Challenging Religion The last half century has challenged many of our assumptions about religion in the US and Europe. New religious movements and other controversial aspects of religion have been met with attempts to monitor and control them on the part of the state, and concerns about the protection of religious ‘consumers’ have been set against the democratic right to religious freedom. In this collection, leading sociologists of religion from the UK, US and across Europe reflect on the important work of Eileen Barker in this field, and debate the political, practical and ethical issues which arise from these changes in the religious landscape. Contributions also attempt to make sense of the elusive social dimensions of religion, in addition to presenting challenges to religion in the form of questioning ideas and practices that may be taken for granted in some religious circles. James A.Beckford is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. James T.Richardson is Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Challenging Religion Essays in honour of Eileen Barker Edited by
James A.Beckford and James T.Richardson
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © 2003 Selection and editorial material, the editors. Individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-29943-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-341461-5 (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-415-30948-4 (Print Edition)
Contents
Notes on contributors
vii
List of abbreviations
xii
Introduction JAMES A.BECKFORD AND JAMES T.RICHARDSON PART I New religious movements 1 Absolutes and relatives: two problems for new religious movements BRYAN R.WILSON 2 Cults, culture and manure: why the root of the second should be the first rather than the third N.J.DEMERATH III 3 Religion and the Internet: the global marketplace JEAN-FRANÇOIS MAYER 4 Religious groups and globalisation: a comparative perspective MARGIT WARBURG 5 Religion after atheism: moving away from the communal flat MARAT SHTERIN PART II Religious ‘deviance’ and control 6 Notes on the contemporary peril to religious freedom THOMAS ROBBINS 7 A chapter in the life of Eileen Barker: the American Psychological Association, brainwashing controversies and the Great Cult Apologist Conspiracy MASSIMO INTROVIGNE
1 10
11 21
32 42 51 63
64 74
8 Satanic abuse: lessons from a controversy JEAN LA FONTAINE 9 The countercult monitoring movement in historical perspective J.GORDON MELTON 10 The making of a moral panic: religion and state in Singapore MICHAEL HILL PART III Religious freedom and empowerment 11 What’s happening in American church/state jurisprudence? PHILLIP E.HAMMOND 12 Religious toleration in Western and Central European countries KAREL DOBBELAERE AND JAAK BILLIET 13 Religious minorities in France: a Protestant perspective GRACE DAVIE 14 Gendered spiritualities MEREDITH B.MCGUIRE 15 The making of a survivor: rhetoric and reality in the study of religion and abuse NANCY NASON-CLARK PART IV Philosophy and methods 16 Aspects of the constitution, construction and reconstruction of human reality THOMAS LUCKMANN 17 The sociology of wisdom DOUGLAS DAVIES 18 Cataclysms and the apocalyptic imagination RICHARD K.FENN
83 93 104 116
117 129 144 154 164
175
176
185 196
A selection of Eileen Barker’s principal publications in English
206
Bibliography
213
Index
231
Contributors
James A.Beckford is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. He was President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in 1988/9, a Vice-President of the International Sociological Association from 1994 to 1998, and is currently President of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion. His main publications include Religious Organization (Mouton, 1973), The Trumpet of Prophecy. A Sociological Analysis of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Blackwell, 1975), Cult Controversies. The Societal Response to New Religious Movements (Tavistock, 1985), Religion and Advanced Industrial Society (Routledge, 1989) and (with Sophie Gilliat) Religion in Prison. Equal Rites in a Multi-Faith Society (Cambridge University Press, 1998). He is the editor of New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change (Sage, 1986), and coeditor of The Changing Face of Religion (Sage, 1989) and Secularization, Rationalism and Sectarianism (Oxford University Press, 1993). His current research interests are in the treatment of religious minorities in prisons and sociological theorising about religion. Jaak Billiet, PhD in Social Sciences, is Professor in Social Methodology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He is project leader of the InterUniversity Centre of Political Opinion Research (ISPO), which organises the general election surveys in Flanders (Belgium). He is a member of both the Steering Committee and the Methodological Committee of the Blueprint for a European Social Survey (ESF). His main research interests in methodology concern validity assessment, interviewer and response effects, and the modelling of measurement error in social surveys. He is also involved in longitudinal and comparative research in the domains of ethnocentrism, and political attitudes and religious involvement. Grace Davie is a Reader in the Sociology of Religion at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Religion in Britain Since 1945 (Blackwell, 1994), Religion in Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2002) and Europe: The Exceptional Case (Darton Longman and Todd, 2002), and of numerous articles in the sociology of religion. She will be President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion for their 2003 meeting in Atlanta, and of the Research Committee 22 of the International Sociological Association from 2002 to 2006. She is the current Director of the Centre for European Studies in the University of Exeter. Douglas Davies, currently Professor in the Study of Religion at Durham University’s Theology Department and previously at Nottingham University, has also been
Chairman of the British Sociological Association’s Religion Study Group (2000–3). The University of Uppsala in Sweden conferred an honorary doctorate upon him in 1998. His academic background at Durham and Oxford lay both in the sociologyanthropology of religion and in theology, with subsequent research relating these disciplines theoretically (Anthropology and Theology, Berg, 2002; Meaning and Salvation in Religious Studies, Brill, 1984) and in fieldwork and empirical studies of Mormonism (Mormon Culture of Salvation, Ashgate, 2000), death (Death, Ritual and Belief, Continuum, 2002; Reusing Old Graves, Popular British Attitudes, with Alastair Shaw, Shaw and Sons, 1995) and Anglicanism (Church and Religion in Rural England, with Charles Watkins and Michael Winter, T. and T.Clark, 1991). Along with Mathew Guest he is currently conducting research on the generation and transmission of values within Anglican bishops’ families. N.J.Demerath III is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts in the USA. He came to Amherst in 1972 following a Harvard AB, a UC Berkeley PhD, ten years at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and two years as Executive Officer of the American Sociological Association. A specialist in religion, politics, culture and sociological theory, he is the author of a dozen books, including most recently the very global Crossing the Gods: World Religions and Worldly Politics (Rutgers, 2001) and the very local Sacred Circles and Public Squares: The Multicentering of Religion in Indianapolis and America (University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming). He is a former President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Karel Dobbelaere is Emeritus Professor of the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain, Belgium) and of the University of Antwerp (Belgium) where he taught sociology, sociology of religion and sociological research. He is a former President of the International Society for Sociology of Religion and its current General Secretary. His main fields of interest are: religious and church involvement, pillarisation, new religious and sectarian movements, and secularisation. His most recent book is Secularization: An Analysis at Three Levels (P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2002). Richard K.Fenn has been teaching the sociology of religion at Princeton Theological Seminary since 1985. His interests focus on the way in which individuals and societies imagine and construct time, especially through beliefs and ritualised practices that link the living with the dead. He has treated secularisation as a process of disenchantment in which societies increasingly forfeit their claims to transcend the passage of time, and individuals are left to their own existential devices. Recent books include Beyond Idols and Time Exposure (Oxford University Press, 2001), The Persistence of Purgatory (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and The Death of Herod (Cambridge University Press, 1992), and he edited Blackwell’s Companion for the Sociology of Religion (2000). Phillip E.Hammond (PhD 1960, Columbia) is the D.Mackenzie Brown Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He taught in the Departments of Sociology at Yale, Wisconsin and Arizona for eighteen years before going to UCSB. He retired in July 2002. Hammond is a member of the Religious Research Association, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. He served as editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion from 1978 to 1982 and as SSSR President in 1985–7. Phillip Hammond is the author of eleven books, editor of five volumes, and author of
numerous articles and chapters. His most recent books are With Liberty for All (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998), Soka Gakkai in America (with David Machacek, Oxford University Press, 1999), and The Dynamics of Religious Organizations: The Extravasation of the Sacred and Other Essays (Oxford University Press, 2000). Michael Hill began his career at the London School of Economics, first as an undergraduate—where he was awarded the Hobhouse Memorial Prize—and subsequently as a Lecturer in Sociology: one of his students was a certain former actress. A Sociology of Religion (Heinemann) and The Religious Order (Heinemann) appeared in 1973. He was appointed Professor of Sociology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in 1976 and has remained there apart from a year as Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore (1996–7). An edited volume, Shades of Deviance (Dunmore), appeared in 1983, and in 1995, with Lian Kwen Fee, he published The Politics of Nation Building and Citizenship in Singapore (Routledge), which is now required reading for trainee majors and lieutenant colonels in the Singapore armed forces. As well as numerous chapters and papers he has contributed to the recent edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Massimo Introvigne is the founder and managing director of CESNUR, the Centre for Studies on New Religions, a research and information centre on new religious movements headquartered in Torino, Italy. He has lectured and given seminars and short courses on the history and sociology of new religious movements in several universities (including the University of Turin), and is the author of thirty volumes on the subject in Italian, some of them translated into French, German, Spanish and English. Jean La Fontaine was born and brought up in Kenya. She took a BA in social anthropology at Cambridge University. Her PhD, also from Cambridge, was based on fieldwork among the Gisu of Uganda. After spending ten years as a diplomat’s wife, during which time she completed a short study of the city of Kinshasa (then Leopoldville), she resumed a university career at Birkbeck College London, moving to the London School of Economics as Reader in 1968. She was appointed to a Chair in Social Anthropology in 1978. During this period she was President of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists. She took early retirement in 1983 to undertake freelance research and consultancy. In 1992 the Department of Health commissioned her to undertake a two-year study of the allegations of ritual abuse, on which her contribution to this volume is based. Thomas Luckmann was born in Slovenia, studied in Vienna, emigrated to the USA and obtained his PhD at the New School for Social Research. From 1965 he taught at the University of Frankfurt and from 1970 until his retirement at the University of Constance. He has also taught at the Harvard Divinity School, and the universities of Wollongong, Bern, Freiburg, Ljubljana, Salzburg and Vienna. He was a Fellow at the Center of Advanced Studies for Behavioral Science in Stanford and is a corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his publications are The Invisible Religion (Macmillan, 1967), Life-World and Social Realities (Ashgate, 1983), Teoría de la acción social (1996) and, with Peter Berger, The Social Construction of Reality (Allen Lane, 1967).
Meredith B.McGuire (PhD New School for Social Research) is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Trinity University. She is Past President of both the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Association for the Sociology of Religion. She is the author of Religion: The Social Context (Wadsworth, 1981; fifth edition 2002), Ritual Healing in Suburban America (Rutgers, 1988), and Pentecostal Catholics (Temple, 1981), among other works. Her current research examines US religious movements, popular religion and spirituality in a historical and cross-cultural context. Jean-François Mayer is a historian, with specialisation in religious movements and contemporary religious developments. The author of approximately ten books—some of them translated into several languages—and many articles, he is currently a Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is also the editor of http://www.religioscope.com/, a website launched in 2002 on religious affairs in today’s world. J.Gordon Melton is the Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, a research facility in Santa Barbara, California, focusing attention on the study of religious groups/organisations, especially the many small and non-conventional religions. He is also a research specialist with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He graduated from Birmingham-Southern College (BA 1964), Garrett Theological Seminary (MDiv 1968) and Northwestern University (PhD History and Literature of Religions 1975), and is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. He is the author of the Encyclopedia of American Religions (Gale, 1979; 7th edition, 2002), the standard reference work on North American religious bodies, and some thirty additional scholarly texts and reference books, and is the senior editor of five different series of books on American religions. Nancy Nason-Clark is a Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. She received her PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in England. Nancy is the author of The Battered Wife (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997) and No Place for Abuse (with Catherine Clark Kroeger, InterVarsity Press, 2001), as well as dozens of journal articles and chapters in scholarly books. She is editor of the international journal Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review. Nancy’s research programme examines the relationship between gender, faith and culture, and she is currently completing two books, one tentatively titled Congregations and Family Crisis and the other, Christian Survivors of Abuse. Nancy has served as President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and is President-Elect for the Religious Research Association. James T.Richardson is Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he teaches sociology and directs the graduate programme in judicial studies for trial judges. He has written extensively in the sociology of religion, where he specialises in research on new religious movements and the relationships between governments and religious groups, as well as focusing on the use of social and behavioural science evidence in legal systems. Thomas Robbins is an independent sociologist of religion. He has a PhD from the University of North Carolina. He is the author of Cults, Converts, and Charisma (Sage, 1988). He has co-edited six collections of original papers, including In Gods We Trust (Transaction, 1981, 1990), Millennium, Messiahs and Mayhem (Routledge, 1997) and Misunderstanding Cults (University of Toronto Press, 2002). He has
published numerous articles, essays and reviews in social science and religious studies journals and in edited collections. Marat Shterin holds a PhD in sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science where he is currently a Research Fellow. His interests include religion and social change in post-communist societies with special reference to Russia, new religious movements and other religious minorities, and religion and law from a comparative perspective. He has published extensively on these topics and is currently writing a book Gods and Prophets in Uncertain Times: Religion in Remaking of Russia, which is an analysis of social and religious change after communism and its implications for the sociological theory of religion. He was awarded the Robert McKenzie Prize for the best PhD thesis at the London School of Economics, 2001/2002. Margit Warburg is Associate Professor in the sociology of religion at the University of Copenhagen. She is Co-Chair of the Research Network on New Religions (RENNER) and is a member of the advisory board of the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs concerning religions outside the Danish Lutheran Church. Her main area of research is religious minorities. She has published widely on the Baha’i religion and has also written about East European Jewry. She has carried out fieldwork and archival studies among Baha’is in Denmark, in the United States and at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa, Israel. Her general research interests are recruitment and conversion, religion and demography, religion and globalisation, and religion and the Internet. She has published around eighty-five books and articles (in English or Danish) including New Religions and New Religiosity (edited with Eileen Barker, Aarhus University Press, 1998), and I Baha’i (in Italian, Elledici, 2001). Bryan R.Wilson is Reader Emeritus in Sociology in the University of Oxford, where he taught for over thirty years, and is Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His first book, Sects and Society (Heinemann), was published in 1961, and since that time he has written or edited twenty other books, most of them in the sociology of religion, and has published numerous articles in learned journals. He has held visiting appointments in various universities, including the University of California, USA, the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, the University of Ghana and the universities of both Melbourne and Queensland, Australia. Since 1991, he has been Honorary President of the International Society for the Sociology of Religions. He was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994.
Abbreviations
AFF
American Freedom Foundation
APA
American Psychological Association
BSERP
Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology
CCG
Countercult group
CCM
Cultural communal movement
CRC
Christian Reformed Church
CRI
Christian Research Institute
CESNUR
The Centre for Studies on New Religions
DIMPAC
Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control
ECIC
European Christian Internet Conference
EMNR
Evangelical Ministries to New Religions
FICOTW
First International Church of the Web
GARBC
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches
INFORM
Information Network Focus On Religious Movements
ISKCON
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
ISORECEA
International Association for the Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe
JPUSA
Jesus People USA
LGAT
Large Group Awareness Training
LSE
London School of Economics and Political Science
MILS
Mission Interministérielle de Lutte contres les Sectes
NFI
Normed fit index
NRM
New religious movement
OED
Oxford English Dictionary
RAINS
Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support
RAMP
Religious and Moral Pluralism
RMSEA
Root-mean-square error of approximation
SCP
Spiritual Counterfeits Project
ST
Straits Times
UC
Unification Church
Introduction James A.Beckford and James T.Richardson This volume is about three challenges. The first concerns the way in which religion seems to defy the best efforts of social scientists to make sense of it. For aspects of religion stretch the explanatory or interpretive power of social science to the limits. The first challenge facing the contributors to this volume, then, is to further our understanding of the social dimensions of religion—including those phenomena that may appear to be inexplicable. The second challenge is to confront religion with the findings of social scientists. It is to raise questions about ideas and practices that may be taken for granted in some religious circles. It means asking why some features of religion are considered to be normal and why others give rise to problems. In the last resort, it involves expressing systematic doubt about the very understanding of what counts as religion. Contributors thereby present challenges to religion. The third, and most enjoyable, challenge is to do justice to the work of Professor Eileen Barker on the occasion of her retirement from the London School of Economics. On the one hand, her scholarly achievements and her contributions to public debates about religion are so numerous that it is difficult to give them proper recognition in a single volume. On the other hand, the range of her interests defies any simple categorisation. Perhaps the best way to capture the full diversity of her contributions is to see them as a commitment to ‘the public understanding of religion’. It was entirely fitting, then, that she received the prestigious Martin Marty Award for Service in the Public Understanding of Religion in 2000. What is more, this award was made by the American Academy of Religion, the largest such body in the world. For more than thirty years, Eileen Barker has immersed herself in difficult discussions, negotiations, courtroom testimonies, official inquiries, public seminars, mass media appearances, and the leadership of INFORM—the well-respected organisation that she founded in London to collect, assess and disseminate reliable information about religious movements. This energetic and selfless service to the cause of improving the public understanding of religion—especially controversial religious movements—has attracted widespread praise and not a little criticism. The challenge that Eileen Barker has always been willing to accept is to defend the rights of religious groups to practise their religion within the limits of law and the rights of their critics to expose evidence of illegal and harmful practices. This takes courage, commitment and competence. Eileen Barker has made unprecedented contributions to the understanding of new religions, not only in her own country but in many other parts of the world as well. A few years ago she admitted to having given more than 500 professional talks in her career, in sixty-five countries. She has also done innumerable media interviews. Eileen always treats an interview with a journalist as a ‘teaching moment’, and she has assisted many journalists in understanding new religions, thus helping them communicate more balanced treatments of NRMs (new religious movements) to the general reading and viewing public in many different
Challenging religion
2
countries. She has also made presentations to a number of government bodies around the world, as they were considering special legislation to deal with the so-called ‘cult and sect problem’. It is safe to say that such efforts have contributed to the development of governmental policy concerning NRMs in quite positive ways in a number of societies, including several formerly a part of the Soviet bloc. Eileen Barker’s scholarship is prodigious, giving impetus to feelings of awe and respect in scholars young and old alike. It is difficult to find discussion of NRMs where her work is not cited, often as the exemplary study in a given area. Her list of publications is lengthy, and we cannot begin to do justice to it here (but see the selected list at the end of this volume). She has edited or co-edited seven books and collections of articles for special issues of journals, thus helping to make scholarship from around the world more readily available to various audiences. Eileen has written two major monographs, which will be discussed below, and she has others in preparation. She has written some 200 articles in journals or chapters in books, some of which have been published or reprinted in a variety of languages, and many of which are widely cited and influential in the field. The fact that she has also been invited to review more than 300 books clearly shows that she is recognised as a major figure in the sociology of religion. Eileen is perhaps best known for her award-winning book The Making of a Moonie: Brainwashing or Choice?, which won the prestigious Distinguished Book Award of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in 1985. The book, which grew out of Eileen’s doctoral research, was reissued a decade later, something of a rarity in sociological circles and a testament to its reception by the scholarly community. This volume is a model of sociological research, with its fine integration of quantitative and qualitative methods and its well-grounded theoretical development. The book, though not written as a textbook, is now being used in courses in the UK, the USA, Australia and several European countries. The wealth of detail about how members of the Unification Church (UC) actually live, the details of recruitment and re-socialisation processes in the UC, and the understanding of member motivations for participating in the UC movement are all significant contributions to scholarship on NRMs. This work did much to undercut the popular assumption that only ‘brainwashed’ individuals would ever consider joining such a group. Indeed, Eileen Barker’s research demonstrated that many young people were joining the UC to act out their idealism, not because they were coerced or brainwashed. Another book that has had a major impact is New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction, which was originally published in 1989 by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, no small honour in itself. This book has been reissued five times by HMSO, with the latest being in 1995 (while another edition is in preparation). It has been translated into Italian, Dutch, Bulgarian, Russian and Polish, and parts have been translated into German and Hungarian as well, indicating its broad acceptance as an important resource. Other translations of this informative and well-written volume are being prepared even now, and we will soon see this seminal work published in Japanese, Czech, Croatian, Serbian and Spanish. In this book Eileen attempts to present a balanced treatment of the entire field of NRMs, writing in a style that makes the information accessible to ordinary citizens, policy-makers and fellow scholars. She attempts to answer questions such as what the new movements are like, why and how people join them, and what happens to people who choose to participate, as well as the effects that such participation has on
Introduction
3
families and friends. She also includes frank discussions of deprogramming and the other ways in which participants leave NRMs (which many do), as well as concerns brought about by certain types of more closed and authoritarian movements. Several of Eileen Barker’s articles and chapters in books also bear special mention, just to present a flavour of her work. One of the best known is her presidential address to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, published in 1995 under the title, ‘The scientific study of religion? You must be joking!’ It is a penetrating discussion of the value of the scientific perspective in helping understand religion, especially controversial varieties. Eileen contrasts the scientific approach with the perspectives of a number of other interest groups, including the media, the so-called Anti-Cult Movement, the NRMs themselves, the law, and therapists. She notes the differences in interests or goals of each, the various methods used to secure information, the data selected (and rejected) for use by each, their mode of communication, and the way in which each alternative perspective relates to the sociological approach. This comparison of primary and secondary construction of reality associated with NRMs offers much insight, and has been cited and reprinted many times since its publication. Eileen has also described the development of INFORM (Information Network Focus On Religious Movements) in several publications and presentations (see, for instance, Barker, 2001). These reports give the detail of how and why she has put so much energy into the development and maintenance of INFORM over the years. In addition, they give a feel for why INFORM has become a model viewed around the world as the best way for scholars, governments, traditional religious groups and other interested parties to work together to gather information about NRMs, and to disseminate that information to those who need it, whether they be distraught parents or policy-makers trying to decide if legislation is needed to deal with the ‘cult menace’, or even if the menace exists at all. Eileen Barker has also written extensively about methodological and ethical issues concerning the study of controversial religious groups. Her sensitivity to these concerns is one reason why her research is viewed with such high regard by scholars everywhere. One favourite of ours (Barker 1983), perhaps because of the title (‘Supping with the devil: how long a spoon does a sociologist need?’), stresses that social scientists need to take care when doing in-depth qualitative research, but that they should not shy away from contact with group members and leaders. Eileen considers this contact essential for a full understanding of the culture of the groups. Some sociologists and others who expound on NRMs do so in a manner that mimics the cerebral hygiene of August Comte in his later years. Eileen Barker, on the other hand, is someone who has spent many an uncomfortable time gathering data in less than ideal conditions. She has been uncompromising in terms of both rigour and ethical concerns, as is shown in the quality of her research and the regard with which it is held by other scholars. Her spoon has been just long enough. Nowhere have the expertise and sensitivities of Eileen Barker been tested more than in her extensive research and involvement in former Eastern bloc countries. She has travelled and conducted research in a number of former communist countries, becoming easily the best-known Western scholar of religion in those environs. She has also spoken before governmental bodies and testified in major court cases there, always promoting the value of solid, scientifically based research on minority religions, including NRMs. She is one of the founding members of the International Association for the Study of
Challenging religion
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Religion in Central and Eastern Europe (ISORECEA), and has helped to make this a strong body of scholars devoted to the study of religion in this region. One of her papers on religion in this part of the world (Barker 1997) was featured in the proceedings of one of the biennial conferences of the organisation (Borovik and Babinski 1997). Eileen, who has always had a knack for catchy titles, called this much-cited paper, ‘But who’s going to win? National and minority religions in post-communist society’. In this paper, which one of us (Richardson) was fortunate enough to hear delivered in person, Eileen gave a magisterial survey of the religious situation facing former communist societies, as they grappled with the influx of sometimes over-eager Western religious groups, while at the same time trying to revitalise their traditional churches and reinforce traditional cultural values. Scholars from the region were awed by her grasp of the religious situation in the post-communist world, and they responded enthusiastically to her presentation. These brief descriptions of some of her major books and papers will give some feel for the many scholarly contributions that Eileen Barker has made to the public understanding of religion. Readers are urged to look through the selected bibliography in the appendix and sample other items in her long list of writings. They will find them always wellwritten, well-reasoned and grounded in strong empirical research. Her writings represent the best of the sociological tradition. Although Eileen Barker’s entry to the profession of university teaching had to wait until she had pursued a first career in drama and had raised her two daugh-ters, there were early indications of the scholarly excellence that was to come. She graduated with a first class honours degree in sociology at the London School of Economics in 1970 and won the Hobhouse Memorial Prize for the best degree in sociology that year. Other honours have followed. In addition to winning the Distinguished Book Award offered by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in 1985, she was elected to a Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) in 1998. Moreover, in the year 2000 the Queen of England appointed her as an Officer of the British Empire (OBE), and the Queen of Denmark conferred on her an honorary doctorate of the University of Copenhagen. Her annus mirabilis concluded with the Martin Marty Award for Service in the Public Understanding of Religion. It is a measure of the esteem in which her peers hold Eileen Barker and her scholarship that she has been elected to numerous positions of leadership in scholarly organisations. They include Chairperson of the British Sociological Association’s Study Group for the Sociology of Religion (1985–90), President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (1991–3) and President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion (2001–2). She has also delivered special lectures and keynote addresses at many universities and international gatherings, and is a frequent visitor to countries in Central and Eastern Europe where the public understanding of religion is changing. Not surprisingly, her expertise and experience are in great demand in charitable foundations, voluntary organisations, editorial boards of scholarly journals, and agencies of the state that are concerned with religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities. Another of the challenges that Eileen Barker has eagerly accepted is to take her scholarship into the university classroom. At a time when most young people in the UK are said to be uninterested in religion, she has attracted, entertained and informed generations of undergraduates, MSc students and PhD candidates at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her innovative courses on the sociology of
Introduction
5
religion and on new religious movements, echoing her own style of intensive research, required students to visit a variety of religious groups and to reflect on their own responses to what they had learned. Some of her doctoral students have already begun to make their own mark on the sociology of religion at national and international levels. While she was generating enthusiasm for sociological studies of religion, Eileen Barker also played a full part in the development and management of academic life. She served not only as Convenor of the LSE’s Department of Sociology from 1995 to 1998 but also as Dean of Undergraduate Studies at LSE from 1982 to 1986, Academic Governor of the LSE from 1988 to 1992 and from 1998 to 1999, and Vice-Dean of London University’s Faculty of Economics from 1986 to 1990. Arguably the task of conceiving, animating and running INFORM has been the greatest challenge facing Eileen Barker. INFORM is the charitable organisation that she founded in 1988 with the help of some mainstream churches and the Home Office. Its objective of collecting, assessing and disseminating reliable information about religious movements was never likely to be easy or popular, but Eileen has never wavered in her determination to defend the ideal of bringing academic knowledge to bear on public debates about the freedom of religion. In the face of some stern criticism, she has constantly lavished her time and energy on training INFORM’s staff, responding to journalists’ inquiries, writing books and leaflets, organising international conferences, liaising with government departments, talking to distressed or puzzled individuals, hosting biannual seminars, raising funds and promoting INFORM’s philosophy in other countries. If the wellspring of the energy that Eileen Barker invests in INFORM remains a mystery, it is no less puzzling that her capacity for fun, humour, companionship and sheer exuberance is seemingly inexhaustible. The choice of chapters and the order in which they appear are a response to the challenges outlined at the beginning of this Introduction. All the chapters, grouped in four sections, aim to do three things. First, they respond to the challenges of making social scientific sense of aspects of religion that are puzzling or problematic. Second, they confront religion with the insights and findings of social scientific research. Third, they honour the work of Eileen Barker by furthering the investigation of topics that have been central to her contributions to the public understanding of religion. We deliberately did not ask contributors to write summaries of particular fields or ‘state of the art’ syntheses. We knew that other books aspired to that type of comprehensive overview of social scientific research on religion. Instead, we urged contributors to write original chapters that would convey the ‘flavour’ of their current concern with the challenges presented by religion. All the chapters, therefore, have the character of ‘reports from the front’. They report the state of play or, in some cases, the state of hostilities in the areas of the social scientific study of religion that the contributors keep under observation for professional and scholarly reasons. The sociology of religious movements, especially the new religious movements at the centre of so-called cult controversies, has been one of the liveliest areas of research into religion for the past four decades. Contributions to Part I range over some of the most challenging issues, showing that religious movements continue to pose problems not only to scholars, policy-makers and legislators but also to the general public. The argument of the first chapter, by Bryan Wilson, begins with the claim that tolerance towards new
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religious movements has not increased since World War II and that many commentators continue to lump them together indiscriminately. The slow historical shift towards achieved, rather than ascribed, identity in the modern world has, Wilson argues, done nothing to relax the tension between the movements’ converts and their relatives. The clash between absolutes and relatives can be noisy and painful, and this is why Wilson commends disinterested social scientific research that aims to understand ‘the nature of absolutist commitment’. In a similar vein, Jay Demerath’s argument is that ‘cult-ness’ is not an aberration of certain widely despised groups but is a feature of all cultures. ‘Cults’ and cultures are both related to the sacred, he suggests, but ‘cult has moved from the core of the religious apple to a mutant growth on its external skin’; and culture has become a ‘jumble of contested meanings’. The advent of global communication by means of the Internet has, according to JeanFrançois Mayer’s chapter, added yet another layer of complication to the relations between new religious movements and the societies in which they operate. In particular, new movements and ancient faith communities alike face a difficult challenge to control the use that their members, their ex-members, their opponents and their observers all make of the Internet. On the other hand, access to the Internet also offers valuable opportunities for religious groups to increase the ‘market share’ that they enjoy. This is why Mayer believes that the Internet will have a major impact on the future of new religious movements. This theme is also echoed in Margit Warburg’s chapter on the strategies that various minority religious groups have recently adopted for exploiting the new global opportunities for spreading their message. Her analysis emphasises the similarities between the global strategies of these movements and those of private business corporations. By contrast, Marat Shterin’s chapter indicates how the transition from communalism to individualism in post-communist Russia has generated unprecedented levels of religious diversity, competition and suspicion. In his view, the ideology and the practice of ‘scientific atheism’ in former Soviet society laid the foundations for today’s ‘epistemologically naive’ and dogmatic attitudes both within some indigenous religious movements and towards religious diversity. ‘Mutations of the Soviet legacy’ is Shterin’s term for the nationalist rejection of new religious movements and the suppression of Islamic movements. He joins other contributors to Part I by arguing for the need of social scientific research to investigate the changing dynamic between cult and culture, absolute and relative, real and virtual, local and global The chapters in Part II deal with responses to perceptions of deviance and threat in religious organisations and with the associated questions about control over religion in a globalising world. Again, it was the growth of new religious movements in advanced industrial democracies in the 1960s that initially sparked a social scientific concern with the social construction of cultural boundaries between ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ forms of religion. Thomas Robbins places these issues in the widest possible context by showing the impact of globalisation on what he calls ‘the new repression of religion’ and on the reactive radicalisation of some religious groups. For him, the political significance of religion has increased sharply in recent decades, thereby increasing the likelihood of state repression and making religious freedom more precarious. The claim that public opinion about controversial religious groups is currently being polarised is also at the centre of Massimo Introvigne’s chapter on controversies about ‘brainwashing’ in new religious movements. In a detailed analysis of disputes among psychologists and social scientists
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about the validity and acceptability of the notion of brainwashing in courts of law, he shows just how bitter and personal the disputes have become. Scholars are far from being disinterested observers of attempts to control supposedly deviant or dangerous religious movements. The integrity of their scholarship is at stake. Nowhere is this more clearly documented than in Jean La Fontaine’s chapter on the lessons that she learned from conducting high-profile investigations, commissioned by the Department of Health in Britain, into well-publicised allegations that children had been the victims of ‘satanic abuse’ in the 1980s and 1990s. Making careful distinctions between the different types of accusations of witchcraft and satanism that have surfaced at various times and places, she attaches importance to the fact that belief in ‘the existence of devil worship and witchcraft are still part of the cosmology of some Christian churches’ and that this belief underlay the movement to extirpate satanic abuse. Its activists considered La Fontaine as ‘hostile’, not only because she found no evidence to support their allegations but also because she did not accept their dogmas. She concludes that the absolute incompatibility between faith and reason made her explanation appear threatening to the movement. The influence of strongly held conservative Christian convictions is also central to what Gordon Melton calls ‘the countercult monitoring movement’. His analysis of Christian-inspired campaigns to oppose allegedly deviant strains of Christianity and new religious movements in the USA emphasises the campaigns’ long historical evolution, their complexity, their internal squabbles and their recent preoccupation with religions other than Christianity. The control of supposedly deviant developments in religion has taken a different turn in Singapore, according to Michael Hill’s chapter. He argues that agents of the Singaporean state have engineered an ‘elite-sponsored moral panic’ since the mid-1980s, deliberately raising fears about ‘crisis’ and the survival of the country, in order to control the possibility that Islamic resurgence and rapid Christian growth in different ethnic communities could have destabilising effects. Phillip Hammond’s chapter opens Part III by tracing changes in the US Supreme Court’s constitutional interpretation of the proper relation between religion and the state. Believing that the US Constitution is a ‘religious’, not a ‘secular’, document Hammond argues that it should, by maintaining a clear separation between religion and the state, guarantee the freedom for citizens to exercise their ‘individual conscience’ as they wish. He therefore challenges the conservative tendencies of recent Supreme Court decisions to weaken the degree of separation. The following chapter, by Karel Dobbelaere and Jaak Billiet, analyses the character and extent of tolerance shown towards new and minority religious movements. Their analysis of data collected by means of interviews conducted between 1997 and 1999 with large and representative samples of people in eleven European countries highlights wide variations in attitudes towards controversial religions and practices. ‘Hesitant tolerance’ of controversial religious organisations is counterbalanced by ‘overwhelmingly negative’ attitudes towards some of these organisations’ beliefs and practices. Narrowing the focus on intolerance even further, Grace Davie’s chapter poses the particularly challenging question of why public attitudes are so critical of sectarian and cultic groups in France. She places the widespread opposition to these groups in the context of long and bitter struggles between the Catholic Church and the determinedly secular state, adding that the position of French Protestant churches is somewhat anomalous. As victims of centuries of persecution, French Protestants tend to
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give a higher priority to religious freedom than to anti-cultism while nevertheless regarding ‘cults’ as competitors. The last two chapters in this section explore the bearing of gender and empowerment on issues of religious freedom. Meredith McGuire shows how some religious movements articulate a ‘gendered self’ with a ‘spiritual self’, thereby furthering the malleability of gender identity and of the category of ‘religion’ in late modernity. Some of these movements contest dominant ideas about gender and sexuality by promoting spiritual practices to re-shape participants’ bodily experiences, including submission to authority. But McGuire argues that historical and contemporary religious movements that challenge hierarchy and dominance are more likely to foster gendered and embodied notions of self that celebrate freedom of choice, egalitarianism and holism. A similar tension between gendered notions of dominance and freedom is at the basis of Nancy Nason-Clark’s chapter that tackles the question ‘Does religion augment or thwart the healing journey of a woman victim of abuse?’ The testimony of women active in churches in eastern Canada who have also been the victims of domestic violence highlights the choice that they face between coercion and empowerment. Many women keep their abuse secret, in some cases out of fear that disclosure will jeopardise their identity as ‘religious women’, especially if the abuser is also religious. Others may feel under pressure to conceal their faith commitments from counsellors in secular agencies. Nason-Clark’s conclusion is that a combination of the language of contemporary culture and the ‘language of the spirit’ can accelerate the journey towards healing and wholeness. The final section contains three chapters that explore some methodological and philosophical aspects of the sociological study of religion. First, Thomas Luckmann investigates the linkage between, on the one hand, each individual human being’s subjective constitution of the world through experience and, on the other, the processes whereby groups (including sociologists and anthropologists) reconstruct the meaning of the world on the basis of other people’s reports. His argument is that the subjective constitution of the world logically precedes its sociological reconstruction. Cultural variations in the location of the boundary between the human world of culture and the non-cultural world of ‘nature’ illustrate Luckmann’s argument and explain what is puzzling to us about animism and why we experience human bodies as human. Although Douglas Davies does not use Luckmann’s language of ‘phenomenological reduction’, this is in fact what his chapter on the ideal-type of wisdom achieves. Using the interpretive method of Verstehen, he builds up a logically consistent ideal-type of wisdom, distinguishing it from charisma and sainthood, in order to tease out the particular meaning that it assumes in the Anglican tradition. Davies also explores the capacity of comparative analysis in social science to challenge prevailing wisdom. It is only fitting that the last word should be left to Richard Fenn, whose chapter is a poignant and timely inquiry into the relation between the experience of cataclysms and the apocalyptic imagination. If ‘apocalypses are cataclysms that have been given meaning’, he reasons, societies facing the threat of disruption must offer ‘small doses of apocalyptic satisfactions’ without turning the world upside down. This is why he argues for the importance of communal rituals that can symbolically satisfy old grievances without permitting the dead to return with a vengeance and without inciting apocalyptic retribution. This is perhaps the ultimate challenge for religion.
