Beckford, James. 2003. The Continuum between Cults and normal Religion -Cults and New Religious Movements Notes

Cults and New Religious Movements

Introduction

• Public inquiries and official reports on religious sects or "cults" have emerged in various countries of Western and Eastern Europe, leading to debates in the European Parliament.

• Some reports recommend strong measures against "so-called sects," "destructive cults," or "psychogroups."

• Anxiety exists even about long-standing groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.

• Public concern stems from events like the gas attacks in Japan and suicides elsewhere.

• The Branch Davidians case involves concern over violent actions by US authorities and reports of authoritarianism, exploitation, and sexual abuse.

• Abuses occur in many religious organizations, not just stigmatized minority movements.

• Examples include:

  • Systematic sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church.

  • Brutality in Catholic residential institutions for young people.

  • Policies for transporting children from Britain and Ireland to Australia under false pretenses.

  • Financial irregularities in the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.

  • Clergy malfeasance in American churches.

  • Sexual improprieties among Methodist clergy in the UK.

  • Financial irregularities in certain Pentecostal churches in the UK.

  • Racism in the Church of England.

  • Exploitation of women in many Christian churches.

  • Collusion between church officials and brutal regimes.

The Study of New Religious Movements

• There is a disparity between public concern about problems in established religious organizations and concerns about "cults."

• Mainstream churches are not perceived to cause difficult moral or legal dilemmas.

• William Bainbridge refers to churches as “conventional religious organizations” (Bainbridge 1997: 24).

• The distinction between churches and cults is exaggerated; there is a continuum between problematic and unproblematic aspects of all religious collectivities.

• From a sociological perspective, the causes of abuses (accidental or doctrinal) make very little difference.

• Spectacular violence and collective suicide have occurred in cultic groups, but animosity against cults existed before the Jonestown massacre in 1978.

• The Branch Davidian and People's Temple were developments of Christian denominations.

• Ordinary religion can also be a hazard, as seen in conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland.

• It's important to understand how problems occur in any religious collectivity, not just those labeled as cultic, by analyzing exploitation, authoritarian leadership, harassment, fraud, violence, and patriarchy.

• Religious collectivities may not be entirely distinctive from other voluntary organizations.

• Allegations of brainwashing, economic exploitation, and sexual abuse in cults are well-known (Barker 1984, 1989; Beckford 1985b; Richardson 1985, 1991, 1996).

The Social Sources of Cult Controversies

• Accusations against stigmatized movements can be explained through characteristics of late twentieth-century life in advanced industrial societies.

• Consolidation of nation-states perpetuates suspicion of migrants, vagrants, and free spirits.

• Citizenship is tied to registration, monitoring, and surveillance.

• Forces of standardization, rationalization, and commodification are powerful.

• People whose life course deviates from the "normal" progression through education, employment, consumption, and relationships are viewed with suspicion.

• Members of minority religious movements are suspected because their non-conventional ways of living imply something is wrong with "normalization."

• Fear and outrage are intense because late modernity is believed to be a time of great individualization, making unconventional religious practices seem unnecessary.

• Permissible individualization is confined to dress, leisure, language, and sexual relations.

• Departures from expected patterns of education, employment, and consumption are grounds for suspicion.

• It's acceptable to "shop around" for religious ideas but not to break with the publicly approved life course.

• Abandoning "normal" education or employment for religious ideals is seen as an affront to the conviction that modern individuals are free, rational decision-makers.

• Modern living is both massified and pervaded by an ideology of individual freedom.

• Allegations of brainwashing are reactions against the exercise of free will and are likened to accusations of witchcraft (Anthony and Robbins 1980; Robbins 1988).

• The claim is that reason has been subverted by an external agency.

• Strictures against NRMs are partly due to efficient communication in the late twentieth century.

• Small movements can reach large audiences globally through telecommunications.

• It is harder for such movements to avoid scrutiny because their opponents can also communicate efficiently.

• Cult monitoring groups can collect information and statistics easily.

• The idea that "cults" are threatening has been facilitated by technology.

• The intensity of cult controversies is due to the simultaneous application of communications technology by NRMs and their opponents.

• Global communications may intensify religious controversies.

• Religion is likely to remain at the heart of controversies despite declining participation in formal religious organizations and little influence over government and business policies.

