and (iii) a `control group' of people who had no contact with the movement but were of the same age and background as the members and non-joiners, can be found in Barker (1984).
VII. Effects on the Individual (Chapter 6)
A. Mental health
Sometimes the very fact that someone has converted to an NRM is taken as a sign that he or she must be suffering from some sort of mental delusion--particularly when the person makes claims about a religious experience or talks about happenings of a non-natural kind.136 This is nothing new. People who believe things that others find incredible have frequently been labelled as crazy. Sometimes they have been mentally ill--when judged by criteria other than their religious beliefs; but it is a dangerous path that a society is treading once it starts defining people as mentally ill merely on the grounds of their religious or ideological beliefs, and it is a path that the nations of the West have vociferously denounced.
Another popular conception is that the practices associated with an NRM are likely to lead to mental illness. There is, however, very little evidence that members of most NRMs suffer from any more severe mental disorders than do others of their age. For instance, two researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center tested 50 individuals who were either in or had left an NRM, and reported that:
Varying degrees of insight into their methods of coping and/or handling of problems were demonstrated by the subjects, but all were within the normal range.137
No data emerged, either from intellectual, personality, or mental status testing to suggest that any of these subjects are unable or even limited in their ability to make legal judgements. Rather, the groups all emerged as intellectually capable on testing.138
Where instances of mental breakdown after a person's involvement in a movement have been investigated, it has not infrequently been revealed that something was amiss before the person's involvement and that the movement may have had very little to do with the problem. Sometimes, indeed, an unquestioning, womb-like atmosphere in which clear-cut directives are given can enable a person to cope when he or she had felt unable to do so `outside'. In fact, there is some evidence that suggests that some people can, in a number of ways, fare better as a result of their stay in some movements.139
The Dutch Government Study of New Religious Movements concluded that
In general, new religious movements are no real threat to mental public health.141
and that
No proof has come up...that new religious movements would have a serious pathogenic impact on their members. Admittedly former members not seldom [claim] to experience psychic problems, but these are (a) usually not of a serious nature, (b) not of a specific nature and (c) usually on the one hand traceable to problems which existed prior to entry into the movement, on the other hand they are no more than adjustment difficulties. ... Therefore, in our view, there is no call for protective measures.142
Similarly, while the Hill Report to the Ontario Government stated that the experience of some movements might contribute to or be a factor in some illnesses, it stressed that the evidence could not identify the movements' practices as the cause of either mental or physical illness.143 The Report concluded that "no new government measures were warranted involving the groups' impact on their members' health".144 Pages 55-57.
Notes:
136 An example would be John Clark's "Cults" in Journal of the American Medical Association, 242/3, 1979, pp.279-181. For a critique of this position see Tom Robbins and Dick Anthony "Deprogramming, brainwashing and the Medicalization of Deviant Religious Groups" Social Problems, vol.29, 1982, pp.283-297. See also Herbert Richardson (ed.) New Religious and Mental Health: Understanding the Issues, New York & Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980.
137 J. Thomas Ungerleider and David K. Wellisch "The Programming (Brainwashing)/Deprogramming Religious Controversy" in Bromley and Richardson (eds) (1982) p.207.
138 Ibid, p.211.
139 See, for example, Marc Galanter, R. & J. Rabkin and A. Deutsch "The `Moonies': A Psychological Study of Conversion and Membership in a Contemporary Religious Sect", American Journal of Psychiatry 136:2, February 1979; Wolfgang Kuner "New Religious Movements and Mental Health in Barker (ed.) (1983); Tom Robbins and Dick Anthony "New Religious Movements and the Social System: Integration, disintegration and transformation" The Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion, vol.21, 1978, pp.1-27; Michael W. Ross "Mental Health in Hare Krishna Devotees: A Longitudinal Study" The American Journal of Social Psychiatry, 5/4. Fall 1985, pp.65-67.
141 Witteveen (1984), p.314.
142 Ibid, p.317.
143 Hill (1980), p.550.
144 Ibid, p.554.
VIII. Forcible Deprogramming (Chapter 11)
At the opposite extreme from the laissez-faire position, there are those who suggest that, as members of NRMs are almost certainly the victims of brainwashing, or are under such pressure that there is no hope of their ever leaving of their own free will, the only viable option is to arrange to hold them in a secure environment so that they can be `deprogrammed'. Sometimes professional deprogrammers contact parents directly, playing on their fears in order to persuade them that, if they really care about and want to save their child, the only option open to them is to pay the deprogrammers to `rescue' the child. More frequently, the suggestion is cautiously dropped into the conversation by someone connected with a `cult-watching' organisation which the parents have contacted in order to try to get help and information about the movement that their child has joined.
Deprogramming has involved members of a movement being kidnapped by being set upon while walking along a street then being bundled into the back of a van;3 in other cases, unsuspecting members have gone to their parents' house for a visit, only to find that they are unable to leave and that their erstwhile home has been turned into a prison with locked doors and barred windows. They may find themselves handcuffed or tied up with rope. Sometimes they have been forced at gunpoint to do what their kidnappers have demanded.
Despite the threats frequently made to kidnap-victims that they may be locked up indefinitely if they do not comply with the deprogrammer's demands? The majority of deprogramming attempts are likely to last for less than two weeks (the average length of the deprogrammings instigated by respondents to the American Family Foundation survey was 8.5 days),6 but there have been attempts that have lasted for several months.7
In both Britain and North America, the use of this illegal practice has spread beyond the area of NRMs. There are examples of Protestant parents hiring professional deprogrammers to `rescue' their offspring from Roman Catholicism,8 of Catholic parents arranging for the kidnap of their daughter from a convent that was reportedly run by a follower of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre;9 of Jewish parents kidnapping children who had converted to evangelical Christianity;10 or a daughter kidnapped after she had married a Muslim;11 and various other cases when parents have disapproved of their adult children's choice of marriage partner or the political causes that they have espoused.12
Sometimes deprogrammers have been gentle in manner; sometimes the methods used have been anything but gentle. The `Father' of deprogramming, Ted Patrick, has written with pride about some of the more brutal practices that he has employed:
I believe firmly that the Lord helps those who help themselves--and a few little things like karate, Mace, and hand-cuffs can come in handy from time to time.13
Apart from the instances of physical violence that are described in Patrick's book, there is a disconcerting number of sworn testimonies by victims of `unsuccessful' deprogramming attempts, including those made by British deprogrammers, that tell of physical violence, intimidation by guns and by unwanted sexual advances.14 Even when the parents are present and physical violence has not been employed, forcible deprogramming is almost invariably an experience that has terrified the `victim' during at least its early stages. (See later sections and Appendix III.)
The Dutch Government Report concluded "Actions, aiming at enforced resignation of members (deprogrammation) we deem unjustified and not to be tolerated".15 In 1986, the Dutch Secretary of State for Health defined deprogramming as being "against the fundamental rights and freedoms of men". The Hill Report to the Ontario Government declared that "forced deprogramming is repugnant to the study."16 In their 1974 Resolution on Deprogramming, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in America (a cooperative agency of 32 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox religious bodies with an aggregate membership of over 40 million persons) declared that:
The Governing Body of the NCCC believes that religious liberty is one of the most precious rights of humankind, which is grossly violated by forcible abduction and protracted efforts to change a person's religious commitments by duress. Kidnapping for ransom is heinous indeed, but kidnapping to compel religious deconversion is equally criminal. ...
The Governing Board is mindful of the intense anguish which can motivate parents at the defection of their offspring from the family faith, but in our view this does not justify forcible abduction. We are aware that religious groups are accused of `capturing' young people by force, drugs, hypnotism, `brainwashing' etc. If true, such actions should be prosecuted under the law, but thus far the evidence all runs the other way: it is the would-be rescuers who are admittedly using force.17
It might also be noted that there are many ex-members of NRMs, including those who have themselves been forcibly deprogrammed, who have spoken out against the practice, declaring it to be unhelpful or destructive. And, as has already been mentioned, every time a forcible deprogramming is attempted, it provides the movement with ammunition with which it may persuade its members that parents are not to be trusted and should not be seen without `adequate safeguards'.
In the American courts, several deprogrammers have been convicted of offences such as kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault. Two British deprogrammers were recently convicted in Germany of causing bodily harm and Freiheitsberaubung (causing deprivation of liberty).18 For this assignment, the deprogrammers were charging the relatively modest fee of 3,000 (plus expenses), but it is not unknown, or unusual, for parents to have landed themselves in severe debt or to have had to mortgage or sell their house in order to pay the fee and expenses for a disastrous deprogramming. A third British deprogrammer, who has been reported as saying that he has successfully deprogrammed 175 people,19 (and who could have certainly added a not inconsiderable number of unsuccessful attempts to that figure)is, at the time of writing, on bail after being held in custody in another European country. This was as a result of his involvement in an attempted deprogramming which, according to several newspaper reports, involved handcuffs and tear-gas.20
Now, in the late 1980s, American deprogrammers may ask for up to $80,000, plus expenses. It is also possible that the parents may have to pay damages and legal costs if their child subsequently brings an action for unlawful imprisonment. In the American Family Foundation inquiry, 16% of all the reported deprogrammings resulted in lawsuits, but Langone suggests that the unrepresentative nature of the study may have resulted in this being rather a high figure.21 Pages 101-104.
Notes:
3 Several vivid descriptions are to be found in Patrick (1986).
6 Michael D. Langone "Deprogramming: An Analysis of Parental Questionnaires", American Family Foundation, n.d. p.8. The survey id discussed further in the later section, "Success Rates". Patrick (1976) suggests a shorter time--see p.15.
7 See Cases I & II in Appendix III.
8 M. Darrol Bryant (ed.) Religious Liberty in Canada: Deprogramming and Media Coverage of New Religions, Toronto: Canadians for the Protection of Religious Liberty, 1979, pp.11-18; The Toronto Star, 11 March 1975.
9 New York Times, 11 August 1988; New York Post, 21 July 1988; Newsday, 29 June 1988.
10 James Bjornstad "The Deprogramming and Rehabilitation of Modern Cult Members", paper presented at the Eastern Sectional Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, Lancaster Bible College, PA, 1 April 1988, p.17.
11 Mail on Sunday, 2 December 1984; The Guardian, 30 October 1985.
12 For further examples of the `scope' of deprogrammings, see, for example, Bryant, op cit; Deprogramming: Documenting the Issue, prepared for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Toronto School of Theology Conferences on Deprogramming, 5 February 1977 (New York) and 18-20 March 1977 (Toronto); "Now--Deprogramming for Everyone" The Washington Star, 18 December 1976; Associated Press 2 July 1980.
13 Patrick (1976), p.63.
14 See literature cited elsewhere in the notes in this section.
15 Witteveen (1984), p.314.
16 Hill (1980), p.585.
17 "Religious Liberty for Young People Too" Resolution on Deprogramming, adopted by the Governing Board for the National Council of Churches, February 28, 1974.
18 The Guardian, 30 December 1987; Sunday Telegraph, 17 January 1988.
19 Sonntags Blick (Zurich), 25 June 1989. The same deprogrammer was reported in 1986 to have claimed that he had "dealt with up to 150 cases all over Europe in the last six years." Woman 1 March 1986.
20 Western Daily Press Bristol, 22 March 1989, 27 March 1989; Gloucestershire Echo Cheltenham, 22 March 1989; Birmingham Post, 23 March 1989; South Wales Echo (Cardiff), 23 March 1989; 24 heures (Lausanne), 21 March 1989; L'Express (Neuchatel), 20 March 1989; Libera Stampa (Lugano), 21 March 1989; Il Dovere (Bellinzona), 21 March 1989; Giornale del Popolo (Lugano); 25 March 1989; Blick (Zurich), 21 March 1989; Berner Zeitung (Berne), 21 March 1989.
21 Langone, op cit, p.8.
A. Consequences of `failure'
So far as the consequences of forcible deprogramming are concerned, those that are unsuccessful (in the sense that the kidnap-victims return to their movements) almost invariably result in the situation becoming significantly worse than it was before. Even if no physical violence was used, people who have been unable to leave a place where they were being held captive against their expressed desire will almost certainly be badly shaken and they are often imbued with a deep distrust of their parents which can take several years to heal. Furthermore, returning members frequently become far more zealously committed to their movement as a consequence of the experience--and less likely to leave than they might otherwise have been.30
It is not denied that there are cases when those who have been associated with an NRM may need to be put under psychiatric care. What is being objected to here is that those who are involved in deprogramming can, by virtue of their having taken the law into their own hands, be in a position to threaten someone with committal unless that person renounces his or her allegiance to an NRM. Whether or not the people concerned would have actually gone ahead with an attempted committal is beside the point; the threat of such a possibility can result in a very genuine terror, especially for anyone who has heard of some of the cases that have been recorded in the United States where people, whose only apparent sign of mental illness has been their membership of an NRM, have been committed to hospital with, on occasion, very disturbing consequences.32
Stories of how "victims" have been maltreated while "in the clutches" of some "sinister, bizarre cult", and how they "managed to escape" or how their parents "had to kidnap them" have become almost a common-place in the media. Practically untold, however, are the stories of the people who have undergone harrowing experiences at the hands of deprogrammers, especially when the person has suffered from a mental breakdown following the deprogramming. Page 107-109.
Notes:
30 See Eileen Barker "With Emphasis Like That...: Some functions of deprogramming as an aid to sectarian membership" in Bromley and Richardson (eds) (1983) pp. 329-344.
32 See, for example, "Using Psychiatry to Fight `Cults': Three Case Histories" by Lee Coleman in Brock K. Kilbourne (ed.) Scientific Research and New Religions: Divergent Perspectives, Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, AAAS, and the 59th Annual Meeting of the South-Western and Rocky Mountain Division, AAAS, vol.2, pt.2, San Francisco CA 94118: Pac. Div. AAAS, pp.40-56. See also Herbert Richardson (ed.) New Religions and Mental Health: Understanding the Issues, New York & Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980.