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It will come as no surprise to readers who are familiar with Eileen Barker and her work to learn that the most difficult challenge that we, the editors, faced in organising this volume was to select a limited number of contributors from among the many in all parts of the world who would have been eager to participate. For, in addition to selecting contributions for their scholarly excellence, we sought to assemble a volume that was a balanced reflection of Eileen’s own interests and friendships. It is a matter of great sadness to us, therefore, that Jeff Hadden, who had enthusiastically agreed to join us, was not well enough to complete his chapter. We wish to record our thanks to Roger Thorpe and Mari Shullaw, formerly senior commissioning editors at Routledge in London, for their warm support. Their help was invaluable in bringing the project to fruition, as was the assistance of James McNally and the editorial staff at Routledge and Nick YeMyint at Warwick before his untimely death on 26 January 2003. In the name of all contributors we respectfully offer this volume to Eileen Barker with admiration and affection. James A.Beckford James T.Richardson
Part I New religious movements
1 Absolutes and relatives Two problems for new religious movements Bryan R.Wilson Two distinct tendencies may be readily discerned in the reaction of the settled traditional institutions of Western society to the many new religious movements that have sprung up in recent decades. Those two tendencies are evident within both religious and secular agencies—in the law courts, the media and politics as well as in the mainline churches and among the general public.1 One of these dispositions is the re-awakening of a longpersisting disposition of intolerance which, although today officially excoriated, has been part of a stock Christian response to new religions over centuries. The second tendency is for commentators to ignore the intrinsic character of each movement, their differences one from another, and to lump them all together as if, collectively, they constituted one common genre. It might be supposed that the various authoritative resolutions promulgated since World War II by international agencies, affirming freedom for all creeds of belief, practice, teaching and proselytising, would by this time have led to the suppression of both the sentiments and the expression of intolerance in religious matters. It has not been so.2 It might also be supposed that advances in scholarship and research into minority religions would, before now, have called forth a more widely educated public, possessed of a modicum of sociological analytical insight and capable of distinguishing one from another the ideologies, ethical systems and social structural characteristics of so diverse a set of phenomena as the current wave of new religions. (That so many new religions should emerge more or less simultaneously and spontaneously may in itself be regarded, at a certain abstract level of analysis, as one historical phenomenon, but such a heuristic assumption should not lead to a hasty conclusion that all these movements, exploiting a common social circumstance, are to be seen in themselves as all of a kind.) These two dispositions are fundamental elements in the common response to the new religions and they tend to reinforce each other. Lumping the new movements together makes it easy to extend culpability for the misdeeds of any one movement to all such movements, and so to attribute even to the least remissive sects responsibility for the most heinous offences perpetrated by any sect. Since there are plenty of sects and new movements about—and many of them new, hence with teachings that are unfamiliar—a campaign against sects in general has ready credence: all sects are culpable when any sect induces its members to break the criminal law. Thus, the collective homicidal or suicidal episodes of recent sectarian history, as perpetrated by the People’s Temple in 1978; the stand-off and shoot-out between the FBI and the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas in 1993; the violent deaths, soon thereafter, in 1994–5, of members of the Solar Temple, in Switzerland, France and Canada; the release of sarin gas on the Tokyo underground in 1995; and the self-congratulatory suicidal advocacy and practice of the adherents of the Heaven’s Gate scenario in San Diego in 1997 (to leave unmentioned more recent
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incidents of sectarian violence in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and elsewhere) become assimilated to a cumulative stereotype widely entertained in the public mind of just what sectarian religion portends and perpetrates.3 Since sectarian belief and practice led to such violence and anarchy in these cases, and since all these movements came to bloom within so short a time and in confrontation with traditional religion, so the common argument goes, may they not all be seen as manifestations of pernicious heresy, and may not heresy be seen, at bottom, as all of a kind? May not all of them, then, be undeserving of the kind of high-minded tolerance that forms the substance of international resolutions and the advocacy of general ecumenical movement in modern liberal Christianity? The counsel of ecumenism, and the various contemporary gestures of practical cooperation between major churches, the irenic remarks of the pope, and the widespread and cultivated representation of Christianity as a religion of love (rather than of justice) overlook the powerful church tradition, endorsed by some of its most revered saints and respected theologians, that heresy must be attacked, and that only following recantation should mercy be shown to the ‘Formal’ heretics—since they shared something of the orthodox tradition but contumaciously disputed some other of its aspects, and, perhaps worse, disputed the church’s legitimate authority—who might, then, be appropriately more harshly dealt with than outright unbelievers (those designated ‘material heretics’). From post-apostolic times onwards, many new movements, even some of those that were otherwise eclectic in belief and practice, were condemned as heretical in one form or the other. In the Middle Ages the church was absolute. It prescribed religious truth, and in this it was sustained by the secular authorities—the nascent state or the secular prince—who, from the time of the Reformation, sanctioned religious intolerance or toleration (at various dates of different groups—Lutherans, Calvinists, (Ana)baptists, Socinians, Atheists). For its part, for centuries, the church legitimised the authority of the nascent state, and used the state’s monopoly of armed force to punish heretics and dissenters. Any allegiance to or participation in the rituals and proceedings of faiths other than that one declared ‘orthodox’ threatened Christian unity. Thus there was a concerted policy, consciously or unconsciously pursued, which took for granted the assumption that such collusion was a necessity for the maintenance of social cohesion. Following Judaism, Christianity had always excluded recognition of all other deities, and required that the believer worship its one deity exclusively. Allegiance to or even acknowledgement of other gods would threaten dilution of Christian fellowship, and, were toleration accorded to other gods, that might mark the beginning of a process of return to dependence on those older sources of social identity and affiliation—ethnicity, common language and territoriality. The distinctive and entrenched intolerance of the Christian tradition was a consequence of the particular circumstances of its social operation in its formative years. Christianity began as a Jewish sect, and there were those among its original converts who sought to keep it as such, who saw Jewish ethnicity and the inherited cultural tradition of Judaism as prerequisites for admission.4 But the Roman world was a world of cosmopolitan mixing, and the new religion soon attracted people of various tribes, different ethnicities and diverse linguistic stock. If such a promiscuous sect was to hold together, it needed a basis for bonding that transcended the taken-for-granted loyalty, shared identity and mutuality that characterised these biological and sociobiological foundations, which, in their very diversity, pointed up differences and enmities.5 Such
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premises may have sufficed to hold together local groups, but they were irrelevant, if not inimical, to the search for cohesion in a movement in which people of widely varied origin were coming together in common fellowship. The chroniclers of the early church saw the problem—not for nothing is so much prominence accorded in the New Testament to the (apparently useless) miracle of speaking in tongues. When, at Pentecost, the Holy Ghost spoke to the assembled disciples in the upper room and again to the multitude, every auditor, no matter what his own language, could understand him, and then, too, they themselves, as Christians, spoke in unknown tongues.6 Here was the symbolism of the—purportedly spiritual—unity of the Church, transcendent above the local, geographical, ethnic and linguistic diversity of the empire in which the church recruited its following. All other claims to loyalty had to be set aside. The strong new bonding was to displace all naturalistic bonds—of blood, locality and language—as well as the cultural bonding of previous local religion or the benefits of quasi-magical client-practitioner associations. It was to bind together people who, hitherto, were of disparate social, cultural, political, tribal, national, linguistic and ethnically based loyalties in a new, over-arching allegiance, based on a supernatural relationship with deity, with a father, whose adherents were all fictive brothers and sisters.7 This fictive kinship, so the Christian scriptures affirmed, implied religious affections and obligations which at once discounted and eclipsed the ties of blood relationship. Blood kinsfolk were to be sacrificed and set against each other, discounted in favour of the new fictive relatives.8 The uncompromising attitude to relatives—the relatives, that is, of converts—is the substance of the Christian absolute. Whereas in religions based on blood relation, ethnicity or even neighbourhood, the expectations regarding salvation were that it would be communal and corporate, the salvation offered in new movements in the Christian tradition was individual salvation within a new community based on a new bonding, new obligations and new reciprocities. This, then, represented a profound shift in the basis of obligation on which a society might be founded—a shared ideology and the mutually supportive commitment of those who believed. Voluntary belief was now claimed to possess a strength superior to that of all other bonding agents. Part of that strength was attributable to its mystical projection of a divine agency, but it was also recognised that a further part of its strength was derived from the free-will choice of the believer which, when sincere, was, paradoxically, more effectively binding than the involuntary dependence on inherited culture, language, nationality or ethnicity.9 Self-chosen commitment to belief amounted to the surrender of an ascribed identity and the acquisition of an achieved identity. That achievement was in itself regarded as meritorious, and something about which the writers of the New Testament so frequently indulged in self and mutual congratulation, and indeed glorification.10 We need only observe that the shift from ‘natural’ to supernatural commitment has been a characteristic of new movements and of self-styled restoration movements throughout Christian history, and that this trait is shared by the new religions of our times. Asserting the transcendence of faith implied asserting that the Christian god was universal. Christianity not only superseded the older votive cults, ethnic and tribal gods, but it asserted that all these other deities and ritual practices were inimical to ‘truth’. Indigenous paganism, if tolerated at all, was subordinated by co-option into peripheral church practices, rituals, myths, thaumaturgy and therapies, hence the transmogrification
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of pagan gods into Christian saints—some being accorded special faculties to superintend particular provinces of activity or categories of people, with such associated institutions as shrines and pilgrimages. Phenomena such as the clamour, pardoners and exorcisms found a place at the fringes of Christendom, but all such pagan residues were rendered subservient to church order. Mysticism, spirit-possession, regionalism, local traditional cults, temples were frequently incorporated, and if in a sense licensed, then certainly supervised and regulated. Pre-existing religious dispositions were disciplined by a church which brooked no rivals and which claimed, almost certainly uniquely among existing religions, to possess an exclusive monopoly as an agency of salvation. The Christian god was the god for all people, a universal god. Christianity was also monotheistic—its exclusivism rejected lesser gods and the gods of lesser peoples, but since the Christian god was projected as universal this combination provided the licence for proselytism. It was not only the best faith, it was indeed the only ‘true faith’. Its votaries were honour-bound to spread the word to all nations and peoples, and to root out whatever form of religiosity pre-existed. Their mission had the function not only of winning new converts but also of providing steady occupation for those already converted, and of reinforcing their commitment. Having to persuade others, in spite of the failure of the Second Advent prophecy, they were also engaged in repeatedly repersuading themselves. Each new convert served to strengthen the convictions of those already in the faith. 11 Chance circumstance brought into unique concurrence the absolutist qualities of universalism: proselytism and exclusivistic monotheism, which together crystallised into the disposition of intolerance that for centuries justified the persecution of dissenters and the burning of heretics. All new religions including, in its early days, Christianity itself, need to justify their emergence and their mission. The properties of absolutism that were deposited with Christianity fitted exactly the claims that it was necessary for a new religion to make as its raison d'être. Many of the recently emerged contemporary new religions have inherited something of this orientation from Christianity. Even in not themselves claiming to be Christian, operating in countries in which Christianity has, for centuries, informed the general, secular culture, few of them have escaped inheriting from Christianity some influences regarding organisation, propaganda, recruitment, publishing, fund-raising or other concerns.12 It is typical for each of these movements to claim that it alone possesses ‘the truth’ and to demand of adherents total commitment to it. The justification for mission is to bring hitherto benighted people and peoples the truth as the movement apprehends it. Such a commission sets each movement at odds with all other religions—new movements and old. It is a sad fact that when one has occasion to tell—tell in a perfectly neutral and unevaluative way—the member of one new religion about the beliefs and practices of other movements, they are not only dismissive that anyone could take seriously such ideas and performances, but readily regard them all—people, ideas and practices—with total derision or disdain. Needless to say, this is a judgement which the sociologist does not make, and betrays an attitude of intolerance native to the new convert, but with which the sociologist himself or herself cannot possibly concur. New movements come into being to publicise a revelation of newly perceived ‘truth’ the manifestation of which all hitherto preceding history has been edging humanity towards. The whole course of recorded history is but a precursor, a long-drawn-out
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preparation for the affirmation of truth which the new religion now proffers to humankind, and which contains the essentials by which each individual, and humankind as a whole, will attain salvation. The new truth is deemed to be of such radical importance that it calls for new commitment, new organisation, new shared dedication, and not only the abandonment of past commitments and associations, but their repudiation and excoriation. New religious movements arise not to conciliate but rather to confront. They set their newly evolved absolute commitment over against all other manifestations of religious practice and belief. Yet it is clear that without the existence of other religions and of votaries of those religions, the new religious movement would lack raison d’être. Willy-nilly each new movement is defined in relation to other, pre-existing religious systems. To acknowledge this is to acknowledge that, at this level and in the wider social context, the ‘absolute truth’ of each and every new movement may itself be understood as in itself relative. Without the existence of an alternative ‘truth’, what the new movement seeks to provide would be neither wanted non-conceivable. It is the contradiction of claimed monopoly by another monopoly which demands that these exclusivities be seen in relative perspective. And the situation in actuality is, of course, even more complicated, since what exists is not merely the alternative of a negation of the claims of each new movement, but the availability—and hence, in a sense, the viability—of a variety of alternatives (if such an expression may be allowed), each making claim not only to pre-eminence but to sole ownership of rectitude. And all this may be advanced without suggesting that the analysis should force these manifestations into a rigorous dialectic order. It is rather that, as a consequence of plural (and incidentally diverse) expressions of absolutism, each such expression is rendered relative to the total religious context. Not many new movements come into being in a spirit of ecumenism. The very fact that ecumenism implies tolerance, conciliation, compromise and liberality of judgement, precludes the impetus to establish a new and separated party. The ecumenical posture is implacably opposed to schism, indeed, may be presented as its very opposite. Some sects, certainly—among them three (the Plymouth Brethren the Cooneyites and the Catholic Apostolics)13 which embrace some of the most extreme sectarian traits—have, at their origin, stated their agenda to be anti-sectarian, and have claimed to be providing the ground for a coming together in unity of all parties to the Christian faith: nonetheless, in practice, each claim is heavily loaded towards their own exclusive perspective. Their ecumenical impulse, such as it is, is soon eclipsed by their uncompromising belief that only their own formulations provide true doctrine and warranted ritual New movements tend to be enthusiastic when not fanatical and, indeed, it is difficult to work up rapturous enthusiasm for ‘the middle way’, or for compromise. Movements with tolerant, liberal, open dispositions, which express and may even encourage a certain Gleichgultigkeit, are usually old movements, with a worldly-wise leadership which has steadily abandoned any claim to a monopoly of truth. The ‘halfway covenant’ is not a goal to inspire enthusiasm among either the original parental covenanters or from those (second or subsequent) generations so willingly accommodating the world that no full covenant would find acceptance among them. The experience of the Student Christian Movement, the numerous ecumenical revival campaigns such as the Year of Evangelism, and the special days of prayer, make evident the diminished compatibility of compromise and commitment. In the nature of the case, the effective and ‘inspired’ new movement is
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almost always spurred into existence by its self-interpretation as a prophetic, iconoclastic or messianic agency, sent to set aside old truths and proclaim what are offered as essentially new ones. Yet one must point out that it is this very absolutism which endangers new movements, or by which those movements endanger themselves. It is the absolutes which alienate the relatives of converts, sometimes leading them and the apostates on whose behalf they claim to act to develop their own absolutes of a negative or contrary kind. It is not easy to abandon absolutes, nor is it easy to strike a compromise without appearing a trifle ridiculous. Two illustrations make the point, the one perhaps apocryphal and the other historically celebrated. The subtle persistence of absolutism appears in the story of two bishops, one Anglican, the other Catholic, who had been participants in an ecumenical gathering to settle some serious local church problems. By chance, the car due to pick up the Anglican bishop had broken down en route and the Catholic bishop, on learning this, offered his colleague a lift. This gesture partook of a rather more practical ecumenism than had been canvassed at the conference they had attended, or than either bishop had anticipated. So, by way of expressing thanks and ending the encounter on an emollient note, the Anglican, on alighting, made an anodyne comment of general congratulation on how well, despite their differences, they had all got on, adding, ‘After all, we all worship the same God.’ ‘We do,’ added the Catholic, quietly, ‘we do indeed—you in your way, and I in his.’ If, in this joke, which is still told with comforting reassurance of assumed superiority in the appropriate religious circles, a triumphalist absolute persists, then note the way in which, rather more seriously, ridicule attaches itself to actual historical episodes that require compromise between absolutism and toleration. The occasion was a meeting of thanksgiving, organised at Kikuyu in Kenya in 1911 to celebrate the success of an interdenominational meeting that had been called to settle the boundaries of mission territory, and so to eliminate undue competition in missionary activities. The meeting had gone well, and the different parties had met in the ecumenical spirit newly dawning in that period. As a religious occasion and in the spirit of amity engendered at the conference, the Anglican bishop presiding over the proceedings thought it appropriate that the delegates of the various denominations attending—Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, and Methodists—should join together in the most sacred of solemn Christian rituals—Holy Communion. This was an unprecedented gesture of brotherliness, embracing some who, in the eyes of others, were spiritually unqualified for participation. It proved all too much for the Anglican bishop of a neighbouring East African diocese, who was sufficiently shocked by this proceeding to complain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. What the presiding bishop had seen as a fraternal ecumenical gesture, his colleague believed to have been a flagrant concession to heresy. The Archbishop of Canterbury could not ignore the dispute, and it placed him neatly on the horns of a dilemma. Should he pronounce shared Communion to be a pollution of the cup, or was it an appropriate ecumenical gesture? As Monsignor Knox para-phrased it, the Archbishop’s verdict was ‘that while the events at Kikuyu were most pleasing in the sight of Almighty God, they must under no circumstances be allowed to occur again.’ Absolutist posturing is an easy target for humour but if we are to live at ease with the many new religions now flourishing in contemporary society which adopt an absolutist position—and as we have seen, most of them do—it behoves the rest of us to go as far as
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we can to comprehend the nature of absolutist commitment. The first step is to inform ourselves of the actual facts of what, in each instance, constitutes the absolutist character of a new religious movement’s commitment. What is its substance, and what is its reputation? This is where the Information Network Focus On Religious Movements comes in. INFORM is a neutral agency which gathers and collates objective information which it makes available to all—government officials, academics, journalists, members of the general public. Perhaps most important of all, its files are available to the relatives of the—usually young—converts to one or another new religion. In dispelling some of the wildly misplaced false information about new religions, INFORM is often in a position from which it can reassure relatives about the character, dispositions, policy, provenance and prospects of a given movement. It may be able to deflate some widely circulated rumours and false impressions derived from media comment. It may be able to illustrate from serious academic research studies much about the motivations of converts and their subsequent careers. On the other hand, it is also able to advise the leaders of new movements of the posture they should adopt in canvassing their message and to make them aware of the impact which their activities have on the general public. In some instances, it may broker a meeting between concerned parents and the founders or officers of new movements. Perhaps in the longer run the most influential of its activities may be found in the capacity of such an agency to establish firm theoretical postulates for the analysis of new religions. The influential example which comes instantly to mind carries its own debt to the work of INFORM and its tribute to the founder of that organisation—Eileen Barker. For some years, the media had latched on to the concept of brainwashing as an explanation of the powerful influence of new religions in converting young people. The concept had the appeal of a ‘trendy’ modern process. It absolved converts of responsibility for relinquishing former and traditional beliefs and adopting those of a heterodox minority. But social science research, particularly the work of Eileen Barker on the Moonies, has shown the inability of such a concept to explain what actually happens, and, if conversion is involuntary under the influence of such mind control, why the success rate of enduring conversions to these movements is so very low (Barker 1984). Ideally, an agency like INFORM should be enabled, if need be at state expense, with funds perhaps channelled through the universities or agencies such as the British Academy, to sponsor its own independent disinterested research, and this task would ensure that its work of reconciling absolutes and relatives continued to rest on a solid basis of detached and objective scholarship. It must be recalled that only by chance good fortune has this example of the best spirit of British voluntary civic service—so fully manifested in the case of INFORM—come into being. Its creation and continued operation is owed entirely to the recipient of these essays, Eileen Barker. Perhaps here, more than in any other area of social research, what is required is the patient, systematic and tolerant spirit of disinterested objective enquiry, exercised by representatives of reason, sense and reconciliation. The situations to be faced are often flammable, and the participants, being deeply committed, are often volatile and headstrong—features which characterise the anti-cultist relatives as well as the absolutely committed votaries. The emotions are unreservedly engaged, and because, to a degree rarely found in other circumstances, religious commitment and belief are often expressed and canvassed in strongly evaluative, emotive and ambivalently evocative language, bringing juxtaposed
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parties to the bar of reason is by no means an easy undertaking. INFORM, Professor Barker and her assistants have succeeded in resolving or adjusting some conflicts where the embattled absolutists on both sides have inevitably failed. If relatives must recognise the sincerity of believers in their commitment to absolutes, those who are or have become so committed must appreciate that outsiders who are acquainted with a large number of new movements, all of which claim to have a monopoly of absolute truth, are unlikely, on the basis of that knowledge, to endorse the claims of any one of them. They will, at most, hold those claims in abeyance. The conspicuous activities of so many new religions, each making a claim solely to possess the truth to which exclusivistic, absolute allegiance is owed, has, paradoxically, brought about the relativising of all religions. True believers need to acknowledge the difficulty that many people experience in accepting absolutes in a world in which relativism commands so much terrain. Plural absolutes give rise to many relatives. Indeed, the new movements themselves often find it expedient to compromise their own absolutist stance when, for example, they join together to seek greater tolerance from the state, or to make common claim to privileges which have hitherto been denied to them, or when they agree literally to share a public platform under the aegis of INFORM, to publicise their common experience of ostracism and opprobrium. Long ago, when the governing authorities of the colonial powers were first undertaking the work of administering tribal territories, they discovered that although native peoples often attributed to witches their various individual and collective misfortunes, in actual fact much of the disruption which those societies experienced came not from the supposed witches but from the activities of so-called witchfinders who were engaged in ‘sniffing out witches’. Those activities were often well institutionalised as a periodic ‘blood-letting’ for the accumulated malice, envy, resentment and discontent of the indigenous population. It is by no means inappropriate to see the members of new religious movements in Europe today as analogous to those in tribal societies who are accused of being witches. Their accusers, the anti-cultists, have, of course, taken on the role of the witchfinders. The relevant institutions of modern society, the media, sometimes—as in the falsely alleged child abuse cases in Teeside and the Orkneys—the social services, and even the agencies of the law, all too readily take the assertions of the witchfinders at face value. The witchfinders, acting like moral vigilantes, assume for themselves the role of keepers of the collective conscience. Obviously, they must be listened to, but not to the exclusion of those against whom they make their accusations. The intolerant policies of various European governments—France, Belgium, Greece and Austria—towards new religions; their uninformed endorsement of the witchfinders, their ignorance of what really motivates and conditions anti-cult campaigns and their lack of knowledge of contemporary waves of spirituality among the so-called witches, make evident the fact that many continental politicians, and some in Britain, have much to learn. Only by the creation of neutral agencies, like INFORM, undertaking objective disinterested research, is the need for toleration likely to be understood, and only then will the resolutions of international authorities be duly honoured.
Notes
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1 For a more detailed discussion of established institutional reactions to new religions see Wilson and Cresswell 1999. 2 Resolutions have been endorsed by the Council of Europe and in the Helsinki Accord, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations affirms, Article 18: ‘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.’ 3 For a succinct account of these sects and the mayhem in which they became engaged, see Chryssides 1999:33–77. 4 See the dispute between Paul and Peter, in which, for those who saw the new religion as a Jewish sect, circumcision is the symbolic cultural criterion for admission to Christian fellowship: Romans 2:25–9, 3:1; Corinthians 7:18–20; Galatians 5. 5 This particular issue is pursued in the context of a broader argument in Wilson 1996:11–34. 6 Acts 2:4, 11ff. 7 See, for example, the promise made in Ephesians 2:19, ‘Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.’ The superiority of fictive kinship and the supersession of blood relationship by the fraternal relationships in the new fellowship of Christians is explicit and had precedence over all other social bonds, including the bonds of family, marriage, tribe and community. 8 See the derogation of marriage bonds as inferior to bonds of Christian discipleship in Matthew 10:21–2, 10:34–7, 19:10–12, 22:25–30. The drift of these comments may also be seen as a symbolic representation of the way in which material and quasi-magical ritual was superseded by spiritual and ethical concerns. The rewards of fictive kinship are promised in Romans 8:16–18:
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with bim, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 9 A similar comparison has been made relative to the extent to which Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses respectively demonstrated a capacity to survive during their internment in Nazi concentration camps in World War II. The Jews had no choice with respect to incarceration: they were victims because of what, unalterably, they were. Jebovah’s Witnesses had choice and had chosen not to obey some of the laws of the Nazi state, in particular the obligation of men to undertake military service, and the prohibition of literature distribution and the denial of the right of assembly. The Witnesses survived better, maintained better morale and defied their captors more effectively than the Jews. Shared voluntary choice proved a more effective social bond than shared ethnicity. See Hesse 2001:9–11, 23–33; and Yonan 1999. 10 Among many New Testament examples of such enthusiasm, see John 3:1–3. 11 For a thesis which argues that the early spread of Christianity was in part attributable to the failure of prophecy relative to the expected second coming of Christ and the consequent felt need of Christians to reassure themselves by converting others to their view that their own faith was still justified, see Gager 1975. 12 Various influences tend to shape new religions into a measure of conformity or similarity with other movements in a given culture. To appeal to the native population, missionaries— see the celebrated history of early missions in China—have frequently sought the inculturation of their faith. This process is often only partially conscious, and not always a matter of deliberate policy, but there are circumstances in which existing social institutions shape new movements. In Britain, the inducement of tax concessions for which a religious
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movement may become eligible once it is recognised as a charity might have served to promote certain policies or practices, or discouraged the adoption of others, thus encouraging new movements to take on characteristics that are perhaps more ‘church-like’ and which typify other organisations already successfully registered as ‘charities’. 13 An account of the theology and history of the Catholic Apostolic Church is provided in Flegg 1992; for the Cooneyites (also known as Die Namenlosen, ‘the Testimony’, and Christian Conventions), see Parker and Parker 1982. On the Exclusive Brethren, see Wilson 1967:257–342.
2 Cults, culture and manure Why the root of the second should be the first rather than the third N.J.Demerath III Social scientists are often frustrated by inconvenient facts that nip instructive stories in the bud. This chapter offers a case in point. It is at least arguable that the term ‘cult’ should be the root word for the term ‘culture’ or ‘cult-ure’, but the facts are otherwise. After briefly reviewing the etymological background of both words, I shall show how each could be enhanced with a bit of etymological licence. Admittedly, my task is somewhat complicated by the myriad of differences between my own American language and that of our Scottish honouree, for whom I have frequently offered to serve as a simultaneous translator before US audiences. In seeking an authoritative source, I might have used the author’ itative American dictionary that was actually begun in my hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts, and is now known as Webster’s Third International. But out of the kind of cross-cultural deference for which we Americans are famous, I have instead deferred to the Oxford English Dictionary and decided to make do with its new twenty-volume second edition. In the sections to follow, I shall deal with both ‘cult’ and ‘culture’ separately before bringing them together in the chapter’s conclusion.
Cults in the semantic whirlwind First, a surprise. Upon consulting the OED for its entry regarding ‘cult’, I was astonished to find no portrait of Eileen Barker—a shabby oversight indeed for Britain’s own analytic goddess of cults everywhere, and one compounded by the absence of even one picture of her enthralled followers whose attitudes towards her virtually define the entry’s firstlisted definition as: ‘Worship; reverential homage rendered a divine being or beings’. And yet this meaning is indicated as obsolete except in the sense of the second definition as ‘a particular form or system of religious worship, esp. in relation to its external rites and ceremonies. Now frequently used attrib. by writers on cultic ritual and the archaeology of primitive cults.’ But finally a third definition is also pertinent: namely, ‘transf. Devotion or homage to a particular person or thing, now especially as paid by a body of professed adherents or admirers’. As relevant as all three definitions may be to the volume at hand, they seem little abreast of recent developments concerning the word itself. Instead they hark back to an earlier era when ‘cult’ had a benign and beatific quality as part of the core of religious practice according to both sociological usage and colloquial parlance. As James
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Richardson put it: ‘The term cult has a long and revered history in the sociology of religion deriving from the work of Troeltsch’ (Richardson 1993:348). I have looked briefly but in vain for Troeltsch’s usage. Because the OED refers to Latin and French derivations but not German, it is worth noting that the great Frenchman, Emile Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life defines a culte as a system of rites and feasts and various ceremonies all having the characteristic that they recur periodically. They meet the need that the faithful feel periodically to tighten and strengthen the bond between them and the sacred beings on which they depend. (Durkheim 1995 [1912]:60, italics in the original) But, of course, Richardson is correct that this kind of usage has recently gone sour. While Durkheim and his contemporaries referred to ‘cult’ as an aspect of any religious (and many non-religious) groups, gradually the term has come to denote a particular kind of group in its own right. In Richardson’s terms: ‘Cult has become a widely used popular term, usually connoting some group that is at least unfamiliar and perhaps even disliked or feared’ (Richardson 1993:348). He cites his own ‘oppositional’ conceptualisation of cults to indicate how they develop in contrast to the dominant culture and its motifs rather than in consonance or sympathy with them. Wilson (1981), Barker (1989a), Bainbridge (1997) and Robbins (2000) are among many others who have charted the change. Cults shifted from the religiously indispensable to the religiously unforgivable largely during the 1960s and 1970s, when a series of flagrantly unorthodox groups emerged to challenge conventional religious institutions and require a new form of religio-demonic terminology. These groups ranged from the Moonies of the Unification Church and the Hare Krishna of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) to the Church of Scientology, and the People of Jonestown with its 911 deaths in the jungles of British Guyana in 1978. Given allegations of perverse and insidious mind-bending and brainwashing, the word ‘cult’ was borrowed from the science fiction literature of the day to become the pejorative term of choice. Although the negative connotations here reflect the views of the ‘anti-Cult cult’—as this counter-movement has sometimes been described—the usage did not reflect the more objective (sometimes portrayed as more ‘sympathetic’) position of most scholarly researchers in the area. Because ‘cult’ had become so demeaningly judgmental with especially punitive consequences in the courts, these scholars came to prefer the more neutral phase, ‘new religious movements’ (NRMs). As much as I would like to find the one person responsible for the phrase, this scholar seems to prefer anonymity as a kind of ‘deep throat’ of the sociology of religion’s cult-gate episode. Given the phrase’s ambiguities, a preference for anonymity may be especially understandable. Alternatively, the phrase may not have been the product of a single individual but rather the work of a committee seeking a conceptual horse but winding up with a multi-humped camel. Before turning to the difficulties plaguing NRM references, it may be worth noting that ambiguous terminology seems to plague the social movement field generally. Another recent example is ‘New Social Movement Theory’. Just what is new here—the social movements or the theory? Proponents stress the former in pointing to a series of new movements concerning gender and sexuality that pivot around matters of personal
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identity. But surely identity concerns have long characterised social movements of all sorts, from the class-consciousness of Marx’s proletariat to the salvational anxieties within diverse religious groups, including NRMs. While it is helpful to remind us of the importance of such identity issues, a-historical claims on behalf of a major difference in kind rather than a possible difference in degree are not the stuff of a major breakthrough. Similar problems pervade the ‘new religious movement’ phrase, as I am hardly the first to point out. Again there is the question of just what is new. Does this refer to the newness of the groups themselves? If so, some of the groups are now a half-century old, and many claim ties to long-standing practices either at home or abroad. At the same time, virtually all religions are heatedly fertile and always seem to be giving birth to still newer religious groups. Every city in the US has witnessed a continuous growth of such small independent religious groups—some in storefronts, others in suburbs, but by no means all ‘cults’ in conventional parlance. Meanwhile, Stark and Bainbridge (1985) emphasise a different sort of newness. They argue that cults are different from sects because the former provide perceived innovations from outside the current religious scene, as opposed to the latter’s revitalisation of older church traditions within the scene. Finally, perhaps the newness refers to a movement’s orientation to the future as opposed to the past and to its effort to prepare its members for a new day and a new way. But such an emphasis on change as distinct from constancy is apt to occur among a wide variety of religious and non-religious movements. In fact, religious-ness is another source of ambiguity in new religious movements. Just where does religion end and non-religiousness begin, and does it really matter? Might new religious movements include New Age undertakings that have no reference to God or the supernatural? Put another way, don’t many of the same critical dynamics occur in some secular as well as some sacred associations? Zellner (1995) uses a single research template to analyse skinheads, satanism, the Unification Church, the Ku Klux Klan, Scientologists, and Survivalists. Adding liberal groups from the anti-nuclear, environmental, and gender and homosexuality battles suggests that NRMs may draw from a wide ideological swath even as they share a relatively narrow band of organisational characteristics. This raises still a third ambiguity. What is the most critical dimension of the cults being euphemised by the NRMs? Is it a theological matter of religious doctrine and practice, a historical matter of religious ties across faiths or the lack of them, or an organisational matter of the causes, consequences and correlates of a communal undertaking? There seems little doubt that the last has become the most distinctive aspect of cults or NRMs and produced the most controversy concerning them. However ‘new’ or ‘religious’ in any sense of these terms, and whatever their doctrines or history may involve, cults are nowadays stamped by five stereotypic characteristics: (1) charismatic singularity, or the sense that the group—and often its leadership—has a unique and perhaps magical claim upon its members based upon a new and compelling vision; (2) a quality of communal and/or familistic detachment that bands members together by cutting them off from others, either literally or symbolically; (3) the fusion of private selves with collective identities, and the willingness to sacrifice the former for the latter; (4) control through socialised ideology and morality rather than the imposed structural rule of, say, a bureaucracy; and (5) the search for affirmation through shared ultimate
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experiences—whether in outer space or inner space—as pathways to personal and/or societal change. When taken together and taken to extremes, these five organisational tendencies depart widely from the original OED definition of a cult as basically and simply a form of routinised worship and devotion. On the other hand, these same tendencies define what I think is most commonly meant by ‘new religious movements’. Although I would prefer a clearer and more inclusive phrase, such as, say, ‘cultural communal movements’ (CCMs), I have no illusions of effecting such a switch. Later I shall draw on both traditional and colloquial meanings of ‘cult’ in fleshing out the term ‘culture’. Meanwhile, what about culture’s own terminological history and more recent connotations?