• Secularization is compatible with religious enthusiasm in marginal places (Wilson 1976).

• A polarization process is occurring between religiously energetic minorities and religiously apathetic majorities.

• Public animosity towards NRMs is one expression of the logic connecting secularization with intense religious controversies.

• NRMs are caught up in a process affecting all religious collectivities.

What Would Make "Cults" Appear to Be "Normal"

• Demonization of "cults" is a product of social forces in late twentieth-century advanced industrial societies.

• Toleration depends on NRMs satisfying non-religious conditions imposed by state authorities.

• Inspired by Peter Brown’s insight into religious toleration in late Roman antiquity (Brown 1995: 41–42), where toleration was extended to minority religions for pragmatic reasons such as paying taxes.

• Toleration depends on more than just paying taxes; movements evading fiscal obligations confirm the stereotype of cults as fraudulent.

• The Church of Scientology has faced criticism for seeking tax privileges as a religious organization in the USA and as a charity in the UK.

• The question is whether Scientology constitutes a religion, which is determined by state agencies.

• Recognition as religious by the US Internal Revenue Service, the Charity Commission in the UK, or a court of law in Italy is necessary but not sufficient for acceptability.

• In parts of southern Europe and elsewhere, NRMs are tolerated if members comply with military service requirements.

• States may demand NRMs prove their religious authenticity by showing willingness to comply with conscription laws before being eligible to apply for exemption.

• Acceptability depends on abandoning claims to cure medical problems, especially if therapy is part of the movement's practices.

• Challenges to state-licensed medical practices are rarely tolerated.

• NRMs are suspected if members do not use publicly available medical services.

• NRMs that educate their members’ children in their own schools are suspected of irresponsibility or ulterior motives.

• Movements educating children from different countries in a single international school are especially suspect.

• They are accused of hiding children where education and care standards cannot be easily monitored.

• In the UK, accessibility of worship services to the public is a condition of acceptability per the Broadcasting Act 1990.

• Religious organizations must publicly advertise and allow access to services without special invitation or fees to access commercial TV and radio channels.

• This assumes that bona fide religious organizations do not restrict access and that public scrutiny reduces the risk of abuse or exploitation.

• Similar to late antiquity, toleration of religious minorities is conditional on satisfying "secular" criteria of religious authenticity.

• Dependence on non-religious criteria by state agencies is inevitable when religion is fragmented and no single organization controls it (Beckford 1989).

Conclusion: The Normal–Abnormal Continuum

• The difference between "normal" and "abnormal" religious groups is a matter of skirmishes along a shifting frontier rather than fixed distinctions.

• Sociological analysis is best served by substituting "continuum" for "distinctions."

• Public opinion and religious interest groups prefer to make categorical distinctions between "real religion" and "destructive cults."

• A dispassionate analysis suggests that within all religious organizations, some practices are accepted as evidence of religious authenticity, while others are suspected of compromising it.

• Criteria of acceptability change over time, reflecting ethical and ideological changes outside religious organizations.

• Skirmishes over objectionable practices of specific NRMs are rarely isolated.

• Discussion of particular cases leads to claims about "destructive cults" or "cultism" in general.

• Continuities between NRMs and other religious organizations are ignored or suppressed for ideological reasons.

• Sociologists should analyze specific dimensions of all religious collectivities without prior judgments about their church-like or cult-like nature.

• Disputes in some Christian churches are intensified by modern communications and the search of journalists for sensational stories. See Ammerman (1990) on disputes among Southern Baptists in the USA.

Nature of New Religious Movements

• Gaining knowledge about new religious movements requires reading studies about specific groups (e.g., Lofland 1977; Wallis 1977; Barker 1984; Rochford 1985; Wilson and Dobbelaere 1994; Lucas 1995; Maaga 1998; Reader 2000; Bainbridge 2002).

• There is little consensus about what constitutes a "cult," due to the background and agenda of those writing about them and the great diversity of NRMs.

• "Cults" come in many shapes, sizes, and styles, with the religious imagination knowing few bounds.

• Global travel, communication, and immigration have led to the transplantation and transformation of religious traditions.