B. Consequences of `success'
There are those who are delighted with the results of a forcible deprogramming. But, despite the claims that `successful' deprogramming allows the erstwhile member to return to a normal life, the deprogrammed individual may well face a number of problems that are not shared by those who leave a movement of their own free will. Those who leave by themselves may have concluded that they made a mistake and that they recognised that fact and, as a result, they did something about it: they left. Those who have been deprogrammed, on the other hand, are taught that it was not they who were responsible for joining; they were the victims of mind-control techniques--and these prevented them from leaving. Research has shown that, unlike those who have been deprogrammed (and thereby taught that they had been brainwashed), those who leave voluntarily are extremely unlikely to believe that they were ever the victims of mind control. They are far more likely to say that things did not turn out the way that they had thought they would, or that the movement helped them over a particular period, but that they now want to move on to something else.33 (See also later section on Leaving a Movement.)
If the mind-control thesis were true, it might provide some excuse for the physical coercion involved in deprogramming. If it is believed to be true, it can certainly provide both those who have been deprogrammed and their parents with an explanation of cult involvement that exonerates them from all blame. But it is also the case that, in so far as the brainwashing thesis is believed by those who have been deprogrammed, it leaves them with the belief that twice in their lives they have been incapable of controlling their own destiny--not just in the way that any of us can feel blocked by circumstances, but in a more fundamental way that can severely threaten their sense of personal identity. They may find themselves with exactly the same problems that they were experiencing before joining the movement--except that they have now lost confidence in their ability to decide their own future. In the words of Saul Levine:
Halted in their radical endeavour before they have been able to utilize the group self in their own behalf, former members are thrown back upon just the psychological dependency on parents they had attempted to break away from. The more the parents have achieved their purpose--that is, the more children now realize their `mistake'--the less former members trust their own ability to make wise choices and the more dangerous it seems to them to do anything on their own. In other words, they find it all the more difficult to grow up.34
For some who have been deprogrammed, a new faith fills the gap and gives renewed hope. For others, and, indeed, for some of those who have discovered a new faith, it is joining a deprogramming team or becoming actively involved in the `anti-cult movement' that allows the deprogrammed person to adjust. Through becoming anti-cult, such people may be offered many of the attractions of being a member of an NRM: they know clearly what is right and what is wrong; they are playing a saving role with a purifying purpose; they belong to a small, often misunderstood community of like-minded believers who know `the truth' and are prepared to make a stand and, if necessary, suffer for the sake of that truth. Pages 109,110.
Notes:
33 For comparisons between those who leave through involuntary and voluntary methods, see Beckford (1985): Bromley (ed.) (1988); Levine (1984); Lewis (n.d.); Wright (1987); James R. Lewis "Reconstructing the `Cult' Experience; Post Involvement Attitudes as a Function of Mode of Exit and Post-Involvement Socialization" Sociological Analysis, 47/2, 1986; and Trudy Solomon in Robbins & Anthony (eds) (1981), pp.275-294).
34 Levine (1984), p.177.
IX. Leaving a Movement (Chapter 13)
The Hill Report to the Ontario Government stated that
Only a small number of persons ... related totally negative experiences. Most former members, even if strongly disenchanted with their movements on other grounds, were relatively healthy and admitted that their membership had some positive effects.
Most of those who became casualties or experienced substantial psychological difficulty short of breakdown seem to have undergone personal crises in their lives prior to joining their movements. A few clearly had been unstable.48
Frans Derks carried out a study of 31 ex-members of a number of different movements in the Netherlands. Over 80% (25 persons) had left voluntarily, 3 had been deprogrammed, 2 had been expelled and one had been both expelled and deprogrammed. Derks found that half his sample reported having had no psycho-social problems after leaving. About half the rest of the sample reported having had some such problems only in the period immediately following defection, but these problems had gone by the time of interview (on average, three and a half years after defection). Of the remaining eight, who reported still having had problems at the time of the interview, five also reported having had these problems before they had converted.49 Although the numbers were too small to make reliable generalisations, the study suggests that around half those who leave an NRM may have some psycho-social problems (they may be `rather emotional') just after they have left the movement, but the chances of their getting over this within a relatively short time are high, unless they had had such problems before they had ever joined the movement.
People often make the mistake of thinking that, by defining the whole experience of involvement with the movement in negative terms, they are helping an ex-member. But, as has already been pointed out, it is rare for ex-members' memories of their time in the movement to be entirely negative. Ex-members may still accept many of the beliefs and practices that the movement taught them.
As was suggested earlier, the manner in which a person leaves a movement is likely to affect his or her attitude towards the movement. Wright asked voluntary defectors with no experience of `exit treatment', "When you think about having been a member, how do you feel?" None responded with indifference; 7% said "angry", 9% felt that they had been duped or brainwashed, and 67% declared that they felt "wiser for the experience".
In another study, James Lewis divided 154 ex-members of NRMs into three groups: (1) those who had left their movement voluntarily and had not been exposed to any form of `anti-cult' counselling (what is sometimes referred to as exit counselling'), (2) those who had left voluntarily and then undergone some form of anti-cult counselling, and (3) those who had been forcibly deprogrammed. He asked the ex-members to evaluate the extent to which they believed that (a) they had been recruited deceptively, (b) they had been `brainwashed', (c) their leader was insincere, and (d) the group's beliefs were spurious. He found that in all four of these matters the ex-members' attitudes were directly related to their "degree of contact with the anti-cult movement". In other words, the more contact that ex-members had had with the `anticult movement', the more likely they were to interpret their movement in negative terms.53 Page 128.
Notes:
48 Hill (1980), p.552.
49 Frans Derk "Uittreding uit Nieuwe Religieuze Bewegingen", Eindverslag van het Onderzoeksprojekt Identiteitsverwarring bij Ex-Sekteleden, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, August 1983, pp.115-6.
52 Wright (1987), p.87.
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OUTLINE No.11:
NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS AND THE CHURCHES, Report and papers of a consultation sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches, Free University, Amsterdam, September 1986, edited by Allan R. Brockway and J. Paul Rajashekar, WCC Publications, Geneva, 1987
I. Religious Liberty and Socio-Political Values
Article 18, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
A. Opposition to new religious movements in the United States
ACM (anti-cult movement) in U.S.
Parents
Ex-members
Anti-cult professionals
Legislative and legal initiatives of ACM
B. The anti-cult movement and attacks on conversion
Friend-of-the-court briefs
Legal and legislative initiatives of ACM
Conversion
Parents
Jewish hostility to conversion to Christianity
Deprogramming
Conservatorship
Ex-members
C. "Deprogramming" by the New Vigilantes
Ted Patrick
Brainwashing
Mind control
Religious liberty vs. "rescuing", ex-members
The ACM IS a cult
Cult-awareness education
D. A description of deprogramming
Deprogramming fees and description: enticing, kidnapping, violence, deprivation, mental torture, ex-members
Half-way houses
Deconversion
Religious liberty infringements
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EXCERPTS No.11:
NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS AND THE CHURCHES, Report and papers of a consultation sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches, Free University, Amsterdam, September 1986, edited by Allan R. Brockway and J. Paul Rajashekar, WCC Publications, Geneva, 1987
[Rev. Allan R. Brockway is programme secretary for church-Jewish relations with the WCC's Sub-unit on dialogue with People of Living Faiths. Dr. J. Paul Rajashekar is secretary for the church and people of other faiths with the LWF's Department of Studies.]
I. Religious Liberty and Socio-Political Values
By Dean M. Kelley
[Dr. Dean M. Kelley is director for religious liberty at the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, New York.]
"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."--Article 18, Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Page 89.
A. Opposition to new religious movements in the United States
Thus far in the United States the major religious bodies have not been active in initiating or encouraging measures against new religions, either because of commitment to religious liberty, belief that they do not pose a significant threat, reluctance to dignify them by attention, inertia, or a combination of the above. Indeed, in some instances they have been commendably resistant to persecutory measures advocated or initiated by others. The main impetus for restrictive or suppressive actions has come from lay organizations composed mainly of (l) the parents, spouses, other relatives and friends of converts to new religious movements, (2) apostate ex-members of such movements, and (3) persons who advise or assist the organizations in their work, often for pay, such as mental health professionals, "exit-counsellors" and a variety of specialists in "rescue" operations, to whom we shall return in a moment.
The principal modes of attack on the activities of new religious movements, however, have been more directly focused on specific problems, often invoking various laws against them that were not originally intended for such application. Thus legal prosecutions have been instituted, not because of excessive zeal on the part of public officials, but as a result of complaints and goadings by irate citizens. Page 94.
B. The anti-cult movement and attacks on conversion
Many of these attacks on new religious movements have created or threatened to create precedents that would apply equally and injuriously to other religious bodies, and for this reason some of the older religious bodies have entered friend-of-the-court briefs in some of the above mentioned cases, not so much in "support" of the new religious groups as in opposition to the government's tactics. But the fifth category involves litigation and proposed legislation that strikes even more directly at one of the central concerns of most religions, particularly Christianity: the validity of conversion, the right pointed to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as "freedom to change...religion". Conversion is an essential element in the New Testament, from the summary of Jesus' message--"repent and believe in the Gospel" (Mark 1:15)--to Paul's sudden conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). Throughout the subsequent centuries Christianity has sought the turning of hearts to the Lord that is the beginning and the "sine qua non" of salvation.
Yet it is this very threshold act that is a source of deep antipathy towards religion, since it precipitates and evidences a change of life and loyalties and may suggest a repudiation--or at least abandonment--of old ways and attachments. Family and former associates resent the implied reproach of such a change, that the previous patterns and commitments were not good enough and so were left for something better. Families have been split and friendships broken over conversion and intense antagonisms generated which seem able to fuel far-reaching vendettas against the religious group(s) thought to be the cause. In addition, some older traditions look upon conversion to more recent faiths as a deadly threat to their survival. Procuring conversion from the "official" religion is a serious crime in Greece and some Muslim countries. The Jewish community is particularly distressed by the threat of loss by (out) conversion and intermarriage, and it is one of the main elements fuelling the anti-cult movement in the US and elsewhere.
Attacks on conversion have taken three main forms in the United States:
a) private "self-help" efforts to reverse conversions by force, called "deprogramming";
b) efforts to use existing "conservatorship" statutes or to enact broader ones to legalize deprogramming;
c) litigation by apostates against unpopular religious groups for torts allegedly arising from membership in the group (i.e., from conversion). Page 95-96.
C. "Deprogramming" by the New Vigilantes
Beginning with the efforts of one Ted Patrick in the early 1970s, a tactic has been developed to reverse conversions by force. It is called "deprogramming" after the argument that converts to new religions have been "programmed"--like computers--by insidious techniques that require stem and intrusive measures to reverse the process. Deprogramming, like the anti-cult movement that promotes and protects it, proceeds from the presupposition that new religious movements gain their adherents by deception and "coercive persuasion" to overcome the will of the unwary and subject them to the dominance of the "cult" so that they can be exploited for the aggrandizement of cult leaders. The entire panoply of anti-cult methods depends upon this axiom of "brain-washing" or "mind control"--the insistence that intelligent, upwardly mobile young people would never join such bizarre groups or remain in them of their own free choice and therefore must have been tricked or coerced. It may be questioned whether such an exotic new explanation is needed. Most of the behaviour changes described can be adequately accounted for by the age-old phenomenon of conversion.
Another axiom of the anti-cult movement is that the "cults"--or at least the "destructive cults" (whatever those may be)--are not really religions but merely economic or political scams disguised as religions in order to claim the privilege of religious liberty. It is crucial to anti-cultists to insist that the cult which a loved one has joined is not a legitimate religion and that one could not have experienced a genuine and voluntary conversion to it. Thus is it not an invasion of religious liberty or a violation of the adherent's free choice, but a high duty and obligation, to "rescue" the adherent from the cult, by force if need be, on the supposition that the cult member will eventually be grateful for deliverance when the hold of the cult is broken. In fact, the hold of the cult is not thought to be broken until the former adherent is ready and willing to thank the deliverers and to help deliver others from similar subjection.
Thus the anti-cult movement has its own faith--commitments, theomachics, rites, gurus, and crusades to which it seeks to counter-convert those it rescues; it is a sort of anti-cult "cult", with its missionaries and propaganda networks, such as monthly newsletters that seem to urge. "Be the first family on your block to hold a successful deprogramming!" (At least that was the case a few years ago. More recently the movement has tried to take on a more genteel veneer, assuring critics that deprogramming is crude and pass, "We only do `cult-awareness education' now." Unfortunately, this message has not yet reached all of the faithful, and deprogrammings still go on.) Page 96-97.
D. A description of deprogramming
The praxis of deprogramming usually includes some or all of the following elements:7
1. Parents or other relatives of a young person who has joined a "cult" contact a deprogrammer and employ him or her to "rescue" the convert. (Fees for this service may run from $20,000 as high as $80,000 plus expenses, whether "successful" or not.)
2. The convert is located (sometimes the hardest part of the job) and the situation is scouted to determine times and places of vulnerability to seizure.
3. A plan of action is formulated, helpers are hired and briefed (sometimes part-time practitioners or relatives of the convert or both), and the routes and means of transportation and place or places of detention arranged.
4. Gaining control of the person of the convert (kidnapping) is often brought about by a ruse--if there is still any relationship between the convert and relatives--such as taking the convert out to lunch or home for a visit or to the hospital to see an ailing parent said to be recovering from a seizure brought on by the convert's absence); if deception is not practical, reliance must be placed on surprise and/or superior force (assault).
5. At some point, in any event, deception is replaced by force. The convert is seized, often by several strong men, bundled into a car or van, and transported (often across state lines)8 to a place where he or she can be kept in isolation for an extended period of time: a motel, a relative's home, a deprogramming centre (of which there are several in the US) or a combination of the above in succession.
6. Keeping the convert under control (unlawful imprisonment) is the next problem. Often the place of confinement is an impromptu prison with windows boarded up, furnishings removed except for a bed and a chair or two, doors locked, guards outside, isolated from outsiders. Sometimes the victim is tied or handcuffed to the bed. He or she is seldom left alone, even when using the toilet, and is told that this detention will continue as long as necessary to attain the desired result: restoring "freedom of choice" to the victim, which can be evidenced in only one way--by deciding to leave the cult.