Culture de-denominated Both my hometown Webster’s and the OED agree that the word ‘culture’ descends from the notion of agricultural cultivation and horticulture, though both dictionaries are too seemly to make plain what is clearly implied: namely, the shared indispensability of manure. The relation between culture and manure will not surprise those confirmed ‘structuralists’ who regard almost all culture as stercoraceous. Nor should culture’s lineage surprise devotees of the great sage Dorothy Parker, who was once asked to use the term ‘horticulture’ in a sentence and replied: ‘You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.’ Nowadays she would no doubt want to add that the stubbornly passive object of that sentence should be understood in non-gender-specific terms. The OED’s first two non-obsolete definitions of ‘culture’ both pertain to cultivating the soil, a plant or a crop. And the next definitions four through six extend this to the social sphere by referring to some variation of ‘the cultivating or development (of the mind, faculties, manners, etc.); improvement or refinement by education and training…the intellectual side of civilisation…[and] the prosecution with special attention or study of any subject or pursuit’. Clearly, in the eyes of the OED culture has a general link with academic standards and high as opposed to low culture. As part of a scenario of elite self-improvement, culture becomes something achieved rather than ascribed or osmotic, and an attribute of the few rather than the many. Moreover, it characterises the individual rather than the social context, and it has relatively little influence on the relation between the two. None of this squares well with what culture has come to mean to social scientists. It may gall the British editors of the OED to learn that perhaps the closest approximation of their version of culture is actually French: namely, the late Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital by which high cultural standards rule the stratification roost and exert a controlling hegemony (Bourdieu 1984). Evidence suggests that this may apply better to France than England, and better to both of them than to the US. But wherever it is applied, the theory marks an important shift away from the dictionary definition by focusing more on the subjects for cultivation than on the cultivated subjects. Culture provides the symbols and sustenance of social action and interaction, but it is not to be confused with the actors themselves. Even for Bourdieu, as for most culturalists these
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days, virtually everyone is cultured in one way or the other; the real question is how and in what terms. A century or so ago at the dawn of the social sciences, culture was a dominant motif that largely distinguished sociology and anthropology from economics and political science. Indeed, sociologists and anthropologists treated culture so enthusiastically and expansively that it became a major integrative concept blanketing virtually all of society and social life. It was certainly a critical element of Weber’s work, and it was a mainstay of functionalism from Durkheim through Parsons. However, critics of functionalism soon began to see culture as a conservative force that tied the present to the past but kept it disconnected from the future. Culture was largely equated with Marxian false consciousness and shunted aside during the turbulent 1960s, as attention turned to more activist inquiries and to a neo-Marxist paradigm that called for replacing false consciousness with a true consciousness of not only class but ethnicity, gender and power relations generally. For the next twenty years or so, culture remained in the closet. But beginning in the 1980s, it began to re-emerge. And yet this was not the culture of yore. The concept had clearly been tempered in the fires of social change. No longer a unified and unidimensional reinforcement of the status quo, culture became more diverse and more involved in provoking change than in preventing it. It was no longer fashionable to speak of culture at the level of a whole society or nation, and references to ‘the culture’ as a singular noun were replaced by references to cultures in the plural and to culture as a process. The stock of cultural content has broadened enormously in the social sciences, as have the various analytic approaches to it. Culture has shifted from a sociological relic popular only among the profession’s dinosaurs to an ebullient enthusiasm of the discipline’s youth and a mainstay of their doctoral dissertations—albeit sometimes for the wrong reason of lending itself to a soft, qualitative methodology. Among the American Sociological Association’s various ‘sections’, culture is now fifth largest among some forty-three. This is not the place for a thorough review of the field, but several dominant developments stand out. Culture has always been seen as a source of meaning, or meaning-making (Spillman 2002). And if cultural analysis involves the interpretation of interpretative processes (Geertz 1973), it can fairly be described as ‘interpretationsquared’. But what is new about this in recent years is an emphasis on what Foucault (1980) might have called culture’s power potential, whether its persuasions are covert within subtly established discourses or overt as parts of an ideological offensive. British Neo-Marxists from Raymond Williams (1995) through Stuart Hall (1992) have produced a bridge from conventional Marxism into a form of cultural studies that is no longer politically withdrawn but deeply engaged (cf. During 2000). Like scholars in Bourdieu’s tradition (cf. Lamont and Fournier 1992), they see culture as both making and assaulting boundaries between those of unequal standing. In recent years, culture has been increasingly portrayed as a choice and a product rather than an inheritance that is passively absorbed. Taking hopeful cues from feminist, gay and lesbian, and ethnic movements, individuals are portrayed as choosing and moulding the cultural frames that will inform their actions and reactions. Agency has become an important element in cultural meaning, and a good deal of our cultural identity and behavioural scripting is constructed at the individual level and manufactured at the
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institutional level. For individuals, Swidler (1986) talks of tool kits into which we may dip for the right cultural instrument of the moment, and of repertoires from which we may select courses of action that are contextually appropriate. In the realm of art—both classical and popular—the production of culture perspective has gained sway following the seminal work of Peterson (1976), DiMaggio (1982) and Griswold (1994). The artists themselves do not always have the last word, note or stroke; they are both parts and products of a complex assembly line that responds to market considerations, organisational factors and broader societal changes. Clearly this is a far more active and dynamic conception of culture than the one that characterised sociology and anthropology at their beginnings. Much of the shift can be plotted typologically. Rhys Williams and I once defined culture in terms amenable to a four-fold schema defined by two cross-cutting dichotomies (Demerath and Williams 1987). The first distinction is between embedded versus expressed culture, i.e. culture that is taken for granted as part of the unacknowledged warp and woof of social life in contrast to culture that is self-consciously created as commentary, critique or celebration in institutional settings ranging from high and low art to religion, politics and the media. The second distinction involves accounts of the world as it ought to be in contrast to the way it ‘is’, between value-driven, normative and ideological notions, on the one hand, and seemingly objective accounts of society in context and as context, on the other. Note, however, that there may be a considerable gap between culture’s depiction of what is and what really is, insofar as one can admit an empirical and structural layer of society as opposed to a purely constructed conception. Recent cultural attention has focused on the expressed-ought combination, with the expressed-is as a close second. The former is the lair of art, literature, music, political ideology and religious theology; the latter is the home of education and science (including social science). The embedded-is combination is also important as part of the culture of identity, especially the ascribed castings of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity or nationality. Increasingly, this becomes a foil to the expressed-ought, as produced culture challenges inherited culture. Note, however, that I have not yet described the fourth possible category of the embedded-ought. The delay is appropriate because this particular duality has become an after-thought verging on an anachronism—a ghost of culture past as distinct from culture present. Although the combination was once a cornerstone of culture a hundred years ago in the hands of Weber and Durkheim, current cultural analysts have backed off the embedded in favour of the expressed, and the ought in favour of the is. As culture has shifted from the normative to the cognitive, it has not only left the functionalist tradition behind but also virtually abandoned any concern for deep-seated values and norms, not to mention anything resembling the sacred. In fact, much the same has happened with popular usage. In listing the OED’s various non-obsolete definitions of culture, I omitted its first listed meaning as Worship, reverential homage because it is labelled Obs. rare. Although this may be the OED’s commentary on the early standing of sociology itself, it seems more likely that culture has been secularised both inside and outside of the social sciences.
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Re-sacralising cult-ure In her recent ‘Translator’s introduction’ to Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Karen Fields talks at some length and with some anguish about the dilemma she faced regarding culte: Although cult once meant a system of religious worship, especially with reference to its rites and ceremonies [a definition likely drawn from the OED’s first edition], it now has a pejorative connotation that gives an odd ring to such sentences as these of Durkheim: But feasts and rites—in a word, the cult—are not the whole of religion. Again: Although in principle derived from the beliefs, the cult nevertheless reacts upon them, and the myth is often modelled on the rite so as to account for it. Cult now connotes not just feats and rites but excessive and perhaps outlandish ones, attached to beliefs assumed to be outlandish. For that reason, used without warning today, it can plant in the American reader’s mind a different attitude toward totemic cults than Durkheim had. I decided nevertheless, to retain cult in most contexts, for this reason: If it is dropped in favour of terms like worship or practice, which sometimes will do, Durkheim’s own use of le culte decouples from the cognate term culture. But that will not do at all. Durkheim’s own formidable exploration of religious beliefs and rites—of representations collectives, and conscience collective, that is, of shared ways of thinking and acting— was seminal to the vast twentieth-century exploration of culture. (Fields 1995: lvi) Clearly Durkheim saw the relation between cult and culture. But as Fields suggests, Durkheim’s version of culture was not so much religionised as sacralised. Every enduring institutionalised collectivity had to be represented to its members in ways that were powerful, compelling and inspiring. These symbolisations, enactments and affirmations could take various forms—some religious, some political, etc. But the form was far less important than its core sacred contents and their diverse ritual reinforcements. Of course, the theoretical, if not etymological, link between cult and culture is hardly a secret between Durkheim, Fields and myself. Even the OED advises ‘culture’ inquirers to ‘see cult’ as a last note on the term’s semantic company. Closer to home, William Bainbridge suggests a reciprocal relationship: ‘Ultimately, we like the word “cult” because it is a short version of culture, and surely religious cults are sub-cultures’ (Bainbridge 1997:24). Thus, just as cultures can—and perhaps must—be regarded as cultic, cults—even more than most other collectivities—require an acute version of the same enveloping sense of the sacred that Durkheim finds in culture generally. At the same time, neither need be religious in the conventional sense. Again, Durkheim is clear on the point in the following observation drawn from his magisterial conclusion to The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life:
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What basic difference is there between Christians celebrating the principal dates of Christ’s life…and a citizens’ meeting commemorating the advent of a new moral charter or some other great event of national life?… If today we have some difficulty imagining what the feasts and ceremonies of the future will be, it is because we are going through a period of transition and moral mediocrity… It is life itself, and not a dead past, that can produce a living cult. (Durkheim 1995:429) For Durkheim, the sacred is not always linked to religion, but it was inevitably tied to morality. He argued that collectivities—indeed, whole societies—could be anchored in sacred but non-religious systems of ethics and morals. In fact, it is said that the great Kemal Attaturk based a number of his secularising reforms of Turkey in the 1920s on this neo-positivistic insight. While it would surprise many sociologists to regard any nation’s politics as an exercise in applied Durkheimianism, even contemporary France shares some of Turkey’s Attaturkian attributes, if not necessarily their source. Alas, Durkheim may be a prophet with all too little honour in his own country. Although there is a Musée d’Auguste Comte in the eccentric’s last residence on what is now the Rue Auguste Comte on Paris’s left bank, Durkheim’s only eponymous site within the city as far as I know is a tiny but elegant jewel box of a lecture hall buried in an out-of-the-way corner of the Sorbonne. Meanwhile the relation between culture and morality also found ardent advocates in other quarters. Certainly Weber’s work on old religious movements is pertinent (Weber 1930 [1904]). And culture’s moral import was central to Talcott Parsons’ seminal Structure of Social Action (1937). It was precisely this theme that drew the convergence between Durkheim, Weber, Pareto and Marshall. All of these scholars independently came to emphasise what Parsons called a voluntaristic theory of action, though the phrase was something of a misnomer for a model of choice that was anything but voluntary, given the influence of culturally ingrained values and norms on individual choicemaking. While each of the four major figures brought different legacies to the newly shared perspective, there was certainly no question in Parsons’ mind that this heralded a major breakaway from the rigidities of previous structural determinisms and psychological reductionisms. Alas, Parsons—like Durkheim a half-century earlier—let his zeal for a new sociology overwhelm his theoretical judiciousness. Parsonian systems analysis gave sociology a gift that was ultimately to become a bad name. Again like Durkheim, Parsons produced an over-determined account of social order. When in Parsons’ case this was compounded by an alien prose style, more change-oriented colleagues were moved to roll their eyes, gnash their teeth and turn away. And yet Parsons’ answer to the problem of order may have been less misconceived than overdrawn. Exploring the relation between cult and culture allows us to examine some fundamental issues without the extraneous baggage. Using cult as more of a macro-metaphor for culture than a micro model for culture may help to rescue some important cultural aspects from their guilt by association with rightfully discredited functionalisms and other formulations. Earlier I provided a list of five attributes generally associated with cults or new religious movements. How do they apply to culture? Consider first what I have termed
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charismatic singularity. Both successful cults and cultures engender within their members a sense of being a part of something special, if not always divinely magical. While this is often ritually proclaimed by cult members, it sometimes goes without saying within large cultures. Still, this is a good deal of what civil religion is all about—again, in both religious and secular forms. The US doctrine of American exceptionalism is a case in point, and this sense of virtuous uniqueness is by no means unique among the world’s cultures. A second cultic attribute involves a sense of communal and/or familistic detachment, through either physical or symbolic means. This isolation is clear enough in cult cases, but it is also anything but rare among cultures. This is true even where national or political boundaries do not overlap with cultural boundaries, or for that matter when cultures take the scattered form of diasporas. However, this cultural element helps us to understand why so many different cultures are seeking to align their political and geographic boundaries through assertions of cultural nationalism. Third, we have many examples of the fusion of private selves with collective identities, hence members’ extraordinary willingness to sacrifice for the cult’s cause. But again much the same applies to cultures, if generally in a less spectacular sense. In fact, successful cultural socialisation can be defined as the extent to which individuals find the boundaries blurring between themselves and their cultural contexts. This can also lead to over-conformity through over-socialisation—the plight of such cultural archetypes as Adolf Eichmann, Willy Loman and those imprisoned in Weber’s iron cage. It is true that recent social science literature in the US has stressed the reverse; namely, an overweaning individualism at the expense of the community and its culture (e.g. from Reisman et al. (1961), Slater (1970) and Lasch (1978) to Bellah et al. (1985)). Insofar as these works suggest a cultural need for a little more cult and a little less cultivation, they are not at odds with the thesis here. However, it is at least arguable that the problem is more one of structural individuation than cultural individualism. Put another way, in Bellah’s work above, the pseudonymous Sheila’s problem in relying on just ‘her own little (religious) voice’ (p. 221) is not that she is a self-confident and resourceful believer in individualism, standing before the social storm like a modern-day Thoreau at Walden Pond. It is rather that she has been dealt a solitary hand in the social game and has little choice but to play it out. It was individualism without individuation that led Thoreau off to Walden Pond, but it is individuation without individualism that affects Sheila and may be the greater pathology of our own time. Meanwhile, a fourth characteristic of cults is control through socialised ideology and morality as opposed to structural rigidities of power. This runs counter to the coercive images of cults advanced by anti-cultists. Of course, it also is out of step with the critics of brainwashing who take cult culture to hysterical lengths. But the characteristic is consistent with mainstream research on cults or NRMs. It also concurs with what we know about culture generally as one of the least obtrusive but most efficient means of social control and instruments of power—a point well established by post-structuralists such as Foucault (1980). Insofar as sociology has overlooked this aspect of culture, it has often been led on a fool’s errand in search of structural sources of power that are sustainable over the long haul without a cultural component. Finally, a fifth characteristic of cults—their search for affirmation through shared ultimate experiences—may seem the most remote from culture. It is hard to find
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analogues to the cult’s flirtation with and seduction by altered innerworldly psychological states or alien forms of otherworldly exploration, including death itself. At the same time, culture is never more galvanising than when it faces a threat or crisis. Both cult and cultural leaders are often paranoid—a condition waggishly defined as being in possession of all the facts. But both are also skilled at whipping up external conflict so as to keep the waters of conflict and crisis roiling. Although some political observers may no longer be sure whether President George W.Bush belongs in the category of a cult or cultural leader, there is a growing sense that his external war on terrorism is being used to gin up the sagging popularity of his domestic initiatives and bind up the nation’s fractured cultural consensus overall. Overall, then, cult and culture fit better than we may have been led to believe. As much as it may strain the etymological truth to posit cult as culture’s root, it strains credulity much less. However, several caveats are important lest this become a wholly unbridled canter down nostalgia lane. In making the case for a dimension of culture that has cult-like characteristics, I don’t mean to take the argument to excessive lengths. For example, one might want to argue that cults and culture are in some measure ‘functional alternatives’—to use a phrase from the past—and that new cults emerge where a traditional culture is lacking or has fallen on hard times. Surely there is a sense in which the problems of culture invite solutions from cults, and to a lesser extent vice versa. The thesis has some empirical support (cf. Stark and Bainbridge 1985). However, it also suffers from a bad case of glibness. Any time one macro-level variable (cultural problems) is used to explain another macro level variable (incidence of cults) without access to intervening micro-level data (just who is belonging to what and why?), we should all be suspicious of what used to be called an ‘ecological fallacy’. Rather than equate cult and culture categorically, it is important to treat their attributes, and hence their relationship, as variables, not absolutes. Virtually all cultural or religious groups share some degree of ‘cult-ness’ along virtually all of the five dimensions I have discussed. It is hard to know just where to place the cut-off points beyond which the term ‘new religious movement’ (or more preferably ‘cultural communal movement’) applies. As our own dominie and doyenne has demonstrated (e.g. Barker 1984), cults are often exaggerated in their extremist qualities and consequences, and they often suffer from high turnovers and short half-lives, Much the same can be said about the cultness of culture itself. Every culture has at least some cult-like qualities at some levels, but it is important to be sensitive to the varying degrees and types that obtain. Every culture experiences some measure of active conflict, passive unravelling and change through secularisation. In arguing that culture shares with cults certain qualities of sacred morality and similar scenarios of member commitment, I don’t mean to urge a return to the ‘culture’ of one hundred years ago—much less fifty. I am certainly not suggesting that culture is the panacea for every society’s woes, that it is ingested whole and uncritically by every member of a society, that it is some deeply cemented constant that always stands athwart change, or that there are not multiple cultures, sub-cultures and counter-cultures—and enough conflicts among them—to keep most societies on edge and on the edge of change itself. I certainly do not want to deny the advances in cultural analysis alluded to earlier. In seeking to restore attention to an aspect of culture that has all but disappeared in our
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rear-view mirrors, I don’t mean to distract our attention from the road ahead. Culture is never uni-dimensional, unanimous or static; it does allow for and even require choice and agency, especially as it becomes more politically charged. Both cults and culture are related to the sacred, but then the sacred may be found in strange places with strange consequences.
Conclusion Is all culture a cult? To some extent. Are all cults cultures? Yes and no. It could scarcely be otherwise when one is dealing with variables rather than absolutes. The answers are even more elusive because, in recent years, both ‘cult’ and ‘culture’ have undergone major transformations in their scholarly usage and popular connotations. Cult has moved from the core of the religious apple to a mutant growth on its external skin. Culture has changed from a static, traditional and hegemonic source of normative guidance to a jumble of contested meanings with the creative choice among them left to those who had earlier been the controllees rather than the controllers. This chapter has offered a review and critique of both developments. It has suggested that it might be helpful—if fanciful— to regard ‘cult’ as the root word of ‘cult-ure’. Such a reading returns us to the vibrant insights of those three great gurus of the sociology of religion’s own cult and culture: Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Eileen Barker.
3 Religion and the Internet The global marketplace Jean-François Mayer Around the mid-1990s, some journalists and critical observers of the alternative religious scene noticed with alarm the growing presence of a number of small religious movements on the World Wide Web. Could it be a promising new missionary field for modern religious movements? Such fears probably reached their apex in 1997 with the collective suicide of followers of Heaven’s Gate in California. However, it soon became obvious that the growing impact of the Internet would not only help new religious movements (NRMs), but also exert pressure on them. As I have argued elsewhere (Mayer 2000), the development of the Internet may well have helped cult-watching organisations much more than controversial groups: nearly every person or association monitoring such groups can recall instances in which people left a group due to material discovered on the Internet—a rather easy task today with efficient search engines. Even disaffected individuals with limited financial means have suddenly become able to express their grievances at a global level and to reach like-minded people accross oceans and continents. Unless access to the Internet is forbidden to members of a group—controlled and closed communes—it will become nearly impossible to keep skeletons hidden in the closet: hot information is just a click away. More generally, the development of the Internet will affect NRMs: all major changes in those societies in which they operate always do, as Eileen Barker has observed (Barker 1995b). Of course, changes might also create much better conditions for NRMs’ activities. But, while this may be something to come, we have not yet witnessed any instance of successful mass proselytisation through the Internet. For every group, the major challenge is actually (and might increasingly become) to be found and heard among millions of websites, and then to convince visitors to stay on a web page instead of jumping to the next one. A key question for the 7th European Christian Internet Conference (ECIC)1 in Cologne was to evaluate how far Christian websites could gain visibility on major commercial portals. Some people feel uncomfortable with the metaphor of the marketplace for describing the current religious situation, but the Internet probably makes it more appropriate than ever: major online directories put on the same footing, without any attempt at a hierarchisation, recent and minor religious groups on the one hand, and major religious traditions on the other hand. The Yahoo directory for ‘Faiths and Practices’2 lists one category ‘Christianity’ (30,353 entries in early September 2002), along with separate categories for ‘Mazdaznan’ (4 entries) or ‘Tenrikyo’ (6 entries), which results in giving a quite surprising prominence to those groups. The Internet not only transforms the rules of the game for NRMs: it also changes them for everybody. Journalists assigned to any topic now routinely search the Internet before making any contact. Students tend—unfortunately!—to log on instead of going first to
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the library stacks to consult reference books. Scholars in every field are experiencing a complete change of their working habits and methods, and this in a matter of only a few years. Those few academics still refusing to use the Internet are seen as oddities, although they would not have been unusual only ten years ago. Even for people dealing with the past, the Internet is transforming the way into which research is conducted and its results published (see Minuti 2002). It was indeed a blessing for scholars researching alternative new religious movements: many of these movements are very recent, their teachings change frequently, and many groups largely remain unstudied. Consequently, the Web allows researchers to find information much more easily and to make the Web a kind of virtual encyclopaedia, although it would be wise to remember that there are also groups which make the headlines and, as strange as it may seem, are not on the Internet (Brasher 2001:166). One of the best examples for the use of the Web as an encyclopaedic resource remains the Religious Movements Homepage, created by Jeffrey Hadden at the University of Virginia.3 It is significant that such an initiative came from a scholar who had long been interested in media-related issues. It is also significant that it evolved from what was originally planned as a learning experience for students at the University of Virginia into a global resource. This is typical of the Web: many religious websites (including websites serving dioceses or other institutions) were also launched by cyber-enthusiasts, not necessarily with strong institutional support, although this is changing and there has been a clear trend toward professionalisation for some years. The Internet should not only be seen as a new tool. In ways which are still difficult to discern, it might transform religion itself to some extent. Years ago, French sociologist of religion, Emile Poulat, devoted a paper to an unusual topic: the consequences of electric power for religious life (Poulat 1988:35–43). Electricity, wrote Poulat, has transformed ‘our inner and outer landscape, the framework of our lives and thoughts, even the way in which we feel and perceive the world’. Anybody who has ever attended a nightly religious service in a sacred space where electricity was not available is able to tell the difference. Although we rarely think about it, electrification had deep consequences for religious life at different levels. And it is legitimate to think that the Internet—which actually is a further development in the electrical revolution—will also affect religious life in various ways. For years, authors have warned that Christian churches should make themselves ready for a new generation that is likely to rely increasingly on the Internet as a major source for information—including religious information. Increasingly, the call is heard: not only NRMs, but representatives of all major traditions are found on the Web and are in no way lagging behind NRMs. According to the Web editor of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, to the best of his knowledge, 6,200 Roman Catholic websites were active in Italy in May 2002.4 The Church of England’s website was receiving about a quarter of a million hits each week in March 2002: NRMs could only envy such popularity! It is not only major religious traditions that are present on the Web: one is amazed to discover how many Zoroastrian sites, for instance, can be found there.6 Basically, the Internet provides religious groups with a number of challenges as well as opportunities, and leads to new questions. Some of them will be briefly examined here.
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Keeping the message under control Books approved as faithful to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church bear a stamp of approval: the nihil obstat and the imprimatur from church authorities which are found at the beginning of the book. It had its negative counterpart, i.e. those books which were definitely not recommended: from 1559 to 1966, the Index librorum prohibitorum was regularly updated to list those books which Roman Catholics were not supposed to read; the purpose was to protect faith and to prevent the spread of heresy. The Index has probably been the most systematic attempt at control over a long period, but other groups (including modern ones) have also sought, in various ways, to control the kind of information to which their followers could or should have access. The fact that the Internet creates a completely different context does not need long explanations, since it is so obvious. An increasing number of people are becoming empowered to become not only consumers of information but also its producers—which has consequences for the media landscape, too. There are attempts to put some limits on access to information through filtering systems: at a very basic level, ‘nanny’ tools used by parents on home PCs in order to prevent their children from accessing pages with adult content. In 1998, opponents of the Church of Scientology accused it of having issued to its members a CD containing a hidden filter (censorware) that would prevent access to a range of web pages. However, if such reports are true, even attempts of that kind would require some degree of agreement from the user (i.e. installing the CD): it could not be imposed on a population unwilling to adopt the filter. Only states could aspire to set up a system of that kind on a broad basis. Chinese Internet monitoring has often been reported. In Saudi Arabia, the Internet Services Unit, located at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), makes no mystery of the fact that ‘[f]iltering the Internet content to prevent the materials that contradict with our beliefs or may influence our culture’ is one of its tasks, in order to preserve ‘our Islamic values’. The public explanations of that task are worth quoting here: All incoming Web traffic to the Kingdom passes through a proxy farm system implementing a content filtering software. A list of addresses for banned sites is maintained by this filtering system. This list is updated daily based on the content filtering policy. A list of pornographic sites is provided periodically by the filtering software provider. However, this list is not comprehensive due to the high proliferation and diversity of pornographic sites. Therefore, KACST maintains a web-based form that users can fill out to report sites they feel should be blocked. Hundreds of requests are received daily. A team of full-time employees at KACST study these requests and implement them only if justified. As for nonpornographic sites, KACST receives orders to block them from related government bodies.7 In the West, no major religious group could even dream of censoring the Internet. Rather, the problem of content control has to do with the possibility that Web users can distinguish between legitimate, authorised expressions of their religious tradition and
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other websites which—sometimes under the guise of, and with the claim of being, authoritative interpreters—diverge from the official teachings. Such concerns were openly expressed in The Church and the Internet, one of the two documents about the Internet released in February 2002 by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications in Rome.8 On the one hand, ‘church-related groups that have not yet taken steps to enter cyberspace are encouraged to look into the possibility of doing so at an early date’. On the other hand, ‘it is confusing, to say the least, not to distinguish eccentric doctrinal interpretations, idiosyncratic devotional practices, and ideological advocacy bearing a “Catholic” label from the authentic positions of the Church’. In order to respond to this ‘confusing proliferation of unofficial websites labelled “Catholic”’, the Council suggested: A system of voluntary certification at the local and national levels under the supervision of representatives of the Magisterium might be helpful in regard to material of a specifically doctrinal or catechetical nature. The idea is not to impose censorship but to offer Internet users a reliable guide to what expresses the authentic position of the Church. To go back to our initial historical reference, the Index librorum prohibitorum, i.e. filtering, is clearly out—it is unrealistic, and no longer acceptable to religious institutions based in the West. But the nihil obstat and imprimatur (i.e. a kind of quality label of approval for acceptable and faithful content) are clearly ideas considered in new forms at least by some religious leaders, in order to help the faithful to find their way safely through the growing jungle of the World Wide Web. It may or may not take the form of ‘voluntary certification’, but the Internet makes more acute than ever the need to make distinctions between what is legitimate and what is not.
Local vs global? In the 1850s, an American Quaker, Warder Cresson, moved to Palestine. Not only did he gather stones in preparation for the rebuilding of the Temple, but he ‘had himself appointed American consul so that he could greet the Messiah when he came on behalf of the government of the United States’ (Katz and Popkin 1998:145) Today, millenarians will no longer need to be physically present in the Middle East in order to witness those dramatic events live. The Web virtually abolishes space: in Jerusalem there are now two ‘Messiahcams’™,9 which permanently allow us to watch the Golden Gate (sealed, and assumed to open when the Messiah comes), as well as the Ascension chapel on the Mount of Olives (where He might return)—which means we should be able to witness the Second Advent from our own homes, sitting comfortably in front of our PCs. Technology as a crowning of millenarian longings! This is taken for granted: time is accelerated, interpersonal relations are transformed, space is abolished through the Internet. ‘Rome, New Delhi, Toronto and Singapore have become quarters of the same city’, the only borders being those created by fee-based or password-protected sites (Revelli 2000:36–8). However, a closer look indicates that we
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should not conclude too quickly that there is just a lack of place or monolithic cyberspace. Actually, the Internet produces ambiguous results. The Internet ‘is numerous new technologies, used by diverse people, in diverse realworld situations’, emphasise two British scholars at the beginning of their ethnography of the Internet in Trinidad (Miller and Slater 2000:1). The Internet is ‘continuous with and embedded in other social spaces’ (Miller and Slater, 2000:5). The Internet can very well be used for local purposes: it suffices to mention here the many web pages of parishes, which are usually not meant for consumption by outsiders. The Internet is also used as a tool for local communities. Moreover, the idea that there is a placeless cyberspace might lead to the inaccurate conclusion that it will necessarily dissolve traditional social links. This is far from proved. The Internet can be used for various purposes. It can be used for strategies aimed at maintaining identities as well. This is particularly evidenced by its use in a diaspora situation. Anybody entering a cybercafé in some area with a strong concentration of migrants in a large Western city will easily notice how many visitors there are who do not seem to be very computer-literate but who make use of the e-mail in order to keep in touch with their families and friends back home—exactly as young backpackers do during their nomadic experiences. Thanks to Funeral Cast,10 ‘you can watch your loved one’s funeral, memorial and graveside service or view online death notices and memorials from anywhere computer and Internet access is available’, and leave a message to the family in the guest book. The amazing number of Zoroastrian websites is certainly in part a consequence of the need felt by members of a small religion to keep their identity through internal communication: an endogamous community without converts, Zoroastrians do not envision the Web as a proselytising tool. However, it is also true that the global will increasingly act with the local on the Internet, with consequences for religious life as well. Miller and Slater have shown how Trinidadian Hindus come to perceive themselves much more as part of a global Hindu network through the use of the Internet, while some Trinidadian Muslims come to question their own local practice of Islam when the Internet allows them to compare it with Islam as practised elsewhere (Miller and Slater 2000:175, 179). The Internet may also serve to short-circuit local religious authorities. An interesting phenomenon is the explosion of cyberfatwas11 in Islam—admittedly not a tradition with a central source of religious authority. A number of Muslim websites offer fatwas, opinions on a point of law by qualified people. This means that ‘[a] single question or query for information would receive several different answers, depending upon which Muslim site was consulted’ (Bunt 2000:108). Of course, different authorities might already have given different answers before the advent of the Internet: but a simple believer in a small town in England, Egypt or Malaysia would not normally have enjoyed access to a wide range of replies. Today, as long as the person knows how to surf the Web, even a nontheologian will get nearly instant access to a variety of replies from different schools and scholars, easily found with the help of search engines. However, there is a big difference between virtual fatwas and traditional ones: online fatwas cannot take into account the context in which they are sought and delivered, the local traditions and circumstances, since the person asking the question and the person answering may live on different continents and may not know each other (Brückner
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2001). French scholar Olivier Roy is correct to claim that the Internet is one element contributing to the de-territorialisation of Islam (Roy 2000).
Virtual communities and online worship In 1997, the Rev. Dr David M.Ford, from Augusta, Georgia, established the First International Church of the Web (FICOTW).12 While it is quite similar to a number of mail-order churches found in the United States, it should be noticed that Brother Dave, as he likes to call himself, gives ordination for free (although a reasonable fee has to be paid if the ordinand wants a certificate): it looks like a sincere attempt to use cyberspace as a place where a ministry can be conducted. Of course, there are many religious groups with a ministry on the Web. But most of them are an extension of an existing, physical congregation: the hope is that people converted online would then push the door of the congregation behind the website. There is nothing like that, however, with the FICOTW, its fellow members of the International Alliance of Web-Based Churches and other similar undertakings. Their congregation is purely virtual. Even if the visitor sees on the welcome page a photograph of church bells against the background of a bright blue sky, those bells do not belong to any FICOTW local parish, since there is none! Brother Dave is not a bodiless being: he attends a local church and even leads a homeless ministry. However, he considers his web-based church as something very real as well: We have an actual congregation, and many members communicate with each other via our bulletin board and through e-mail. Most of my correspondence with members is done one-to-one via e-mail… I know we have many members who are disabled and not able to visit regular church or fellowship, and they really enjoy the opportunity to fellowship with our other members via the web. We also have members in rural areas where they don’t have access to regular churches, or are home-bound for other reasons, and also members living in Islamic countries where they can’t openly practice their Christian faith… So yes, I do feel as though I’ve established a true virtual congregation.13 The FICOTW does not have a very sophisticated website: Brother Dave launched it with a very basic knowledge of the Internet and does not attempt to keep up to date with the latest technical possibilities online. He is happy if what he does can lead people to Christ. Several members of the International Alliance of Web-Based Churches use free hosting services. There is nothing like interactive worship. This prompts the question: does a number of one-to-one relationships create a virtual congregation, or is it rather a ministry, despite the name of ‘Church’ which it bears? The Roman Catholic document on The Church and the Internet which was mentioned earlier observes: Although the virtual reality of cyberspace cannot substitute for real interpersonal community, the incarnational reality of the sacraments and the liturgy, or the immediate and direct proclamation of the gospel, it can
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complement them, attract people to a fuller experience of the life of faith, and enrich the religious lives of users. What about worship online, then? With the technological improvements and the growing possibilities offered by the Web, it would be a mistake to exclude the possibility that sufficiently interactive solutions could be found to create a real worship experience online despite the fact that participants would remain in different locations. The keyword here is ‘interactive’: religious programmes on radio and television have long been offering the opportunity to hear and/or to watch a religious ritual taking place at a distant location, but there is no opportunity for interaction. Religious services offered online by groups such as the International Christian Internet Church14 (based in Hungary, with services in English or in Hungarian) are just that: broadcast services, recorded obviously in a church or chapel, conducted exactly as they would be on radio, except that listeners are invited, at the end of the sermon, to send an e-mail if they have any questions. The Web helps to spread the message, with the advantage of being accessible at any time and from anywhere, but otherwise there is not much new. The Internet has, however, already brought the process one step further. One can visit a virtual place for worship, or ‘go’ to a real place through watching it online. For instance—and this is not the only case, although probably the most widely publicised since it is found in the convent of a cyber-monk who has written a guide to the Catholic Internet (Raymond 2000)—one can see at any time the altar with the tabernacle in the chapel of the Monks of Adoration, ‘updated every minute 24 hours a day’.15 And if one reads the witness stories on the website of the Monks of Adoration—there is no reason to believe they are not authentic ones—there are people who really pray, meditate, adore in front of their computer (which is especially interesting, since Roman Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but how is it mediated through the Internet?). Some people claim that they ‘come to visit your chapel several times a day’. Another one: ‘Every morning, I logon to your website and pray before the Blessed Sacrament.’ Some are quite moving: ‘Thank you…for the Eucharistic webcam. I am a semi-invalid; on my ‘tired days’ your webcam is a means for me to focus upon He who is the Eucharist.’ Of course, the Monks of Adoration do not claim that a webcam can replace a visit to church: ‘It is for those times when you cannot visit Him in a church.’ If one visits the virtual chapel of the Elisabethkirche,16 a Protestant parish in Marburg, Germany, there is no adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, but the possibility to do something more interactive (externally—of course, prayer is interactive, but in another sense): the visitor can use a mouse to light the candles of the virtual prayer chapel, and then put them out at the end of prayer. A selection of prayers is offered: as soon as one clicks on one of them, the text appears, while a religious organ-like music plays in the background. It is also possible to listen on the website of the parish to a meditative worship as it takes place once a month in the church in Marburg—with one major difference, compared with what a ‘real’ participant would experience: the possibility of selecting some segments of the service (preaching, readings, songs, psalms, prayers…) and not listening to others. While the technical possibilities offered by the Web will definitely improve and open new opportunities, there are limits set by theological beliefs: as already mentioned, the Roman Catholic Church does not see the Web as a substitute for sacraments, and
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practices such as online confessions (most of them parodic, anyway) have been clearly condemned. But this may be different for traditions with an emphasis on different elements in worship and relationship with God. For instance, in the Hindu tradition, the notion of darshan, of seeing and being seen by God or anything sacred, is not unlike a sacrament (if one sees a murti or a saintly person, a blessing is received) (see Eck 1998). Consequently, the Web, with its visual aspect (sometimes complemented by sound— and maybe some day by smell), can be used for providing that experience of ‘seeing the Divine’. There are several websites offering it, for instance Online Darshan.17 After choosing the representation of a particular deity, the visitor not only listens to devotional songs, but can also click in order to see the text of the prayers and to read them alongside. One may also offer virtual flowers by using the mouse for dragging and dropping them at the deity’s feet. Moreover, virtual lamps are provided in order to perform aarti.18 This is not just watching a ritual or listening to it, but also participating actively, although on an individual basis—it is not a collective worship. Such resources are used not only by teenagers but also by older people, for instance those living in the West and far away from a temple.