• Scholars classify NRMs into groups according to family resemblances. J. Gordon Melton (1993) distinguishes eight "family groups":

  • Pentecostal family

  • Communal family

  • Christian Science–Metaphysical family

  • Spiritualist, psychic, and New Age family

  • Ancient wisdom family

  • Magic family

  • Eastern and Middle Eastern families

  • New and unclassifiable religious groups

• Classification helps to familiarize us with the range of possibilities and demonstrates order and cultural continuity.

• Scholars categorize NRMs according to common features revealed by their analysis (see Dawson 1997).

• Roy Wallis proposes three types of new religions based on their relationship with society: world-rejecting, world-affirming, and world-accommodating.

• NRMs may embrace the world, affirm its goals, reject the world, denigrate its values, or remain indifferent to the world (Wallis 1984: 4).

• Differences in attitude account for differences in organization, behavior, and treatment by societies.

• Wallis provides an introduction to the beliefs and practices of new religions and their leaders.

• Theoretical insights are needed to allow for more manageable comparisons and the development of general propositions.

• William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark’s essay “Cult Formation: Three Compatible Models” develops these themes.

• We can learn about NRMs by grasping the social and psychological dynamics that brought these groups into existence.

• They demonstrate the advantages of theoretical ingenuity in the face of complexity.

• Like Wallis, they employ ideal types, in this case models of religious innovation, to stipulate empirical generalizations about how NRMs function.

• They propose three conceptions of why and how NRMs are formed:

  • Psychopathology model

  • Entrepreneur model

  • Subculture-evolution model

• These models are based on propositions about religions as social systems of exchange in which members secure scarce rewards.

• In each model, the rewards exchanged and costs incurred differ.

• The models are compatible, and it is unlikely that any one model reflects the motivations for starting a specific movement.

• Elements of all three models must be invoked to explain the origins of any NRM.

• The models are conceptual frameworks for stimulating research and organizing results into coherent explanations of religious innovation.

• Explanations derived from application to actual cases influence the theoretical process of creating other models.

• Researchers strive to elevate the study of NRMs beyond mere description to the development of generalized principles of explanation.

vWhat are some examples of abuses that have occurred in various religious organizations, not just stigmatized minority movements?
Definition: Systematic sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church, brutality in Catholic residential institutions for young people, policies for transporting children from Britain and Ireland to Australia under false pretenses, financial irregularities in the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, clergy malfeasance in American churches, sexual improprieties among Methodist clergy in the UK, financial irregularities in certain Pentecostal churches in the UK, racism in the Church of England, exploitation of women in many Christian churches, collusion between church officials and brutal regimes.

Term: According to William Bainbridge, what are mainstream churches referred to as?
Definition: “Conventional religious organizations”

Term: What are some of the well-known allegations against cults?
Definition: Brainwashing, economic exploitation, and sexual abuse

Term: What are some characteristics of late twentieth-century life in advanced industrial societies that explain accusations against stigmatized movements?
Definition: Consolidation of nation-states perpetuates suspicion of migrants, vagrants, and free spirits. Citizenship is tied to registration, monitoring, and surveillance. Forces of standardization, rationalization, and commodification are powerful. People whose life course deviates from the normal progression through education, employment, consumption, and relationships are viewed with suspicion.

Term: What are some non-religious conditions imposed by state authorities that toleration depends on?
Definition: Movements evading fiscal obligations confirm the stereotype of cults as fraudulent, complying with military service requirements, abandoning claims to cure medical problems, members do not use publicly available medical services, movements educating children from different countries in a single international school are especially suspect, accessibility of worship services to the public.

Term: What does sociological analysis suggest about religious organizations?
Definition: Within all religious organizations, some practices are accepted as evidence of religious authenticity, while others are suspected of compromising it.

Term: According to J. Gordon Melton, what are the eight family groups of cults?
Definition: Pentecostal family, Communal family, Christian Science–Metaphysical family, Spiritualist, psychic, and New Age family, Ancient wisdom family, Magic family, Eastern and Middle Eastern families, New and unclassifiable religious groups

Term: According to Roy Wallis, what three types of new religions are there based on their relationship with society?
Definition: World-rejecting, world-affirming, and world-accommodating.

Term: What three conceptions of why and how NRMs are formed do William Sims Bainbridge
Definition: undefined