7. The main activity during this detention is intensive counter-indoctrination (which often involves menacing, intimidation, assault, etc., but apparently not torture, or the use of drugs). Various techniques are used, including the following:
a) Essential to the process is getting and retaining the victim's attention, which may require knocking hands away from covering the ears, gripping the cheeks to prevent turning the head away, twisting the arm, tying in a sitting position, shouting, shining a bright light in the eyes, etc.
b) A second tactic is removing any vestiges of cult-identification (to instill a feeling of isolation and weaken the will to resist) by taking away cultic garb, prayer-beads, amulets, literature, cutting off cultic hair-do, etc., stripping the victim down to underwear (which also inhibits escape and intensifies a sense of vulnerability), disrupting prayers or chanting.
c) A major effort is devoted to "overloading" the victim with the deprogrammer's messages so that other thoughts, memories and messages are crowded out: the victim is subjected to a continuous barrage of `round-the-clock argument, reproach, beration, cajolery and abuse by "helpers" who work in shifts, keeping the victim awake as long as possible to prevent leisure for reflection or regaining composure, keeping the victim perpetually "off balance", as it were: denunciation alternating with pleading, kindness with harshness, accusations with entreaties by tearful parents, etc.
d) Attacks on the victim's new religion are a central ingredient in the process and include ridicule of the cult's teachings and practices, atrocity stories about the cult, exposes by apostates (ideally former members of the same cult), defacing of cult scriptures, symbols or pictures of its leader, and never-ending argumentation from the Bible and other sources to "prove" the convert's religion false.
e) The victim is pointed to "the (only) way out", the new doctrine to be accepted in place of the (not very) old. Sometimes videotapes are shown of the "breaking" of other deprogrammees--the capitulation, the reconciliation with parents, the expressions of gratitude for being "rescued" from the cult.
The "explanation" is provided of "how the cults work", which also provides a formula of exoneration if the victim will only accept it: "they tricked you; you were duped; they just wanted to use you for their own ends; but now you're free to make up your own mind (to leave the cult, of course); soon you will be able to help rescue other victims of mind-control", etc.
These efforts continue until the victim gives in, escapes, or is rescued from the self-appointed "rescuers" by the police, the cult or other third parties--or the parents' money for paying the deprogrammers gives out.
In a "successful" deprogramming, the victim eventually "breaks" and comes over to the Right Side, when all is forgiven, the Family is Reunited, the battle is won. (Sometimes, since the cults have their own self-defence programme of anti-cult awareness training that recommends pretending to "break", the victim feigns capitulation in order to turn off the pressure, so the process culminates in a final phase: "floating".)
f) After capitulation or deconversion (or frequently re-conversion to a new, anticult faith), the deprogrammed person is kept under close observation for several weeks or months (during which he or she is said to be "floating") to prevent reversion to the cult, often in one of the several "halfway houses" such as "Unbound" in Iowa City or Carla Pfeiffer's "Enrichment Center" in Norfolk, Nebraska.
(Notwithstanding these precautions, many victims eventually go back to their chosen faith-group anyway.)9
It is instructive that this methodology of forcible deconversion resembles in many respects precisely the same techniques which the anti-cult movement accuses the cult of using: deception, coercion, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, repetitive indoctrination, emotional pressure, etc. Whether or not the cults use these methods as diabolically as their accusers allege, there is no doubt that the deprogrammers do--by their own admission." Perhaps it is another instance of "fighting fire with fire", which often produces remarkable resemblances between the supposedly benevolent and the allegedly malevolent, so that it is sometimes hard to tell which is which. The most striking likeness, however, is that both sides rely upon the most penetrating reagent in human experience: intense, protracted one-on-one attention such as few people experience except for a few minutes at a time, and that rarely. Whether it be "love-bombing" or "reproach-bombing" may be less significant than that it is close, interpersonal, saturation "attention-bombing" that goes on for hours, days, even weeks. Very few people can resist that influence, though like the physical coercion of Chinese "brainwashing"--once it ceases, the effect can quickly wear off, therefore, the long period of "decompression".
This deliberate, concerted, protracted, violent assault on religious faith is probably the most serious infringement of religious liberty in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century, and the agencies of law enforcement and the courts have been rather dilatory and uneven in their efforts to apprehend and punish its perpetrators. (In the US, there is an important distinction between state action v. private action, and the latter is more difficult to reach by law.)
Local law enforcement and prosecution efforts have been spotty at best. There are instances in which local police have ignored or even aided deprogrammings. But in some other instances they have been prompt and effective in apprehending and prosecuting deprogrammers, only to have grand juries refuse to indict or petite juries to convict. But there have been some significant criminal convictions. And where criminal prosecutions fail or are not even attempted--civil actions have sometimes been brought and sometimes have succeeded. Pages 97-100.
Notes:
7 Derived from the autobiographical account of Ted Patrick in Let Our Children Go!, and the description by numerous victims from the author's flies.
8 Thus violating the Federal Anti-Kidnapping Statute, which, however, is not enforced by the US Justice Dept. against "family" actions.
9 D.M. Kelley, The Law of Church and State, Book II, B, 2 (forthcoming)
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OUTLINE No.12:
THE NEW VIGILANTES: Deprogrammers, Anti-Cultists, and the New Religions, by Anson D. Shupe, Jr., and David G. Bromley, Sage Publications, 1980
I. Anti-Cult Movement Ideology
A. Deception Metaphor
Benefits of NRM membership
Zealots not zombies
Idealism
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EXCERPTS No.12:
THE NEW VIGILANTES: Deprogrammers, Anti-Cultists, and the New Religions, by Anson D. Shupe, Jr., and David G. Bromley, Sage Publications, 1980
[Anson D. Shupe, Jr., received his Ph.D. in 1975 from Indiana University, specializing in comparative political sociology. After teaching one year at Alfred University, he moved to the University of Texas at Arlington where he is currently Associate Professor of Sociology. His primary research interests are in the areas of social movements, sociology of religion, and political sociology. He is currently engaging in long-range study of social movements and societal response with co-author David Bromley.
[David G. Bromley received his Ph.D. in 1971 from Duke University, specializing in political and urban sociology. After serving on the faculties of the University of Virginia and the University of Texas at Arlington, he is currently Associate Professor and Chairman of Sociology at the University of Hartford, Connecticut. His primary research interests are in the areas of social movements, deviance, and political and urban sociology.]
I. Anti-Cult Movement Ideology
A. Deception Metaphor
Despite the view that such persons ["cult" members] were possibly less healthy than non-"cult" members who did not turn to "new" religions, Ungerleider did not perceive them to be psychologically damaged. Indeed, his own research cited earlier found no evidence of psychiatric impairment. Fundamentally, Ungerleider seemed to claim that the "cult" experience could only be defined as destructive or constructive in terms of a specific individual's needs and not (as did brainwashing metaphor advocates) through any blanket condemnation of all "cults". He concluded (1979: 15-16): "For many persons, the benefits obtained in terms of temporary control of their impulses and external controls is worth that price. For many others it is not." He even maintained that a person who joined a religious movement, made its work his life, and eventually rose through its hierarchy to an elite position probably gained "a better experience than those who never experience this phenomenon at all." Levine and Salter (1976: 418) went even further: they concluded that "these religions, as fatuous and as reprehensible as most people may find them, are improving the personal lives of many of their members." Galanter et al. (1978: 10) also were relatively positive in their evaluation of the consequences of joining a new religion: "Conversion apparently provided considerable and sustained relief from neurotic distress."
Ungerleider therefore explicitly rejected Conway and Siegelman's (1978) negative interpretation of the "snapping" experience, referring to it as the "a-ha" phenomenon, the sudden illusion, the finding of what one has been looking for" rather than as the point at which one surrenders or loses free will and psychological integrity. Like Ungerleider, Levine and Salter (1976: 414) concluded in their study of members from various "cults" that "psychiatric diagnoses could not be applied to the majority of cases. ... It would be fallacious to label all of these religious followers as more emotionally disturbed than their peers." Nor did they believe that membership in a "cult" was necessarily a dangerous experience for individuals. They acknowledged (1976: 417):
Of those who do join the fringe religions, most will not be markedly changed, or harmed, any more than if they had joined any other intense belief system and cult, be it political, for example, Communist, chemical (drug scene)...or therapeutic (primal groups).
The predominant imagery of those authors we have clustered under the secular deception metaphor was one of zealotry rather than of zombiism. Stoner and Parke perceived the majority of "cult" members whom they encountered in their research as zealous in the same way many sectarian Christians are zealous. In fact, they asserted (1977: 30): "We have yet to meet a cult member, or former cultist, who has convinced us that he was hypnotized into a new religion." They regarded "cult" members as examples of simply misdirected idealism which had previously been expressed by joining groups such as the Peace Corps. Pages 80-81.
Notes:
Ungerleider, J.T. (1979). The New Religions: Insights into the Cult Phenomenon. New York: Merck, Sharp, and Dohme.
Levin S.V., and N.E. Salter (1976). "Youth and contemporary religious movements: psychosocial findings." Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal 21(6): 411-420.
Galanter, M. (1978). "The `Moonies,' a psychological study." Presented to the 131st Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, Atlanta, Georgia.
Stoner, C. and J. Parke (1977) All God's Children. Radnor, PA: Chilton.
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OUTLINE No.13:
THE ODYSSEY OF NEW RELIGIONS TODAY--A Case Study of the Unification Church, by John T. Biermans, The Edward Mellen Press, 1988
I. The Brainwashing Myth (Chapter 2)
A. Origins of the Theory (Section A)
Communist brainwashing in Korean War
B. Some Key Elements of the Brainwashing Theory (Section B)
Error of applying Communist brainwashing to explain the conversion experience
C. Brainwashing Theory Repeatedly Discredited (Section C)
D. Rationale for Brainwashing Myth (Section F)
Persecution of NRMs
Psychiatry as toll of persecution
Mind control
E. Further Critiques of Brainwashing (Section G)
Semantics
II. Deprogramming/Faithbreaking (Chapter 4)
A. The Nature of Deprogramming (Section A)
B. How Deprogramming Works (Section B)
Information disease
C. The Destructiveness of the Deprogramming Experience (Section D)
Counter-brainwashing
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EXCERPTS No.13:
THE ODYSSEY OF NEW RELIGIONS TODAY--A Case Study of the Unification Church, by John T. Biermans, The Edward Mellen Press, 1988
[John T. Biermans is a New York attorney, having studied law at the University of Toronto and the University of San Francisco.]
I. The Brainwashing Myth (Chapter 2)
The charge that members of NRMs are "brainwashed" has perhaps been the most widely publicized of all the allegations against them. Where did this theory come from, what does it mean and what do scholars say about it?
A. Origins of the Theory (Section A)
The concept of "brainwashing" originated as an attempt to explain what took place in prisoner of war camps during the Korean War. American soldiers were subjected to attempts by the Communists to change their political ideas about communism and capitalism through various deprivations, group discussions and written confessions. This, of course, was done while they were being held under total physical coercion. As a result, during captivity, some gave the appearance of having been changed, but only a few were genuinely changed in their political views.1 Page 29.
Notes:
1. Donald T. Lunde and Thomas E. Wilson, "Brainwashing as a Defense to Criminal Liability: Patty Hearst Revisited", Criminal Law Bulletin, vol.13, 1977, 347-48. Psychiatrist Lee Coleman writes: "Out of this experience, however, and the embellishments of cold-war propaganda that sought to gain support for what was an unpopular war, came the idea that the Chinese had developed a method of `mind control'." The idea that scared so many people, as Coleman suggests, was "that a zombie could be created, one that acted like he was in control of his own thoughts and feelings but whose mind was in fact under someone else's control. It is this zombie that anti-cultists and vocal psychiatrists so vehemently claim the cults are fashioning." Lee Coleman, Psychiatry the Faithbreaker: How psychiatry is promoting bigotry in America (Sacramento: Printing Dynamics, 1982) 15. See also Joel Fort, "Mind Control: The What and How of Conversion and Indoctrination", supra, 220.
B. Some Key Elements of the Brainwashing Theory (Section B)
In chapter 22 of Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Lifton sets out a list of categories which, according to him, describe methods of political re-indoctrination used by the Chinese after their victory in 1949. The following are Lifton's categories of "totalism" in their order of occurence:
Milieu Control
Mystical Manipulation
The Demand of Purity
The Cult of Confession
The Sacred Science
Loading the Language
Doctrine over Person
The Dispensing of Existence 4
Deprogrammers and anti-cult organizations took over these political categories from the Chinese communist experience and applied them uncritically to the new religions without carrying out any appropriate research. In so doing, they have thereby created a novel psycho-political stereotype. Furthermore, this analogy was made despite the lack of evidence that these religions engaged in the physical coercion so essential to the Communist practice.5 Page 30.
Notes:
4. John A. Saliba, "Psychiatry and the New Cults, Part II", Academic Psychology Bulletin, vol. 7, 1985, 371.
5. In another major work on this topic, Coercive Persuasion: A Socio-Psychological Analysis of the "Brainwashing" of American Civilian Prisoners by the Chinese Communists (New York: North, 1961), Edgar Schein makes it clear that physical confinement or captivity is essential for "coercive persuasion" or "brainwashing." This has been strongly affirmed by Donald T. Lunde and Thomas E. Wilson, "Brainwashing as a Defense to Criminal Liability", supra, 351.
C. Brainwashing Theory Repeatedly Discredited (Section C)
Theologian Harvey Cox makes precisely this point when he states: "The term `brainwashing' has no respectable standing in scientific or psychiatric circles, and is used almost entirely to describe a process by which somebody has arrived at convictions that I do not agree with."14
Psychiatrist Walter Reich of the National Institute of Mental Health aptly notes: "Psychiatry endangers itself--debases its coinage--by entering areas in which it lacks a broad base of expertise. In [brainwashing] cases, psychiatric experience is limited and not widely tested. It does not amount to legal expertise."15 Likewise, sociologist Robert W. Balch concludes that, "as a descriptive label, brainwashing...is essentially useless because it depends on untestable assumptions about the slippery issues of freedom and control."16 Page 33.
Notes:
14. "Interview with Harvey Cox", in Steven J. Gelberg, ed., Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna (New York: Grove Press, 1983) 50.
15. Walter Reich, "Brainwashing, Psychiatry, and the Law", Psychiatry, vol.39, Nov.1976, 403.
16. Robert W. Balch, "What's Wrong With the Study of New Religions and What Can We Do About It", in Brock Kilbourne, ed., Scientific Research and New Religions, 1985, 25.