Answering prayers and questions online This brings us back to the issue of space and the Internet. Not only is it possible for believers to pray online in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem,19 but they can also have a note placed in the Wall. Similarly, it is possible to order over the Internet a puja in a temple of one’s choice in India.20 But another important aspect of the Internet is its more general use for prayer. The Web is not a place that first comes to mind as very appropriate for prayer life. However, the fact that many monasteries are found on the Web seems to indicate possible convergences—in addition to the desire to make one’s monastery known to a wider audience through a new medium.21 Some monasteries offer not only glimpses of their daily life but also the possibility of listening to recordings of religious services. If one pays attention to prayer on the Internet, two main aspects quite soon become obvious. A first aspect is guidelines for praying. For instance, several Jesuit websites offer guidance for people who want to pray and suggest prayer intentions. Irish Jesuits offer a ‘sacred space’ online: ‘We invite you to make a “Sacred Space” in your day, and spend ten minutes, praying here and now, as you sit at your computer, with the help of on-screen guidance and scripture chosen specially every day,’22 American Jesuits propose ‘online retreats’.23 Some participants with experience of a traditional type of retreat are quite convinced, if we read the testimonies left on the website: ‘I have been making inperson Ignatian retreats at a retreat house every year for the past 17 years, but I have found the online retreat has really drawn me to Ignatian spirituality even more.’ It seems important to mention such testimonies, since they are evidence that the potential impact of the Internet for religious life (and not just for spreading a religious message) should be taken seriously. A second aspect is the amazing number of people looking for supportive prayer on the Web. Just as some churches leave a notebook on a table where people can leave anonymous requests for prayer, with the promise that the local community will pray for
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them, so the same thing is taking place online. Several monasteries have such a space where visitors can leave a prayer and be assured that the community will remember their concerns. But the practice is not limited to monasteries: the FICOTW also has a section for prayer requests. Moreover, it is not solely a Christian phenomenon: there are several Jewish sites on which one can leave prayer requests as well, for instance one specifically for people suffering from sicknesses, with the possibility of indicating precisely the nature of the sickness.24 Those prayers can often be read online by other visitors of the website, which indicates that there is an expectation that some of those visitors will also pray for the people who have requested prayers—thus creating some kind of invisible, online, prayerful community. People not only expect prayers; they also have questions, whether about theological and practical issues in their religious life or more personal decisions to be taken. This is another important development taking place on the Web: spiritual counselling, for which there is a demand which seems to be growing, although statistics are lacking25—and this is quite in accordance with the increasing use of the Web as a source for information, including on religious issues. It is difficult to measure it, since most such activities are conducted on a one-to-one basis: web pages serve as an initial contact point. But cyberpriests, cyber-rabbis and cyber-imams have a lot of work to do—and as one old cyberpriest confided at the first gathering of the French Christian Internet in Paris in June 2002, this is a learning experience, since questions asked by people are not always what clergy would have expected. The Internet, again, creates contact opportunities with people who otherwise might never push the door of the local church or temple. As a sociologist studying young and rapidly evolving religious movements over many years, Eileen Barker has paid special attention to changes in that specific field. The rapid development and spread of the Internet is one of the factors which might produce some subtle or more obvious changes in NRMs as well as traditional religions in the years to come. While we may see the emergence of purely web-based religions—which will no doubt attract much interest from media and scholars, due to their novelty—it is primarily transformations induced by the existence and the use of the Internet in existing religions that will probably require most attention and innovative approaches from scholars. There are reasons for suspecting that the various elements mentioned in this brief overview are only a foretaste of things to come.
Notes 1 http://www.ecic.info/ 2 http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Religion_and_Spirituality/Faiths_and_Practices/ 3 http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/welcome/welcome.htm 4 Interview with Fr Franco Mazza, 12 June 2002. 5 ‘Church grapples with hi-tech dilemma’, BBC News, 28 March 2002 (downloaded on 6 September 2002: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/1895116.stm). 6 See directories of links such as: http://www.zoroastrian.net/zorosites.htm. 7 Information downloaded on 6 September 2002 from the website of the Saudi Internet Services Unit: http://www.isu.net.sa/index.htm. 8 Document downloaded on 6 September 2002 from the website of the Holy See: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/pccs/documents/rc_pc_pccs_doc_20 020228_church-internet_en.html. 9 http://212.150.183.204/index.html
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10 http://www.funeral-cast.com/ 11 The German scholar Matthias Brückner maintains a website on that issue: http://www.cyberfatwa.de/. 12 http://ficotw.org/index.html 13 Personal communication from Brother Dave, 30 August 2002. 14 http://www.worshipservice.hu/ 15 http://www.monksofadoration.org/chapel.html 16 http://www.elisabethkirche-mr.de/spiforum/gebetska/index.htm 17 http://www.onlinedarshan.com/ 18 See another attempt at a virtual puja (conducted by clicking on the various steps) at: http://www.shivkhodi.com/puja.htm. 19http://www.aish.com/wallcam/ 20 http://www.saranam.com/ 21 There is also a web-based ‘Religious Careers Placement Service of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States’, found at http://vocationsplacement.org/index.asp, which is reported to have already helped several monasteries to find new recruits. 22 http://www.jesuit.ie/prayer/ 23 http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/online.html 24 http://www.savealife.org/Tehillim.htm 25 The impression of growth is based upon discussions with people involved in such ministries.
4 Religious groups and globalisation A comparative perspective1 Margit Warburg The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 were extreme manifestations of the link between religion and globalisation. Arguments for the attacks were extracted from religion, which again proved to be an inexhaustible reservoir for the derivation of absolute truth. The attacks themselves were planned, coordinated and executed by two of the technological icons of globalisation: the Internet and the modern passenger plane. And the more than three thousand dead represented a global variety of nations, races and creeds.
Globalisation Globalisation has become the standard term for describing how humanity nowadays experiences a historically unique compression of space-time into a single world space—a process which the sociologist of religion Roland Robertson allegorically has expressed by saying that the world becomes a ‘single place’ (Robertson 1991:283). Intercontinental transport and travel around the globe is now possible within twenty-four hours, and communication by telephone, fax and e-mail is instantaneous. This historical change is a qualitatively new state of affairs, which warrants the use of the special term ‘globalisation’ (Dawson 1997; Scholte 2000:62–88). Globalisation is characterised not only by the present, rapid integration of the world economy facilitated by the innovations and growth in international electronic communications, but also by an increasing political and cultural awareness of being globally interdependent (Bergesen 1980; Ferguson 1992; Featherstone and Lash 1995; Scholte 1996). Globalisation brings foreign people, foreign goods and foreign customs in closer contact with local cultures. The local cultures are thereby contrasted with the foreign, and the locals are presented with alternative attitudes towards fundamental issues of society and with different ways of doing things. Contrary to popular belief, this increased contact does not lead to simple cultural homogenisation, as predicted by the earlier ‘westernisation’ or ‘modernisation’ theories (Simpson 1991; Ferguson 1992; Robertson 1995). The current sociological discussions of religion and globalisation—with Roland Robertson and Peter Beyer among the most important participants—have mainly concentrated on the relation between globalisation and the cultural values and ideological orientation of religious groups (Robertson and Chirico 1985; Robertson 1992; Beyer 1994). Some religious groups accept or even endorse the plurality of cultural values, which follows from the increased interaction between the foreign and the local (Beyer
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1994:70–96). Examples are a number of Christian ecumenical movements or the Baha’is (Warburg 1999). Other groups emphasise the differences in outlook and confront the non-believers in an attempt to prevent their own particular values from being eroded by globalisation (Beyer 1994:70–96). So-called fundamentalist Christian, Muslim and Jewish movements are well-known examples.
Globalisation and minority religious groups In the present contribution I will look at how religious groups participate in and are affected by globalisation, regardless of their ideological reactions to globalisation. The groups I have in mind are not the major Christian churches but the entire spectrum of organised religious minority groups—groups that are obviously central to a Festschrift in honour of Eileen Barker. Like other organisations, many of these religious groups cleverly exploit the social and technological features of globalisation. To take an obvious example: several small and dispersed religious groups now systematically use electronic, worldwide communication to establish a community feeling across space (Rothstein 1996). Religious groups may change for many good reasons, as well as for some less spiritual reasons. Both external and internal factors play a role in this (Barker 1995a). Like other voluntary organisations, many religious groups and movements function in market conditions, unlike the major Christian churches which often enjoy certain traditional privileges from the state. However, religious groups are not passive respondents to external factors, they do much to ensure their own survival and growth. Religious groups exploit the opportunities for spreading the message and gather the necessary resources for their activities; otherwise, the groups may eventually decline or even disappear. In the 1980s sociologists of religion published several important studies on the organisational and financial basis for the position, growth or decline of religious groups and movements (Bromley and Shupe 1980; Hall 1988; Richardson 1988; Bruce 1992). For example, Robert Balch’s study of the economic and organisational dissolution of a religious hippie commune, the Love Family, showed that arbitrary and unpredictable management was a main factor behind its decline (Balch 1988). For most groups, lack of sufficient resources for mission was a general problem (Richardson 1988:3–12). Such issues are of a general sociological nature, and they may of course be paralleled by examples from non-religious organisations. This comparison does not imply a sociological parallel in all cases—religious groups are not just private business organisations. In a discussion of how religious organisations are participating in and affected by globalisation I shall, however, briefly view them simply as private organisations, and consequently turn to scholars who have studied private organisations in a globalisation perspective. One of these scholars is the sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who is known in the sociology of religion for her study of the conditions for success or failure of utopian communes (Kanter 1972). She later turned to the study of modern organisations and the conditions for success or failure of private businesses. In her 1995 book, World Class. Thriving Locally in the Global Economy, she identified four trends that she saw as particularly salient in the process of globalisation: mobility, simultaneity, bypass and
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pluralism (Kanter 1995). Although Kanter was concerned primarily with private businesses, she perceived the four trends as mega-trends in a world undergoing globalisation. If that is the case, they should be recognisable in private organisations other than businesses.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s four trends Mobility is the first trend. It means that money, ideas and people move more and more freely across traditional borders. Mobility is a visible token of globalisation. It is evident that mobility is linked to the improved means of communication and the relative decline in costs of long-distance travel, and it is generally agreed that the technological innovations in transport and communication since the mid-1800s were a prerequisite for globalisation (Robertson 1992:179–80; Scholte 2000:99–101). Many new religious movements are characterised by pronounced movements of members in and out of countries, even wholesale migration. An early example of this was the religious commune, Rajneeshpuram, which was transplanted from India to a farm in Oregon in 1981, but after their leader was arrested in 1985 the sannyasins abandoned the farm and left for destinations around the world (Carter 1990). Simultaneity is Kanter’s second trend. Before the onset of globalisation, it was common that new consumer goods, new technology and cultural innovations had their breakthrough in one country or region of the world, and gradually these innovations were then spread to other regions. Simultaneity describes the situation in which the breakthroughs happen in several different places in the world within a comparatively short period. Simultaneity is also one of the key terms in Jan Aart Scholte’s characterisation of globalisation (Scholte 2000:49). Many of the new religions from the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries had their breakthrough in the United States many years before they came to Europe. Most contemporary new religions are still mediated via the USA, but it usually takes a much shorter time before they become established in Europe, too (Beckford and Levasseur 1986). The trend called bypass implies, according to Kanter, that numerous alternative routes of communication are available. The increased possibilities of bypass through new forms of electronic communication make it more difficult for traditional gatekeepers to maintain control. This happens within organisations, challenging traditional hierarchical structures, and it happens in society at large. In recent years, several authoritarian regimes have been weakened because the opposition has been able to bypass censorship of the mass media, using fax machines, photocopying and other electronic devices as alternative routes of mass communication. A famous example is that before the Iranian revolution Khomeini’s speeches were distributed in Iran on thousands of audiotapes, enabling his followers to circumvent the censorship of the shah’s regime effectively. Pluralism is Kanter’s last trend. In her approach it means that dominating centres with a traditional monopoly are weakened to yield to several, sometimes competing, centres. This process concurs with globalisation, both within countries and within organisations (Kanter 1995:46–8). She describes the trend allegorically with the words of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats: ‘The centre cannot hold’ (Kanter 1995:46). Kanter is here in line with other globalisation scholars. For example, Scholte has noted that with globalisation
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transworld relations have become much more significant than before, and the nationstates are therefore losing their previous near-monopoly on cultural projects that strengthen national solidarity (Scholte 2000:159–83). In Europe, the days are gone when the national state-owned TV channel could unite the whole nation, evening after evening, and the popular music culture has lost much of its previous national character. Kanter’s observation of the trend she calls pluralism may be shrewd, but the label chosen, ‘pluralism’, is unfortunate and may be confusing. It seems more precise to describe it as a trend towards multipolarity, and I shall therefore use the label multipolarity instead. There are many examples of multipolarity, both within countries and within organisations. In European countries the traditional positions of the Christian majority churches have been weakened by the upsurge of new religions of Christian, Muslim or other background, partly as a consequence of migration. Within the international Roman Catholic Church, the traditional power position of the Italian cardinals has eroded, and the Catholic Church of, for example, Brazil has gained considerable influence in its own right—a development which the Vatican has tried to reverse (Casanova 1994:114–34). The decline of traditional monopolies was particularly abrupt in the former communist countries, because the communist system shielded these countries politically and culturally from the full impact of globalisation. This may explain why many East Europeans, who had grown up in a political system that emphasised monopolies, apparently had difficulties in perceiving a future situation with no religious monopolies (Barker 1997).
ISKCON, Baha’i and Word of Life—three examples of religious organisations experiencing the four globalisation trends I have selected three well-known religious groups, ISKCON, Baha’i and Word of Life, and shall now analyse how they are influenced by and cope with the four trends of globalisation identified by Kanter. After presenting the groups I shall briefly show how the four globalisation processes are visible in concrete situations involving these three groups. All three selected groups are well organised, which is a prerequisite for drawing an analogy to Kanter’s study of industrial companies challenged by the trends of globalisation. In most other respects, however, they are rather different. They are rooted in three different religious traditions: Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, and they have only a little in common with respect to their relations to the society of which they are part. Thus, ISKCON has traditionally encouraged an ascetic, communal lifestyle for its full-time adherents, a lifestyle that contrasts with many of the prevailing cultural norms of Western society (Rochford 1985). These ideals are, however, challenged in practice by the fact that the majority of ISKCON members have chosen to live in individual households (Rochford 1995). The Baha’is are committed to a positive engagement in society, offering religiously based principles for its improvement, and the lifestyle of the Baha’i elite conforms with cosmopolitan, upper-middle-class norms (Warburg 1999). The Swedish evangelical Christian group, Word of Life (Livets Ord) has its background in Kenneth Hagin’s Faith Movement and his Bible training centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma (Skog 1998; Coleman 2000:92). In contrast to the Baha’is, but in line with other
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charismatic Christian movements, they are concerned with individual salvation and consider the societal implications of their religious teachings and practice as less important. These very brief descriptions are generalisations, of course, and for each group there are considerable variations over space and time, but not to the extent that would make it incorrect to denote them differently with respect to how they interact with their majority societies.
Experiencing the four processes of globalisation For each of the four processes I shall give three examples of how the three groups experience these trends. Brevity dictates that the examples are formulated in twelve terse paragraphs. The material covering the Baha’is is mainly from my own studies of this religion, while the examples covering ISKCON and Word of Life are from other authors; in the case of ISKCON, I have also had access to primary material from Finn Madsen, whose PhD thesis dealt with ISKCON in Scandinavia, England and Germany.2 For the sake of an overview, I have drawn a figure showing the three religious groups, ISKCON, Baha’i and Word of Life, placed in the four processes of globalisation: mobility, simultaneity, bypass and multipolarity (Figure 4.1). The ellipses that represent the three groups are shown with broken lines to symbolise that the boundaries of these groups, like those of most other modern organisations, are open and sometimes diffuse. The processes are depicted as winding arrows to symbolise that they do not occur synchronously, but are affected by local conditions within the countries. For example, the possibilities of mobility and bypass are presumably fewer and more restricted in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes than they are in open democracies. Also multipolarity may be restricted in local cases through legislative measures, even in democracies. In the beginning of the 1990s in Eastern Europe, for example, several governments helped the traditional churches to uphold their central, national positions and prevented a number of new religions from being registered (Richardson 1997).
Figure 4.1 Three religious groups in four processes of globalisation
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Mobility All three religious groups are strongly engaged in mission, and the mobility among the members is high. ISKCON members move around from country to country, both to strengthen mission locally and also to sustain ailing communities by an injection of fresh members. For example, in 1997 the number of ISKCON members in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland was 230–40 members altogether (Madsen 2001:225–6). However, 44 per cent of them were of foreign nationality, and many had been sent from abroad to live in one of the four Nordic countries for periods of three to six months with the purpose of strengthening the local ISKCON communities (Madsen 2001:33–4).3 An important goal in the Baha’i mission is to establish Baha’i communities with nine members or more in different municipalities, because nine is the minimum number of Baha’is required to form the basic organisational unit of the Baha’i community, the socalled local spiritual assembly. This goal and the general emphasis placed on mission have resulted in a considerable mobility among the Baha’is. The newsletter and annual reports of the Danish Baha’i community show, for example, that each year several Baha’is have moved from one part of the country to another, often for the sake of fulfilling the goal of being nine Baha’is in the same town. On the continental level I found that the growth of the Baha’i communities in most of the European countries was sustained by immigration, because new conversions alone could barely compensate for the losses from resignations and deaths (Warburg 1995). In Uppsala, Word of Life runs what is said to be the largest Bible school in Europe, and many of the students are recruited internationally (Skog 1998). Word of Life also operates affiliated Bible schools in the Czech Republic, Albania, Russia and Tajikistan, and it is about to open a Bible school in India as well (The Mission of Livets Ord University 2002). This means that many foreign young believers and prospective believers move to Sweden temporarily, while many Word of Life elite believers are sent from Sweden to work abroad (Coleman 2000:99–103). Simultaneity Simultaneity means that the same phenomenon is manifested in many places almost at the same time, often but not always supported by electronic communication. In the West, ISKCON found many of its first converts in the hippie rock culture, which had a breakthrough in the early 1970s among youths all over the Western world. An ISKCON band chanting the mahamantra even came on the BBC TV programme Top of the Pops, and this made ISKCON known all over the West with the words ‘Hare Krishna’ as its popular label (Madsen 2001:94). The brief but widespread popularity of ‘Hare Krishna’ is an example of simultaneity. Simultaneity can also be consciously orchestrated to demonstrate globality. Already ten years ago, the Baha’is used this with great effect during their world congress in New York in 1992, which was attended by 27,000 participants from 180 countries.4 With the help of an electronic network involving eight satellites they had a several hours’ long two-way audio/video teleconference gathering more than eighty countries simultaneously. As the headline went: ‘Unprecedented broadcast links Bahá’í communities around the world in spirit of love and unity’ (The American Bahá’í 1992:13). The Baha’is repeated the success when they made a World Wide Web
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broadcast from the inauguration of their new monumental gardens at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa, 22 May 2001 (Bahá’í World News Service). Word of Life stands for conservative family values and economic-political attitudes similar to the New Christian Right evangelicals of the United States. The New Christian Right is a huge network of independent congregations and movements, among which Pat Robertson’s movement is one of the best known (Coleman 2000:22–3). The New Christian Right started to grow in the late 1970s and gained influence in the 1980s in the USA, and it is an example of simultaneity that a movement expressing similar ideals could suddenly grow in the 1980s in Northern Europe. An important factor behind this has been the new technological opportunities in electronic mass communication (Coleman 2000:166–72). Bypass Bypass implies, as Kanter has phrased it, ‘numerous alternative routes to reach and serve customers’ (Kanter 1995:45). An example of bypass in this sense is ISKCON’s success in selling their magazine Back to Godhead by street soliciting instead of through bookstores and newspaper stands (Madsen 2001:98–100). Even though the ISKCON version of the Bhagavad Gita was published by a major Western publishing company, ISKCON soon found it more profitable to bypass the ordinary chain of sales, and to the dismay of the Macmillan company they found a loophole in the contract allowing for this (Madsen 2001:100–1). Bypass makes central control difficult, as my example of bypass within the Baha’i organisation will show. The Baha’is have a developed system of supervising internal critics through a pre-review of all articles and other written material dealing with Baha’i topics. Critics may be summoned to so-called consultations for guidance, and they run the risk of being shunned and even excommunicated as ‘covenant breakers’. This has hit hard on liberal but otherwise loyal Baha’i academics who feel that such an unscholarly pre-review is an undue interference with their work. The Internet has now opened a new opportunity for Baha’i critics to exchange uncensored controversial views, bypassing their formal leadership. This is an inevitable development, which has been seen among other religious groups as well, but the Baha’i authorities in Haifa have taken it very seriously and are trying to monitor the conversation of these net groups (Cole 1998, 2001). In the long run, the Baha’i leadership will probably accept that bypass does occur, and they will adapt to this situation, whether they like it or not, because the Baha’is cannot, and do not wish to, opt out of the trends of globalisation. Word of Life is involved in the TV channel Christian Channel Europe, and they distribute TV programmes five days a week to more than forty different countries (My Church, Word of Life, Livets Ord). Like the conservative evangelical groups in the USA they have seen the advantages in bypassing traditional Protestant channels of mission, such as pulpits, assembly halls and summer rallies. Multipolarity Multipolarity means that the monopolistic position of a traditional centre yields, and tendencies of this can be seen within even highly centralised religious organisations, such
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as ISKCON and Baha’i. ISKCON went through a crisis in recruitment in the late 1970s, which partly had to do with the fact that the ashrams and the ascetic devotees lacked the base which the ashram had in a traditional Hindu society (Rochford 1985:149–69). Many ISKCON communities embarked on a reform that implied the enrolment of members who did not live in the ashrams as full-time devotees, but instead raised a family and had ordinary jobs (Rochford 1985:261–3; Rochford 1995; Arcana Dasi 1999). This new policy broadened the recruitment base of ISKCON. In opposition to or parallel with the reform movement, some orthodox leaders criticised the relaxation in lifestyle and maintained that ISKCON members were full-time devotees on the standard no-meat, nosex and early-morning-rise basis (Rochford 1985:163–9). Both trends are still accommodated within ISKCON but not without considerable tensions and unresolved issues on ashram lifestyle versus more conventional congregationalism (Rochford 1999). The Baha’is have recently experienced a move from a highly centralised to a slightly more decentralised organisation. The period from 1963 to 1986 was characterised by a considerable strengthening of the power of the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa. During this period, the various mission plans were exclusively drafted at the centre, and they contained detailed goals for the expansion of the religion. However, in the mission plans from 1986 to 1992 the goals were, for the first time, largely formulated in dialogue with the boards of the national Baha’i communities, the so-called national spiritual assemblies. For the Baha’is this was a clear signal of decentralisation and a small, cautious step towards (controlled) multipolarity within their own ranks. This development has continued in the later mission plans. Word of Life is rooted in Kenneth Hagin’s movement, as mentioned before, and the Word of Life University in Uppsala is affiliated with Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, which is connected to Hagin and the Faith Movement. However, the leader of Word of Life, Ulf Ekman, works independently of Hagin, and even within Sweden itself there are other Faith churches that do not belong to the circles around Ekman (Skog 1998). This is an expression of multipolarity within a globally dispersed movement sharing the same label, the Faith Movement (Coleman 2000:97–103).
Conclusion In the above brief paragraphs I have exemplified how three religious groups of different background and with different orientations towards society experience the four trends of globalisation: mobility, simultaneity, bypass and multipolarity. In some cases these trends were cleverly exploited to the advantage of the group. Two obvious examples were the Baha’is’ arrangement of a global simultaneous event, and ISKCON’s bypass of traditional distribution channels. The twelve examples corroborate the view that mobility, simultaneity, bypass and multipolarity are general globalisation trends affecting different kinds of organisations with different kinds of rationalities. Conversely, by looking at religious groups from the perspective of globalisation, phenomena that might appear unrelated and even particular to some groups may be interpreted as manifestations of globalisation. By looking at the four trends of globalisation we may therefore gain a better understanding of religious groups in a world undergoing globalisation, as well as gaining a better empirical understanding of globalisation itself.
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Notes 1 This paper is a revised and expanded version of an oral presentation at the conference ‘The Spiritual Supermarket: Religious Pluralism in the 21st Century’, London School of Economics, 19–22 April 2001. 2 Finn Madsen is thanked for a valuable discussion of his study of ISKCON during my preparation of this paper and for his permission to let me draw upon his yet unpublished thesis. 3 The figure of 44 per cent is based on interviews with 162 of the 230–40 ISKCON members. 4 I participated in this event. The congress is described in, for instance, The American Bahá’í (1992).
5 Religion after atheism Moving away from the communal flat Marat Shterin What do the recent ‘cult controversies’ in Russia tell us about the country’s postcommunist transformation? The liberties and freedoms of the post-communist decade both allowed and pushed emerging religious groups and their opponents to assert themselves, thus inadvertently drawing new social and cultural boundaries and contributing to the creation of a new society. As this chapter points out, all participants in this debate come from a society where legitimate cultural and social boundaries were supposed to be obliterated, and ways of pursuing and negotiating different interests were restricted and rigidly controlled. This is a painful and still unfinished process. It could be compared to the experience of looking forward to moving from a communal flat to peaceful coexistence in separate apartments, but ending up having one group of new owners attempting to oust those whom they see as illegitimate occupants, or at least to curtail some of their rights. One aspect of this shift is that living in separate apartments makes for increasing diversity, but the habits of the communal flat cannot cope with this diversity. Post-communist Russia has seen the emergence of both new religions and new religion, as all active religious groups have to build on a largely destroyed cultural heritage, which inevitably involves a great deal of innovation. However, the decades of ‘scientific atheism’, which was part of the politics of cultural homogenisation, have also blunted the ability to appreciate, understand and cope with the variety of post-communist religious phenomena. This chapter argues that development of the social scientific study of religion, and in particular the study of new religious movements (NRMs), could help to promote a better understanding of cultural diversity and more rational attitudes to it.
About some habits in a communal flat When about 90 per cent of Russian respondents in most surveys in the 1990s said that religion was a good thing, they meant faith rather than faiths. Most of them perceived ‘Christianity’ as a single entity rather than a set of different Christian churches; and although separated by cultural boundaries, world religions appeared to be spreading the same message of love, peace and goodness (see Vorontsova et al. 1994). Apparently ignorant of Western media images, a number of Soviet and, later, Russian politicians, senior church bishops and influential Muslim muftis were happy to meet, and even on occasion to sign agreements with the Dalai Lama or the pope but also with the leaders of the Unification Church, the Nation of Islam, Scientology and Aum Shinrikyo.
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That spontaneous ecumenism might look surprising in a country that had been separated from the rest of the world over the previous seven decades, during which the only correct and totally atheist ideology was supposed to guide it steadily towards a blissfully secularist future. However, the early post-Soviet affirmative and undiscriminating attitude to religion was in large part a recognition of the failure of, and a backlash against, state atheism, whose overall success had been seen by its proponents as a precondition for achieving the communist modernising project. It is not surprising that the first successful attempt at counter-communist legislation was the 1990 law On Freedom of Religions that guaranteed religious freedom and equality to all believers, and strictly banned state agencies from intervening or engaging in religious affairs.1 With the benefit of hindsight, we can readily see that the change from infatuation with religious freedom and ‘ecumenism’ to suspicion and rejection was almost as quick as the toss of a coin. This, I argue, reflects one success of Soviet policy—not the elimination of religion but the destruction of religious institutions and of a diversity of legitimate religious expressions. One result was unawareness of the impact of boundaries—hence, mixing and choosing; not so much acceptance, but unawareness. The corollary of this was ‘epistemologically naive’ and inflexible attitudes that often gave rise to dogmatic views on the religion of others.2 It is easy to observe that Soviet ideological communism and early post-Soviet naive ecumenism show a suspiciously high degree of similarity to each other, since they both envision a boundary-less and polarised picture of religion, either as an absolute enemy or as a universal good. However, I am not suggesting an ideological continuity between the two. My preference is to look at the social and cultural legacy responsible for the apparent continuity. For one thing, despite the pervasive ideological indoctrination, ideological purity hardly ever existed in Soviet society. Early on, Soviet educationists and ideologists turned to, and emphasised, Russian high (‘classical’) culture, Western ‘progressive’ writers and composers, and science. Making this limited but still quite diverse repertoire of cultural artefacts, ideas and themes compatible with the official ideology, or, using Michael Epstein’s words, ‘compressing [everything] into the forms of Marxism’, became a special skill in which certified Soviet philosophers excelled (Epstein 1995:161 quoted in Borenstein 1999:440). This became particularly evident from the 1960s onwards, with the increased interest in, and access to, a wider range of the old Russian traditions and to contemporary currents in Western culture. Eliot Borenstein (1999) follows Epstein in arguing that scientific atheism, a constituent part of official Marxism, also tended to lump together different religious traditions to produce a single negative image of ‘religion’. The result was that, although failing to deter people from religion, scientific atheism produced religious believers who practised their ‘poor’, ‘minimal’ and eclectic religion in an uncommitted and leisurely manner (Borenstein 1999:441). While partly sharing this observation about what can be called an inadvertent epistemological impact of official atheism, I doubt whether it provides an adequate analysis of religiosity in the last decades of Soviet society. To begin with, I doubt whether Soviet atheism can be held accountable for producing any type of religious believer, good or poor, denominational or non-denominational (unless one includes scientific atheism in the definition of religion). In fact, Epstein’s (1995) description of ‘poor religion’ that, while showing awareness of the spiritual
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dimension of life, takes little notice of expressions of institutional commitment and deemphasises institutional differences, is strikingly similar to the ‘believing-withoutbelonging’ type of faith well analysed by Grace Davie (1994). Davie’s uncommitted believers, however, would not have experienced the impact of scientific atheism; rather, their ‘little religion’ is a product of the conditions, pressures and cultural climate of their contemporary life. I am not suggesting that we are dealing with the same phenomenon as that described by Davie, although the type of believer portrayed by Epstein would indeed have been recognisable among some circles of the Soviet urban intelligentsia in the late 1970s and 1980s, who would share some characteristics with their Western contemporaries in terms of their education and access to cultural commodities. However, the experience of scientific atheism did make a huge difference, but in a more important sense than that referred to by Epstein. Scientific atheism contributed to the relativisation of religious boundaries through its monopoly and through its underpinning of Soviet policy on the institutional destruction of the carriers of religious traditions, and less through its ideological contents. Closing down or desecrating churches, mosques and synagogues, and their educational establishments; diminishing the numbers and status of the clergy; and dissolving religious communities—all this left very little for a religious believer to be committed to. The policy also attempted to ‘secularise’ ethnicity, so that being Russian, Jewish or Tatar would no longer mean having even symbolic association with religious tradition, but simply having one’s ‘nationality’ stated in one’s passport.3 What was on offer for religious seekers in the two decades preceding the fall of communism? Apart from risky underground activities, they could get patchy and restricted access to religious sources, to a few semi-official communities, and to a few dozen unstable groups with floating membership. This severely limited their ability to develop particular group commitments and individual religious identities, i.e. to be socialised into their faith. On the other hand, what distinguished these activists from the rest of society was that they were believers. Those who were raised in their traditional faith and then continued or returned to it in their old age tended to have more awareness of their ‘Russian’, ‘Tatar’ or ‘Jewish’ faith. However, in some sense theirs was also a ‘minimal faith’ expressed in a restricted range of rituals outside the public arena and often combined with continuing allegiance to ‘communism’. In other words, within that semi-traditionalist milieu, the ethno-religious boundaries were preserved, but their markers were reduced to a minimum. In the 1970s and 1980s seekers could pick and choose from the discarded debris of religious traditions that were available on the Soviet religious black market. This was unlikely, however, to have made for any enhanced tolerance of other religions based on acceptance of the legitimacy of the different religious truths that are negotiated with the wider society. Furthermore, the lack of a legitimate religious market was only part of the general lack of legitimate options in other areas of life, such as the economy, politics and culture. As a result, there was a more general lack of experience in managing and negotiating a diversity of legitimate interests. Indeed, the image of a communal flat is relevant here: people live and mix with each other, and periodically have little squabbles, but they are not allowed, and indeed cannot afford, to go beyond a certain level of diversity. They know each other well, perhaps too
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well, but what they know is very much the result of suppressing their individualities. As soon as they have a chance to develop their individualities, their seeming omniscience about each other quickly gives way to an ‘epistemologically naive’ understanding of the differences between them. Who lives in the new apartments? A sociologist would expect a degree of social and cultural continuity between both Soviet and post-Soviet society on the one hand, and NRMs on the other. This, it can be further suggested, would be more pronounced in those NRMs that grew out of Russia’s indigenous cultural soil. Having started from a recognisably Soviet claim to embrace all possible aspects of the universe, and from an unmistakably Soviet repertoire of ideas, these movements eventually established their own identity and found a place for themselves within the emerging new society. In many ways, the theologians of the Russian NRMs were well attuned to the general cultural enterprise of the early post-communist years. In the apparent quasi-millenarian pondering of the ‘fate of Russia’ as a unique social and cultural entity, serious broadsheets, TV programmes and semi-official think-tanks indulged in ‘theories’ about saving Eurasian civilisation or about a unique Slavic identity. The government promised a solid financial reward for the best project on the ‘Russian national idea’ that would restore the country’s cohesion to its previous strength. The post-Soviet liberties encouraged an almost boundless conceptual creativity that boldly mixed religious images and quasi-scientific concepts from a motley assortment and from diverse origins, most of which had been present in the Soviet cultural milieu of the 1970s and 1980s (Gessen 1997:21–98). The imagery of the new Russian theologians was more articulate, their claims were stronger, and their ultimate truths required more commitment and sacrifice. According to Vissarion, the founder of the Church of the Last Testament, his was the Last Revelation of the Single Uniting Faith that embodies ‘all the main religions of humanity’, and it provided the only saving guidance in the era of the Last Judgement. The very ‘sacred name’ of the Great White Brotherhood—Usmalos—as well as the names of its founders, the ‘Divine Duo’ of Maria Devi Christos and Uoani Swami, alluded to their embrace of the entire wisdom of the West and the Orient, which was now available to the elected few.4 In 1995, one of the bishops of the Mother of God Centre explained to me that, although his church provided a unique path to the salvation of humanity, it ‘followed the tradition of Maxim Ispovednik and Ioann Kronshtadski, and also of the Sufi brothers or Zen sages’.5 These NRMs proposed their own versions of a ‘new Russian idea’ and were based on geopolitical mythologies that looked like mutations of the Cold War dichotomy between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. In the original teachings of the Great White Brotherhood, the world was sharply divided into the Holy Russia that had been desecrated by the Soviets, and the godless West that was now eager to take advantage of the Russian predicament. Despite the quasi-Oriental names of the movement’s leaders, God who sent them ‘was a Russian’. The end of the world, they taught, was to occur in the New Jerusalem, i.e. Kiev, the capital of the first East Slavic state, with only Slavs destined for salvation (Borenstein 1995). According to Ioann Bereslavski, the founder of the Mother of God Centre, the
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Virgin Mary predicted in her last revelation in 1917 in Fatima (Portugal), that Russia would become the battlefield of the final cosmic confrontation between God and the evil of communism. The new theologians tackled other early post-communist concerns, such as ecological issues, corruption and crime, within the general ‘saving Russia’ framework. Vissarion claimed that the global ecological catastrophe was already unfolding and that the centre of salvation was located in the ‘true heart of Russia’, in southern Siberia. Here, his followers are currently building a New Jerusalem, or an ecologically pure San-city located in the ‘energy centre of Mother Earth’, near Lake Tiberkul. This is, of course, thousands of miles away from Moscow. However, one wonders how culturally distant this project is from the 1998 State Duma proposal of a law on ‘bioethics’ which links ecological issues to the ‘fate of Russia’ and, in addition, to other aspects of Russia’s purity, such as the degradation of the language and the proliferation of ‘cults’. These features of the indigenous NRMs can be readily subsumed under the rubric of Russian nationalism. In my view, these were distinctive early post-communist versions of naive cultural nationalism that drew on the social experience of these NRMs’ leaders and members and on the available repertoire of cultural artefacts which helped intellectually to cope with the shocking loss of the country’s identity. However, the seeming paradox of these NRMs is that, while elaborating their salvationist Russia-centric projects, they used their right to forge their own identity and thus they inadvertently contributed to the development of the very cultural diversity that eventually weakened their exclusive stance. In the early 1990s, these movements could hardly tolerate each other, their foreign rivals, the Russian Orthodox Church and their host society. This was reciprocated. A decade later, however, a variety of changes occurred. The Mother of God Centre had abandoned its anticipation of the imminent and final battle between the Marian Faith and the Earthly Evil, believing instead that a century of ‘peaceful dissemination of spiritual purity among humankind’ would follow. The movement had become more accommodating, at times even ecumenical, towards other faiths, and much more moderate and accepting in relation to the wider society (Baklanova 1999:98). The Church of the Last Testament no longer puts emphasis on the fate of Russia but often markets itself as an international ecological movement, and even applies for grants to carry out such an agenda (Grigorieva 1998:61–8). I am far from suggesting that religious freedom and the resulting diversity per se have caused the change in these movements. Undoubtedly, this transformation was produced by a combination of causes, including demographic changes, the necessity to deal with the generally unwelcome environment and the overall developments in the country’s political and cultural climate (Barker 1995b). However, while change was inevitable, its direction was not. What we need to consider is that the freedom to develop and defend group and individual identity in a diverse environment often has the inadvertent effect of accommodating and moderating change. Furthermore, in the early post-communist years, those who sought active religiosity within the confines of their traditional ethnic religious institutions were also in many ways new believers who found themselves having to build their religious identities on the ruins of the great historic traditions.