D. Rationale for Brainwashing Myth (Section F)
The conclusion of experts Robbins and Anthony is that "the validity of brainwashing as a scientific concept is problematic, to say the least. ..." They write that brainwashing can be described as "a mystifying and inherently subjective metaphor--which is now being used as a simplistic explanation for intense sectarian confinement, as well as a way of attacking groups against which charges of tangible physical coercion cannot be substantiated."32 Gene James bluntly states that "the primary function of the idea of brainwashing as applied to new religious groups has been to legitimate oppression."33
One important rationale for the brainwashing myth has been offered by such researchers as psychiatrist Lee Coleman. In his excellent expos, "Psychiatry The Faithbreaker", Coleman writes that brainwashing is simply an explanation for behavior with which people disagree. "The claim of `brainwashing' today accomplishes what the claim of `possession by the devil' accomplished hundreds of years ago. ... Today indeed critics can't accept the fact that many young people are finding fulfillment in some of these new churches, so they attribute their contentment to the effects of `mind control'."34 In a similar vein, Cox remarks:
Some psychiatrists contend that young people who join Oriental religious movements or Jesus communes have obviously been "brainwashed" since they now share their money and have lost interest in becoming successful executives. That someone could freely choose a path of mystical devotion, self-sacrifice and the sharing of worldly goods seems self-evidently impossible to them. They forget that...according to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was a candidate for "deprogramming", since His own family thought He was berserk and His religious leaders said He was possessed by the devil.35
Researchers Alan Scheflin and Edward Opton in The Mind Manipulators suggest that "brainwashing" or "mind control" are convenient ways to rationalize one's actions and thereby avoid taking responsibility. Anyone can commit an act such as joining an unpopular group and afterwards claim "I was programmed to do so." Scheflin and Opton point out that esoteric notions such as "brainwashing" allow people to forget that they are responsible for their own actions--in a manner that compares with the insanity plan in legal cases. Personal values and independence of thought and judgment "are not snatched away from people. ... The concept of brainwashing is the most seductive mind manipulation of all."36 Pages 36-38.
Notes:
32. T. Robbins and D. Anthony, "Brainwashing and the Persecution of Cults", Journal of Religion and Health, vol.10, no.1., 1980, 66.
33. Gene G. James, "Brainwashing: The Myth and The Actuality", Thought, Fordham University Quarterly, vol.LXI, June 1986, 255.
34. Lee Coleman, Psychiatry The Faithbreaker, supra, 16.
35. The New York Times, Feb.16, 1977, 25, col.1, cited in Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law (Mineola, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 1978) 884.
36. Alan W. Scheflin and Edward M. Opton, Jr., The Mind Manipulators (New York: Paddington Press, 1978) 474. See also Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe, Understanding Cults (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1986) 11.
E. Further Critiques of Brainwashing (Section G)
Jeremiah S. Gutman, who is a leading figure in the American Civil Liberties Union and a leading civil rights attorney, points out that through such a distorted and negative perspective, "[a] religion becomes a cult; proselytization becomes brainwashing; persuasion becomes propaganda; missionaries become subversive agents; retreats, monasteries and convents become prisons; holy ritual becomes bizarre conduct; religious observance becomes aberrant behavior; devotion and meditation become psychopathic trances."37
Sociologists David Bromley and Anson Shupe: "The entire concept of brainwashing, as we have seen it, is a misnomer. It is repudiated by many sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists as a crude euphemism. Worse, it is a distortion of a real, understandable process of attitude change that is neither mysterious nor unusual in American society."41 Pages 38-39.
Notes:
37. Jeremiah S. Gutman, quoted in Robert Shapiro, "Indoctrination, Personhood and Religious Beliefs", supra, 153.
41. Bromley and Shupe, Strange Gods, supra, 124. Religious studies professor Irving Hexham of the University of Calgary and anthropology professor Karla Poewe of the University of Lethbridge offer a similar conclusion: "We reject the brainwashing thesis not only because it represents an attack upon religious conversion generally but also because there is considerable evidence that people join new religions of their own free will." Among the four main sources of evidence they cite to support their conclusion are the following: "First, there are testimonies by ex-cult members who have totally repudiated the beliefs of the cult but strongly deny that they were trapped by techniques of mind control. ... Finally, accounts of the cult members themselves often indicate that their decision to become members in new religions followed a long search not only for meaning but also for the resolution of major life crises." See Understanding Cults and New Religions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986) 9-10.
II. Deprogramming/Faithbreaking (Chapter 4)
A. The Nature of Deprogramming (Section A)
The alleged mental illness called "brainwashing" or "mind control" is presumably so severe and damaging that drastic measures must be taken. According to John Clark, Margaret Singer and others, adherents of certain religious "cults" must be forcibly removed and subjected to "coercive deprogramming", otherwise they will never be able to leave the "cult". Page 61.
B. How Deprogamming Works (Section B)
Along with Robert Lifton's book on thought reform, one of the most influential books endorsing this practice of deprogramming as the cure for "brainwashing" is Snapping by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman.19 This book is often used as a major reference source for deprogrammers during their "dialogue" or interrogation of religious adherents. As Lowell Streiker explains, "If Lifton's Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism is deprogramming's Bible, Snapping is its Summa Theologica, Constitution, and Encyclopedia Britannica all rolled into one.20
This book has served to impress many victims of deprogramming as authentic evidence that they have been subjected to a "sudden personality change". Conway and Siegelman assert that "mind-altering" techniques such as repetition of chants, intimate touching, physical duress, etc., tamper with the quality of information fed into the brain, leading to "information disease". The book has been particularly effective because the faithbreaking victim is totally isolated and has no way of verifying the truth of Conway and Siegelman's theory. However, for the record, this book has been severely discredited by both social scientists and psychiatrists such as James R. Lewis,21 David Bromley,22 Brock Kilbourne,23 and Lowell Streiker. Streiker finds it difficult to contain his contempt for this book largely because the elaborate theory about "information disease" that Conway and Siegelman have created applies to just about any activity, particularly if there is any intensity in it at all. As Streiker remarks, "Anything which reaches above the threshold of boredom is suspect." He concludes, "Obviously there is a whole lot of brainwashing going on, and very little of it by the handful of religious sects routinely lambasted by the ACN [Anti-Cult Network]."24
James Lewis and Brock Kilbourne also offer harsh criticism of the Conway and Siegelman conclusions. Based on his study, social psychologist Kilbourne critiques the lack of statistical support for the "information disease" hypothesis.25 On the basis of his extensive research, Lewis confirms this, pointing out that "the trauma of the shattering of one's religious faith (such as occurs during deprogramming)--rather than `cultic mind control'--are responsible for `information disease'".26 Kilbourne concludes: "What is perhaps more surprising than the Conway and Siegelman conclusions about the destructive effects of cults in the absence of supporting data is the almost blind endorsement by some of their study on cults (see the Collegiate Advisor, December '82, January 83, p. 17). Such pseudo-scientific research may tell us more about some who study cults than about the cults themselves."27 Pages 65-66.
Notes:
19. Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change (New York: Delta, 1979). Since writing this book, Conway and Siegelman have turned their anti-religious rhetoric against fundamentalist Christians asserting that they are more dangerous than the "destructive cults." See Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Holy Terror (New York: Doubleday, 1982) 5.
20. Streiker, supra, 163.
21. James R. Lewis, "`Information Disease', and the Legitimization of Religious Repression", supra.
22. James R. Lewis & David G. Bromley, "The Cult Withdrawal Syndrome: A Case of Misattrition of Cause?" 18. Forthcoming in the Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, December 1987.
23. Brock K. Kilbourne, "The Conway and Siegelman Claims Against Religious Cults: An Assessment of Their Data," Journal For the Scientific Study of Religion, vol.22, no.4, Dec.1983, 380.
24. Streiker, supra, 166. Streiker quotes from the back cover of the paperback edition as an indictment in itself. "Hare Krishna chanters, est graduates, Moonies, Born Again converts...Charles Colson, Eldridge Cleaver, Patty Hearst, "Son of Sam"--What can they all possibly have in common? They answer is "snapping"--the term Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman use to describe the sudden drastic alteration of personality that has become an American phenomenon in the past decade and is spreading fast. According to Conway and Siegelman, snapping is visible among religious cult members, today's popular self-improvement mass therapies, and even within the vast Evangelical movement. The authors point out that mind-altering techniques employed by these groups tamper with the kind and quality of information fed to the brain--through isolation, repetition of chants, monotonous music, intimate touching, lack of sleep, physical duress, and fatigue." Ibid., 164.
25. Kilbourne, "The Conway and Siegelman Claims", supra, 384.
26. Lewis, "Information Disease", supra, 6.
27. Kilbourne, "The Conway and Siegelman Claims", supra, 384.
C. The Destructiveness of the Deprogramming Experience (Section D)
In a very useful article on the subject, constitutional attorney Sharon Worthing debunks the assumption by some anti-cult proponents that deprogramming "breaks the spell" that the religious adherent is under and returns him to a "normal state". Worthing asserts that this assumption clearly does not stand up under analysis. She writes:
The object of deprogramming is to break a person's will so that he yields to the demands of the deprogrammers. This is brainwashing in the true sense. Deprogrammers assert that because the person has already been brainwashed and deprived of his will's normal action, their technique is a necessary "counter-brainwashing". Yet even if an individual has been broken by his association with a religious group, which is a highly suspect proposition, it is doubtful that he could be mended by breaking him a second time. If anything, deprogramming would constitute additional brainwashing, not "counter-brainwashing".47 Page 71.
Notes:
47. Worthing, Sharon L. "Deprogramming", Liberty, Sept/Oct 1977
* * *
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OUTLINE No.14:
STRANGE GODS, The Great American Cult Scare, by David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe, Jr., Beacon, 1981
I. Introduction, by Harvey Cox
"Cult scare"
Legislation adequate
ACM (anti-cult movement) advocates repression
Deprogramming
II. The Heart of the Issue (Chapter 1)
A. The Cult Hoax
Media hype
NRMs (new religious movements) at odds with society
B. New Religions in American History and Conflicts of Interest
1. Sources of Horror Stories
Ex-members
American history of religious exposs
2. Organized Opposition to New Religions
Church opposition
Government opposition
Public opposition
III. Who Are the Cults? (Chapter 2)
"Cult": a buzz word
IV. Joining the New Religions: Brainwashing or Conversion? (Chapter 4)
A. Evidence for the Use of Mind-Control Techniques
Coercion
Mind control
B. Evaluating Claims of Brainwashing
Brainwashing
Mind control
V. The Leaders: Gurus and Prophets, or Madmen and Charlatans? (Chapter 5)
A. Wealth and Greed as Motives
COG's (Children of God) use of funds
VI. Fund-raising and the New Religions: Charities or Rip-Offs? (Chapter 6)
A. Fund-Raising by New Religions
COG's use of funds for evangelising
VII. Deprogramming (Chapter 7)
A. Vindication for Deprogramming: The Apostates
Ex-members
Deprogrammed ex-members
Atrocity stories
Motives of apostates
Ex-member surveys
B. Evaluating Deprogramming
Ex-members
Brainwashing
Mind control
Atrocity stories
Deprogrammers
VIII. A Hard Look at the Cult Controversy (Chapter 8)
A. Evaluating the Anticult Movement
History of American religious persecution
Ex-members
Brainwashing
Commitment
Parents of members
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EXCERPTS No.14:
STRANGE GODS, The Great American Cult Scare, by David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe, Jr., Beacon, 1981
[David G. Bromley, chairman of sociology at the University of Hartford, Connecticut, and Anson D. Shupe, Jr., associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Arlington. Both authors have written extensively about the cults and anticultist movement. They travel and speak widely on this uniquely American concern.]
I. Introduction, by Harvey Cox
[Harvey Cox is the Thomas Professor of Divinity at Harvard University]
There is much to dislike, disagree with, and even to oppose in some religious (and political and therapeutic and other) movements today. There are certainly dishonest and scheming individuals operating in religious movements and in many other kinds of movements as well. The "cult scare," however, goes far beyond any legitimate cause for concern. It conjures up a general specter, a Godzilla from the depths that must be destroyed by any means available. The fact is, however, that legislation already exists to countermand all the illegal acts attributed to the religious movements and leaders who violate such laws without making the cults themselves a target. It is already against the law in the United States to kidnap people, to hold them against their will, to extort their money and to prevent them from eating red meat if they want to (and can afford it). No advocate of religious freedom defends the right of someone to deprive people of their freedom or to falsify income taxes just because he or she is a religious leader. Being a religious leader does not exempt anyone from criminal liability.
Anyone is free to oppose the teaching of any religious group, criticize its ideas, question its practices, and argue against the claims it makes. I have done my share of this polemicizing in the past and will continue to do so in the future. But those who have created the great cult scare are not satisfied with these forms of protection and of refutation. They want to marshal the power of the state, the churches, the mental health profession, and other sectors of the society in rooting out something they see as an unprecedented threat, and they are perfectly willing to sacrifice legal guarantees, established scholarly procedures, and accepted boundaries of civil discourse to do so. They want us to believe the cults pose an unprecedented and extraordinary threat so that the use of unprecedented and extraordinary means to uproot them can be justified.
Reading this book strengthened my belief that the anticult movement will only succeed in creating a new armory of repressive techniques that an increasingly repressive society will inevitably apply to more and more unpopular groups and individuals. "Deprogramming" has already been used against political deviants, and in a widely reported case where there was no suggestion of religious affiliation at all, a Cincinnati mother recently engaged a deprogrammer to un-brainwash a daughter whose lifestyle she did not approve of. If there is a menace abroad, it is probably the growing power of the alliance between government and mental health sectors to keep people thinking and acting the way those in charge think they should.
HARVEY COX
Thomas Professor of Divinity
Harvard University
Pages xiii-xv.