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The Mladostarchestvo or ‘young sages movement’ within the Russian Orthodox Church is a good example. While the phrases are different, the themes are familiar— Russia’s spiritual uniqueness, its difference from the West, and an almost millenarian emphasis on the narrow path to salvation guided by the strict interpretation of the teachings. The guidance is mainly provided by young clergy (hence the name of the movement), often recent converts themselves. Their immediate involvement in almost all spheres of their followers’ lives—family relations, financial matters, medical treatment, employment and education—would easily fit the definition of charismatic authority. Mladostarchestvo is frowned upon by the church authorities because, after all, it has too much resemblance to ‘sectarianism’.6 The so-called new Muslims are another example of active religiosity growing from a largely destroyed tradition. In Moscow and St Petersburg, in the republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, and in the north Caucasian republics of Chechnya and Dagestan, there are a range of groups with different teachings and practices, from Sufi brotherhoods to semi-fundamentalist Salafi groups. The following words of a member of one of these groups seem to convey what many of them have in common: I took to going to our local mosque [in the Nizhni Novgorod region], but I couldn’t make sense of what’s going on there. A few old men on Friday discussing local rumours after the namaz [prayer]… He [the local mullah] wouldn’t even be willing to explain the prayers… And then, in Kazan, I met these people. They could explain everything—our Muslim way of life, no drinking, purity, prayer and what it does to you… That teacher from Egypt, he knew all this because they had always had genuine Islam, from the time of the Prophet… He would quote from the original [Arabic] Qur’an. Not like here, after all these Soviets and Russians, and with all the Western crap coming in now… And, you know, having gone through all this, you wouldn’t any longer feel ashamed to wear a beard or Islamic clothes.7 Stories like this seem to have become common among those young ‘new Muslims’ who seek an active religious involvement. These young people tend to take for granted their traditional ethnic religious identity and they view it as a replacement for the previously imposed Soviet identity and as a shield against the encroachments of Western culture. However, in a search for a ‘living faith’ they sometimes look outside their local traditional institutions, and in particular to Middle Eastern versions of Islam. This, combined with political tensions inside and outside Russia, may dramatically change the context in which they forge their new religious identities.
New rules of cohabitation, bona fide inhabitants and squatters Not long ago, one prominent and relatively liberal state official complained in a radio round-table discussion that in many Russian army units commanders routinely took their soldiers to church—as a mandatory activity and irrespective of their ethnic or religious background. The comment of his opponent, a doctor of medicine and also a monk and
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director of the Soul-Guarding Centre for Victims of Destructive Cults and Occultism, was scathing. Not only was this allegation untrue, he said, but the opposite was taking place. He described the government policy as a continuation of the godless 1917 Revolution, amounting to cultural genocide, because, contrary to the professed will of the 85 per cent of the population who claim to belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, this policy deprives them of their right to have education and culture that correspond to their religious tradition. Furthermore, he claimed that it gives them the same rights as those of religious minorities, which would be unacceptable in most European countries (sic). Moreover, he concluded, at the prompting of the US State Department, the government takes an openly anti-traditionalist stance by favouring foreign sects and imposing Darwinism, atheism and sectarianism on its citizens.8 This is a recent example of the debate that marked the thorny post-communist passage from the religious communal flat to separate apartments for different religions. One aspect of this passage is concerned with institutional changes in legislation and government structures; but another aspect involves what can be called cultural coping with diversity, i.e. finding and using arguments to legitimise competing claims. Parts of these arguments stem from the same cultural soil as the early ideas of Russian indigenous NRMs. Thus, in the example above, the defence uses a familiar geopolitical mythology of a unique cultural space whose identity has been destroyed by the godless Soviets and is now being threatened by global and alien forces. While the cultural origin of this nationalism is similar to that of the Russian NRMs, its social meaning and political implications are different. It is a nationalism that purports to be a cornerstone of Russia’s nation-building as it seeks to define the rights of groups and individuals by reference to their religion. In addition, it is capable of supporting its claim with political action, legislative measures and administrative mechanisms. Sometimes this is done with a rigidity that is reminiscent of some of the contemporary actions of indigenous NRMs. In late October 1993, the White House, seat of the Supreme Council (then parliament), was surrounded by President Yeltsin’s troops, and his rival ‘president’ Rutskoi had no more important business to do than to sign a draft law repealing the 1990 law On Freedom of Religions. The subsequent development of elements of liberalism and democracy inadvertently contributed to widening and refining of the repertoire of options considered by proponents of Russia’s cultural purity. Although the nationalist, including communist, factions of the Duma successfully lobbied for repeal of the 1990 law in 1997, this was done with more sophisticated arguments, in particular through references to the ‘Western experience’. Moreover, even relatively liberal and ‘pro-Western’ MPs supported the introduction of the new 1997 law. The result was a rather restrictive and inconsistent law that, nevertheless, retained freedom of religion and some elements of equality among believers (Durham and Homer 1998; Shterin 2002). The subsequent half-decade has been marked by a combination of the traditionalist, ‘holy-Russian’, cultural defence and an expedient use of ‘democratic’ rhetoric. This resulted from several post-communist developments. On the one hand, essential elements of an institutional protection of religious diversity were put in place. Most importantly, the legal system became more transparent to society at large, and functioned in the new constitutional and legislative frameworks that guaranteed freedom and equality of religious expression. This has allowed religious
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minorities to make much progress in defending their rights, albeit with many difficulties and despite some obvious legal errors (Richardson and Shterin 1999). In addition, the country found itself in a new international context in which its chances for increased economic and geopolitical co-operation were often conditional on its performance in the area of human rights. As a result, simply outlawing minority groups by reference to their being non-traditional was hardly a viable option. On the other hand, the same international and domestic contexts provided new arguments against new minority religions, which nationalists could use expediently and to which many liberals proved susceptible. One such argument came from Western anticult groups and maintained that membership in these minority religions resulted from virtually irresistible mental manipulation (‘brainwashing’ and ‘mind-control’) rather than from free choice. These arguments sounded even more plausible as they seemed to be widely supported in West European democracies and, though more tacitly, by panEuropean institutions (Barker 1984; Beckford 1985; Shterin and Richardson 2000; Richardson and Introvigne 2001a). In addition, the existence of state churches in several European democracies seemed to justify treating religions in Russia in accordance with a pecking order that reflected their ‘traditionality’. For those with more knowledge about the actual situation in Western democracies, these references, while having some reality behind them, also attest to ‘epistemological naivety’. Indeed, none of these countries has legislation that links individual religious freedom to the issue of ‘traditionality’, nor was the concept of mental manipulation officially accepted in most of them. Where it was accepted, however, it was often successfully challenged in courts of law and severely criticised by prominent academics, mainstream churches, politicians and human rights organisations. In my view, the ‘epistemological naivety’ seen in both anti-cult and traditionalist arguments has a lot to do with the continuing lack of desire and skills to come to terms with, and handle, the complex reality of religious diversity. Furthermore, many find it difficult to appreciate that this diversity stems from acceptance of individual rights and, in a search of familiar concepts, they turn to what can be called mutations of the Soviet legacy. In the example at the beginning of this section, the proponent of traditionalism does not question the legitimacy of religious diversity per se: after all, he agrees that nonOrthodox soldiers should not be taken to church by their commanders! Rather, by referring to ‘Western Europe’, he is trying to link the number of rights enjoyed by various religious groups to their proportion in the population and their rootedness in Russian history. Thus, while the principle of absolute collective rights of the bona fide majority is now dead, there are attempts to replace it with a concept of collective rights arranged in a hierarchical order, based on the size of the group and its ‘traditionality’ (Shterin 2002). This current obsession with establishing hierarchies paradoxically co-exists with the widespread propensity to lump together disparate religious expressions, with science, politics and administrative matters. An early example was the belief shared by both Russian and Ukrainian authorities that the leaders of the Great White Brotherhood had supernatural abilities. This led the Ukrainian police to employ ‘experts in telepathy’ to dissociate them from their followers. In a more recent instance, Sergey Kirienko, a liberal politician and presidential representative in the Volga Federal District, put forward the proposition that, to counter the adverse effects of globalisation, his administration should support a project aiming to ‘Christianise the Russian section of the Internet’.9 Sergey
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Gradirovski, his advisor on ethnic and religious matters, suggested that religious organisations should judge the government policy not according to its contribution to improved social justice and well-being, but according to ‘whether or not it leads to Salvation’.10 Although these cases may seem disparate, they are all instances of the ‘epistemological naivety’ that have their origins in the Soviet atheist communal flat. This ‘epistemological naivety’ becomes even more of a problem when combined with political concerns. This has recently been brought into sharp relief by the controversies about Islamic radicals in Russia. One example will suffice. In the summer of 2002, a small group of Muslim women from the mainly Islamic republic of Tatarstan legally challenged the official ban on wearing their traditional scarves on passport photographs. The case was lost, but it triggered many media articles warning the public that this legal action might have been the beginning of an Islamic jihad,11 and a strong statement from Russia’s president about the threat to the country’s national security.12
Scientific atheism in the communal flat and the need for the sociology of religion The Soviet setting provided only limited opportunities for sociological explorations. As far as religion was concerned, this setting was not supposed even to provide substance for such explorations: except for the official viewpoint, different worldviews were seen as wrong; they were not expected to be ‘socially constructed’ but engineered; they were not allowed to be negotiable but were destined to disappear. Social scientists themselves were involved in social engineering, with their primary responsibility being to assess progress in causing religion to wither away. Surveys of the ratio of believers to unbelievers provided a valued measurement, showing the proportion of those who were still in need of engineering efforts. That approach blunted empathy with religious expressions and sensitivity to religion as a variety of social phenomena. Many questions that normally interest sociologists of religion were not even raised. How are religious views elaborated and maintained? How are people attracted to and socialised into them? How are religious groups formed and developed? What are the social consequences of adopting these views and participating in these groups, for the individual and society? This is not to say that social scientists, including scientific atheists, were all unaware of the significance of religious feelings, creativity, solidarity and commitment. I personally know quite a few for whom this awareness was a source of personal doubts about the validity of scientific atheism. However, they had little or no chance to use their insight for systematic studies that would raise methodological questions and sharpen methodological skills. Speculation, bias and lack of healthy detachment from the subject were equally common among convinced scientific atheists and their opponents. Furthermore, both proponents and opponents of scientific atheism tended to share a universalist and normative approach to the study of religion. For both sides, the debate was often about the ‘truth’ of religion, its ‘functions’ and its viability. This was often combined with extreme reductionism in which all social aspects of religion were reduced to the question of ‘whose interests it serves’.
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While this legacy was not helpful for post-Soviet academic studies of religion, the emerging diversity required adjustments. One can see post-atheist mutations in numerous publications on religion over the last decade or so. Surveys remain the main activity of an army of experts, although they are now quick to declare the near death of atheism. While the surveys tended to detect an impressive religious diversity in the early 1990s, half a decade later they stress that ‘traditional’, and in particular Russian Orthodox, believers constitute a clear majority. Other experts use this to justify demands for more rights for this majority.13 Together with some NRMs and their opponents, post-communist social scientists have often engaged in a defence of the idea of a cultural space unique to Russia, with attempts at more ‘methodological’ underpinning. In 1999, a dissertation on the Unification Church, which was successfully defended at one of the leading academic institutions, stated that: The key element of analysis [of the effects of NRMs] must be the notion of integrity of the cultural—historic space of the Russian Federation… The pivot [of Russia’s history] over the last millennium has been Orthodox Christianity which determined the identity of the Russian State, shaped the worldview of its people, and now provides the basis for national integrity and well-being. (Kuznetsova 1999:359) A similar conceptual legacy of the view of the world as bipolar and of relations between nations as a zero-sum game is evident in the following explanation of the proliferation of NRMs, offered by academics from the Russian Academy of Civil Service as recently as 2000: The West is undertaking concrete steps towards introducing international institutions in the territory of our civilisation. These institutions reflect Western spiritual values, and the West seeks to legitimise them in Russia. Therefore, the inculcation of alien religious orientations in the minds of even relatively small sections of society becomes a matter of national security.14 In an apparent paradox, though, ‘Russian civilisation’ has not produced effective arguments to corroborate views like this, and for want of a better source their proponents turn to Western anti-cult literature, Russian translations of which have been steadily flowing into the country’s bookstores. In a further apparent paradox, however, such books are usually located on shelves that are next to those carrying the works of Osho, Alister Crowley, Castaneda, etc. The development of religious diversity offers enormous opportunities for empirical sociological studies of religion, and in particular of new groups. Unfortunately, these opportunities remain largely unrealised in Russia. Among the variety of reasons for this—from insufficient funding to the strong politicisation of religious issues—two seem clear to me: lack of empathy with religious expressions and lack of the methodological skills that are necessary for the social scientific study of religion. The few available
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reference books cannot provide the public domain with what is, in my view, badly needed—first-hand, accurate and balanced academic accounts that would give the general public better access to the social reality of religious phenomena. This lack of experts with immediate experience in the sociological study of religion has had many consequences for the operation of social, administrative and political structures. Many legal cases involving new minority religions were marked by questionable judicial decisions, not least because in these cases the dearth of experts capable of presenting their empirical findings was outweighed by the number of speculations about ‘Russian mentality’ and ‘state interests’ that went under the name of ‘expert testimonies’ (Shterin and Richardson 2002; Krylova 1999). Again, the acute need for sound sociological accounts of new religious phenomena has recently been highlighted by the controversies over Islam. The profusion of quasiacademic and non-academic speculations about the new Islamic radicals, combined with demonstrations of political toughness against the ‘Islamic threat’, may well result in a distorted threatening image of the whole faith, with dire social and political consequences. Accurate sociological studies of new Islamic groups in Russia, that would include analysis of their incidence, their members’ demographic characteristics, social grievances, cultural resources, and their access to political resources within different local contexts, would undoubtedly put society and the government in a better position to understand and handle real and perceived problems.15
Concluding remarks: post-communism, new religions and sociologists of religion Moving from the habits of the communal flat to those that regulate the lives of residents in separate apartments is a difficult process—in particular when in real life there are still so many communal flats around! While there have been many dramatic changes in Russian social and cultural life as well as in politics and institutions, the old conceptual and behavioural repertoire is still there to interpret and cope with these changes. Furthermore, the tenacity of this repertoire is not only due to the inertia of individuals, but also and perhaps mainly because of the persisting features of social and economic reality. Added to this are the alarming aspects of ‘globalisation’ that often trigger familiar cultural defences and selective use of those defence mechanisms that are offered by globalisation itself (such as the use of the Western anti-cult concepts in post-communist Russia).16 New religions in Russia, either within a traditional religion or outside any of them, are expressions of post-communist changes and they provide a ‘perspective for understanding’ this transition, using the title of a collection edited by Eileen Barker. For some, like Barker herself, this is not enough. Misunderstanding of these new phenomena in post-communist societies, they feel, may result in the unnecessary suffering of whole groups and tens of thousands of individuals, and in mistaken policies and waste of money and human resources in countries where these are badly needed. For Eileen Barker, this active involvement ranges from publishing books and giving talks at academic meetings to addressing the State Duma and standing for more than five hours in the witness box of a Moscow courtroom.17 This, however, could be the subject of another article.
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Notes 1 On the 1990 law On Freedom of Religions and the subsequent development of religious legislation in Russia, see Durham and Homer 1998; Shterin 2002. 2 Eileen Barker (1987:278) refers to an ‘epistemologically naive rhetoric’ that was sometimes used in Britain to attack NRMs. I find this expression useful and employ it in a broader sense to refer to simplistic and ill-informed views on religion in general, which result from lack of social and cultural experience and knowledge of social manifestations of religion. 3 In some parts of the former Soviet Union, such as the Central Asian republics, Northern Caucasus and Western Ukraine, the situation was in some ways different, in particular as far as semi-official religious activities were concerned. 4 Uoani is a distortion of John (an allusion to John the Baptist) and in Sanskrit swami means ‘holy person’. The middle name of Maria Devi Christos is the Sanskrit for ‘holy woman’. Usmalos contains the first letters of the names of the leaders and los stands for logos. 5 Interview with Piotr D., 12 November 1995. 6 See Journal Svyashchennogo Sinoda Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi, 114, 29 December 1998. 7 Interview with Damir K., Moscow, 3 January 1999. 8 See http://www.state-religion.ru/cgi/ru, accessed 15 May 2002. 9 See Nezavisimaja Gazeta, 16 May 2001. 10 Vestnik EKG PFO RF, 1, 2001 (available at www.ekg.metod.ru/pub). 11 Izvestia, 3 August 2002. 12 Washington Post, 8 September 2002. 13 See, e.g., I.Ponkin, ‘Pravovoi Status Traditsionnykh Religii: Mirovoi Opyt’, http://www.state-religion.ru/cgi/ru, 23 April 2001. 14 N.Trofimuchuk and V.Svishchev, ‘Ekspansia’, available at http://www.statereligion.ru/cgi/ru. 15 Some recent studies of Muslim communities in Russia have taken account of sociological factors, e.g. Malashenko 1996; Makarov 2000 and, in particular, Pilkington and Yemelianova, 2003. 16 On effects of globalisation on religious movements, see Beckford 2000; also Shterin and Richardson 2000. 17 On Barker’s expert testimony at Yakunin vs Dvorkin in Moscow in 1997, see Shterin and Richardson 2002. In 1997, her book New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction (Barker 1989a) was translated and published in Russia by a group of liberal academics affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Part II Religious ‘deviance’ and control
6 Notes on the contemporary peril to religious freedom Thomas Robbins ‘Worldwide, religious freedom is deteriorating.’ This is the striking conclusion of a recent essay (Marshall 2001:18–20) by an outstanding religious freedom advocate. According to Marshall, ‘the dominant pattern in the world is the increasing political influence of religion coupled with increasing religious repression’ (2001:18). Religious persecution, meaning violence in which the religion of the persecuted or the persecutor is a factor, affects all religious groups. Christians and animists in Sudan, Baha’is in Iran. Ahmadiyas in Pakistan. Buddhists in Tibet, and Falun Gong in China are the most intensely persecuted, while Christians are the most widely persecuted group. But there is no group in the world that does not suffer because of its beliefs. All religions, whether large, such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism, or small, such as Baha’i, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Judaism, suffer to some degree. In many cases these attacks come from their own religious group [e.g. Sunni Muslims persecuting Shiite Muslims— parenthesis added by T.Robbins]… Religious Freedom is also not confined to any one area or continent. There are relatively free countries in every continent and of every religious background. Perhaps surprisingly, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, South Africa, Botswana, Mali and Namibia are freer than France and Belgium. There are now absolutely no grounds for thinking that religious freedom is an exclusively Western desire or achievement. (Marshall 2001:18) In this essay I will discuss some aspects of the phenomenon evoked by Marshall with particular, though not exclusive, reference to ‘alternative religions’, an area in which the work of Eileen Barker (e.g. 1984, 1986, 1989a) has been outstanding. Like Marshall, Dr Barker has also been an outstanding votary of religious freedom.
Religious persecution and globalisation There are various reasons for the surge of religious persecution. ‘Globalisation’ as a cultural as well as an economic process is definitely a vital part of the picture. As I have argued previously (Robbins 2001a, 2001b), ‘globalisation’ is a salient factor contextualising both the spread of ‘alternative religions’ and the growing mobilisation
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against such disvalued ‘cults’. Globalisation enhances ‘the frequency, volume and interconnectedness of ideas, materials, goods, information, pollution, money and people across national boundaries and between regions of the world’ (Beckford 2000:170). Globalisation thus readily facilitates the transnational and transcultural diffusion of symbolic meanings and movements (Robbins 2001b). Globalisation encourages innovative syncretism (Hexham and Poewe 1997) as well as the spread of ‘religious multinationals’ such as Scientology, the Unification Church or Mormonism to new continents and cultures.1 Globalisation therefore has a tendency to increase religious diversity within societies and to implicitly deregulate religious markets (Robbins 2001b). This may seem disconcerting and tends to produce culturally particularist reactions, which may combine in different proportions in different modern societies nationalism, traditionalist religious hegemonism (such as reviving Russian Orthodoxy), and secularist suspicion of (particularly esoteric and unfamiliar) supernaturalist religion, e.g. in France and Maoist China. ‘Religious multinationals’ such as Scientology, Unificationism, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Hare Krishna will often appear alien from the standpoint of the nations and societies into which they are being introduced. As James Beckford has noted, anxiety over alien and extra-cultural ideas and influences is naturally heightened, ‘at a time when the movement of population between countries is becoming easier and more extensive’ (Beckford 1998:181). The unsettling globalisation process tends to increase the sensitivity of nations, regimes and cultures (and the dominant groups therein) to the defence and increasingly precarious legitimation of received cultural identities, institutions and orientations, which globalisation and multiculturalism threaten to relativise. Globalisation ‘puts all ideologies and belief systems under pressure to clarify their place in relation to the new circumstance. They can no longer refuse to consider their position’ (Beckford 2000:173). Although this dynamic may influence the presently enhanced anxiety over and discrimination against alternative religions in continental W. Europe (Beckford 1998, 2000; Richardson and Introvigne 2001a, 2001b; Robbins 2001a, 2001b), the seemingly inexorable process of cultural globalisation may appear particularly disruptive and productive of religious conflict, persecution, intolerance and militancy in more traditional, less modernised societies. Paul Marshall writes: One reason why religion is frequently associated with social unrest is that ‘globalization’ or ‘westernization’ is penetrating deeply into traditional cultures. Traditional believers in Japan or Java did not in the past wonder who they were. But now, through new communications and commodities, local identity cannot simply be taken for granted, and so needs to be consciously asserted. (Marshall 2001:19) One consequence may be the emergence of militant ‘fundamentalist’ or neo-traditionalist, puritanical-primitivist movements, which in Islamic cultures react not only against globalist cultural relativisation but more specifically against the politico-economic as well as cultural hegemony of the Christian/secular West and their own perceived helplessness and oppression (Lewis 2001; Maalouf 2001). Some reactive, militant
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movements have a conspicuous violent, ‘terrorist’ dimension, which evokes anxiety in Western societies and may have implications for Euro-American apprehension about and persecution of, not only Islamic groups but also any esoteric, apocalyptic, messianic and totalistic movements, which may appear volatile and potentially violent (see below). Ironically, the spectre of terrorist violence associated with religious responses to Westernisation and globalisation in traditional cultures may reinforce culturally particularistic reactions against esoteric alternative religions—particularly apocalyptic sects—in modern societies. Some novel movements which arise in part as a response to globalisation may elicit a hostile reaction which is itself in part a response to globalisation; moreover, globalisation of culture promotes the spread not only of multinational alternative religions but also international ‘anti-cult’ networks and mobilisation (Hexham and Poewe 1997). This duality clearly operates with respect to the World Wide Web, which is effectively employed by both alternative religions and their well-organised (particularly in cyberspace) opposition. As Marshall notes, the globalisation/anti-globalisation dynamics feeding into religious persecution are reinforced by the decline of world communism. These trends ‘are exacerbated by the collapse of communism which eliminated the only major alternative to globalization. Consequently those distressed by the dominant directions of the world now look to their own country’s traditions which of course are predominantly religious traditions’ (Marshall 2001:19). One result of these trends is the growth of religious nationalism, whether heartfelt or contrived, wherein countries are increasingly defined by their religious inheritance. This has typified the conflicts between Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. It is endemic in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, while, to acquire legitimacy, the Burmese Junta masquerades as Buddhist. The Chinese government inveighs against ‘foreign’ religions, while other regimes in the region celebrate so-called ‘Asian values’. (Marshall 2001:19) In this context Saddam Hussein, who emerged from a somewhat secular, socialist (Baath Party) political background, now poses as a mighty champion of Islam. In Russia and Eastern Europe traditionally hegemonic churches such as the Russian Orthodox Church and the Polish Catholic Church—‘national churches’—are making variably effective bids for a kind of ‘re-establishment’, and in the process they come to look on new groups with a distinctly jaundiced eye, as do traditionally strong and state-supported if not dominant churches such as the Catholic Church and the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches in Hungary (Froese 2001). Alternative religions surged in Eastern Europe immediately after the dissolution of the ‘Soviet bloc’, but their growth may have subsequently slowed or reversed as a consequence of traditionalist reaction (Froese 2001; Shterin 2001). In Eastern Europe, southern Germany and elsewhere, traditionally dominant or strong churches are mainstays of anti-cult mobilisation (Froese 2001; Hexham and Poewe 1997; Joffe 1997; Shterin 2001), which is much less the case in North America. It might be noted, however, that some emergent groups such as militant Christian evangelical sects have conspicuous anti-Catholic views (Krumina-Konkova 2001), which antagonise citizens and officials and thereby help to elicit persecution.2
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In Eastern Europe, according to Stark and Finke (2000:257), officials have substantial anxieties regarding energetic Christian and Islamic sects.3 Reactionary laws facilitating discrimination against esoteric alternative religions may have emerged partly as a byproduct of fears concerning Islamic and sectarian Christian militancy. Formerly dominant religions such as Russian Orthodoxy or Polish Catholicism strongly influence national sentiments. In France, on the other hand, nationalism manifests a distinctly secular or even anti-religious quality—la laïcité—reflecting the historical influence of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution (Beckford 2001b; Hervieu-Léger 2001b; Le Blanc 2001). The existing French pattern originally emerged as a means of containing the influence of the formerly dominant Catholic Church. A small number of familiar, ‘domesticated’ churches are legitimated and autonomous, while esoteric groups which don’t belong to the main Protestant Federation or do not embrace conventional Episcopal or Congregational organisational patterns are deeply suspect (Beckford 2001b; HervieuLéger 2001b). This writer has compared the French system, which seems to be animated by a distrust of religion and its destructive and reactionary potential, to a hypothetical ‘anti-Indian’ American system whereby only large, familiar Native American groups such as the Sioux, Navaho or Cherokee would be considered legitimate and let alone, while smaller, less familiar, esoteric or ephemeral groups would be considered dangerous and placed under surveillance, put on ominous ‘lists’ and suspected of possible criminal violations of laws protecting individual autonomy from group domination (Robbins 2001b). While such a system would be less hostile or injurious to Native Americans than the system implied by the traditional vicious saying, ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian’, it would still be clearly antagonistic to Indians and would reflect suspicion that only by having just a few familiar ‘tamed’ groups or by having stringent controls and surveillance applied to less conventional groups could officials guarantee the absence of feared excesses such as scalping, raiding, etc. In any case the status of alter-native religions in France has very recently deteriorated with the passage of new legislation (for the ‘Prevention and Repression of Cultic Movements’) aimed at protecting individuals from psychological domination and manipulation at the hands of cults (sectes), which now becomes a criminal violation and a basis for dissolving religious organisations (Beckford 2001b; Le Blanc 2001; Richardson and Introvigne 2001a).4 The new repression may reflect in part recent destabilising pressures on the traditional French control system arising from globalisation and increasing religious diversity in France, the decline of ‘secular-Catholic’ French spiritual culture, and the association of alternative religions with futuristic symbols such as new information technologies (Beckford 2001b; Hervieu-Léger 2001b). The governments of Belgium, Lithuania, Chile and China are considering adopting something similar to the new French measures. One salient aspect of the globalisation-religious persecution dynamic is probably antiAmericanism. As noted by Le Blanc (2001) a French crusader against sectes has called them ‘America’s Trojan Horse’ which attempts to subvert French culture. Indeed, alternative religions such as Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Hare Krishna have either originated in the United States or else, whatever their initial origins, tend to be exported to Europe and elsewhere as American cultural products. In France and elsewhere there is resentment against transnational, American-owned corporations, which are perceived as assaulting the economic, social and cultural integrity of France (Beckford 2001b). Similarly there is resentment against some products such as ubiquitous
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American ‘fast food’. Globalisation facilitates American corporate penetration of France as well as the crowding out of exquisite French (e.g. culinary) products by vulgar and degraded American substitutes. The French may indeed perceive Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hare Krishna et al. as degraded, Americanised ‘fast religions’ (Robbins 2001b; Le Blanc 2001). The French government is secularist, however, and is probably not motivated in its hostility to alternative religions by pervasive religious protectionism in terms of either safeguarding local hegemonies or reinforcing a religious nationalism linked to religious traditionalism. In some nations with a tradition of religious nationalism, foreign— particularly American—missions or churches and missions staffed by foreigners are viewed with suspicion and sometimes persecuted (Shterin 2001). The Salvation Army mission in Moscow seems imperilled at this writing. In France, to a lesser extent than in Russia where resurgent nationalism is linked to the Russian Orthodox Church which supports anti-cult ideology imported from the United States as a means of reasserting its dominance (Beckford 2000; Shterin 2001), there is also suspicion of foreign (e.g. American) missions (Hanley 2001). It appears that antagonism to religious diversity is in part a means by which in rather different ways nationalist intelligentsia in both France and Russia strive to forge a satisfactory understanding of their nations’ distinctive identities in a disconcerting context of globalisation (Beckford 2000; Robbins 2001b; Shterin 2001).
Violence and terrorism It would appear likely that the very recent intensification of concern with violence on the part of religious (Islamic) terrorists in the aftermath of the catastrophic events of 11 September 2001 will make things more difficult for alternative religions. The resulting anxieties are likely not only to enhance pervasive European ‘Islamophobia’ but also to spill over to the broader realm of apocalyptic, messianic ‘cults’ (sectes). However, should governments with pronounced hostilities to alternative religions use terrorist depredations to justify suspicion of such movements, there may be some ironies. Some European governments which frowned on deviant sectes and seemed obsessed with their menace took inadequate precautions against the emergence of terrorist al Qaeda cells in their countries. A 1996 French governmental report on dangerous sectes did not even mention Islamic groups. While the German government obsessed over the threat of Scientology, which was kept under surveillance, al Qaeda cells were developing unmolested in Hamburg. As a result of the new terrorism scare, hostility may mount against close-knit, esoteric movements with strong internal solidarity, charismatic leaders and apocalyptic-messianic worldviews.5 Indeed, modern and modernising states may both now be motivated to put a larger premium on ‘regulating the religious market’. A number of factors may link terrorism and a more precarious situation for non-terrorist alternative religions. The exigencies of ‘coalition politics’ in the ‘War Against Terrorism’ are already undercutting the capacity and motivation of the United States’ State Department to continue its formerly vigorous criticism of religious repression abroad, as a congressman has recently noted (Smith 2001; see also Gunn 2001). The heightened concern over ‘bioterrorism’ has
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directed attention to certain ‘cults’ such as Aum Shinrikyo in Japan and the earlier Bhagawan Movement of Shree Rajneesh in Oregon, which actually pioneered the use of biochemical weapons in the mid- 1980s (Rajneesh) and mid-1990s (Aum) (Lifton 1999; Miller et al. 2001). Finally, crusaders against ‘cults’ have not been slow to dredge up their favourite notion of ‘brainwashing’ and use it to ‘explain’ the fanatical dedication of terrorists on suicide missions, and to make explicit comparisons between terrorist groups and (sometimes fairly non-violent) ‘cults’ (Pearson 2001). It must, of course, be acknowledged that some alternative religions have been involved in horrendous, large-scale violence, which cannot be entirely explained in terms of responses to persecution and provocation by opponents or the state (Robbins and Palmer 1997; Robbins 1997; Lifton, 1999; Hall et al. 2000; Wessinger 2000a, 2000b; Richardson and Introvigne 2001c; Bromley and Melton 2002). Such groups represent only a tiny proportion of alternative religions and unconventional sects; moreover, there is often an ‘interactive’ component in state-sect ‘deviance amplification’ processes culminating in large-scale violent episodes (Anthony et al. 2002; Hall et al. 2000; Richardson 2001; Wessinger 2000a, 2000b). In any case there is now an interesting anomaly whereby the United States, in which most (not all) of the non-Islamic extreme episodes of ‘cult violence’ have transpired, manifests at present a less discriminatory or persecutory governmental posture towards alternative religions than continental Western Europe, which has witnessed only one spectacular episode (or sequence of episodes) involving the Order of the Solar Temple (Hall et al. 2000:111–48). Various factors, including a dominant secular humanist tradition, a tradition of governmental omnicompetence, paternalism and messianic statism, anxieties over national integration in a globalist context, anti-American nationalism (including a new Euro-nationalism), and a tradition of militant anti-clericalism now displaced to hostility towards totalistic, nonprivatised sectes, have been adduced to explain this anomaly and the greater current potency of anti-cult discourse about ‘brainwashing’ and mental coercion—a discourse which originated in the USA—in continental Western Europe (particularly France) compared to its country of origin (Beckford 1998, 2001b; Le Blanc 2001; Richardson and Introvigne 2001a, 2001b; Robbins 2001a; Soper 2001). I have suggested that the largerscale violence of Waco and Jonestown may have affected Europeans less than the smaller Solar Temple ‘transits’, in part because Europeans may have expected that such horrors might unfold ‘in the wild and wooly United States where crime rates are high, firearms are ubiquitous, and extremism and violence often seem to run rampant’, but were nevertheless shocked when collective suicides and homicides related to a deviant secte erupted ‘in their own sedate and moderate haven of secularism and civility’ (Robbins 2001a:174). I think it is possible that religious violence in the West, and particularly anti-American terrorist violence, could have the consequence of altering the way Americans and American law think about religion and religious liberty. A provocative but disturbing essay recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal (2001) by Sam Tannenhaus, author of a critically acclaimed biography of the anticommunist (ex-communist) writer Whittaker Chambers. Reacting to the recent egregious acts of religious terrorism on 11 September 2001, the author has been led to question the absolute protection of beliefs which has been enshrined in American legal culture. This ‘admirable principle of restraint’ implies ‘that we underrate the importance of beliefs themselves and their power to weaken or
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destroy the society in which they are allowed to flourish’ (Tannenhaus 2001: W19). Movements may have certain ‘animating beliefs’ which may be deeply and violently hostile to the culture or polity of a given society. ‘Doesn’t it follow’, asks the author, ‘that any and all who hold the same beliefs—those of extremist Islam—may already threaten us?’ (Tannenhaus 2001:W19). Americans, however, notes Tannenhaus, are beset by a ‘crippling doubt—about whether we have the right to condemn any beliefs at all, even beliefs that threaten our existence… But we may have to surrender this luxury.’ A society or political system that is under attack from implacable foes must defend itself. ‘To do so requires meeting the enemy full on, which means confronting not only his actions but the beliefs from which they flow’ (Tannenhaus 2001:W19). It seems likely, however, that the most dangerous religious terrorists will simply conceal their dangerous beliefs, as did Mohammed Atta and the activists responsible for the acts of 11 September 2001. Enhanced governmental scrutiny of beliefs of religious groups might inadvertently end up targeting mainly ‘passive millenarians’ or passive utopians who may hold conspicuously offensive or aberrant beliefs but who are pursuing their millennialist or utopian visions passively and non-violently, for example by ‘waiting for the end’. In any case, a reconsideration of the American religious libertarian tradition, such as Tannenhaus appears to suggest or anticipate, would probably bode ill for (even non-violent) sectarian religious minorities. Extremist beliefs, even if not previously implicated in violent behaviour, may increasingly be viewed with a jaundiced eye by authorities in a society that now considers itself to be under serious threat from religious militants.6
Conclusion: religion in today’s world In the final analysis, evoked by Paul Marshall, the basic factor underlying the worldwide surge of religious persecution is the enhanced significance of religion in the twenty-first century world. It may be difficult for younger observers to realise how different the milieu is today with respect to the role of religion in the world compared to this writer’s formative period in the 1960s. When I was a graduate student in the middle and late 1960s, the challenge to American goals and security in the international realm came mainly from ‘world communism’ and the ‘Sino-Soviet bloc’ which was said to be fervently animated by the secular, anti-religious creed of Marxism-Leninism. In the Mideast, America’s antagonist was secular nationalism, e.g. ‘Nasserism’. In the 1970s terrorism began to be widely feared, but it also appeared to be largely Marxist—assorted ‘Red Armies’.7 In American politics, religion was hardly irrelevant but did not appear to be a dominating force—the anticipated overpowering anti-Catholic reaction to the candidacy of John F.Kennedy not having materialised. The ‘secular city’ had arrived and ‘secularisation theory’ was in vogue. It was in this context that broad ‘functional’ conceptions of religion gained scholarly currency such that communism, nationalism and rock music might legitimately be treated as ‘religions’, and the status of the study of religion therefore would not have to depend on the seemingly declining relevance of ‘substantively’ defined (in terms of supernaturalism) faiths and on dull churches.
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It is my recollection that graduate students in the sociology of religion in the mid-late 1960s, often ordained, tended to be gently derided by other sociology grad students, who viewed them as benighted persons whose quaint obsession with irrelevant things of the spirit isolated them from the real world where Revolution and sociopolitical conflicts were making history. Many scholars and intellectuals were committed with varying degrees of specificity and sophistication to the hoary Marxian duality of the fundamental economic ‘base’ or ‘substructure’ of society and its epiphenomenal religio-ideological ‘superstructure’. Religion seemed somewhat out of the world historical loop, and religious conflicts, while not viewed as trivial, were also not perceived to be at the core of world or American politics and particularly of student and academic politics. It was perhaps for this reason that, while academic American sociology was in the late 1960s and 1970s embroiled in ideological controversy and strident intellectual insurgency, the American sociology of religion—not yet fully detached from its confessional origins— appeared to be a placid academic backwater and a bit of a genial club of hobbyists. Of course, things look very different today and have for some time. The spectre of egregious religious terrorism is merely the final nail in the coffin of ‘The World We Knew’. Robert Wuthnow wrote in 1988: On all sides religion seems to be embroiled in controversy. Whether it is acrimonious arguments about abortion, lawsuits over religion in the public schools, questions over who is most guilty of mixing religion and politics, or discussions of America’s military presence in the world, religion seems to be in the thick of it…the issues shift almost continuously, but the underlying sense of polarization and acrimony continues. (Wuthnow 1988:6) Religious influence and religious conflict is everywhere. Religion is therefore very much worth persecuting. Whether it is French officials’ ‘war on sectes’, the Chinese government’s brutal suppression of Falun Gong, officials in Uzbekistan persecuting various groups in fear of a militant Islamic insurgency, or Taliban officials in Afghanistan prescribing the death penalty for attempts to convert Muslims to other religions, the word is out that religion matters, and therefore religion cannot be left alone. Laissez-faire seems less and less tenable to political elites, and religion advances to the cutting edge of state repression.8 As mentioned earlier, there are indications that both the effectiveness and the dedication of the American government’s three-year campaign to promote worldwide religious liberty and expose repression is presently weakening in the context of the need not to antagonise our anti-terrorist coalition partners (Smith 2001). According to Gunn (2001), neither leading US media nor serious foreign policy journals have discussed the American government’s freedom of religion initiatives. This is particularly unfortunate, since religious freedom is a powerful and polarizing issue in a number of countries whose efforts to suppress religious dissent have the potential of rocking the world: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, India, Turkey, and Nigeria.
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Religion is now one of the dominant stories in the media. But it is not the story of the ‘importance of religious freedom’ that the U.S. spent three years trumpeting. Rather it is the ‘dangers of religious extremism’ story that has long been used by regimes in Uzbekistan, China, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt to justify their repression. (Gunn 2001:14) With this in mind let us conclude this essay as we began it, with a passage from Paul Marshall’s recent eloquent essay ‘The First Freedom under siege’: religious conflict and religious repression will not go away simply because our foreign policy elites refuse to speak of it. The United States can only address such conflict if it clearly and unsentimentally acknowledges it. Religious Freedom is historically the first freedom in the growth of human rights and often has more to do with growth of democracy than does a direct focus on political activity itself. Integrating religious issues and concerns into a coherent policy is extremely difficult, of course. While all human rights pressures make realists nervous, religion carries the added burden of touching on very deep-seated commitments. But America’s historic concern for freedom will not be sustained without a more informed and urgent appreciation of religious freedom. (Marshall 2001:20)
Notes 1 The term ‘religious multinationals’ was originally coined by Beckford (1981, see also 1985). 2 ‘Alternative religions’ are sometimes schismatic sects which have separated from a larger church or sect against which they recriminate, e.g. the Branch Davidians and David Koresh were hostile to the Seventh-day Adventist Church from which the original Davidians split off. Some ‘fringe Mormon’ groups excoriate or demonise the official Mormon Church. Some ‘primitivist’ Protestant groups revive early Protestantism’s demonisation of the Catholic Church. 3 Stark and Finke (2000:257) also suggest that the future, in terms of ‘alternative’ religions, lies with dynamic Christian and Muslim sects rather than with more esoteric ‘New Religions’. 4 Le Blanc (2001:16) notes that the French ideal of laïcité entails a marked ‘distrust of group identities independent of the state’ (Le Blanc 2001:16). The state would become a substitute for the church and express its own civil religion. Thus, laïcité entails ‘an entirely secular and rational worldview bolstered by the state as a national ideological alternative to religion [read: Roman Catholic Church]’ (2001:16). Non-Catholic French religions are expected to be radically privatised and ‘France remains uneasy about collective identities—ethnic and linguistic as well as religious—that seem independent of the state’ (2001:16). Le Blanc contrasts French messianic, secularist statism with American pluralism and ‘liberal conception of religious freedom’. Yet persecution (e.g. of Catholics, Mormons, Communists, ‘cults’) has certainly transpired in the United States, and in France powerful organisations have been built around dissident political ideologies such as fascism and communism. In this connection I have noticed that a reversal has transpired in the roles of France and the United States since my childhood in the 1950s. When this writer grew up in the early 1950s, the
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USA was in the grip of anticommunist hysteria—‘McCarthyism’. Western Europeans tended to regard this phenomenon with a mixture of amusement, disdain and alarm. Some Americans in turn waxed indignant over Europeans’ inadequate anticommunist fervour and expressed alarm over the persisting power and prestige of the French Communist Party. Today the roles of France and the USA seem to have been somewhat reversed. France appears to be playing the ‘American’ crusading, countersubversive role. Many Americans view the French obsession with sectes with either indifference or libertarian alarm, while some French citizens blame the United States for maintaining a permissive climate in which noxious sectes flourish and are ultimately exported to France to subvert the latter. Some of the sectes identified as sinister by French officials are fairly reputable in the USA. 5 See the contributions to an important edited volume (Bromley and Melton 2002) for discussion of the factors contributing to large-scale violence associated with alternative religions and for case studies. See also Robbins and Palmer (1997); Wessinger (2000a, 2000b); Hall et al. (2000) and Richardson (2001). On the contemporary surge of ‘religious terrorism’ see Jurgensmeyer (2000). 6 The American Attorney General has called for expanded surveillance of potentially violent religious and political groups. See ‘Ashcroft may relax FBI to spy on religious, political groups’, World Religious News Services, 1 December 2001. 7 If memory serves, the notable Arab terrorism of the 1970s—the terrorism of al Fata and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)—had a less distinctly Islamic character than the contemporary terrorism of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda. On contemporary Islamic and other ‘religious terrorism’, see Jurgensmeyer (2000). 8 In the contemporary milieu, governments inclined to persecute some religions must nevertheless make some sort of nominal gesture towards religious liberty. A frequent response is to implicitly define religious freedom in individual, intrapsychic terms—freedom of inner belief—which might exclude the right to worship collectively, organise or proselytise. The Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of belief but not the right to organise or proselytise. A French legislator who introduced the recent anti-cult statute in the National Assembly has insisted that the new legislation does not violate religious freedom because the new law will not prevent individuals from worshipping an orange in the privacy of their kitchens! (World Religious News Service, 14 June 2001).
7 A chapter in the life of Eileen Barker The American Psychological Association, brainwashing controversies and the Great Cult Apologist Conspiracy Massimo Introvigne
The American Psychological Association’s involvement in the 1980s brainwashing controversies In 2001 a book was edited by Ben Zablocki and Tom Robbins and introduced as the longawaited result of a worthy attempt to call to genuine dialogue academic ‘anti-cultists’ and ‘cult apologists’ (with both sides, of course, objecting to such labels), in the hope of finding a ‘moderate’ middle ground. As the project went on (and some scholars, including Eileen Barker, opted out of it for several different reasons), similar results were sought through the participation of cult critics in conferences organised by CESNUR (the Center for Studies on New Religions, based in Italy and whose managing director is the undersigned) and INFORM (the information centre on new religious movements founded by Eileen Barker in London), and of scholars critical of the cult critics in conferences organised by the anti-cult AFF (American Family Foundation). What, exactly, has been achieved? Although no consensus has emerged on several crucial issues, there are some significant results making the difficult enterprise worth pursuing. It has been at least proved that scholars of different persuasions may indeed have a dialogue, in itself no mean achievement, even if some on both sides are still suspicious of the other side’s motivations. All authors, on both sides, recognise that religious movements do try to control scholars, but strategies are available to avoid such efforts. All (or almost all) agree that funding by mainline churches, new religious movements, anti-cult organisations, or governments is not always unacceptable but should be disclosed, although a problem emerges when scholars claiming that their work has not been funded by any of the above sources are not believed by those on the other side. Beyond these procedural achievements, substantial progress has also been made on the controversial issue of brainwashing. Although exchanges on this point show that many issues are still bitterly fought over, two important areas of consensus emerge. The first is that the ‘crude’ brainwashing theories usually connected with the name and forensic activities of psychologist Margaret Singer (but by no means restricted to her work) are rejected not only by ‘cult apologists’ but by some academic ‘anti-cultists’ as well. One of the latter, sociologist Benjamin Zablocki, calls Singer’s theory of brainwashing ‘a distortion of the foundational concept’ (Zablocki 2001:168), although whether Zablocki’s own theory is really as different from Singer’s as he claims remains a point of contention.
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Second, both critics and apologists of brainwashing/mind control theories acknowledge that the work on thought reform and coercive persuasion of Robert Jay Lifton (see Lifton 1989 [1961]) and Edgar Schein (see Schein et al. 1961) deserves serious consideration and should not be dismissed by lumping it together with cheap anti-cult propaganda. Whether the word ‘brainwashing’ should be used remains a matter of dispute (both Lifton and Schein ultimately recommended not to use it), but building on these two points a much more meaningful discussion on persuasion in religious movements (and elsewhere) may perhaps continue. One of the controversies still eliciting somewhat heated comments concerns the rejection, in 1987, of a report by a committee (Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control, DIMPAC), chaired by Margaret Singer, by the Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) of the American Psychological Association (APA). Zablocki still regards as ‘shameful’ the fact that some scholars in the ‘other camp’, including the undersigned, ‘by playing fast and loose with terminology attempt to parlay a rejection of a committee report [the DIMPAC report] into a rejection of the brainwashing concept by the American Psychological Association’ (Zablocki 2001:168). ‘Shameful’ is a somewhat strong word in a book about dialogue, although in a footnote Zablocki adds some moderating comments (Zablocki 2001:205). Less moderate are comments by other ‘anti-cult’ scholars implying that the APA did what it did because it was under the influence of authoritative scholars inspired and financed by some controversial new religious movements. The story of the APA involvement in the ‘cult wars’ of the 1980s is, thus, still an object of controversy. It is also an interesting story in itself, and it involves Eileen Barker directly. There are two bitterly opposed narratives about what the APA did exactly when it rejected the DIMPAC report. The division is (and has always been) also between those who have access to a number of crucial documents on the incident (either because they were part of it or for other reasons), and those who read only some of the documents, but not all. Before 1998, most of those commenting on the controversy obviously were not familiar with the documents; most had obviously never read the DIMPAC report itself. For complicated legal reasons, it was only around 1998 that almost all of the documents became accessible (through, inter alia, the CESNUR website and a file accessible to the public in Turin’s CESNUR library). In the early 1980s, some US mental health professionals became controversial figures for their involvement as expert witnesses in court cases against new religious movements, during which they presented their anti-cult theories of brainwashing, mind control or ‘coercive persuasion’ as if they were generally accepted concepts within the scientific community. Devastating critiques of their theories had been offered by both psychologists (primarily Dick Anthony) and sociologists, none perhaps more effective and influential than Eileen Barker’s discussion of brainwashing in her 1984 book The Making of a Moonie. In the meantime, in 1983, the American Psychological Association had accepted Margaret Singer’s proposal to form a task force called DIMPAC. Margaret Singer was asked to chair DIMPAC and report to the APA’s Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP). Singer personally recruited most of the DIMPAC members. They included, among others, Louis J.West (1924–99, arguably the most extreme anti-cultist among US mental health professionals) and Michael D.Langone of the American Family Foundation.
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DIMPAC pursued its work for some years, while Singer and a few other professionals continued to appear as expert witnesses in court cases using their coercive persuasion and brainwashing theories. Dissatisfied with this continuing state of affairs, ‘on February 5, 1987, during its winter meeting, the APA Board of Directors voted for APA to participate in the [Molko] case as an amicus’ (American Psychological Association 1989:1). Molko was a case pending before the California Supreme Court, involving issues of brainwashing and coercive persuasion with respect to the Unification Church. On 10 February 1987, APA joined other parties in submitting a brief in the Molko case (the brief was also signed by about twenty individual scholars, including Eileen Barker). The brief stated that as applied to new religious movements by anti-cultists in the 1980s, the theory of coercive persuasion ‘is not accepted in the scientific community’ and that the relevant methodology ‘has been repudiated by the scientific community’ (American Psychological Association and others 1987b). It would be difficult to state a position more clearly than that, and the brief also implied that theories of mind control, in their standard 1980s anticult form, were uniformly regarded as ‘not accepted in the scientific community’, be they referred to as ‘brainwashing’, ‘mind control’, or—as Singer preferred, by borrowing (and at the same time re-defining) Schein’s term—‘coercive persuasion’. Singer, and a number of her friends, complained that it was inappropriate for APA to remain in the Molko case because in doing so it was anticipating a verdict not yet rendered. In fact, the DIMPAC task force had not yet submitted its final draft report to BSERP and the latter, on behalf of APA, had not yet decided whether to accept or reject it. Bearing these arguments in mind, therefore, ‘the Board of Directors [of APA], in the spring of 1987, reconsidered its prior decision to participate in the brief and voted, narrowly, to withdraw’ (American Psychological Association 1989:1). This means that ‘APA’s decision to withdraw from the case was based on procedural as distinct from substantive concerns. APA never rejected the brief on the ground that it was inaccurate in substance’ (ibid.: 2). When filing its 24 March 1987 motion to withdraw from the Molko case, APA cautioned that ‘by this action, APA does not mean to suggest endorsement of any views opposed to those set forth in the amicus brief’ (ibid.: 2; see American Psychological Association and others 1987a, 1987b). The Molko brief was only one of the documents presented in 1987 in which the APA declared that, as it was at the time applied to new religious move-ments by the anti-cult community, the theory of coercive persuasion was not scientific. In fact, although Singer later claimed that all drafts were still provisional and that she needed more time, by the end of 1986 the APA’s BSERP had submitted the latest draft of the DIMPAC report both to internal reviewers and to two outside academics, namely Jeffrey D.Fisher and Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. The latter was, and is, well known for his lack of sympathy towards ‘cults’. On 11 May 1987 BSERP released a Memorandum, on behalf of the APA (BSERP 1987), evaluating what it called the ‘Final Report of the Task Force’. The DIMPAC report was rejected because it ‘lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur’. The Memorandum contains five paragraphs plus enclosures, the latter including reviews by two BSERP members and two external experts. A version of the BSERP Memorandum was filed in different court cases, and was so widely circulated that, according to Singer herself, it could be regarded as having been ‘publicly distributed’ (Singer and Ofshe 1994:31, n. 110). This version includes the two
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external reviews. The two internal reviews were not part of the document as ‘publicly distributed’, although one, by Catherine Grady, was later filed in a court case. Grady concluded that the techniques that the task force alleged to be used by religious movements ‘are not defined and cannot be distinguished from methods used in advertising, elementary schools, main-line churches, AA and Weight Watchers’. References to ‘harm’, Grady wrote, were ‘extremely confused’: ‘It’s all unsubstantiated and unproved newspaper reports and unresolved court cases. It’s not evidence’, she said. External reviewer Jeffrey D.Fisher, of the University of Connecticut, wrote that the report was ‘unscientific in tone’, ‘biased in nature’ and ‘sometimes…characterized by the use of deceptive, indirect techniques of persuasion and control—the very thing it is investigating’. ‘At times, the reasoning seems flawed to the point of being almost ridiculous.’ The historical part on ‘cults’, Fisher wrote, ‘reads more like hysterical ramblings than a scientific task force report’. DIMPAC criticised the use by scholars of the phrase ‘new religious movements’, and insisted that ‘cults’ should be used. Fisher commented that this was ‘some of the most polemical, ridiculous reasoning I’ve ever seen anywhere, much less in the context of an A.P.A. technical report’. Since Singer had contested the other experts from the point of view of their bias in favour of ‘cults’, Beit-Hallahmi’s review was particularly important. Although Singer later stated that ‘upon information and belief, Beit-Hallahmi had at the time established an academic reputation of being protective of the type of coercive psychological cults whose abuses DIMPAC had been charged with investigating’ (Singer and Ofshe 1994:29, n. 105), Beit-Hallahmi is in fact a leading member of the ‘anti-cult’ academic camp. Paradoxically, he still maintains today that there was indeed in the 1980s and 1990s a ‘cult apologist’ conspiracy aimed at protecting controversial movements and blacklisting cult critics (Beit-Hallahmi 2001): if there had been, he should have been himself a prominent co-conspirator. In fact, the Beit-Hallahmi review, dated 18 February 1987, asked: What exactly are deceptive and indirect techniques of persuasion and control? I don’t think that psychologists know much about techniques of persuasion and control, either direct or indirect, either deceptive or honest. We just don’t know, and we should admit it. Lacking psychological theory, the [DIMPAC] report resorts to sensationalism in the style of certain tabloids. Beit-Hallahmi’s verdict was clear: The term “brainwashing” is not a recognized theoretical concept, and is just a sensationalist “explanation” more suitable to “cultists” and revival preachers. It should not be used by psychologists, since it does not explain anything.’ Thus, for the second time following the Molko brief, the APA stated in 1987 that brainwashing or coercive persuasion theories, as then applied by the anti-cult movement to new religious movements, were not scientific. To state that a report ‘lacks scientific rigor’ is tantamount to saying that it is not scientific, and to state that brainwashing ‘is not a recognized theoretical concept’ but, rather, ‘a sensationalist “explanation” more suitable to “cultists” and revival preachers’ is even worse. It simply would not do to claim that the APA’s BSERP rejected only the DIMPAC report, in particular, and not the brainwashing
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and mind control theories as applied to new religious movements, in general. The DIMPAC report was a faithful and comprehensive representation of the brainwashing and mind control theories as applied by the anti-cult faction to new religious movements. It would also not do to state that BSERP unfairly evaluated a provisional draft of the report. Correspondence from 1986–7 shows that the text was the ‘final draft of the report, minus the reference list’ (Thomas 1986). In all fairness, at least in my own personal opinion, the DIMPAC report also included some interesting sections, particularly those on the history of what scholars of the New Age have called seminar religion or culture (and which DIMPAC prefers to call ‘large group awareness training’, or LGAT). Its main thrust, however, was the standard anti-cult idea that cults are different from genuine religions, and that they should be referred to as ‘cults’ rather than ‘new religions’ or ‘new religious movements’. To use the latter terms would result in ‘an attitude of deviance deamplification towards extremist cults, and a tendency to gloss over critical differences between cultic and non-cultic groups’ (DIMPAC 1987:13). The term “cult” as employed henceforth in this report is intended to mean “totalist cults”’ (ibid.: 15). A ‘cult’ is defined by DIMPAC as a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive dedication or devotion to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative (i.e. deceptive and indirect) techniques of persuasion and control designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community. Unethically manipulative techniques include isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgement, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it, etc. (ibid.: 14) In short, ‘cults’ are likely ‘to exhibit three elements to varying degrees: (1) excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment by members to the identity and leadership of the group; (2) exploitative manipulation of members, and (3) harm or the danger of harm’ (ibid.: 14). Cults are not distinguished from religions ‘for their professed beliefs’ but ‘by their actual practices’ (ibid.: 14–15). As Singer herself admitted, the rejection of the DIMPAC report was ‘described by the APA as a rejection of the scientific validity of the theory of coercive persuasion’ as applied by anti-cultists to religious movements (Singer and Ofshe 1994:31, n. 110), inter alia in subsequent court cases. This rejection (and Dick Anthony’s well-drafted submissions to the court) played a crucial role in the Fishman case of 1990, a landmark federal court decision in which testimony about mind control was not admitted in a case involving the Church of Scientology. Fishman included a careful review of the whole controversy, and accepted critical claims that anti-cultists were, in fact, and contrary to what they claimed, misquoting and misusing Robert Jay Lifton’s theories of communist thought reform (for crucial differences between the anti-cult mind control theory and both Lifton’s thought reform model and Schein’s original theory of coercive persuasion, see Anthony 1986, and Introvigne 2002).
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The fourth paragraph of the 11 May 1987 Memorandum goes on to state that ‘BSERP does not believe that we have sufficient information available to guide us in taking a position on this issue’ (BSERP 1987). What, we may ask, is ‘this issue’? Sentences should be interpreted within the context of whole documents, and documents include enclosures. Surely, the issue on which the APA’s BSERP was not ‘taking a position’ could not be the DIMPAC report, because the aim of the whole document was precisely to take a clear stand on the report. Nor could it be the coercive persuasion or brainwashing theory as applied to new religious movements by anti-cultists in the 1980s, since it formed both the very content of the DIMPAC report and the subject matter of the external reviewers’ wrath presented in the enclosures. When one reads the enclosures and considers the whole controversy, it becomes clear that the issue not resolved by the 1987 Memorandum is the much larger issue of totalism and unethical persuasion processes, a problem not exclusive to the field of new religious movements or ‘cults’. Unethical behaviour and false representation may occur quite independently of any brainwashing, coercive persuasion or mind control practices, both in religion and in psychotherapy. Beit-Hallahmi’s review, for instance, stated that psychotherapy as it is practised most of the time (private practice) is likely to lead to immoral behavior… I have no sympathy for Rev. Moon, Rajneesh, or Scientology, but I think that psychologists will be doing the public a greater favor by cleaning their own act, before they pick on various strange religions. (BSERP, 1987) More generally, the Memorandum clearly did not wish to take a position on theories of coercive persuasion in general as presented by Robert Jay Lifton (1989 [1961]), Edgar Schein (Schein et al. 1961), and others. These theories, however, are different from the standard cult brainwashing theory prevailing in anti-cult circles in the 1980s. The latter was the subject matter of the DIMPAC report, on which the APA was able to reach unambiguously negative conclusions.
Conspiracy theories Readers of the APA documents have been misled by a statement in the APA Memorandum of 11 May 1987, i.e. that ‘the Board appreciates the difficulty in producing a report in this complex and controversial area, and…thanks the members of the Task Force for their efforts’. This statement only shows that, perhaps unlike some involved in later controversies, the members of the APA’s BSERP were familiar with the most elementary rules of courtesy. Singer, however, was not over-enthusiastic about this courtesy. In fact, she filed (and lost) two subsequent lawsuits against APA and other bodies, as well as a number of individual scholars, accusing them all of having organised the whole incident ‘fraudulently, intentionally, falsely, and/or in reckless disregard for the truth, with intent to deceive and in furtherance of the Conspiracy’ (Singer and Ofshe 1994:30, n. 107). Singer claimed that the APA and the leading scholars were all part of a ‘Conspiracy’ (always written by Singer with a capital C). The aim of the ‘Conspiracy’
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was apparently to discredit brainwashing and mind control theories in order to protect some of the more controversial new religious movements (which, Singer alleged, probably financed the whole operation anyway). The APA never repudiated its 1987 actions, however, not even in the face of lawsuits filed later by Singer, when it would have been tempting to settle by repudiating its earlier actions. Instead, the APA vehemently denied the accusation that its actions of 1987 had been illegitimate, and indeed spent a significant amount of money in legal fees defending its legitimacy. Conspiracy theories nonetheless warrant a passing reference here, because they have been revived, after many years, within the context of brainwashing references in the new European cult wars (see Richardson and Introvigne 2001a), in almost the same terms, and quoting the same documents. Singer in particular (Singer and Ofshe 1994:70, n. 217) offered, as evidence of the conspiracy, documents about meetings conducted in New York between 10 and 12 December 1989 with representatives of the Unification Church and three sociologists. One of the sociologists concerned, Jeffrey K.Hadden (1936–2003), later wrote a detailed memorandum dated 20 December 1989, posted on the Internet in the 1990s both in its original form and in incorrect, altered versions as ‘the Hadden Memorandum’. For anti-cult conspiracy theorists, the document is the smoking gun indicating that prominent social scientists were indeed attempting to suppress Singer’s theories by conspiring with ‘cults’ and their attorneys. In the Memorandum, Hadden wrote that: Eileen Barker, David Bromley and I met in New York on December 10– 12 to consider further the issues we discussed at our October meeting in Salt Lake City. While in New York we met with the following individuals: Perry London (Dean of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University); Mark [sic: for Marc] Galanter (Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at the NYU School of Medicine); Eric Lieberman (attorney who has been involved in a number of NRM cases); Dean Kelley (National Council of Churches) and John Biermans, David Hager, and Hugh Spurgen (Unification Church). (Hadden 1989:1) What the sociologists discussed was the possibility of further researching issues of persuasion and control; of making the scholarly criticism of the anti-cult brainwashing theory better known to US media and courts; and of considering the possibility of ‘an American equivalent of INFORM’. In the six-page Memorandum, just a few lines are devoted to the meeting with officers of the Unification Church, where possible co-operation was both discussed and regarded as unlikely: Our meetings with the members of the Unification Church confirmed our earlier impressions that while they may assent to the value of a long range strategy for dealing with the anti-cultist [sic] and their forensic
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consultants, their response is very substantially confined to ad hoc responses to crises. I pressed them on the question of whether it might be possible for the UC in collaboration with several other NRMs to raise a significant amount of money that could go—no strings attached—to an independent group, which in turn, would entertain proposals and fund research on NRMs. While the three of us were not of one mind regarding the desirability of such a development, we agree that this is unlikely to materialize for several reasons. First, the NRMs are primarily interested in projects that will be of immediate benefit to them. Second, it seems unlikely that persons such as John Biermans, who clearly are interested in and appreciate social science research, are prepared to deal with the intraorganizational politics of supporting research that they can’t control Third, we conclude from these conversations, as well as others, that there is not a high level of communication and cooperation among NRMs. (Hadden 1989:3–4) What the Memorandum reports is that in the meeting the theoretical possibility was discussed of new religious movements such as the Unification Church funding projects of social research without ‘strings attached’, with the understanding that this would remain ‘independent’ research ‘that they can’t control’. Although such funding by mainline churches and other institutions (including, of course, the anti-cult associations) is quite common, ‘the three of us [sociologists] were not of one mind regarding the desirability of such a development’ (with marginal notes on the original version of the Memorandum explaining that Eileen Barker was particularly against any funding from the movements); and all ‘agree[d] that this is unlikely to materialize for several reasons’. The reasons explained in the Hadden Memorandum appear quite obvious in light of the general policy of the Unification Church and other similar movements. In her court cases, Singer in fact invoked the Hadden Memorandum, but consistently failed to prove that anything came from these contacts, or that the Unification Church in fact subsidised or financed subsequent activities carried out by these scholars in the United States or anywhere else. Note, also, that the New York meetings were held, and the Memorandum written, two years after the APA’s rejection of Singer’s DIMPAC report. The conspiracy theory, thus, has repeatedly been found wanting in court. On 9 August 1993 the United States District Court, S.D. of New York, dismissed the federal case brought by Singer and anti-cult sociologist Richard Ofshe against the APA, the American Sociological Association and a number of scholars, finding no conspiracy and no ‘racket’ (as Singer had alleged). Anti-racketeering statutes, the plaintiffs were told, ‘can have no role in sanctioning conduct motivated by academic and legal differences’ (United States District Court, S.D. of New York 1993). Singer and Richard Ofshe then turned to Californian state law and produced a huge writ of summons which may be regarded as the true ‘bible’ on the Conspiracy (Singer and Ofshe 1994). Once again, Singer lost and had to pay the defendants’ legal costs. Judge James R. Lambden ruled on 17 June 1994 that: ‘Plaintiffs have not presented sufficient evidence to establish any reasonable probability of success on any cause of action’ (Superior Court of the State of California in and for the County of Alameda 1994; see also Richardson 1996). Ironically, seven
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years after the collapse of Singer’s court cases, the anti-cult scholar who tried to revive the dead horse of the Hadden Memorandum argument was the same Benjamin BeitHallahmi (2001:45–7) who had been accused by Singer of being among the conspirators ‘protective of…coercive psychological cults’ (Singer and Ofshe 1994:29, n. 105). Those who occasionally like to revive the spectre of the Great Cult Apologists ‘Conspiracy’ would do well to listen to District Judge McKenna’s counsel in the federal case. Their ‘best remedy’, he said, remains not with bizarre conspiracy theories ‘but in continuing to maintain that their theories are sound within appropriate scientific and legal fora’ (United States District Court, S.D. of New York 1993).
8 Satanic abuse Lessons from a controversy Jean La Fontaine From 1987 to 1992 allegations that children were being abused and sacrificed in rituals of devil worship spread like a rash1 through Britain. The claims followed similar phenomena in the United States a few years earlier. Allegations, although fewer, also surfaced in other parts of the (mainly English-speaking) world.2 The details of what was alleged to have happened and the identity of the accused varied, but a clear common pattern made it reasonable to consider them all as forming part of the same social phenomenon. In particular, in no case was material evidence or independent corroboration brought to support the charge; the existence of the satanic rituals was only a matter of allegations.3 The allegations concerned secret rituals, described as devil worship, satanism or witchcraft, whose features, although variable in form, included: animal and human sacrifice; the rape and murder of children; cannibalism; the ingestion of faeces and urine; incest; and other perverse behaviour that outrages public morality. Although the initial scare seems to have been triggered by adults who claimed to be recalling their own early experiences,4 the victims were children who were said to have told adults of their involvement. The perpetrators were alleged to be witches or devil worshippers; as the scare developed, the term ‘satanists’ came to be used as a general term for these unknown evil-doers.5 In England the parents were usually included among them, but in the United States it was more often parents who were the accusers and the perpetrators were those who had care of children in nurseries and kindergartens. The rituals came to be called ritual or satanic abuse, by analogy with the physical and sexual abuse of children that had been publicly revealed in earlier years. This label was applied as both description and explanation of extreme and unusual features of children’s behaviour, thus including many disparate elements under the one term and adding to the tally of cases. The whole phenomenon has been called ‘the satanism scare’ (Richardson et al. 1991), the label I adopt here. The full, international, extent of the scare developed over twenty years and included Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland and Germany and, though later and in a different manner, France. ‘Experts’ in the cases travelled about the world, and international conferences enlarged the audience for national or even local allegations. The scare largely affected countries in which English is either the national language or is in wide use as a second language; all contained a sizeable Protestant community even if Protestantism was not the national religion. The Mediterranean countries and the non-Christian world were, seemingly, unaffected by the scare. Africa was not free from witch-hunting at this time, but the allegations there took a very different course. Through most of the twentieth century, Christian missionaries had
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labelled beliefs in witches as pagan and had endeavoured to eradicate them, but although many traditional pagan religious practices fell into disuse, beliefs in the power of witchcraft remained strong. In recent years, suspicions that individuals were practising witchcraft have resulted in the violent deaths of many people, who have been openly attacked and killed. Others who were accused have been given sanctuary by the police or by Christian organisations; they exist in limbo, unable to return home. Southern and eastern Africa countries in particular have been the scene of much of this witch-hunting (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Auslander 1993), some of which resembles the killings of witches that occurred all over Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Ralushai 1996) more than the allegations that are the subject of this chapter. Unlike the cases that made up the satanism scare, these violent African witch-hunts have left ample material evidence, not least the bodies of the victims, and there are eyewitness accounts of the events. They were not part of secret magical rites6 or the worship of an evil god. The deaths were the results of accusations of evil-doing against the victims, rather than celebrations of evil by the living. They differ from the early modern European witch-hunts, first in that these deaths were not the carrying out of sentences handed out in trials. The killings were spontaneous, angry and public actions, taken by lynch mobs. Second, in South Africa contemporary fugitives from such lynch mobs have been able to find protection without their protectors being attacked as well. In modem Africa the authorities are not behind the hunt and there is also a section of society that dissents and is strong enough to be able to do so publicly. There have been witch-finding movements or hunts in Africa before the present popular upheavals. These have been documented by anthropologists in East, Central and West Africa (Richards 1935; Morton-Williams 1956; Willis 1968, 1970) and there is evidence that, at least in some areas, they could be considered endemic, occurring periodically and then dying down (Douglas 1963; Goody 1957). Like the satanism scare of the late twentieth century, they were only loosely organised around leading figures whose possession of secret knowledge was the key to their position. Traditional village rulers were said to have been unable to withstand invitations from the witch-finders to clear the country of witches, so that disbelief, if any, was not voiced. Unlike the beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery that anthropologists studied as part of the culture of a single society, these witch-finding cults might cross cultural boundaries, adapting themselves to local custom, although they do not appear to have had the geographical spread of either the European witch-hunts or the satanism scare. Rather, they seem to have been limited to an area of cultural similarities. The witch-hunts in early modern Europe spread across a region which, although divided politically, shared many cultural features besides Christianity; historians have argued that it should be considered a single phenomenon (Ankerloo and Henningsen 1990:9). The widest extent of the satanism scare seems to reflect an even more extended cultural zone, in which the shared traits indicate an AngloAmerican sphere of influence. The satanism scare was not violent although it did arouse powerful emotions, and public demonstrations against those who were accused occurred in some places. There was a concerted campaign to make the appropriate authorities, the police and the government take action rather than any incitement to direct attacks on the satanists. Those who were made sceptical by the lack of supporting material evidence or eye-witness accounts7 were seen as, at best, betraying the victims by their lack of support or, at worst,
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as satanists themselves. A position of neutrality was almost impossible to maintain; only ignorance justified it, and this exposed the ignorant to vigorous canvassing. But, ten years later, the topic rates only an occasional mention in the more lurid tabloids8 and it seems useful to look back on the scare for any lessons that hindsight may have to offer. It is particularly appropriate that I should do so in the context of this book because it was Eileen Barker who set me on the path to studying satanic abuse.9 I offer Eileen this chapter in admiration of her ability to remain objective, rational and sceptical in the midst of controversy, an example to me in similar circumstances. I shall consider what light this controversy shed on religion, beliefs in witchcraft and notions of evil at the end of the twentieth century and, more briefly what special problems research on a controversial issue faced then.