II. The Heart of the Issue (Chapter 1)
A. The Cult Hoax
In this book we insist, on the basis of hard, reliable evidence, that much of the controversy over so-called cults is a hoax, a "scare" in the truest sense of the word. There is no avalanche of rapidly growing cults. In fact, there probably are no more such groups existing today than there have been at any other time in our recent history. Furthermore, the size of these groups has been grossly exaggerated and almost all have long since passed their peak periods of growth. Much of the "cult explosion" has been pure media hype. There is no mysterious brainwashing process used to trap and enslave millions of young Americans. Few young adults have found these new religions attractive enough even to experiment with membership, and the vast majority of those who have tried them have walked away after only a brief stay. There is no convincing evidence that all new religions are out merely to rip off every available dollar from the American public. Some have shown relatively little interest in accumulating large sums of money or in being the recipients of public donations. There is no compelling reason to believe that all modern gurus and spiritual leaders are complete charlatans. Finally, there is no bona fide mental health therapy called deprogramming that works as its practitioners and promoters claim. If anything, the logic behind deprogramming smacks of the same medieval thinking behind the seventeenth-century Salem witch trials in colonial America.
Yet this cult hoax is not the result of hallucination. Nor is it sheer fabrication by the people who have been most anxious to promote it. It is not a deliberate fraud, but it is a deliberate attempt to horrify and anger us. Stories are spread by a number of Americans who sincerely believe them and genuinely feel they have been victimized. At least some of their complaints are not groundless. These new religions are at odds with the values, lifestyles, and aspiration of the majority of contemporary Americans. Virtually all of the groups do condemn and reject the way most of us live. They do seek to recruit and reshape anyone who will listen to them. In general, they do show limited concern for individual members' past ties and obligations to families, friends, and personal careers. Many of the new religions do act unscrupulously and do treat us with some mixture of pity and contempt. Like other zealots, they presume they know what is best for us better than we ourselves do. New religions do take advantage of laws and constitutional protections to further their own ends. These facts are naturally disquieting since most of these groups, if successful, would create worlds in which few of us would wish to live. Pages 3-5.
B. New Religions in American History and Conflicts of Interest
1. Sources of Horror Stories
Allegations leveled against various new religions in American history have come from many sources. In most cases, however, the most important and influential source has been disillusioned or disgruntled ex-members of the religious groups (or at least individuals who claimed to have been members). Such persons, we have found in our research, make a predictable entrance into antimovements. Antimovements call for radical action against new religious groups and must justify such extreme measures. They are faced with a problem, however, since they must provide convincing, credible evidence that the groups in question really do deserve harsh, punitive measures. These ex-members, or defectors, provide the perfect solution to this problem. In the past, whether claiming to be ex-Mormons, ex-Catholics, or ex-whatevers, these individuals have been able to sway audiences and actually incite mobs with their inflammatory accusations and lurid claims of "I was there, I saw it happen!" As a result, American religious history has a rich literature of "exposs" that carry such titles as Secrets of Nunneries Disclosed, and Rosamond; or, A Narrative of the Captivity and Sufferings of an American Female Under the Popish Priests in the Island of Cuba, with a Full Disclosure of Their Manners and Customs.
These purported firsthand accounts were extremely effective in arousing public opinion and by and large seem to have been accepted uncritically. Many of the individuals who wrote these exposs, however, undoubtedly had their own private motives for joining the ranks of opponents of, in this instance, Roman Catholicism. Certainly the most celebrated cases of individuals with private grudges who were extremely successful in gaining public support were those of Maria Monk and Rebecca Reed. Both women wrote books, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery and Six Months in a Convent, in which they claimed to be escaped nuns who had witnessed horrible atrocities during their convent captivities. Actually, neither woman had ever been a nun, a fact well known to the Protestant groups that used them to whip up anti-Catholic hatreds. The two books were largely ghostwritten by leaders of the anti-Catholic movement. According to historians who have investigated both cases, Reed worked in a convent for a short time and Monk's only contact with a convent came when she was confined by her mother to a Catholic-run mental asylum for incorrigible behavior. According to one historical account of the Reed case:
In order to escape censure as a failure, she put her imagination to work instead of her muscles and thereby found a way to get out of her intolerable position with honor. She decided to flee the convent and spread the story that she was being forced to take orders against her will. Once out, she quickly got into the clutches of the Beecher (Protestant) group. ... 10
Monk, on the other hand, was about to give birth to an illegitimate child (the father was a notorious anti-Catholic activist) and sought to escape her obvious dishonorable state by blaming the whole affair on forcible seduction by a Catholic priest. While the Reed and Monk cases are extreme, they illustrate the operation of private motives in such conflicts and warn against uncritical acceptance of unverifiable accounts. Pages 15-16.
Notes:
10 J.P. Chaplin, Rumor, Fear and the Madness of Crowds (New York: Ballanine), p. 17.
2. Organized Opposition to New Religions
Antigroups that opposed new religions have traditionally come from established churches, various levels of government, and groups of individuals who have come into direct, personal conflict with the new religions. For established churches the issue has been the new religions' belligerent rejection of them. In each of the cases we have described, the new religion claimed special revelations or spiritual authority that had the effect of elevating it to a superior position both morally and spiritually. The established churches could not allow such claims to pass unchallenged. If there were a truth higher than traditional Christianity, what would be the basis of the established churches' authority and what was the worth of moral decisions and personal sacrifice made in the name of their teachings? Naturally clergy and parishioners alike reacted defensively to the claims of new religions with anger and alarm.
Leaders of established churches usually warned their parishioners of the spiritual dangers posed by the new religions and tried to discredit their teachings. Often they were not averse to rallying public opinion and stimulating government action wherever possible. Organizations formed with the avowed purpose of exposing and attacking one or more of the new religions. In the campaign against Catholics, for example, there were a number of organizations, such as the American Protestant Association, the Protestant Reformation Society, and the American Protestant Union, which were led by Protestant clergy. Other organizations emerged later to combat the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, and many of these [such as Ex-Mormons for Jesus, Saints Alive!, Mission to Mormons, Ex-Jehovah's Witnesses for Jesus, Help Jesus, and Jesus Loves the Lost) are still active today in the United States.
Government action against new religions has taken place when political interests have been directly threatened. Refusals to acknowledge the legitimacy or supremacy of the United States government (such as by refusing induction into the armed forces and refusing to salute the American flag) have brought swift, harsh punishment. The Mennonites, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Quakers have all paid a heavy price for such beliefs. Indeed, at one time a number of Quakers were sentenced to death for refusing military induction, although their sentences were later commuted. Jehovah's Witnesses not so long ago were beaten and lynched for the same reason. The nineteenth-century campaign against Catholics led to the formation in the 1840s of the American Republican Party, which enjoyed considerable electoral success on a platform attacking foreigners and Catholics. Although the new party was not able to muster enough support to pass the kind of repressive legislation it sought, a distinctly anti-Catholic flavor permeated the policies of several state governments as well as the federal government during this era. One cannot read the history of the times without coming away convinced that those new religions had been afforded less legal protection than established churches.
Large-scale public reaction to new religions has been most likely when some segment of the population has sensed a direct threat from their activities. Popular uprisings have been most successful when the government has been unwilling or unable to enforce the religious liberties of minority groups by protecting them. Certainly the classic example is the anti-Catholic campaign during the 1830s and 1840s, when public opinion was inflamed by traditional Protestant fears about papal power and the economic competition and clash of lifestyles that the large wave of Irish immigrants brought to New England. Protestant leaders further stirred up public sentiments by playing on public fears. In 1834, the Ursuline Convent in Charleston, Massachusetts, was burned to the ground by a mob incited by rumors that a young woman was being held there against her will. There were numerous instances of anti-Catholic rioting during these decades mobs destroyed homes, churches, and convents, causing numerous lives to be lost. Probably the worst rioting occurred in Kensington, a suburb of Philadelphia, in 1844. A series of rumors sent a mob into Catholic neighborhoods. Thirteen people died and two churches were burned to the ground. The rioting was halted only after the militia had been called out and finally forced to fire pointblank into the crowd. There were similar vigilante-style actions against the Mormons and Shakers that kept driving these groups from place to place seeking refuge. The Mormons were ultimately forced to seek sanctuary in the then-remote reaches of Utah after having been persecuted across more than half the United States. Page 17-19.
III. Who Are the Cults? (Chapter 2)
Most Americans have heard the label cult applied to a wide range of groups claiming their inspiration from the gurus of the Orient, the charismatic fringes of Judeo-Christianity, and even flying saucers. The word's frequent use leaves the impression that there is a specific category of religions universally recognized as cults and that these groups can be treated as if they were all basically alike. As deprogrammer Ted Patrick has claimed:
You name'em. Hare Krishna. The Divine Light Mission. Guru Maharaj Ji. Brother Julius. Love Israel. The Children of God. Not a brown penny's worth of difference between any of'em.1
Articles about cults have appeared frequently in such popular magazines as McCall's, Good Housekeeping, Seventeen, and Readers Digest, as well as in virtually every American newspaper until the public has come to feel, perhaps intuitively at least, that it knows what cults are.
In actuality, however, cult is a fashionable buzz word thrown about haphazardly by the media, anticultists, establishment ministers (who no longer worry about the label being applied to them), and even some social scientists who should know better. Although the term has a fairly precise technical meaning, it has been run into the ground by persons who indiscriminately attach it to any group not conforming to a narrow range of so-called normal middle-class religions. Cults are thus touted as new, expanding at alarming rates, and potentially dangerous both to their members and to larger society. They are allegedly the products of a breakdown in modern American institutions. Pages 21-22.
Notes:
1 Ted Patrick and Tom Dulack, Let Our Children Go! (New York: Ballantine, p. 17.
IV. Joining the New Religions: Brainwashing or Conversion? (Chapter 4)
A. Evidence for the Use of Mind-Control Techniques
As scientific research shows, true coercive persuasion, or brainwashing, is rare and not nearly as effective in changing attitudes as is commonly believed precisely because it relies on imprisonment and force. Coercion tends to produce overt compliance, not changes of mind.
To maintain any parallel with POW experiences, anticultists have to claim that there exists psychological coercion or subtle group pressure equivalent to physical restraint as the force prohibiting young adults from simply walking away from religious indoctrination sessions. ... The claim of psychological coercion is misleading because it relies as much on subjective impression as on objective fact. Clearly there is manipulated attitude adjustment in such situations, but it hardly constitutes destruction of an individual's capacity to think or reason. Pages 107-108.
B. Evaluating Claims of Brainwashing
The entire concept of brainwashing, as we have seen, is a misnomer. It is repudiated by many sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists as a crude euphemism. Worse, it is a distortion of a real, understandable process of attitude change that is neither mysterious nor unusual in American society.
Attempts to shape attitudes are a part of every church, school system, military establishment, and government. Ultimately there is nothing inherently wrong, in the moral sense, with the practice of shaping attitudes, even if it brings about radical change. The "wrongness" depends only on whether we approve of who is shaping the attitudes and for what purpose. This is the fundamental issue with which we as citizens must come to grips. Over a century ago Roman Catholics supposedly practiced mind control but Protestants did not. Today nobody seriously claims that the Roman Catholic church brainwashes its members more than any mainstream Protestant church. Has the Catholic hierarchy radically altered its method of indoctrinating clergy and lay members? It would be hard to see how. Rather, public toleration for Catholics has increased, and with toleration has come an acceptance of them as legitimate and noncontroversial. Mind control is more in the mind of the perceiver than some individual, identifiable practice.
Unquestionably, nearly all (if not all) the new religions seek to shift personal values and goals in a dramatic fashion. But the important legal and moral question is: do such efforts leave members uncritical, semiconscious, virtually compliant, quasicomatose zombies who are blindly obedient to the whims and orders of new religious leaders? The evidence suggests otherwise. How would supporters of the brainwashing/mind control stereotype explain high turnover rates in memberships of the Unification Church, the Hare Krishnas, and the Divine Light Mission? (To answer that their memberships have not declined runs counter to the facts.) Why did so many of Jim Jones's followers have to be forced at gunpoint to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid? Moreover, why have a number of psychiatrists and psychologists found no reasonable evidence of stunted mental functioning? Surely something so obvious in human behavior as the inability to make a rational, independent decision would be apparent to any trained mental health professional.
The brainwashing stereotype is clearly inadequate to explain the otherwise normal daily behavior of thousands of Scientologists who pay their taxes on time, raise families, competently work at their ordinary jobs, and vote for public officials in elections. Neither does it help us understand the real behavior of Hare Krishnas and Children of God members who must make complex organizational decisions in their growing bureaucracies. Pages 124-125.
V. The Leaders: Gurus and Prophets, or Madmen and Charlatans? (Chapter 5)
A. Wealth and Greed as Motives
In contrast to the Unification Church, Hare Krishna, and Scientology, the Divine Light Mission and the Children of God do not possess a great deal of wealth.
The Children of God have raised funds in a variety of ways, ranging from donations of funds and property by members to publicly selling their literature. Member donation has not been as profitable as literature sales since the group has not experienced a great expansion of membership. As the religious tracts Children of God devotees sell are rather inexpensively printed, these "sales" in many respects amount to public donations. Nevertheless, the Church seems more interested in spreading its message than in making money. Children of God runs a number of youth-oriented nightclubs and music-related businesses, but these are more important to the Church for their recruitment value than for money. Despite its modest income, the Children of God pours substantial funding into international proselytizing. The Church claims to have rounded colonies in over 80 countries, and the cost of establishing and sustaining these missions must be substantial. Members continue to live frugally, consistent with their theological beliefs, and there is no evidence that David Berg personally departs significantly from this lifestyle. Page 136,137.
VI. Fund-raising and the New Religions: Charities or Rip-Offs? (Chapter 6)
A. Fund-Raising by New Religions
What are the reasons the new religions need money? Their needs vary. For example, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Shakers, and other well-known Christian sects, the Children of God expect an imminent end to this world as we know it. Their major objective is to warn everyone of Christ's Second Coming in this century and the terrible fate that will befall those who do not harken to the message of God's chosen prophet, David Berg. The end is coming, regardless of what humanity does, so there is no need to store up material goods or wealth beyond the movement's survival needs. For COG, therefore, money is raised largely to broadcast their message and provide living expenses for the faithful while they await the millennium. These funds come from the sale of pamphlets and newsletters, or what they call "litnessing." Page 165.
VII. Deprogramming (Chapter 7)
A. Vindication for Deprogramming: The Apostates
Reevaluation does not produce angry ex-members of new religions who are suddenly eager to tell all about the groups. There are some ex-members who walk away from their commitment and write damaging exposs of what they saw and did, but they are rare. Most ex-members made the decision to leave as simply as they made the decision to join.
But for coercively deprogramed ex-members leaving is not that simple. As we have seen, parents are under strong (if understandable) pressure not to blame either themselves or their children for cult involvement. Once a young person becomes convinced that the new religion is not nearly as lofty, appealing, or benevolent as once thought, he or she too comes under the same pressure: not to blame oneself for misplaced idealism or naivete.
Deprogramming is an option that provides a stigma-free way out of the dilemma: "Yes, my son (or daughter) did become involved in a `strange' group, but it was not his (her) fault." "Yes, I really did call my parents Satanic and reject them, but I did not know what I was doing-my mind was not my own." Deprogramming provides parents with the potential to remove their children from unconventional groups quickly, but they can only justify such actions on the grounds that the young persons do not know what they are doing. After the reconciliation of the family, therefore, pressure on a young person to reinforce the parents for what they did is strong. Once out of the new religion, the ex-member cannot simply admit he or she has made a mistake, then have all forgotten and forgiven. That scenario would not only violate the logic of the brainwashing-deprogramming explanation, it would also ignore several facts:
that parents had been humiliated and insulted by the offspring's rejection of their lifestyle, values, and past sacrifices
that they had gone to the trouble, potential legal risk, and often considerable expense to stage the deprogramming
that no excuse that the young person had been deprogramed for his or her own good (thus that violation of the individual's religious freedom was justified) is nearly as convincing to others uninvolved as the ex-member's own testimony.
Thus, some ex-members, or what scholars call "apostates," tell their tales of atrocities that include lurid themes of exploitation, manipulation, and deception. They and their stories, which may be true, false, or embellished, serve several important uses. Aside from justifying the family's desperate and coercive actions and avoiding any public stigma attached to both family and individual, such stories become evidence that other opponents of new religions can point to in seeking laws, police action, and other remedies against the groups. Apostates' claims of what they saw and did have a first-person quality that makes them hard to refute. Since the family and the ex-member appear to be perfectly normal and average in every other respect, their stories deliver a profound impact on listeners and readers. These anecdotes tend to outrage audiences, frighten families of members currently in new religions, and make public officials more willing to consider controlling the so-called cults. For most Americans who know relatively little about new religions, apostates' stories may be their only source of information.
Some apostates have appeared briefly in the public eye to tell their stories, enjoyed a measure of short-lived publicity, and then faded away. A few have sought profit by writing books based on their adventures and/or by going on lecture circuits.
A well-known example of this recent apostate phenomenon is ex-Moonie Christopher Edwards, who wrote an autobiographical book of his experiences, Crazy For God. Aside from demonstrating a remarkable memory for details and events that allegedly occurred while his brain was being washed, Edwards' account of his indoctrination at the hands of the Unification Church's Oakland Family is a modern illustration of a literary genre as old as the anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic movements of the early nineteenth century. Edwards portrays himself as a young, idealistic innocent who was reduced by malevolent leaders to a degenerative, zombie-like state. He was exploited callously, the reader is told, for their own selfish and fanatical purposes until he was dramatically saved from such an unhappy predicament by his family and hired deprogrammers. With a literary style and deliberate melodramatic construction reminiscent of the script for a made-for-TV movie, Crazy For God makes one feel as if the ghost of Maria Monk, that self-proclaimed ex-nun from a nineteenth-century Montreal convent, had reappeared to promote another potboiler tract, this time substituting the Unification Church for the "Papist" Roman Catholics.
In sum, apostates and the horrific stories they tell are necessary, to provide fuel to attack unpopular movements, but, more important, to absolve families (and themselves) of any responsibility for their actions. This can be clearly seen in recent research by British sociologist James Beckford,21 who went to great efforts to track down examples of that rarely seen but plentiful species: the silent majority of former new religions' members who were not deprogramed but walked out on the group after deciding it was not for them. Beckford interviewed ex-Moonies and their families in Britain and discovered a telling source of strain remaining in the family even though the son or daughter had returned and resumed a "normal" life. Beckford noted that ex-Moonies continued to be ambivalent about their past participation in the Unification Church. While overall the experience had not worked for them, they still recalled good times and positive aspects. They were also embarrassed, knowing how others regarded the Church, and therefore deliberately avoided publicity concerning their past membership. It was their parents who badgered them to offer outsiders details of their experiences that could be interpreted as manipulative and deceptive. The parents wished to interpret their offspring's participation as the result of brainwashing, but the ex-members knew better. They had voluntarily walked away from the Unification Church.
Psychologist Trudy Solomon's recent study of 100 ex-Moonies, some of whom had been deprogramed and some of whom had exited voluntarily, also came to the same conclusion. Those who voluntarily left the Unification Church became less involved with the anticult movement, as did their parents, and felt less pressure to view their past involvement as a totally negative experience. The deprogramed Moonies, on the other hand, were encouraged to become active anticultists. Pages 198-202.
Notes:
21. See James Beckford, "`Brainwashing' and `Deprogramming'" in Britain: The Social Sources of Anti-Cult Sentiment," forthcoming in James T. Richardson (ed.), The Deprogramming Controversy: Sociological, Psychological, Legal, and Historical Perspectives (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books), and "Politics and `The Anti-Cult Movement,'" Annual Review of the Social Sciences, Vol. 3, pp. 169-90.
B. Evaluating Deprogramming
The similarities in horror stories told by apostates, or ex-members, of new religions are not the result of their all having experienced the same brainwashing processes; rather, their stories are so similar because the family dynamics--that is, the need of both families and individuals to deflect responsibility for joining a strange religious group away from themselves--are the same for most persons. Many anticultists claim that brain-washing and mind control must be real processes because so many deprogramed ex-members repeat the same accusations and stories. This is specious logic, however. We argue that the family situation puts pressures on ex-members to reinterpret their cult experiences in the same self-serving way, and that after deprogramming became a more widespread practice a folklore of deprogramming developed. Deprogrammers themselves implanted interpretations in the midst of new religions' members. Deprogrammers are like the American colonials who persecuted "witches": a confession, drawn up before the suspect was brought in for torturing and based on the judges' fantasies about witchcraft, was signed under duress and then treated as justification for the torture. In the end, the similarity of ex-members' stories is not the result of similar experiences but rather of artificial and imposed reinterpretations by persons serving their own needs and purposes.
Deprogrammers are self-serving, illegal, and fundamentally immoral. In some cases, despite their protests to the contrary, they have profited handsomely from this practice.23 The interpretation of deprogramming and cult membership most dear to the parents of young adults caught up in new religious movements is inaccurate. It would take a strong parent indeed who, in the face of resentment and disappointment over an offspring gone off on an exotic, idealistic crusade, could face the facts we have presented with cold logic. But most deprogrammers are not consciously malevolent, and most parents who decide on coercive deprogramming act from sincere motives. One of the tragic elements in this controversy is that parents who risk legal and financial penalties as well as the possible future alienation from their adult children by a deprogramming do so for decent, sincere reasons. These parents have much to gain if the deprogramming works, but also much to lose if it does not. Most people do not risk reputations and more except for causes they believe in. However misguided the critics of deprogramming paint all such parents and friends, they are not simply mindless, knee-jerk bigots. They are basically motivated by love and concern for their children. Neither side can take much comfort in the fact as long as the controversy rages. Pages 203-204.
Notes:
23. For example, in its one and only real year of operation, the Freedom of Thought Foundation deprogramming ranch cleared an estimated $195,000. Likewise, there is convincing evidence that Ted Patrick did not do badly himself during the mid-1970s. See Shupe, Jr., and Bromley, The New Vigilantes, pp. 135-41, for further details on available profit figures from deprogramming.
VIII. A Hard Look at the Cult Controversy--(Chapter 8)
A. Evaluating the Anticult Movement
American history is rich with similar conflicts, each one thought by its participants to be unique. Such groups as the Quakers, Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites, and Christian Scientists have at different times been the targets of allegations strikingly similar to those being made against the new religions. Given the conservative nature of most of these churches today it is hard to believe that earlier generations of Americans burned and looted Catholic convents, assassinated Joseph Smith and mobilized the United States Army against the Mormons, and sentenced Quakers to death for their refusal to serve in the armed forces.
The centerpiece of the anticultists' allegations is that cults brainwash their members through some combination of drugging, hypnosis, self-hypnosis, chanting or lecturing, and deprivation of food, sleep, and freedom of thought. If this argument were true, the new religions would not have such a sorry recruitment record, the defection rate among those who do join would not be as high as it is, individual members could not be counted on to work with the zeal they do, and ex-members would not be able to recall in such exquisite detail how they were brainwashed. Social scientists have largely repudiated the concept of brainwashing as the anticultists have used it. Certainly it is possible to break people down physically and psychologically through coercive techniques. But there is no evidence that people so abused will show the kind of positive motivation and commitment that converts to the new religions manifest.
Although the brainwashing argument is false, there is no doubt that the demands of those new religions that are organized communally can be total and consuming. Such groups require that converts cut off ties with the outside world and their former lives, demand total discipline and commitment, and provide for virtually all members' personal and social needs within the self-contained community. To distraught parents it might seem that only coercive measures could produce the personal sacrifice and the apparent single-mindedness with which converts to the new religions pursue the groups' goals. However, many young Americans are seeking out idealistic groups that demand a high level of discipline and commitment, even if most eventually tire of it and return to their former lives. For parents this distinction may not matter since in either case they lose the capacity to exert any significant influence over their off-spring. For the rest of us, however, this distinction is a vital one. Evidence of coercive, destructive brainwashing probably would gain the anticultists many supporters. Yet revelations of intensive socialization tactics like those used by convents, monasteries, military academies, and Marine Corps boot camps arouse much less indignation, despite the similarities. Pages 211-212.
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OUTLINE No.15:
TO SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY, American Constitutional Law and the New Religious Movements, by William C. Shepherd, Crossroads Publishing Company, 1985
I. Foreward, by Ray L. Hart
Constitutional freedom of religion
II. The Legality of Heresy (Chapter 3)
Judicial regulation of NRMs (new religious movements)
Richard Delgado: Professor of Law, UCLA
Media attacks on NRMs
Parens patriae
Conservatorship
Deprogramming
Minnesota Supreme Court decision: state-sanctioned deprogrammings
Guardianship
Forced treatment really means punishment of religious deviants
Proving mental competency
Thirteenth amendments applied to NRMs
Slavery
Proselytzing
Criminal law is adequate to regulate NRMs
Therapeutic state
Sovietization of medicine
Vigilantes
Religious freedom
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EXCERPTS No.15:
TO SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY, American Constitutional Law and the New Religious Movements, by William C. Shepherd, Crossroads Publishing Company, 1985
[William C. Shepherd (deceased 1982) had a Ph.D. from Yale in religious studies and was a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Montana. His wife, Molly, a lawyer, finished and published the book.]
I. Foreward, by Ray L. Hart
However appalled [Shepherd] was, and he was, at the commitments the young were willing to make, in the new religious movements, he was even more appalled at the reactions within contemporary American society to such commitments. Especially alarming to him were the ominous signs that the judiciary would place within the prosecutor's, or the conservator's, reach what the first and related amendments to the Constitution had placed beyond law and its force, the inalienable right of individual choice in matters of religious belief and, within limits precedentially established, practice.
II. The Legality of Heresy (Chapter 3)
The most powerful voice that has been raised in support of judicial regulation of the new religious movement groups belongs to Richard Delgado, Professor of Law at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has exhaustively and ingeniously spelled out every conceivable ground on which the state could establish an interest compelling enough to justify infringing upon and controlling the new religions. His position, stated generally, is that the "cults" flourish only because of success at subjecting young people to regimes of totalistic control that can inflict deep harms on unsuspecting minds. Thus he argues that the state not only has the right but the humanitarian duty to protect its young by blocking cultic activities and by making it legally possible to extricate believers from their new commitments so that they may be restored to their former socially useful pursuits (see especially, 1977:62-72). Delgado's law review articles lay out a scholarly rationale for the quite common journalistic attacks on the new religious movements and for the anticult movement in general (on the latter see Shupe and Bromley). In theoretical perspective, his careful and comprehensive sequence of argumentation is an attempt to extend parens patriae doctrine by thinking about new religious movement devotees in medical terms.
Reliance on parens patriae authority to justify intervention into the lives of new religious movement adherents is riddled with legal and ethical problems. For example, psychiatric treatment of a person during a temporary conservatorship more often than not is undertaken without consent. Delgado nonetheless advocates deprogramming, a forcible intervention designed to rescue members of harmful religious groups: "deprogramming or other similar forms of confrontation therapy may well prove to be the only way certain victims can be retrieved from a state of mind control" (1977:85). He prefers state-authorized deprogramming to "self-help," which is "unadorned abduction," as opposed to "abduction under color of state law" (see Pritchard, 1978:3-21). Similarly, the Minnesota Supreme Court recently asserted that "owing to the threat that deprogramming poses to public order, we do not endorse self-help as a preferred alternative." But the court also implied that deprogramming under the auspices of state-sanctioned temporary guardianships would be acceptable, meeting the least restrictive requirement in a way that self-help does not (Peterson v. Sorlien, 299 N.W.2d 123, 129 and n.2, Minn. 1980, discussed more fully in Chapter 9).
But even when carried out under conservatorship or guardianship orders, deprogramming is still enforced therapy or treatment, initiated (in most circumstances) without the volition or consent of the conservatee. Coleman and Solomon distinguish between volitional bona fide treatment and parens patriae treatment. For them the latter is unlawful--it is straightforward punishment, which without legal authority amounts to battery just as much as does an enforced surgical procedure (349 and n. 15). Benevolent intention on the part of professional therapists does not in itself result in bona fide treatment; only if the intended "patient" consents is psychiatric intervention genuinely treatment and not punishment. And of course neither treatment nor punishment for holding one sort of religious conviction as opposed to another is constitutional. Asserted right to treatment should not mask clearly illegal usurpation of authority, or a misuse of state parens patriae power.
If ... forced treatment is correctly termed punishment, a more honest term for right to treatment is justification for treatment. This label discloses the state's effort to rationalize, and to cast in the light of benevolence, its continuing punishment and control of deviants who might be difficult to process within the criminal justice system. The depiction of forced treatment as a right obfuscates the reality that the right to treatment is a justification for punishment (Coleman and Solomon: 356, emphasis in original).