Academic assumptions The satanism scare raised some interesting problems in the study of religion. The allegations challenged a fundamental assumption about post-industrial society made by social scientists and historians: that its members no longer entertained beliefs in magic and witchcraft. In 1963 the editors of a book of essays on witchcraft by anthropologists stated: ‘Most Europeans no longer hold these ideas [of witchcraft and sorcery]’ (Middleton and Winter 1963:1) The first analyst of the satanism scare in Britain considers the most important influence in its creation there to have been fiction, the novels of Dennis Wheatley (Jenkins 1992:155). Anthropologists may base claims for their discipline’s value on its ability to understand and explain beliefs, such as witchcraft, that Westerners do not share and to whom they appear irrational. Like most other members of their society, anthropologists are aware that, in the past, Europeans believed in witchcraft and magic. These beliefs were thought to have been rejected or to have lapsed with the rise of science and the spread of rationality. Historians like Trevor-Roper and Thomas have argued that the Enlightenment ushered in a revolution in thinking that ended the witch craze. The end of the witch-hunts was thus equated with the abandonment of beliefs in witchcraft, or with the spread of scientific thinking at the expense of medieval superstition. There was, moreover, implicit support for this view in the origins of social theory, ideas from which lingered on among intellectuals despite having been rejected by subsequent research. In such thinking, magic, religion and science occurred at different points on an evolutionary process that all societies went through and that culminated in Western civilisation.10 For most evolutionists, beliefs in magic or witchcraft in a society showing a developed religion represented survivals from the past. Despite the explicit rejection of evolutionism as a social theory, comparisons between twentieth-century Africa and early modern Europe recall the idea that the present of some societies is equivalent to the past of our own. Later theories about the secularisation of European society and the salience of rationality, deriving from Max Weber and other sociologists of the first part of the twentieth century, continued to support a sharp contrast between those who believed in witchcraft and those who did not, and suggest a historical progression from one to the other. Belief in witchcraft and magic was contrasted with religion as ‘mere superstition’; missionaries in Africa taught their converts that to believe in
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witchcraft was to lapse into pagan ways. Christians, they claimed, did not believe in witches or witchcraft. The outbreak of allegations about the recurrence of witches’ sabbaths in late twentieth-century Western societies caused some consternation among holders of such a view, particularly some of my African friends. The idea that beliefs in witchcraft had been abandoned in Europe while Christianity remained the established religion implied that they were distinct from religion and could be separately rejected, in the same way that social evolutionists regarded beliefs in witchcraft and magic as representing a different stage of evolution and their coexistence as a transitory phase. Apart from the discrediting of social evolutionism there are two good reasons to reject this view. First, anthropologists who have worked in many different parts of the world agree that what may be labelled ‘religious’ in any cosmology is not independent from a whole range of other ideas about the world and about human beings. Witchcraft is a set of ideas representing an image of human evil and its relation to events in the world and is an integral part of social morality. The image of the witch (sometimes referred to as the night-witch because, as the inverse of normality, the witch is usually nocturnal) is loaded with the most extreme sins (murder, incest, cannibalism) and is a symbol of all that is anti-social and wicked. Real people are accused of practising witchcraft but rarely of being witches. The satanist is a similar personification of evil. They too are rather shadowy figures, the unseen controllers of the human beings who are accused. In addition, the work of historians of the early modern period in Europe now shows quite clearly the connection between the Christianity of the period and particular witch beliefs. They describe two distinct forms of belief in witchcraft: folk, magic as practised in the villages, was concerned with counteracting all sorts of affliction believed to be caused by witchcraft, while the learned (among them members of the clergy) used Ritual or High Magic to explore and harness the hidden forces of nature. The church originally accepted the latter practice, despite the fact that it might harness demons to increase its powers, and ignored the folk beliefs in magical healers, makers of protective charms and other practitioners. It was the theologians who elaborated the idea of a pact with the Devil that made heretics his servants and worshippers (Cohn 1975; Munchembled 1990:140). It was their claim that all witches drew their power from such a pact that linked theology with folk beliefs and let loose the witch-hunts on the peasants (Rowland 1990:179–80). The beliefs behind the witch-hunts were thus constructed and disseminated by the Christian elite and formed part of the Christian beliefs of the times. Associating witchcraft with paganism resembled the early modern church’s manner of demonising heretics, and the same idea, of a secret conspiratorial cult,11 was perpetuated in the antiSemitic myth about the Passover as a cannibal feast.12 The idea of the witch and witchcraft’s association with the Devil constructed a picture of evil, the nightmare of a secret cult and its manifestation in secret rituals. The image has persisted long after the witch-hunts were over. Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, people suspected of being witches might occasionally be attacked and even murdered (Ward n.d.). But it was the successor of the elite, Christian idea of the witch rather than the folk notions of magical practitioners that fuelled the satanism scare. With the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the mid-twentieth century, the emphasis on the fight against evil incarnate became much more pronounced among Protestants. Confessions by converts to the more extreme churches have long contained references to
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witchcraft, and to worshipping Satan in witches’ sabbaths, as epitomising the evil of their former lives.13 While, of course, no Christian would worship the Devil, they believed in his power, and although they would not practise witchcraft they believed that those in Satan’s power might do so. Thus the Christian view was that other—evil—people believed in and practised witchcraft, or worshipped the Devil.14 This notion, combined with a powerful opposition to all new and alternative religions, made fundamentalist Christianity, not surprisingly, a significant driving force behind the satanism scare, as most observers agree (Jenkins 1992; La Fontaine 1994). This fact entails a revision of our understandings of religion in England at the end of the twentieth century, because the scare made clear that beliefs in the existence of devil worship and witchcraft are still part of the cosmology of some Christian churches. We have few data on what most people think or believe about the Devil, or about witchcraft and magic in Western societies today. Studies of religious beliefs rarely encompass these unofficial, folk ideas.15 An example of the influence of the ancient image of the witches’ sabbath on popular ideas was to be seen in the reporting of a particular case of sexual abuse of children. The convicted perpetrator, a young man, had first befriended the single mother of two little girls. He then lured them into the abuse by promising to teach them to be witches so that they could fly to pop concerts with their favourite pop stars. The first girls were used to recruit others, and in all over a dozen children were abused by him. The case was regularly reported in the press as a ‘witches’ coven’ or ‘magic circle’, and the activities described as though they were rituals in which all the girls participated. In fact the ‘magic’ was invented by the perpetrator of the abuse; there were no joint activities involving them all, and many girls did not know that others had been involved or who they were. Magic figures in children’s stories of all sorts, and even young children are fascinated by magic and by witches. Paedophiles know this. My research data included several cases in which magical rituals or promises to teach magic were used by an abuser to attract children. Only in one of them was there evidence that the rituals were of any significance to the man who instigated them except as a means to entrap the children. Except for this one rather doubtful case, in which the man finally declared himself to be Lucifer, there were no serious followers of any occult religion, let alone satanists, among the perpetrators of abuse. They were using the ideas of magic and witchcraft merely as lures. Since witchcraft and satanism represent the epitome of evil to those who believe in their existence, some popular notions of evil in England collected by an anthropologist (Pocock 1985) shortly before the satanism scare are relevant to our understanding of it. Christians used ‘evil’ as denoting attachment to the Devil as the quintessence of evil, but otherwise the term was associated with inexplicability. The majority view of evil was that it referred to certain actions that were deemed so immoral as to be inexplicable in terms of human motivation, or indeed in any other terms. The nature of the acts themselves precluded any explanation and this justified the use of the term ‘evil’. Any attempt to explain them was seen ‘at best as misguided and at worse as participating in the very evil that, by explaining, it appeared to extenuate’ (Pocock 1985:51). Evil people were regarded in some ways as monsters and could not be credited with any characteristic that might be thought admirable in a ‘normal’ human being. The addition of claims that such people perpetrate their evil acts during satanic rituals obviously poses few problems of acceptance to the majority. While Christians are
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prepared to believe in the existence of Satan-worshippers or witches because of their belief in a personalised figure of evil, the Devil, non-Christians exhibit a similar personalised image of evil but attribute it to the inhuman nature of the person committing the act, rather than to the Devil. The idea that religion had been superseded by a scientific rationalism found some support. Among a minority, whom one can call ‘rationalists’, the term ‘evil’ was too strong to be used where ‘we do not know all the circumstances’. They too viewed evil in terms of inexplicability, but considered that even where the act concerned seemed one that would be universally condemned in moral terms, an explanation of behaviour might still be possible (Pocock 1985:50). It might only be specialised knowledge that permitted explanation, not the common knowledge of everyday human experience, but any explanation would render condemnation as evil inappropriate; some extreme rationalists held that in the future all behaviour would be explicable in scientific terms. These are clearly people disposed to be sceptical of allegations of devil worship. Believers in satanic abuse resembled the ‘majority’ among Pocock’s discussants of evil. As many of these were Christians, including the first person to publicise the satanic abuse threat, Maureen Davies, and some were even clergy, we can conclude that late twentieth-century Christianity might still personalise beliefs in evil as witchcraft and devil worship. However, belief in the existence of satanic abuse was not confined to the Christian Church. Some of those who believed that satanic abuse did occur denied vigorously and publicly that they were Christian. Their non-Christian status as Jewish atheists or socialist non-believers was presented as a guarantee that they were not swayed by Christian beliefs. They did not, they asserted, believe in witchcraft or satanism themselves. Like many Africans, these believers in the existence of satanism claimed that it was others who believed in and worshipped the Devil. The views of these secular campaigners were barely distinguishable from those of the Christians. I do not think they were deliberately hiding their membership of Christian churches, although some of them probably were, but their expressed views indicated that Christian ideas on the nature of evil and its manifestation are part of British culture, regardless of an individual’s religious affiliation. In rejecting explanations of what seemed to have occurred, they too appeared to think that to explain was to condone and that seeking explanations of satanic abuse permitted it to flourish. They were thus not rationalists.
Experience and belief Christianity, as a transcultural and proselytising religion, has an attitude to individual adherents different from that of local religions where religion is an expression of the community. In societies that are Christian by tradition, religion is considered a matter of individual belief and adherence to a church. This attitude, of course, underlay the disavowal of Christian belief as well; it accounted for the assertion that those who were not Christian were free of Christian dogma. The arguments deployed in support of the allegations of satanism, whether Christian or not, rested on the same idea of a society in which individuals choose for themselves what to believe. Where the existence of satanism was concerned, faith was not considered to lack reasoned foundations. There were a number of different arguments but all made the
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acceptance of the allegations a matter of faith rather than the consequence of available proof. For Christians, of course, belief was deemed to be a consequence of faith in God. For non-Christians belief also rested on authority, but one that inhered in individuals by virtue of either their status or their condition. This approach is by no means confined to believers in satanic abuse; it is widespread in society, and is particularly clear in advertising. The argument from status might take one or more of three forms. First, the social status of individual believers was advanced as a reason for believing what they said. It was argued that social workers were trained to understand disturbed children; they had read Freud and so were aware of the advisability of recognising symbolic rather than literal statements. Ministers of religion, police officers and psychiatrists were people of integrity and of standing in the community and deserved to be believed. Christians believed lying to be sinful and could therefore be trusted to tell the truth, even if as religious persons they did believe in the Devil and his worshippers. On the other hand, those who were not Christian could not be accused of being predisposed to find Satan’s influence everywhere, so if they believed these allegations, they could be accepted as literally and factually true. The authority of psychiatrists, psychologists and others whose patients, whether adults or children, were said to be reporting satanic abuse was a particularly powerful guarantor of the truth of the allegations. Mulhern has traced the development by the therapeutic profession in the United States of a clinical diagnosis that is indissolubly linked with satanic abuse and which received official recognition in the United States (Mulhern 1991). As she points out, the medical associations of the therapeutic professions, their apparent scientific status together with their experience as clinicians combined to spread belief in the phenomenon (1991:162). Her view received subsequent confirmation in the way that my critics used my lack of clinical experience to try to invalidate my research. Such evidence as was offered by therapists for the reality of allegations showed their understanding of evidence to be fundamentally flawed (Mulhern 1991:153–4). Rather, it was their belief that acted as a filter, concealing the ways in which their clinical methods created the symptoms they perceived in their patients. Their reference to ‘evidence’ was misleading; the basis of belief was faith, not reason. In addition, the personal qualities of children, the innocence of the supposed victims, was also asserted as a guarantee of the validity of what they were alleged to be saying. They could not make up the dreadful stories they were telling; such horrors were too far out of children’s experiences to be recounted in their stories. Hence, if children were speaking of murder, cannibalism and blood-drinking, of child-abuse and incest, they must be describing actual experiences. Suggestions that children might have been influenced by video nasties, horror films or television, or by their interlocutors, were attacked as attempts to deny children a voice. Children were recounting their real experiences; children do not lie, it was argued. In the United States an organisation supporting believers called itself Believe the Children.16 Arguments of a different kind were used to support the claim that children must be believed. It was stated that the discovery of the physical abuse of children and, later, of the occurrence of sexual abuse, showed that when children disclosed ill treatment what they said was true. It was the adults who had not wished to believe them who claimed they were lying. This argument represented satanic abuse as merely the latest and more
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appalling discovery about the sufferings of children. With a public conditioned to accept more and more revelations about the ill treatment of children, this was effective. The argument ignored the much earlier uncovering of both physical and sexual abuse at the end of the nineteenth century, in order to paint a dramatic picture of successive revelations; it suggested that failure to believe in the reality of satanic abuse was a betrayal of suffering innocents, like the failure to believe in the reality of incest or babybattering. It was the fact that children were victims that was claimed in support of belief, not any evidence corroborating their stories. The fact that many of these cases did produce evidence to show that the children had been sexually abused, although no evidence to show it had happened in satanic rituals, was not considered relevant. It was the identity of the victims that guaranteed the truth of the allegations. Finally, and this is the argument still most commonly strongly urged, the stories told by adults about their own abuse in childhood were considered to place the weight of personal experience behind the allegations. These were adults who believed they had undergone the same horrors as the children and were prepared to talk about it with the support of their counsellors and therapists or others who supported them. (In some cases the therapists talked for them.) They were referred to as ‘survivors’ and might be likened to survivors of the Holocaust; Valerie Sinason prefaced her introduction to her book on treating survivors of satanic abuse with a quotation from Bruno Bettelheim’s work on Holocaust victims, and explained later in it (1994:5) that her use of the term ‘survivor’ was not metaphorical. I have already mentioned that the satanism scare was triggered in the United States by such accounts; over twenty years later, the idea of satanic abuse is kept alive by these ‘survivors’ and their therapists.17 Those who supported survivors or were involved in the cases concerning young children often felt themselves to be in danger (see Youngson 1994:295). I was told a number of stories that demonstrated the mysterious powers of the satanists, who might enter locked houses without leaving a trace of forced entry or kill pets by mysterious means. I presented my research plans to a meeting of RAINS, the chief professional organisation of believers at that time, and some members did not come to the meeting because they were afraid of what might happen if they met me. Throughout the scare a common assumption was that the forces of evil were so powerfully dangerous that confronting them was hazardous and thus required great courage.18 The willingness of believers to risk harm for their beliefs was a further guarantee of their credibility. The arguments of believers provide excellent examples of what Gellner (1992) has dissected as the rivals of reason. His description of their stance could serve as a summary of the last paragraphs: ‘The phenomenon, or the mediating individual or the occasion or the force itself is claimed to be unique and to possess a kind of sacredness and special quality that would be sullied by a sceptical, unprejudicial enquiry’ (1992:61). Its legitimacy is, to use a Weberian term, charismatic. The last part of Gellner’s definition suggests a reason for the extraordinary hostility shown to my research and to that of others making ‘unprejudicial enquiry’ whether on religious subjects or the assumptions of psychotherapy. Research is impossible; there can only be belief or non-belief. To seek information is considered legitimate, and thus to begin with I had no difficulty gaining access to leading figures among believers or in attending their conferences. However, when this did not lead to acceptance of the dogmas of the movement, I was relabelled as hostile. My arguments and analysis were largely
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unconsidered in this categorisation; it was the failure to believe that was salient. By seeking to explain what should have been taken on trust, this absence of belief ‘sullied’ theirs by offering the possibility of doubt. Doubt is the essence of scientific enquiry, where it serves to stimulate the search for evidence, but it is inimical to faith. It is thus the absolute incompatibility of faith and reason that makes explanation a threat.
Notes 1 Another term that has been used is ‘epidemic’, however, there have been objections to it for its implications that contact with a case was the cause of others. Here I use the term ‘rash’ to avoid this. 2 Our survey recorded 84 cases reported as having occurred between 1991 and 1998 in which such features were suspected to have been present. More may have existed that were not reported to the survey of such cases that I undertook in conjunction with a team from Manchester University (La Fontaine 1994; Gallagher et al. 1996). 3 There were convictions in the US on the basis of these allegations alone (see Nathan and Snedeker 1995). In what follows, ‘victim’, ‘perpetrator’ and ‘survivor’ must be understood to be labels applied by the allegations and not proven. The context indicates where a conviction has verified the allegation. 4 See Michelle Remembers (Pazder and Smith 1980); Satan’s Underground (Stratford 1988) and other similar works. 5 This was largely in response to public protests from Wiccans who call their (modern) religion witchcraft and who objected to being linked either with Satan or with the rituals described. See La Fontaine 1997, ch. 3. 6 There have also been documented cases in southern Africa of killing in order to obtain parts of the body to use in powerful magic (Ralusbai 1996). The bodies of the victims have been discovered but the perpetrators remain unidentified. The torso of an unidentified boy, found at the edge of the River Thames in 2001, has been tentatively assumed to be a similar case. While all these cases involve magical practices, they do not involve satanists or a satanic religion. 7 In a phrase made famous by a British national newspaper, there were ‘no bodies, no bones, no blood…nothing’ (R.Waterhouse, The Independent on Sunday, 12 August 1990). 8 Although recently a book on the issue reached the verge of publication, only to be withdrawn before publication. (See my review in the Evening Standard, 11 October 2001). 9 By suggesting I attend a seminar in Cardiff at which one of the most famous British cases, that of Nottingham, was first described. The Department of Health subsequently funded two years’ research, from 1992 to 1994, and I am most grateful for their support. I collaborated in a survey with a research team from Manchester, of whom the main researcher was Bernard Gallagher. However, the views expressed here are mine alone. 10 The order in which these were placed varied according to individuals, but for most of them magic was a more rudimentary belief than religion. 11 See Norman Cohn’s demonstration of the long-standing myth in Europe of a hostile conspiracy that predated Christianity in Europe’s Inner Demons (Cohn 1975). 12 A social worker at a seminar where I presented my research told us that almost every year at Passover she had to bear jokes about Christian babies being murdered to provide the Passover meal. 13 Doreen Irvine (1973) is a good English example. 14 This was partly in response to vigorous protest from the neo-pagans, who spent a good deal of effort in publicising the distinction between satanism and Wicca (the modern name for witchcraft) and neo-paganism.
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15 Several authors offer examples. Probably the best-known in England is Tate, Children for the Devil (1991), which was withdrawn after a libel suit. 16 This organisation tried to discredit me with the university authorities when I was invited to read a paper at a campus of the Ohio University. Their letters were such that the organiser of the conference declined to show me them. 17 Valerie Sinason told me (e-mail, 6 April 2002) that she had based her research on 51 patients who were survivors. This research has not yet been published as far as I know. The role of self-confessed witches in the European witch-hunts, which is not often discussed, is referred to in my Speak of the Devil (La Fontaine 1997:31–2, 134–5). 18 Mulhern (1991:164) points to a similar phenomenon in the USA.
9 The countercult monitoring movement in historical perspective J.Gordon Melton While scholars have focused an increasing amount of attention on the secular cult awareness movement (currently represented by the American Family Foundation), the Christian part of popular opposition to new religions, while continuing to grow, has attracted significantly less interest (Melton 1986; Introvigne 1995; Melton 2000; Barker 2002). In light of the ups and downs of the cult awareness movement, the steady expansion of the Christian countercult movement becomes ever more important for its obvious success in bolstering public concern with and generally negative attitude towards groups labelled as cults (Cowan 2003). Far older and larger than their secular counterpart, the countercult ministries have also produced far more literature on new religions (Tolbert and Pement 1996). Though it has not been as visible in the cult wars—in either the formulating of proposed legislation against cults or participating in court cases—the countercult movement has nevertheless mobilised a large constituency opposed to the further spread of religious pluralism, especially in the United States. The cult awareness movement is the more secular aspect of the mobilised force opposing the new and alternative religious movements that have arisen in the last generation. The cult awareness movement has attempted to build a programme based upon what it sees as destructive behaviour common to such groups rather than their beliefs. For countercult groups (CCGs), just the opposite is true. They have opposed the new religions because they depart from or disagree with the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, as spelled out, for example, in the traditional creedal statements of the church. As Eileen Barker (one of the few scholars to pay attention to the countercult movement) noted recently, when discussing new religions CCGs tend to ‘concentrate on “wrong” beliefs, rather than on those beliefs that they have in common, and frequently rely on an interpretation of Holy Scripture to demonstrate the error of the movement’s theology’. She also correctly observes that ‘Members of CCGs are likely to include clergy, theologians, some former members who have converted to the new faith, and others, who are committed to the theological position shared by that particular group’ (Barker 2002:129). The development of countercult ministries in the United States into a national movement was largely the result of the work of Walter R.Martin, a Baptist minister, who devoted his career to warning Evangelical church groups about the dangers of heretical groups and who, directly or indirectly, trained and inspired most of the present leaders of the movement. Any history of the countercult effort can be rightly divided into three major periods—before Martin, Martin’s ministry, and post-Martin developments.
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This paper primarily concerns itself with the American countercult movement. Religious interest in cults developed somewhat differently in Europe and even in Canada. However, as CCGs emerged in the United States, an equivalent movement also appeared in other predominantly Protestant countries. In Europe, it was focused in England’s Dei Gloria Trust and Denmark’s Dialog Centre. Because of different church-state laws, in countries such as Germany, the line between the Christian countercult movement and the secular cult awareness movement was considerably blurred. In Russia and Greece, countercult efforts are spearheaded by the Orthodox Church. Barker has noted that the appearance and strength of the CCGs is directly related to the level of secularisation and pluralism in a given cultural setting: the ‘more monolithically religious a state, the less demand there is for CCGs’ (Barker 2001:137). Thus, such groups are playing a significant role in post-communist societies in Eastern Europe.
The beginnings of countercult concerns The countercult movement is generally traced to 1917 and the publication of Timely Warnings (Irvine 1917) by William C.Irvine (1906–64). A popular text, it was frequently reprinted over the next generation, under its later title, Heresies Exposed (1973). It should, however, be seen as a transitional volume, moving as it did between the nineteenth-century efforts to oppose the new sectarian movements that fell outside orthodox Christianity and the development of a view that a group of ‘cults’ existed that threatened Christianity (Jenkins 2001). Beginning in the 1830s and throughout the nineteenth century, attempts arose to oppose the new ‘heresies’ that were seen to be developing in America (Spiritualism, Christian Science, and Adventism). The attack on Mormonism was by far the most vigorously pursued—after all, the Mormons came first, were relatively successful, and by their actions provided a number of fronts against which to launch an assault. Immediately upon publication, the Book of Mormon was reviewed negatively by Alexander Campbell (1788–1866), who challenged the volume from a variety of perspectives that are still echoed in writings to the present. Campbell concluded that the Book of Mormon was a very modern book, addressing the variety of issues before the public in New York in the 1820s, and not the translation of any ancient texts (Campbell 1832). The number of anti-Mormon books grew steadily decade by decade through the nineteenth century, including some fifty-six anti-Mormon novels, and was a constant topic in religious periodicals. While the Mormon tendency to vote as a bloc, to claim hegemony over Western land claimed by the United States government, and to practise polygamy gave reasons for broad-based secular condemnation, religious leaders took the lead in criticising Mormon religious teachings and their deviation from the Bible. Other churches had been quick to move into the Mormon settlement of Nauvoo as soon as it was abandoned, and into Salt Lake City as soon as possible after it was opened to nonMormon settlement by the federal government. During the last half of the nineteenth century, several specifically Christian anti-Mormon organisations began to operate in the eastern part of the United States. Anti-Mormonism became a popular ministry among Protestant bodies and to this day provides the major item upon which Evangelical countercultists apply themselves.
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Almost half of the 400 countercult ministries are concerned exclusively with Mormonism, the only rival for attention being Jehovah’s Witnesses, like the Mormons relatively successful both in the United States and abroad (Tolbert and Pement 1996). Both groups are involved in high-pressure evangelism efforts that include knocking on doors throughout North America (Peterson and Ricks 1992). Thus, throughout the nineteenth century, Christian refutation of a spectrum of heresies developed, though rare was the book (or author) that would tackle multiple heresies (Barrington 1898), and overwhelmingly ministries and publications were exclusively focused upon a single false teaching. By the end of the century, one could compile a large library of books refuting different groups (the list of which continued to grow), including more established groups such as Roman Catholicism and Unitarianism. Of course, the great new heresy as the twentieth century began was modernism, the movement behind modern liberal Protestantism. Thus it was inevitable that, sooner or later, someone such as Irvine would reach the conclusion that a more coordinated approach to the growing pluralism should manifest. Timely Warnings was unique in that it attempted to catalogue all of the current heresies and offer a refutation of each. The author, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, was strongly identified with the emerging fundamentalist movement, and modernism received priority coverage. It was also the case that at the time most of the variant teachings still retained some claim on the Christian heritage, however much they diverged from the orthodox theological tradition. Mormonism added a new revelation, Christian Science poured new meaning into old symbols, and Unitarianism merely discarded a few of what it considered outdated Christian doctrines. Even Spiritualism, which most departed from the tradition, attempted to picture itself as a biblical faith by drawing on accounts of human intercourse with spiritual entities from the spirits of the deceased to angels in the biblical record. Thus, critiques of the new groups could easily focus upon how each group deviated from the orthodox standards. Fundamentalism saw itself as defending the essentials of the faith especially against those who would claim the name ‘Christian’ but deny traditional affirmations such as the Trinity or the Virgin birth. In the free atmosphere of twentieth-century America, heresies abounded, and following Irvine, other fundamentalist writers would take up the cause and produce additional books, some concentrating on a specific heresy (Swain 1917; Snowden 1920; Stoddart 1919; Kinney 1912), and others providing information on a spectrum of groups (Atkins 1923; Ferguson 1929). These latter books set the stage for what became for the next generation the most influential countercult text, The Chaos of Cults (1938) by Christian Reformed minister Jan Karel Van Baalen (1890–1968). Van Baalen had emerged as a young minister of note during a period of intense conflict within the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). In the years after World War II, at the very time fundamentalism was becoming a national movement, the CRC conducted four heresy trials, each of which led to the condemnation of the teachings of those under the spotlight. In one 1924 case, the doctrine at issue was what was termed ‘common grace’. The CRC generally held, and in 1924 adopted a formal statement to affirm, that humans possessed a common grace that ‘without renewing the heart, so influences human beings that, though incapable of doing any saving good, they are able to do civil good’. Van Baalen authored several pamphlets arguing for the common grace position, as opposed to those who held that grace was only for the elect (Hanko 1988).
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When he finally turned to the subject of cults, he produced a volume noteworthy for his encounter with the various groups under discussion. He had obviously gathered and read a wide variety of available literature from each group (and secondary sources where available) and attempted to present a clear picture of the group’s history and belief. He also suggested that each group had an appeal due to their lifting up a single truth (i.e. Christian teaching), which had been neglected in the present. Spiritualism had, for example, called attention to the existence of a spirit world and life after death. He then turned to the more important task at hand, the refutation of each group in the light of its different teachings. Assuming the authority of the Bible and the correctness of the church’s creeds, how did each group deviate? Given the orthodox definition of the nature of Christianity, were these groups Christian? In each case, he concluded that they were not. Insight into the nature of Van Baalen’s position is seen in his consideration of Roman Catholicism, which he thought about adding to his list of cults but in the end decided against. While he believed many of the positions taken by the church in the twentieth century (for example, the veneration of the Virgin Mary) to be wrong, he also concluded that the church continued to hold to essential orthodox doctrines. The Chaos of the Cults would go through numerous reprints and at least three major revisions, and would lead to the production of a second volume summarising its contents. It would be in place as the fundamentalist-modernist controversy ended in the 1930s with the withdrawal of many theological conservatives from the larger denominations and the setting up of a number of fundamentalist denominations. By the end of the decade, the fundamentalist community had been divided into three camps. First, a number of the fundamentalists remained in their positions within the larger denominations. Second, among those who separated were those who insisted that no contact should continue with those who remained within the modernist apostate denomination. Third, a far larger group who had left the denominations refused to break fellowship with conservatives who chose to remain in the older denominations and attempted to make common cause with them. During the 1930s, this third group would become the core around which a new perspective would arise—Evangelicalism (Van Baalen 1938, 1944). The separatist fundamentalists found a champion in radio preacher Carl McIntire (1906–2001). A dynamic person, he mobilised the separatists into the American Council of Christian Churches and the International Council of Christian Churches. The third group, however, united with their colleagues within the older denominations and went about creating a new future for their cause. Of immediate need was a ministerial training centre, and their answer was Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. In contrast to the separatists, largely content with holding the fort, the Evangelicals took an outward-looking position that would, without giving away the essentials of the faith as they saw it, be theologically creative and operate in a dialogue with the modern fastchanging intellectual world and its culture (Ellinsen 1988). By engaging the world, they hoped to be an influence in transforming it. Given its nature, having started from some agreement theologically with the fundamentalists but eschewing their ultraseparatism, and at the same time withdrawing from the ‘liberal’ denominations while keeping close relationships with those conservatives who chose to remain, the Evangelicals sensed a need to draw even stronger boundaries to their community than Christianity in general. The perceived need for boundary maintenance for Evangelicals as the community consolidated its gains in the
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1950s set the stage for the emergence of Walter R.Martin and a new level of concern for cults. For just as the movement strove to define itself over against the larger realities of fundamentalism and modernism, so Martin posed an equally important threat, the smaller but growing attraction of people to groups that looked Christian but which, on closer examination, denied the essentials of the faith in ways not unlike that of the modernists. It is easiest to see the countercult movement as it emerged in the 1950s as a boundary maintenance movement that found its dynamic in the Evangelical movement’s attempt to define itself as an orthodox Christian movement while rejecting its imitators and rivals. Though not perceived as an important issue by Evangelical intellectuals, cults were becoming a matter of primary concern for pastors and local church lay leaders who daily confronted the reality of America’s growing pluralism. As with the academic study of new religions, studying and writing about cults was seen as a somewhat fringe activity by the leading voices of the Evangelical community, who rarely acknowledged the problem until the cult controversies of the early 1970s attracted some attention.
The career of Walter Martin Walter Ralston Martin (1928–89) emerged in the 1950s following his ordination by the separatist fundamentalist General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC). There is every reason to believe that his move into the Evangelical camp was occasioned by his being defrocked by the Regular Baptists in 1955 and his subsequent move to association with the liberal American Baptist Convention and later the Southern Baptist Convention (in the Evangelical camp). The same year he left the GARBC, he published his first book, The Rise of the Cults: An Introductory Guide to the Non-Christian Cults. Readers of it and the subsequent volumes, The Christian and the Cults (1956), The Christian Science Myth (1956), Jehovah of the Watchtower (1959), The Truth about Seventh-day Adventists (1960) and The Maze of Mormonism (1962), had little interest in his denominational affiliations. In 1960 he founded an independent ministry, the Christian Research Institute (CRI), to house his work on cults. In essence he had carved out a unique ministry and there was little competition. The only other person writing on so broad a scope about cults was William Whalen, a Roman Catholic journalist (Whalen 1963). Martin expanded into radio, a medium that has been good to Evangelicals in general. By the time Martin published his more comprehensive volume, The Kingdom of the Cults (1965), he had become the titular leader of a small but growing movement of Evangelicals interested both in establishing the boundaries between Christian orthodoxy and the various unorthodox and non-Christian options that were becoming more well known in the culture, and in launching efforts to convert members of such groups to Evangelicalism. The Kingdom of the Cults was an immediate hit and would go through numerous printings and editions over the rest of Martin’s life. Through CRI and the Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, California, where he briefly taught, he would draw young people (many of whom had formerly been members of these various groups) and inspire them to begin work similar to what he had pioneered. Martin’s ministry took off in the 1970s as ‘cults’ became a high-profile issue in the larger society. In 1974, he moved from New Jersey to California and reorganised CRI,
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which began functioning as an informal activity out of his study and the home of Bob and Gretchen Passantino, its first employees. Over the next decades Martin emerged as the patriarch of a burgeoning popular movement built around literally hundreds of small organisations/ministries devoted to evangelising members of the growing spectrum of new religions. While most of these remained focused on Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, several of the new organisations, such as the Spiritual Counterfeits Project based in Berkeley, California, also attempted to handle the broad gamut of religions that came from Asia after 1965. The ‘popular’ nature of the countercult movement cannot be overemphasised. Martin, in spite of assuming the title of ‘Dr’, was no scholar; his writings were popular religious polemics and his discussions of the various groups about which he wrote were journalistic at best. However, through the 1970s he was rarely criticised. In like measure, the people drawn to the task he had placed before his Evangelical colleagues were also, with few exceptions, not scholars. Many were former members of the groups Martin criticised, some of whom had college degrees, some not even that. Almost none had a seminary degree. While, individually, the possession of a relevant academic degree may or may not contribute to their work, as a whole the lack of theological training by people who assumed leadership roles in the movement contributed to its shallowness and poor comprehension of the religions’ systems it attempted to confront, while at the same time angering many in the various movements who felt that the countercult movement completely misrepresented them. Martin himself was best when writing about Christian groups that had adopted one of the classical heretical positions (such as Arianism) that clearly deviated in its understanding of God and/or compromised the deity of Christ. In these cases, Martin trod well-worn paths of Christian theological debate. He showed the limitations of his knowledge of non-Christian religions in his 1980 book (coedited with his protégée Gretchen Passantino), largely built on the testimony of former members of the new religions, The New Cults (Martin and Passantino 1980). This volume is replete with errors in every chapter. While most of the groups that CRI and its sister organisations attacked paid little attention to him, through the 1980s a few groups launched a counterattack. Possibly the most important group reaction to Martin and countercult attacks in general was made by the Local Church. Gretchen Passantino and her husband Robert had initially attacked the Local Church in the 1970s, their work anticipating part of a growing body of anti-Local Church literature that would in the mid- 1980s become the centre of a set of legal actions against several countercult organisations. After winning a multimillion-dollar suit against Spiritual Counterfeits, the Local Church turned its attention to Martin and CRI. However, the major problem to confront Martin in the last few years of his career was a stinging attack upon his credibility by two members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1986, Robert L. and Rosemary Brown, who at the beginning of the decade had taken it upon themselves to answer a spectrum of Mormon critics, published the third volume of their most interesting series, They Lie in Wait to Deceive. Much of this volume was dedicated to their research on Martin, in which they concluded that he had consistently misrepresented himself over the years by claiming an array of credentials he never possessed. The Browns offered a number of additional criticisms, however, the exposure of Martin’s lack of academic credentials proved the most
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important and has been the subject of several attempted defences of him by CRI and exCRI personnel.1 Martin passed on in 1989; while embattled in the last years of his life, he nevertheless, was, for Evangelicals at least, the ‘World’s leading authority on Cults’, as one of his last books noted on the cover (Martin 1989). He left behind what he must have seen as a vibrant movement. One symbol of the vitality of the countercult movement was the formation of a co-operative asso-ciation of countercult ministries, Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR), formed in 1982. Originally, most of the larger countercult organisation and its few intellectual lights, like Gordon R.Lewis, Ron Enroth and Douglas Groothuis, were actively involved. It is interesting to note, however, that through the 1990s, as it has attempted to raise the academic standards of the movement, it has at the same time declined in influence.2 Any attempt to raise academic standards threatens many of the movement’s most established leaders whose current roles would be severely diminished by the advent of a new generation of formally trained personnel.3 Their position seems secure for the moment, however, as only a small number of Evangelical scholars have shown any inclination to devote their career to mastering both the scholarly literature and the flood of publications by the new religions, that would be required if they were to assume the direction of the movement in the future.