Delgado's response to this kind of argument is that nonconsensual therapeutic intervention performed on new religious movement group members is not punitive: it is restorative. It is not designed "to implant new values, impose a new set of loyalties, or compel the young person to become a compliant son or daughter" (1977:82). It is, accordingly, not like the original cultic brainwashing processes, even though Delgado admits that the procedures are often similar (see id. at 85 n. 444 on the methods of 'lay deprogrammer" Ted Patrick). Furthermore, he argues that enforced therapy is not aimed at religious beliefs as such, but rather at "practices that are utilized to expand the numbers and powers of groups that happen to be religious" (id. at 84-85). He claims that first amendment doctrine presents "no insurmountable problems" (id. at 85); the issue is simply restoring free choice to persons impaired by membership in totalistic religious groups, thereby invoking benevolent parens patriae authority.
While Delgado's understanding of this point is surely subject to debate in ethical and political contexts, the thesis for present purposes is that it is also legally questionable (see LeMoult, passim, for cases and discussion, and the remarks in Chapter 2 on free choice). The confrontation between the Katz superior and appellate courts revolved precisely around this perception of parens patriae authority. The breed of benevolent paternalism espoused by Delgado was judged unconstitutional on first amendment grounds by the Katz court of appeal (73 Cal. App. 3d 983-89, 141 Cal. Rptr. 253-56). A person's religious commitments may not be used as grounds for the state to require him to prove his mental competence in order to avoid enforced therapeutic treatment. No determination of mental impairment may be based on religious adherence; legally, no one may be adjudged crazy by virtue of his faith. And even when the cluster of problems associated with involuntary acquisition of beliefs and present capacity to maintain them is introduced into the legal equation, grave doubt still hovers over anything like Delgado's argument. For at bottom, the mind control issues are matters of fact and proof; and "no court that has conducted an evidentiary hearing has found that any religious organization has subjected its adherents to mind control, coercive persuasion, or brainwashing" (note, 53 N.Y.U. L. Rev. at 1281). Moreover, self-endangerment, by itself, is not a ground for state-authorized psychiatric intervention.
Professor Delgado bases another more recent argument for exercise of parens patriae power over the new religious movements on the thirteenth amendment's categorical prohibition of slavery. He avers that this approach has several estimable virtues. There is no need to balance interests under the Sherbert-Yoder test for protecting free exercise of religion. Assessing whether initial voluntariness is present at conversion is not required. The need for health and psychiatric evaluations to establish harms is obviated. And the whole issue of mind control and brainwashing is bypassed. If bondage and peonage could be shown on the basis of a group's living conditions or its authoritarian regimen, then the state has a clear avenue on which to intervene in order to extricate and treat members. The state is committed to these ameliorative thirteenth amendment thrusts--to preventing degradation of human personality and attendant misery and suffering, and to averting social ills such as megalomaniacal leaders and antipluralistic activities. If courts could objectively determine that religious groups are indeed carrying out peonage practices, then both criminal and civil remedies might become legally available, including the most drastic, physical removal of the "victim" via conservatorship orders (Delgado, 1979-80:51-67).
Delgado's thirteenth amendment analysis is merely another way to justify extension of the state's parens patriae authority. For him, the thirteenth amendment offers a more direct avenue for intervention in new religious movement activities than does the first amendment balancing of harms against free exercise rights. What is gained in directness and simplicity, however, may be illusory. Some policy decisions that we as a society may wish to make are constitutionally forbidden. Delgado recommends a thirteenth amendment approach that he thinks gets around the complicated first amendment issues discussed above. But the potential success of this end run seems questionable. For in new religious movement cases, assessing whether or not a condition of involuntary servitude indeed exists probably depends almost wholly on adoption of an external and critical vantage point.
It is intuitively sounder to judge the conditions within these groups from the perspective of the outsider rather than that of the `happy slave.' By our standards, and by those of ex-cult members, rank and file cult members live lives of misery and deprivation. (Id. at 61)
But constitutionally, the happy slave's rights are precisely what must be protected, even if as a consequence society must put up with more of justice Jackson's mental and spiritual poison. People have the right to be miserable and deprived if they so choose. Roman Catholic monks and hermits are just as wretched "[b]y ordinary standards" (id.). If we leave it to the church to regulate them, so also must we leave it to the new religious groups to lay out a style of life for their adherents so long as they can continue to dig up converts by legal means. Peaceable persuasion, if not deceptive, is not by itself a coercive technique, and it is neither reasonable nor logical immediately to make the judgment that involuntariness must be in play or else people would not want to join a group whose beliefs and ways of living we find distasteful. To deny religious groups the right to proselytize is to sentence them to extinction, and that clearly cannot be done in the absence of a state interest compelling enough to override the guarantees of non-establishment and free religious exercise.
Once again the thicket of claims and counterclaims about voluntariness must arise; however much we may wish to circumvent the issue, it is inescapable, and so consequently are the first amendment commands that have been considered here. Thirteenth amendment cases have been built on force, compulsion, and threat. If force or threat of force is involved in new religious movement conversion methods, "the question of whether one has voluntarily surrendered to a cult remains unresolved, and so we still must face the `voluntary' issue which Professor Delgado claims we can avoid" (Gutman, 1979-80:69).
A thirteenth amendment rationale supporting governmental intervention may come a cropper precisely over the problem of happy slaves. Unless criminal acts are committed by group leaders to keep adherents in tow, then the state has no right to interfere. And if criminal behavior is going on, then its perpetrators are subject to criminal prosecution. We are left with the very same distinctions raised by cases weighing first amendment liberties against state interests. If fraud, or kidnapping, or deception can be proved, then the state not only has a defensible interest but also an obligation to prosecute. And if believers have been involuntarily reduced to "states of zombie-like obedience" (Delgado, 1979-80:71) by virtue of coercive persuasion techniques, then the state may have the right and even the duty to rescue them so long as they are genuinely incapacitated. The same messy questions remain. Clear violations of the law must be prosecuted; but establishing whether a new religious movement member's state of mind provides evidence that laws have indeed been violated, or that values underlying our constitutional prohibition of slavery have been transgressed, is a task that the prosecutor must not undertake lightly (see Anthony).
Finally, all supporters of parens patriae regulation of the new religions--even on the thirteenth amendment ground that Delgado has recently espoused--see pathology and mental impairment in people's choosing to join and to maintain membership in these groups. Delgado's own convolutions on this point confirm this conclusion. He claims that his new approach avoids the "medical model" for legal purposes, yet in the very next breath he continues to speak of "cultist brainwashing" (1979 80:55). Conservatorships, moreover, still loom for him as an available remedy in cases of persons who have fallen under the domination of cult leaders and whose psychological freedom has been demonstrably impaired" (id. at 65). "Impaired psychological freedom" and "zombie-like obedience" and "brainwashing" are merely other terms for pathology and mental disorder. Once involuntary behavior is imputed to someone, the disease or medical model is already in play.
To the extent that `sick' persons are the victims of inner pathological processes which interfere with normal behavioral functions, their behavior is assumed to be beyond their control. (Robbins and Anthony, 1982:285)
Supporters of parens patriae intervention argue that the person cannot help what he does; he is a victim of pathological compulsion, robbed of free will, in need of rescue and treatment.
Again, the asserted right to treatment of new religious group adherents may be a dangerous ploy that wrongly circumvents civil liberties and first amendment protections. To treat and cure, to restore freedom of choice and former life-patterns: these seem to be admirable goals on the surface, yet exercising benevolent parens patriae authority with respect to the new religious movements is simply one more link in the chain of evolution toward the therapeutic state (Kittrie, passim). A therapeutic vision of governmental services and sanctions leads to a debatable discussion of policy, and there may be legitimate considerations, for example, favoring treatment of convicted criminals rather than moral judgment and overt forms of punishment. But the more this vision is put into practice, the more deeply the question of "who is sick" presses. The more extensive state paternalism becomes, the more deviant and minority (but harmless) behaviors may be scrutinized, and the more people may have to fear from state-imposed, involuntary treatment. Thinking in medical terms about deviance feeds the growth of the therapeutic state, which seeks to coerce the maintenance of optimal mental health in all its citizens (see generally Robbins and Anthony, 1982). Where new religious group members are the deviants, compulsory psychiatric care is often the goal motivating alienated parents who try to get conservatorship orders from sympathetic courts. But this, for a civil libertarian such as Gutman, is nothing else than the "`Sovietization of medicine'" (quoted in Shupe and Bromley, 1980:224).
Consideration of the therapeutic revolution is intertwined with the profoundly antagonistic feelings that people often have about new totalistic and authoritarian religious groups. The state's therapeutic apparatus and its medical way of thinking about deviance give anticult citizens a way of stigmatizing cult membership as sickness. Rescuing "victims" is a laudable objective, and rescuers (vigilantes?) need not therefore be overly concerned with the niceties of civil liberties. "If cultism is essentially a medical issue it cannot also be a civil liberties issue, for the sick must be healed" (Robbins and Anthony, 1982:286, emphasis in original). The problem is that vigilante self-help rescue attempts, kidnapping, and forcible deprogramming are illegal. The Katz appellate court concluded that legal conservatorships for deprogramming purposes are also illegal in the absence of proof that lawless grave abuses are going on. No one disagrees that new religious movement illegalities should be subject to all state sanctions. Focusing on unlawful activity rather than on putative pathology within these groups would be a step in the proper direction. For it is nonverbal, intrapsychic behaviors, as opposed to criminal conduct, that bring constitutional concerns into play. Since Sherbert and Yoder, these concerns are weighted in favor of individuals' free exercise rights and against state parens patriae power.
We may wish for open-minded and tolerant people, but we cannot produce them through legal processes, for the rights of a person to be intolerant and dogmatic and narrow and servile are protected. Abuses of the law may be regulated and prosecuted.
[But] problems arising from the power and authority wielded by cults over converts should be conceptualized as conflicts of authority between religious movements and other institutions, notably the state and the family. (Robbins, 1979-80:46)
Psychiatric afflictions may of course arise, but religious deviance is not necessarily and by definition a front on which state-condoned compulsory psychiatry may move. When we use the rhetoric of mental illness to justify intervention, we may both mask and exacerbate tensions within society that make new religious group membership look attractive in the first place and fuel the righteous vehemence of the anticult movement (Robbins and Anthony, 1982; Shupe and Bromley, 1980). And by stigmatizing new religious movements we may force members into further closure and further alienation ("deviance amplification") (Robbins, 1979-80:48).
If the focus of judicial attention shifts from cultic religious conduct regulable by secular interests toward the absolutely protected area of sheer belief, then a novel constitutional confrontation could lie ahead. Some courts have clearly seen this danger in recent years and have recoiled from it, as did the Katz appellate court. Prevailing public prejudices and popular medical stigmatization of the new religious groups ought not to lure courts into an unlawful concentration on individuals' internal states of mind and their private religious convictions. Seizing on the mind control issue in order to vault over required substantive findings and procedural safeguards could well lead to an unconstitutional expansion of the scope of judicial intervention (Robbins, 1979-80:38).
Religious beliefs by themselves were wrongly at stake in the original Katz proceedings (note, 53 N.Y.U. L. Rev. at 1255 n. 53). A similar misplaced focus resulted in a New York grand jury indictment of leaders of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. But a judge granted the defendants' subsequent motion for dismissal of the indictments, recognizing the clear distinction between criminal acts subject to the prosecutor's reach and spurious allegations of mind control put forward in order to justify state intervention. He found no legal foundation for the state's argument that religious activities and beliefs of the group constituted brainwashing, destruction of free will, or subjection of victims to unlawful imprisonment. He issued a caveat to prosecutorial agencies:
[T]he premise posed by the People ... is fraught with danger in its potential for utilization in the suppression--if not outright destruction--of our citizens' right to pursue, join and practice the religion of their choice, free from a government created, controlled or dominated religion, as such right is inviolately protected under the First Amendment. ... (People v. Murphy, 98 Miscellaneous. 2d 235, 413 N.Y.S.2d 540, 543-44, 1977)
Proselytizing and living under strict regimes of belief maintenance are not crimes. Neither is heavy indoctrination (413 N.Y.S.2d at 545). All these may involve mental and spiritual poison, and they may impede reasonable and logical thinking, but they are beyond legal recourse on the part of those who find them abhorrent. Religious freedom, to be sure, is the freedom to pursue, join, and practice a religion; and it is also the freedom to define one's own religious experiences and to associate with those who may see reality through similar lenses. Heresy is not subject to the prosecutor's reach. Pages 31-37.
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OUTLINE No.16:
UNDERSTANDING CULTS AND NEW RELIGIONS, by Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986
I. Christian Apologetics, Deprogramming, and the Cults
A. The Accusation of Brainwashing
Deprogramming
Media hype
Ex-members
Atrocity stories
Parents
Brainwashing
Conversion
Shell shock
Mental health
Evangelical intolerance of NRMs (new religious movement)
ACM now attacking evangelicals
B. Evidence Against Brainwashing
From ex-members
From parents
From sociologists
From members
C. The Question of Deprogramming
Deconversion
Deprogramming denies choice and identity
Deprogramming is un-Christian (and anti-Christian)
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EXCERPTS No.16:
UNDERSTANDING CULTS AND NEW RELIGIONS, by Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986
[Irving Hexham is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary. Karla Poewe is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.]
I. Christian Apologetics, Deprogramming, and the Cults
A. The Accusation of Brainwashing
Before we can seriously discuss conversion to new religions, we have to consider the charge that they are sinister organizations that brainwash their members. In North America and Europe many newspapers have told bizarre stories about life in new religions. Such stories depict cult members as mindless zombies. Supporting this view, ex-members speak oil T.V. and radio talk shows about having been trapped by cults and subjected to sleep deprivation, protein-deficient diets, and isolation from family and friends. Similarly, the media spotlight parents who describe tragic stories about misled children they have attempted to rescue without success.
Such stories raise the question of whether, brainwashing really occurs in cults. To begin to answer this question, we must consider the history of brainwashing as a theory of religious conversion.
The term brainwashing was first used to explain religious conversion by the British psychiatrist William Sargant, who wrote Battle for the Mind in 1957.7 This book is the main source of the term as used today. Sargant argues that evangelical conversions from St. Paul to Billy Graham can be explained in terms of psychological processes that he says are akin to what was called, "shell shock" during World War 1. Shell shock is a psychological process that can be engineered to produce personality changes, and Sargant claims that "brainwashing" to produce a religious conversion is a similar process. By equating brainwashing with shell shock and relating both to religious conversion, Sargant was intentionally associating the conversion process with disease.
Commenting about Methodism in his conclusion, Sargant says "this is no longer the eighteenth century. Then it did not seem to matter, what the common people believed because they exercised no political power and were supposed only to work, not think; and because they read no books or papers. But religious conversion to fundamentalism seems out of date now; ... the brain should not be abused by having forced upon it any religious or political mystique that stunts reason." He indicates that he considers fundamentalists--by whom he means evangelical--to be dangerous people. He says that people like Billy Graham abuse people mentally and gain followers by brainwashing.
Since Sargant wrote Battle for the Mind, evangelical Christians in Britain and America have grown in numbers. As their numbers have increased, so has their political and social influence, while unfavorable criticisms of them have conversely decreased. New religions, however, continue to stand accused of brainwashing and mind-abuse--and, ironically, evangelical Christians are among the first to make such accusations."
Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman have produced a variation of the brainwashing thesis, arguing that groups like the Moonies (members of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church) use conversion techniques that place people under pressure until they snap, thus making personality changes possible. Evangelicals welcomed Conway and Siegelman's book Snapping because it was a direct attack upon the Moonies and their leader. They completely ignored a short statement on page 46 that equates the conversion practices of the Moonies with those of evangelical Christians. In their latest book, Holy Terror (1982), however, Conway and Siegelman press their attack upon evangelicals directly, insisting that conversion is a form of snapping or brainwashing not only among would-be new religionists but also among would-be evangelical Christians.8 Pages 8,9.
Notes:
7 Sargant, Battle for the Mind (London: Pan Books, 1959).
8 See, for example, Ron Enroth's Youth Brainwashing and Extremist Cults (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978).
B. Evidence Against Brainwashing
We reject the brainwashing thesis not only because it represents an attack upon religious conversion generally but also because there is considerable evidence that people join new religions of their own free will.
We have four main sources of evidence about recruitment to cults. First, there are testimonies by ex-cult members who have totally repudiated the beliefs of the cult but strongly deny that they were trapped by techniques of mind control. Second, there are many parents, relatives, and friends of cult members and ex-cult members who seem to understand that the person they knew chose to join the cult freely. Third, there are many studies by social scientists indicating that individuals have different conversion careers, which would suggest that the conversion process is voluntary. Finally accounts of the cult members themselves often indicate that their decision to become members in new religions followed a long search not only for meaning but also for the resolution of major life crises. Pages 9,10.
C. The Question of Deprogramming
Those who assume that members of new religions are in fact brainwashed sometimes attempt to undo the brainwashing by means of a process called "deprogramming." Deprogrammers claim to "rescue" people from cults by using a variety of techniques to coerce them into renouncing their former allegiances. We have questions about both the premise and the effectiveness of deprogramming, however.
For deprogramming to work, subjects must be convinced that they joined a religious group against their will. They must therefore, renounce all responsibility for their conversion and accept the idea that in some mysterious way their mind was controlled by others. But this idea has some very unsettling implications. If one has lost control of one's mind once, why can't it happen again? What is to prevent another person or group from gaining a similar influence? How can deprogramed people ever be certain that they are really doing what they want to do? By its very nature, deprogramming destroys a person's identity. It is likely to create permanent anxiety about freedom of choice and leave the deprogramed subject dependent upon the guidance and the advice of others.
Fundamentally, deprogramming denies choice and creates dependency. It robs people of their senses of responsibility. Instead of encouraging people to accept the fact that they chose to join a religion or realize that they made a mistake, it encourages people to deny their actions and blame others. This, deprogramming is not only psychologically destructive but profoundly unChristian. The Bible repeatedly emphasizes human accountability and calls us to choose between good and evil. Deprogramming denies our responsibility to make such choices. Pages 10,11.
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OUTLINE No.17:
UNDERSTANDING THE NEW RELIGIONS, edited by Jacob Needleman and George Baker, Seabury Press, 1978
I. Deep Structures in the Study of New Religions, by Harvey Cox
History of American intolerance to NRMs
Mormon persecution
Four journalistic anti-NRM (new religious movement) myths:
1) Subversion myth--threat to public order: Catholics, Quakers, Puritans
2) Accusations: sexual or behavioural deviancy
3) Dissimulation--deception: Jesuits
4) Evil eye--brainwashing and mind control: Mormons, ex-members, Salem witchcraft trials
Anti-cult literature
Historical example: burning of Ursuline convent in Boston, 1839, as result of an anti-Catholic book
II. New Religions and Religious Liberty, by J. Stillson Judah
Favorable parents of NRM members
Open minded psychologists
Deprogramming
Mind control
Ex-members
Atrocity stories
Plight of deprogrammees
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EXCERPTS No.17:
UNDERSTANDING THE NEW RELIGIONS, edited by Jacob Needleman and George Baker, Seabury Press, 1978
I. Deep Structures in the Study of New Religions, by Harvey Cox
[Harvey Cox is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School.]
When I began to read some of the attacks on the new religious movements, I became interested in the history of mainstream attacks on marginal, deviant, unhealthy, heretical, and schismatic movements. The literature is ample. One discovers, for example, in the stacks of the Andover Library at the Harvard Divinity School that most of the books on Mormonism treat the "crimes of Mormonism," and present exposs of life in Utah. There are actually fewer objective, scholarly, to say nothing of sympathetic, treatments. So one does not have to go very far, as any American church historian knows, to discover reams of material by mainstream religious writers about deviant or marginal movements. It makes wonderful reading.
At the same time that I was reading some of this material, I came across the paper in which Dick Anthony suggests the possible application of a modified version of Noam Chomsky's structural linguistic distinction between deep and surface structures in a religious movement. This suggestion provided me with a handy way of looking at some of the recurrent themes in mainstream polemics toward marginal movements. What I began to notice was that there are recurrent "deep structures" with which mainstream writers and critics characterize, caricature, and condemn marginal movements. The themes are repeated, as though the same scenario were there, and only the names of the actors needed to be changed.
Here I wish to outline four such themes. A useful term to refer to these themes is "myth."
(1) I call the first theme the "subversion myth," according to which a movement, whatever its religious intentions, is thought to pose a threat to the civil order. Sometimes these movements are seen as mainly religious fronts for politically subversive movements, or as movements that will endanger the civil authority. Other times they are seen as having at least secondary characteristics along this line. Time after time, polemical writers say that the main problem with "these people" is not what they teach, but what would happen if their movement were to become widespread. It would somehow undercut the fabric of society. Civilized life itself would be endangered. Sometimes the taking of oaths by "these people" is suspect. For a long time it was thought that Catholics could not take oaths to a Protestant sovereign, and therefore could not be accepted as a part of the commonweal. A similar argument was leveled against the Quakers: they refused to take oaths at all, and they refused, moreover, to take off their hats to magistrates. Quite apart from their religious perspective, they were seen as a danger to the civil community. In fact, Kai Erickson, in his little book on the Wayward Puritans, points out something that I had not noticed before, that in interrogating Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the magistrates had no real interest in finding out what the Quakers were teaching. Simply being a Quaker was enough to get someone deported or, finally, hanged in the Boston Common. The recurrence of this myth may be seen in the current polemical literature. The threat to civil order is touted again and again.
(2) The second myth, i.e., accusation, that comes up, although again the faces and the actors are changed, is this: behind the walls of these movements exists a form of sexual or behavioral deviancy. How often has this accusation been heard? One remembers Maria Monk and all the babies born in the convents and buried in the basement. One hears stories of Reverend Moon's sexual prowess, and one used to hear similar stories of Father Divine. Sometimes the polemic is directed to the alleged orgiastic behavior, and at other times to the excessive sexual stringency of these movements. In this example, the mythic power of the "deep structure" may be seen as the cause of allegations that appear contradictory at the surface level.
(3) The third theme one notices frequently is what I call the "myth of dissimulation." It runs this way: "You can't talk to these people because they are taught to dissimulate. They are carefully coached in not telling the truth and in misleading you. Because of this, any communication with this group is impossible, fruitless, and misleading, because their doctrine itself teaches them to lie to you."
Of course, the best example of this myth is the Jesuits. There are many other examples, but we still have the term "jesuitical" in the English language to refer to devious reasoning, mental reservation, or that kind of pseudo-communication that occurs when one partner in the dialogue is serious and the other is not. When it becomes widespread, this idea functions as what logicians call "poisoning the well." Communication becomes impossible because "I can't believe what you are saying from the outset," and since this kind of underlying myth structures the perception that one has of a movement from the outset, it tends to be self-reinforcing. In any religious movement somebody occasionally fibs. With regard to most movements, an instance of dissimulation is not taken as evidence of an underlying principle or teaching. It is seen as a temporary deviation. In other movements, though, dissimulation is understood to evidence refusal on principle to enter into real communication.
(4) The fourth myth is what I call the "myth of the evil eye." It is thought that no sane person could possibly belong to a movement "like this," and therefore the participant must be there involuntarily. The existence of some kind of coercive, manipulative, or magical activity--or witchcraft--is inferred. Unfortunately the term "brainwashing" has come into currency recently a more psychologically acceptable way of expressing what s expressed previously in other ways. The brainwashing version of the evil eye myth holds that "these people" are the victims of prophets, spell-binders, witches, or hypnotists. There is a voluminous literature about how all of the Mormon women were being kept captive in polygamy by the brutal charismatic harm of the Mormon leaders. According to this material, there were no women living in Salt Lake City in the middle of the nineteenth century who were there voluntarily. This myth s expressed in much of the expos literature that usually comes with a title that includes the phrase "I was a..." These include a description of how the apostate had been "tricked" or "hypnotized" or "charmed" into it.
Persons that have had an unfavorable experience with one of the new religious movements tend to speak of their experience in a characteristic way: such persons try to prove that they were brainwashed by recounting their bizarre behavior. They seem to say, "the more bizarre I can tell you my behavior was, the surer the evidence is that I must have been brainwashed." I recall a conversation I had with a young lady who had been a member of a Christian fundamentalist group and whose only way of being able to talk about her experience was to say that she had been brainwashed. At first she described the process, but then she began recounting the "bizarre" things she did: she used to stay up praying for three nights in a row; she always walked around with her eyes on the ground, and so on. I was immediately reminded of the witchcraft trials in Salem, in which the proof that a person was a witch lay in the behavior of a second person. This second person might fall on the ground, and froth, and scream, and use profane language. This behavior, then, would be attributed to the action of the witch. The more profane, the more bizarre the behavior of the bewitched person, the surer the indication that that person was under control of an outside force. The myth of the evil eye presents an intriguing problem in interpretation. And, at this stage, I do not want to dismiss the possibility of there being manipulative or coercive forms of persuasion in these movements.
These then are the "deep structures" that seem to be enormously persistent in the anti-cult literature that stems from the main-line churches. Let me illustrate their presence in one case. In 1839, an Ursuline convent was burned by a mob in the Charlestown section of Boston. (Imagine that, burning a Catholic convent in Boston! That was really the old days.) I have been looking into the investigations of that incident, what preceded it, and the kind of atmosphere that surrounded it. Sure enough, all four of these myths appear. First, Catholics as such were suspect as being a danger to the civil order. Especially suspect were people living in convents and monastic situations, since they were believed to be under some kind of even more pronounced authoritarian control and therefore not eligible for participation in democratic society. There is myth number one: the danger to the civil order. Secondly, the atmosphere had already been charged by the book, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836), with its story of illegitimate babies, infanticide, graves, and all the rest. It had become a widely read, if not best-selling, book. In this particular convent, there was a young woman whom the people in Charlestown believed was being held there against her will. She had been "religiously seduced" into this convent, it was thought, and was not there according to her own choice. The selectmen investigated. They were shown through the convent by the Mother Superior and talked with the lady in question, who assured them that she was there of her own free will, and had not been seduced or otherwise forced into it. They made a public report completely exonerating the convent of any malicious or criminal activity. And the next week the convent was burned down. Part of this, of course, reflects the dissimulation myth. Some people believed the selectmen were misled and that as a "brainwashed" person (of in this case a "religiously seduced" person) she was not in a position to assure anyone that she was in the convent of her own free will. Thus all four myths I have mentioned i.e., endangering the civil order, sexual deviancy, dissimulation, and the evil eye, were present in Charlestown in 1839. Pages 125-129.
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II. New Religions and Religious Liberty, by J. Stillson Judah
[J. Stillson Judah is Librarian Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions, Graduate Theological Union, and Adjunct Professor, Pacific School of Religion.]
In spite of the criticism of many parents reported by the media, less publicized is the fact that there are also parents of those who are members of these new religions who do neither object to their children's choice of faith, nor note any harmful personality changes, nor do they feel that their children have been alienated from them.
Moreover, there are also psychologists who dispute the claims of others that the new religions have had such a deleterious effect upon its members. They have examined subjects who were to be deprogrammed and have produced affidavits testifying to their mental health in confutation of those psychologists who were hired by the deprogrammers. In fact, the tragedy for many who have been abducted without any due process of law has been that deprogramming has been done without any psychological examination, but often on the assumption that conversion to one of the new religions or to even one of the established churches signified the effects of coercive mind control.
Although it appears there are varying degrees of mind control, one of the most extreme would involve well-known Oriental techniques that employ physical restraint and sometimes severe coercion. While the so-called "cults" certainly cannot be accused of this, it has been reported as applicable sometimes to the techniques of the deprogrammers. There are two major differences, however. In the Orient, the process consisted in first breaking down one's beliefs and getting the subject to confess his wrong ideas and actions. This was followed by "educating" or programming him into a new viewpoint. In this country, unfortunately, only the subject's faith is usually broken, and invariably each subject is programmed to believe he or she was coercively mind controlled whether this was true or not. These young adults are not given a substitute belief, but only a negative viewpoint. Therefore, evidence at this point that is valid at least for some, though still insufficient as a general conclusion, points to the apparent fact that many of our youth who had been converted to a new faith meeting their needs have been left in a state of limbo. Page 205.
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