The contemporary countercult movement Through the 1980s and 1990s, the countercult movement existed as an element in the Evangelical world. It was focused in a handful of larger organisations that were responsible for most of its literature and hundreds of small ministries that distributed the literature and engaged in the apologetic role of defending Evangelicals from the perceived assault of cults attempting to lure Evangelicals into their fold. Ministries concentrated on presentations to Christian groups warning them of the dangers of cults and direct confrontations with new religions, either witnessing to members or picketing events. Its role in shaping Evangelical thought, at least at the local church level, is clearly indicated by the shelves of books produced by the movement that can be found in any Christian bookstore. Its fringe nature can be seen in the lack of interest shown in the countercult movement by those who have written about Evangelicals otherwise; they rarely, if at all, mention it, and countercult concerns are under-represented in the curricula of Evangelical schools. While existing as somewhat of a subculture on the fringe of the Evangelical establishment, the countercult movement has itself been further shaped by a series of controversies, some of which represent the differences of approach by some more extreme conspiratorial and/or fundamentalist writers such as Constance Cumbey and Texe Marrs. However, the very centre of the movement has been rent by controversy which has served to divide it into a set of warring camps, some involving bitter personal attacks on countercult spokespersons, which has consumed measurable portions of the movement’s energy. The first important controversy to shake the movement concerned the Local Church, a group that originated in mainland China with roots in the Plymouth Brethren movement. It was at first accepted into the Evangelical fold, but in the mid-1970s countercult writers
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charged the Local Church with heresy. The early literature generated a war of words, with the Local Church defending its orthodoxy and its leader, Witness Lee, issuing an array of statements affirming his allegiance to traditional orthodox standards. At the same time, the Local Church’s ecclesiology led it to adopt a separatist stance and its vigorous evangelism programme attracted primarily Christians from other churches. The church found itself in competition for members with groups such as Campus Crusade for Christ at colleges and universities. The tension level was heightened in 1977 when Neil Duddy, of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, authored The God-Men, a booklength attack on the Local Church. The book not only attacked the Local Church’s beliefs, but also painted the Local Church as a sinister organisation led by a corrupt leader. A revised edition published by InterVarsity Press appeared in 1981. After some months of attempted negotiation to have the book withdrawn, the Local Church filed a libel suit. At the last minute, SCP withdrew from the court proceeding, complaining of no resources to continue their defence. Nevertheless, the case proceeded and a multimilliondollar judgment was rendered, forcing the organisation into bankruptcy. They were able to pay a portion of the judgment and later reorganised and continue to exist. However, they were never again the influential organisation they had become in the movement prior to the suit. A later controversy was generated by sociologist Ron Enroth, who had emerged at the end of the 1970s as one of the movement’s leading spokespersons. He was also a minority voice in the movement, being one of the few at the time who attempted to keep his feet in both the cult awareness and the countercult camps while seeking ways to reconcile their very different, if equally antagonistic, approaches to new religions. Enroth’s early books appeared as brainwashing emerged to theoretically justify deprogramming (the forceful confinement of a member of a new religion with the intent of forcing them to renounce their faith). Martin and Passantino had spoken for the majority of countercultists in the 1980s: Amidst the controversy concerning the psychological bondage of some of these cults has arisen the practice called ‘deprogramming’. Many wellmeaning Christians and non-Christians have actually kidnapped adult cult members and have subjected them to the endless hours of ‘counterbrainwashing’ to convince them to leave their cult. I cannot stand behind such practices. It is true that cultists have been blinded by the ‘god of this age’, but it is also true that they have the right to make up their own minds, and we should not stoop to unchristian tactics to accomplish God’s ends. (Martin and Passantino 1980:2–3) In contrast, in Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults (1977) and The Lure of Cults (1979) Enroth had plainly demonstrated his sympathy with the secular anti-cult position, and psychologist Margaret Singer, the person most identified with the brainwashing hypothesis, wrote a dust-jacket endorsement for his 1992 Churches that Abuse. The problem came two years later when he penned the sequel, Recovering from Churches that Abuse, which included an attack on Jesus People USA (JPUSA), one of the surviving Jesus People communes from the early 1970s, which had subsequently affiliated with the Evangelical Covenant Church.
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The chapter on JPUSA, based on stories elicited from former members who had rejected its communal lifestyle, fractured the countercult community. While Enroth had been one of the founders of EMNR, two JPUSA members, Jon Trott and Eric Pement, had become leading figures in the countercult world. Pement was a major contributor to EMNR’s statement on ethical and doctrinal standards, and JPUSA’s periodical, Cornerstone, was a media force to be reckoned with after it produced several important expose articles on hoaxes in the Evangelical movement. JPUSA felt betrayed by Enroth’s attack, and in the months and years that followed, leaders of the countercult community lined up on either side (and the controversy has been perpetuated in recent years by the posting of many of the articles and letters of the time on the Internet). The Enroth/JPUSA controversy might have had even more effect had it not been for the single most acrimonious problem within the movement, the critique directed at Martin’s successor at CRI, Hank Hanegraaff. Hanegraaff emerged suddenly in 1990 as the unexpected new head of CRI. He assumed Martin’s mantle as the ‘Bible Answer Man’ (from his radio show) and through the 1990s wrote voluminously, including two prominent books, Christianity in Crisis (1993) and Counterfeit Revival (1997), the second title drawing sharp criticism for its reputed errors (Beverley 1997). However, by the time Hanegraaff and Beverley squared off, Hanegraaff was already enmeshed in employee trouble. In the early years of Hanegraaff’s leadership of CRI, employees began to leave. Then in 1994, Brad Sparks filed a lawsuit charging that Hanegraaff had used his position with CRI to further profit-making activities that allowed him to pocket considerable sums (hundreds of thousands of dollars) that rightly should have gone into the ministry’s coffers. As Hanegraaff focused on Sparks’ suit, other employees surfaced as the Group for CRI Accountability, demanding a meeting to air their grievances. Rebuffed, they have kept their charges alive on an Internet site, ‘On the Edge’.4 In the midst of the continuing controversy, Elliott Miller, who had been on the board of the Evangelical Ministries to New Religions for many years, abruptly resigned. Many attributed his leaving to CRI’s inability to abide by EMNR’s Manual of Ethical and Doctrinal Standards. Then, as the new century began, Martin’s widow Darlene and his daughter Jill Martin Rische challenged Hanegraaff’s legitimacy as head of CRI. They claimed that he was not Martin’s handpicked successor, merely a good businessman who had used his abilities to gain the necessary control of the board, after which he had forced Darlene to leave. The Martin family recently formed ‘Walter Martin’s InfoNet’, a Web-based countercult ministry that continues the polemic against Hanegraaff. They have received broad support within the countercult movement, especially from the former CRI employees. In response, Hanegraaff has denied the Martins’ charges, which were subsequently answered at length by CRI staffer John Stoffel. Meanwhile, Hanegraaff remains in firm control of CRI and its expansive broadcast ministry—by far the largest countercult organisation, though now alienated from many of the movement’s leaders.5 He has received his strongest support from Martin’s former associate, Gretchen Passantino, who now leads Answers in Action, her own countercult ministry. Meanwhile, Walter Martin’s Religious InfoNet has become a member of EMNR.
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Conclusion Countercult efforts—opposition to new religious movements that reject orthodox Christianity—have been around for more than 150 years. They proliferated in the late nineteenth century concurrently with public controversies concerning Mormon polygamy and Christian Science healing, but declined somewhat during the post-World War I fundamentalist—modernist controversy. However, as that controversy matured, a renewed interest in alternatives to Christianity developed that flowered in the work of Walter R.Martin, beginning in the mid-1950s. In the half-century since Martin began calling attention to the growing alternatives, the countercult movement has emerged as a significant force in shaping the attitudes within the larger Evangelical community, now a distinct worldwide Christian community over against liberal Protestantism (represented by those churches associated with the World Council of Churches) on the one hand and Roman Catholicism on the other. The countercult movement’s growth during the last two decades has paralleled the growth of interest in the ever-burgeoning religious pluralism in North America. In the meantime, Evangelical intellectuals have recognised the changed situation in America. From a previous focus on what was perceived as a rising secularism, they have shifted their attention to the growing religious competition from Eastern, non-Orthodox Christian, and Western Esoteric groups. This area had been left to the various countercult spokespersons, some of whom have developed a significant following through their many books, the Internet and radio and television shows. It remains to be seen whether the Evangelical schools and denominational administrators will attempt to reclaim this area as one needful of attention along with the array of traditional concerns with theology, biblical studies, missiology, etc. Should this happen, the countercult movement can expect some changes as further review and assessment of its material occurs, and more thorough examinations by colleagues of its adequacy for the task ahead happen. Already, the heightened profile of the movement has produced a range of new assessments of it from within Evangelicalism, from the larger Christian world, and from secular commentators (Cowan 2003). In the meantime, the Evangelical Ministries to New Religions has issued a call to raise the standards of the movement’s scholarship and writing about the groups it criticises and to bring its ‘apologetics’ more in line with the intellectual currents that are guiding Evangelicalism in other areas, especially missiology.
Notes 1 For a quick summary of the Brown material see http://www.lightplanet.com/response/martin.htm. 2 As of 2002, EMNR includes as members only some thirty-five of the several hundred organisations. Noticeable by their lack of association are Christian Research Institute, Spiritual Counterfeits Project and the Ankerberg Theological Research Institute. Their disassociation from EMNR is not just about credentials and standards, however, but also reflects very real differences within the movement, some of which are discussed below.
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3 EMNR has issued a Manual on Ethical and Doctrinal Standards that was drafted by its Committee on Ethics and approved by its Board of Directors. It is posted at: http://www.emnr.org/manual.html. 4 The ‘On the Edge’ Internet site is at http://www.geocities.com/ote3/. 5 The controversy between Hanegraaff and the Martin family is detailed on the Walter Martin Religious InfoNet site at http://www.waltermartin.org/cri.html. Accessed 15 November 2002.
10 The making of a moral panic Religion and state in Singapore Michael Hill The genealogy of the moral panic concept can be traced to the labelling perspective, which emphasised the role of social control agents in amplifying, even creating, deviance. Jock Young’s original coining of the term ‘moral panic’ was adopted by Stan Cohen in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1973), a study of the conflicting youth cultures in 1960s Britain. While incorporating popular rumours of the type associated with urban legends, Cohen focuses especially on the role of the media and on what he called ‘the manufacture of news’. Since the first paragraph of Cohen’s book has been cited creedal-style in all subsequent discussions of moral panics, I will simply intone the first line, confidently assuming that readers can complete its recital: ‘Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic…’ (Cohen 1973:9). Of particular importance to Cohen’s account for the present chapter are three features of the ‘media inventory’ deployed in accounts of the panic. These he calls: (1) exaggeration and distortion: overestimating the numbers involved and exaggerating the seriousness of incidents reported, sometimes incorporating elements of urban legend; this component has provided ongoing debate over the issue of disproportionality (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994:36); (2) prediction: where the media imply that disruptive events in the past can be anticipated to recur, ‘that what had happened was inevitably going to happen again’ (Cohen 1973:38), justifying those in authority ‘nipping in the bud’ any perceived threats; (3) symbolisation: symbols, labels and iconic presentations are adopted which create images that are ‘sharper than reality’, creating ‘folk devils’, especially those to whom subversive motives can be attributed. As a result of these media processes and heightened public anxiety, there follows a stage of reaction and control when agents of social control are called on to manage the deviant group. This can sometimes leave a lasting trace in legislation, not always as an obvious sequel to the source of the panic: for example, in Britain after the James Bulger murder and trial in 1993, demands were made for controls to be tightened over violent videos despite the highly conjectural link between them and the actual murder (Thompson 1998:102–6). Two further aspects of Cohen’s account deserve brief emphasis. The first is the contribution of experts to a moral panic—the ‘socially accredited experts’ who, in his words, ‘pronounce their diagnoses and solutions’ (Cohen 1973:9). The role of experts, both in constructing and also in checking such episodes of moral concern, has been identified in a number of accounts. A further element typifying the contribution of moral crusades and moral entrepreneurs to moral panics is the idea of a set of traditional values which are under threat and in need of protection, evoking the notion of a ‘golden age’, sometimes as an ‘invented tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983).
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Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) have attempted to consolidate previous discussions of moral panics in a three-part typology of grassroots, interest-group and elite-engineered. Although they refer to these types as ‘theories’, and later as ‘models’, they are based primarily on the level or levels in the social structure at which a moral panic is initiated; in other words, moral panics may contain inputs from more than one level. In the grassroots model, moral panics originate with the population at large, arising from widespread and genuinely felt—if sometimes mistaken—concerns. It is out of such concerns that politicians and interest groups may make their own inputs to moral panics. Their second model, the interest-group source of moral panics, is located at an intermediate point in the social hierarchy and involves such groups as professional associations, police departments, the media and religious organisations in generating issues of intense moral concern. Though interest groups may genuinely believe that their efforts are in a good cause, their involvement almost inevitably advances the status, and frequently the material resources, of the group concerned. On occasion, material interests may have a major influence on interest-group claims-making. An example would be the involvement of psychiatrists like Margaret Singer in the ‘cult controversy’ of the 1970s promoting the psychiatric treatment of ‘cult’ members as a means of expanding psychiatric practice (Kilbourne and Richardson 1984:248). Goode and Ben-Yehuda define their third, elite-engineered model thus: The theory that moral panics are elite-engineered argues that an elite group deliberately and consciously undertakes a campaign to generate and sustain concern, fear, and panic on the part of the public over an issue that they recognize not to be terribly harmful to the society as a whole. Typically, this campaign is intended to divert attention away from the real problems in the society, whose solution would threaten or undermine the interests of the elite. (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994:135) This definition, together with the descriptor ‘engineered’, raises not only the issue of proportionality but in addition assumes a debatable element of manipulation and conspiracy on the part of the elite. Even when elite manipulation can be demonstrated as a factor in the origin of a moral panic, it may be unsuccessful in its goals, and some observers have suggested that with the proliferation of media and availability of alternative spokespersons it may be increasingly difficult for elites to engineer moral panics (McRobbie and Thornton 1995). It is more accurate to speak of elite-sponsored moral panics, leaving open as a matter for empirical investigation the extent to which they represent manipulated episodes. The process of elite ‘engineering’ cannot be regarded as fail-safe and there is always the possibility of a backfire (McRobbie and Thornton 1995:567). In addition, the successful engineering of a moral panic by an elite will depend on such factors as the coherence of the elite and the extent to which the media, through which information is channelled, are synchronised or pluralistic. The principal example of a moral panic originating with the elite presented by Goode and Ben-Yehuda is the study of media representations of ‘mugging’ by Hall et al. (1978), and they give it a somewhat restricted sphere of operation, noting that ‘the elite-engineered model does not
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seem to work for most moral panics’ (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994:142); indeed, they claim that such moral panics often fail to materialise or ‘simply fizzle out’ (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994:34). It will be a task of the present chapter to suggest that this model in the revised form of elite-sponsored moral panics deserves enhanced attention. Finally, Goode and Ben-Yehuda suggest that the three levels of moral panics should not be regarded as discrete categories because they frequently intersect. An example of such a conjunction can be found in the early modern witch-hunts. Henningsen sees episodes of witch-hunting as resulting from ‘the explosive amplification caused by a temporary syncretism of the witch beliefs of the common people [grassroots] with those of the more specialized or educated classes [elite]’ (Henningsen 1980:391). Larner has pointed out that elites often served an ‘educational’ role in the witch-hunts by informing and steering grassroots anxieties and strains which may be less distinctly articulated (Larner 1981:34). Into this process of elite-grassroots interaction may be interposed the activities of interests groups, also seeking on the basis of their claimed expertise to educate and direct the course of the moral panic, and in the case of the witch-hunts the Inquisition has been seen as occupying precisely such a role (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994:165). By examining the way in which these three levels interact a more richly textured account can be offered. The techniques of crisis orchestration and management as governance strategies have been noted by a number of observers and contribute to an understanding of elitesponsored moral panics. For instance, in the United States, the elite sponsorship of moral panics has frequently been seen as a form of diversionary politics. In his study of moral panics and the social construction of flag desecration, Welch identifies a clear strategy on the part of the political elite to ‘divert attention from substantive problems which elected officials have difficulty resolving’ (Welch 2000:124). A similar ‘politics of diversion’ has been shown in the elite’s construction of the ‘crime problem’ in the United States as a smoke screen incorporating false information behind which unpopular policies such as the Vietnam War could be pursued (Chambliss 1995:250). In such episodes the deployment of communitarian rhetoric—identifying malevolent groups who threaten the existence of the social collectivity—is part of the repertoire of elite-sponsored moral panics (Hawdon 2001:426–7). The elite-engineered (or as is preferred, -sponsored) model has had a somewhat mixed reception, partly because of its conspiratorial overtones, but mainly because, in a Western context of pluralistic competing media in which political elites often lack ideological coherence, such a concept appears overstated. Elites simply cannot rely on hegemonic control of the media to generate moral panic scenarios. However, the model might have more validity as a technique of governance and of policy steering in a global setting. Here, Singapore provides an excellent context for the analysis of crisis amplification and management because it has a highly coordinated political elite and a media which is closely synchronised with elite policy-making. In addition, the political elite in Singapore has a well-established practice of crisis orchestration and management as a strategy of governance. One paradoxical way of emphasising citizens’ dependence on the state is periodically to create ‘crises’ which serve to draw attention to the state’s key arbitrating role, and crisis management has become a central component of Singapore’s ideology of survival, which has formed a ‘cornerstone concept’ of nation-building since 1965 (Regnier
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1991:229–32). The ‘survival’ motif is periodically reiterated by senior government spokespersons as a means of underlining Singapore’s exposure to external threats. For example, in the aftermath of a 1997 debacle between Singapore and Malaysia the Sunday Times (11 May 1997) ran the headline ‘Singaporeans now more aware of vulnerability’ and reported that ‘One silver lining has emerged from the diplomatic cloud hanging over Singapore-Malaysian relations. Singaporeans now have a keener appreciation of the nation’s vulnerability and achievements’ (emphasis added). Most notably, there is a clear distinction between the ‘golden age’ scenario which is often embedded in the claims-making associated with moral panics in Western countries and the Singapore political elite’s fundamentally Hobbesian presentation of the country’s history in the 1950s and 1960s. As part of its emphasis on the ‘crisis’ and ‘survival’ motifs which are fundamental to the post-independence legitimation of the state, the government constantly reminds its citizens that the alternative to its firm control over significant sectors of their lives is a reversion to what is portrayed as the anarchy and violence of its early days, a veritable ‘state of nature’. This image is constantly reiterated, especially when there is a perceived need to remind the population—a growing proportion of whom have no personal recollection of the incidents that are rehearsed—of the dire consequences of disunity. Clammer in similar terms suggests that Singaporeans are left with ‘the feeling that there is a permanent sense of crisis’ (in Barr 2000:85). This model of crisis-driven development is one which has proved especially effective in consolidating the Singaporean state and economy. In support of his argument Barr itemises a series of such government-identified crises spanning two decades (Barr 2000:83–4). The role of the media in staging such crises has been examined by Birch (1993:74), who argues that while some countries may engage in building a myth of nationhood by means of a massive injection of ‘reality’, such as warfare, in Singapore discourses of crisis are staged through the media. In the remainder of this chapter the relations between religion and the state in Singapore in the 1980s will be explored using the model of elite-sponsored moral panic. A number of the core features of moral panics which have already been addressed appear prominently in the Singapore government’s conduct of crisis amplification and crisis management. These include: • The raising of spectres as a predictive device In alerting public consciousness to impending disruption, key events or persons (especially the latter) in the country’s history are identified, their status as folk devils is reaffirmed, and their enduring presence as threats to public order is stressed. • The state’s precariousness and vulnerability That the folk devils thus identified constitute a genuine danger is emphasised by reminders in the media of the state’s short history, its turbulent origins, and its weakness and vulnerability as an island state in a volatile region. • The pre-emptive strike/‘nipping in the bud’ In its constant vigilance over the protection of its citizens’ security, the government must anticipate such dangers and wherever possible prevent their
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occurrence by any means available: however draconian the latter may appear, they are necessary and legitimate. • Validation through expert discourse In order to demonstrate the source and extent of the crisis, research by university social scientists is commissioned, and the resulting reports are extensively covered in the media. • Consensus building Concurrent with the presentation of expert analysis there is a search for consensus—an agreement that a problem exists which needs to be addressed— among the leaders and representatives of groups deemed to be involved. • Legislative and policy outcomes Legislation to contain the problem is mooted on the basis of the expert analysis, consensus over its necessity is established, and the resulting legislation is enacted. The succession of episodes and responses which constitute the ‘crisis’ of religion in Singapore between 1986 and 1990 is offered here as a classic instance of an elitesponsored moral panic. The degree of precision which can be incorporated in the model owes much to the transparency with which the Singapore government presents its diagnoses of problems and consequential policy outcomes, with minimal recourse to diversionary politics. Crisis construction becomes a highly visible process when the elite not only formulates its agenda in a tightly co-ordinated manner but in addition has an effective channel of transmission to the population at large through communications media which are largely synchronised with its perceptions. The Singapore print media, which provide most of the empirical material for the second part of this paper, play a key role in articulating and expanding on the government’s course of action. And while the orchestrated hegemony of an elite-sponsored moral panic may be difficult to achieve in a Western environment of pluralistic competitive media, it will be shown that the print media in Singapore were able to accomplish a sustained and substantial task of crisis construction. It is to this task that the chapter now turns. An issue of recurring significance in Singapore since full independence in 1965 has been that of Malay ethnicity and religion, seen as a source of loyalties competing with the nation-state, and this became a particular focus of concern in late 1986 and early 1987. The occasion which sparked intense controversy in 1986 was the invitation of the Singaporean president to the president of Israel to visit Singapore. For a number of years Israel had provided military advisers who assisted in the training of the Singapore Armed Forces personnel, so there were practical relations between the two countries which justified a courtesy invitation. Full accounts of the events of 1986 have been given elsewhere (Leifer 1988), but of particular interest in the present context is the response to them in Malaysia and the Singapore government’s utilising of this response. In reaction to resurgent Islam within Malaysia, its Prime Minister, Mahathir, had adopted an anti-Zionist, even an anti-Jewish, stance, and his rhetoric was at its height at the time the Israeli Embassy in Singapore announced its president’s forthcoming visit. What was seen as a personal slight to Mahathir, coupled with a more general resentment in Malaysia of Singapore’s perceived hubris, led to a deeply hostile response in the Malaysian media. This included the suggestion that Singapore’s fresh-water supplies, piped across the Johor causeway, could be cut off. Of particular significance is the
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Singapore government’s use of such material as a mode of crisis production, because while Malaysian newspapers are not openly circulated in Singapore, the latter’s press for several weeks reported savagely critical statements from such newspapers, including the possibility of Singapore Airlines becoming the target of PLO-inspired acts of terrorism. Perceptively, a Malaysian newspaper noted that ‘it is important for Singapore leaders from time to time to frighten their people’ (quoted in Leifer 1988:348). As part of the process of defusing grassroots tensions in the aftermath of the Israeli president’s visit, in January 1987 consultation was embarked upon with a forum of Muslim and Malay organisations calling for greater government sensitivity towards Malay Singaporeans, coupled with more open and mature discussion. Almost immediately the Malay issue was reopened by government minister Lee Hsien Loong, who replied during a constituency tour to the question why there were no Malay pilots in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) in the following way: If there is a conflict, if the SAF is called upon to defend the homeland, we don’t want to put any of our soldiers in a difficult position where his emotions for the nation may come in conflict with his emotions for his religion, because these are two very strong fundamentals, and if they are not compatible, then they will be two very strong destructive forces in opposite directions. (Straits Times, 23 February 1987) The statement attracted considerable adverse comment in Malaysia, with one political representative accusing the PAP leadership of chauvinism (Straits Times [ST], 1 March 1987). The Singapore government’s response, which was delivered by Malay members of the PAP, was to view with grave concern interference by foreign—in this case Malaysian— politicians in Singapore’s internal affairs. Both the assiduous encouragement of the reporting of violently hostile foreign comment, as in the visit of the Israeli president, and the outraged dismissal of it, as in the SAF controversy, have the function of securing the legitimacy of the state; on the one hand by highlighting the external threat and the country’s vulnerability, and on the other by emphasising the government’s ability to act independently. Jasper has noted that ‘In some countries governments exert considerable control over the media… Their intervention allows governments to curb sensationalism and prevent moral panics, but it also allows them to incite them to their own advantage’ (Jasper 2001:10031). The ethnic dimension of the religious problem was further dramatised in June 1987 with the announcement that on 24 April four Malays had been arrested under the Internal Security Act (which permits the issuing of detention orders without trial for up to two years) for spreading rumours of impending racial clashes on or around 13 May—the anniversary of the 1969 racial riots in Malaysia and Singapore. The announcement of their arrest was delayed until 3 June to forestall disturbances on 13 May and because of other Muslim observances at the time (ST, 4 June 1987). In televised confessions, two of the four spoke of their involvement in both Malay martial arts groups and Islamic education. The report of the arrest provided an opportunity for the Straits Times to raise the spectres of three previous occasions of inter-ethnic and religious violence, which it
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did with the headline ‘Three tragic reminders’. It should be noted that Singapore’s English-language newspapers make particularly effective use of headlines and precisely bear out the comment of Hier that ‘news headlines serve the important function of summoning cultural representations and scripts about social phenomena, providing the general context within which social meaning is attributed to present-day occurrences and events’ (Hier 2002:6). The ‘three tragic reminders’ referred to were first of all a series of religious riots of 1950 which were occasioned by a legal wrangle over Maria Hertogh, the Eurasian child of Roman Catholic parents, who was either adopted or fostered by a Malayan woman and raised as a Muslim, then reclaimed by her natural father. This led to accusations of enforced Christian conversion of a Muslim and to ensuing riots in which eighteen people died (Maideen 1989). The Maria Hertogh case has become a symbolic marker in the Singapore state’s representa-tion of religious strife in its history and has been revisited on a number of occasions, especially as an instance of the destabilising potential of religious conversion. The second series of riots occurred in 1965, when Singapore was still part of the Federation of Malaysia, and began with a mass religious procession by Muslims which led to inter-communal violence between Chinese and Malays: thirty-six people were killed and 563 wounded. Then in 1969 racial riots in Malaysia, arising from election results which the indigenous Malays interpreted as a threat to their traditional position, spilled over into Singapore, with four dead and eighty wounded. In cataloguing these three historical episodes, the newspaper was framing the current incident within a broader scenario of civil disturbance, thus justifying pre-emptive action on the part of the security authorities. The alarm raised over the 1987 episode led to a series of consensus-building initiatives, and in response Christian-Muslim dialogue took place (ST, 9 July 1987). For its part, the government’s strategy was to warn about the dangers of mixing religion and politics, and in August the banning of four Muslim preachers was one of the topics alluded to by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew at the National Day rally (ST, 17 August 1987). In the following week the first deputy prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, publicly announced that the government was considering taking action on religion and minority issues (ST, 23 August 1987). After this initial crisis over religion and ethnicity, from the middle of 1987 the problem of religion was more sharply focused on the perceived links between Christianity and political subversion, with an accompanying focus on the destabilising impact of religious conversion. In what was to become an acute and protracted moral panic over religion the government identified a ‘Marxist conspiracy’ in May 1987: the label is one which was immediately attributed by the authorities to the persons and events involved, and it remains the one which is used officially, for instance in the index of Singapore parliamentary debates. Though there is not space to review the chronology of events in detail, a brief summary is necessary. On 21 May 1987, sixteen people were arrested under Singapore’s Internal Security Act on the grounds of their alleged connection with a clandestine communist network. It should be noted that in dealing with incidents of this kind the Singapore press does not qualify government-supplied information with terms such as ‘alleged’, and thus it privileges the state’s version as objective fact. Initially no details of age, sex or
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occupation of those arrested were given, only a list of their names (ST, 22 May 1987), and it was five days before a detailed account of the circumstances was provided. At that point the Home Affairs Ministry presented a fully constructed narrative of the case against those arrested within the framework of a ‘Marxist conspiracy’. The mastermind of this conspiracy was claimed to be Tan Wah Piow, a former student activist who had fled Singapore in 1976 after being convicted and sentenced to one year’s jail for unlawful assembly and rioting. An icon of Wah Piow appeared at the head of the newspaper account, and was to reappear in subsequent newspaper reporting of proceedings, thus emphasising the subversive nature of reported events under the leadership of this remote figure. The Ministry report contained a diagram showing an alleged network incorporating as its principal locally based organiser Vincent Cheng, a full-time Catholic lay worker. He was claimed to be coordinating a variety of organisations containing students and religious members, together with a Catholic Welfare Centre whose main activity was to run a refuge for Filipino maids. Other groups presented as being part of the network were the opposition Workers’ Party and a theatre group which presented plays focusing on satire and social comment. The Ministry report also laid considerable emphasis on the fact that the majority of those arrested were graduates and professionals, and left no doubt about the seriousness of the threat they posed: Singapore now has to contend with new hybrid pro-communist types who draw their ideological inspiration not only from Maoism and MarxistLeninism, but also from the ideas of contemporary militant leftists in the West. They augment traditional CPM (Communist Party of Malaya) tactics with new techniques and methods, using the Catholic church and religious organizations. This marks a new phase in the unceasing communist efforts to subvert the existing system of government and to seize power in Singapore. (ST, 27 May 1987) The news reporting followed the pattern specified by Cohen in relation to the ‘creation of news’ in a moral panic. Exaggeration and symbolisation were particularly rich in the initial presentation of the ‘Marxist conspiracy’ in the media. A battery of phrases was employed to establish the context within which events were to be interpreted: reports were replete with terms such as ‘conspiracy’, ‘plot’, ‘agitator’, ‘penetration and manipulation of groups’, ‘radicalising’, ‘mastermind’, ‘subversive’, ‘chaos’, ‘indoctrination’, ‘activists’ and ‘infiltration’ (ST, 27 May 1987). The headlines confirm the overall interpretation of reported events, signalling a ‘Red threat’ (ST, 27 May 1987). The component of prediction also featured in media representations, which raised the spectres of former folk devils who had attempted to stir up left-wing opposition (ST, 27 May 1987). The Home Affairs Ministry, which contains the Internal Security Department and which maintains ongoing surveillance over religious organisations, also reported Vincent Cheng’s disclosures that he had used the Catholic church for political ends. In addition, the issue was amplified by the elite and media into a critique of Liberation Theology, which was explicitly linked with the role of radical Catholicism in the
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Philippines in the 1986 ousting of President Marcos. The strategies adopted by Liberation Theology adherents were reported to range from open political activity to the formation of small groups and engagement in guerrilla war. At the same time the firm actions of the state were justified as examples of the ‘pre-emptive strike’, with the headline ‘Government acted to nip communist problem in the bud’ (ST, 2 June 1987). The protracted consequences of the discovery of the ‘Marxist conspiracy’ in 1987–8 included televised confessions by those arrested, disciplinary action against several priests by the Catholic archbishop, retractions of their confessions by several of those initially detained, and further televised retractions of the retractions. The state’s claim to be fragile and vulnerable to threats from communist agitators was part of its wider process of legitimation, and government spokespersons cited these reasons as grounds for its decisive response. The Hobbesian scenario was rehearsed under headlines such as ‘Network for chaos’, once again using icons of Tan and Cheng (ST, 30 June 1987). Though a range of agendas converged in the moral panic over the allegedly subversive potential of religion, a principal concern was to set boundaries around the permissible limits of religious activity. Already the attempt to set limits on the growth of civil society had led to friction with academics, the media and the legal profession, and these issues resurfaced during the ‘Marxist conspiracy’. One of the goals initially attributed to Tan Wah Piow was to set up a network in Singapore to prepare for his return after Lee Kuan Yew had ceded power to his successor, Goh Chok Tong (ST, 27 May 1987). Thus it was important for the new leadership to show that it was capable of the type of pre-emptive strike which had characterised Singapore’s first-generation leadership; indeed, the incoming prime minister was outspoken in hammering home this political message. In a speech to the National Trades Union Congress in 1988, for instance, he promised wage rises, but not without the political stability that was necessary to reassure investors in Singapore. If the political conspiracy somehow succeeded, he said, ‘you can kiss your wage increases for this year goodbye’. In this way the government exposed the tangible consequences of scenarios which might otherwise have seemed somewhat distant to the population at large. The identification of alleged subversion with a socially activist form of Catholicism provided the legitimation for the state to exert control over one other area of civil society. Much was made in the presentation of the conspiracy of the fact that those involved were English-educated professionals, with one headline announcing ‘Fight on to stop the communists from roping in English-educated’ (ST, 28 May 1988). It has been suggested that one source of the moral panic surrounding the ‘Marxist conspiracy’ was a fear on the part of the elite of the information-rich leading the information-poor into political activity (Birch 1993:81). Concern about the implications of increasing religious fundamentalism—principally Islamic and Christian—together with deep-seated fears about the disruptive potential of conversionism had been signalled by the government and potential action had been mooted. Thus, by the late 1980s the problem for the government had become one of containing religion within what it saw as legitimate parameters, and in August 1987 accredited experts—social scientists at the National University of Singapore (NUS)— were commissioned by the government to conduct research into religion and religious revivalism.
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One of the concerns behind the commissioning of the reports was a feeling among political leaders that the pace of social change in Singapore had outstripped the capacity of many people to make sense of their new surroundings. The concerns had been encapsulated in Prime Minister Lee’s Eve of National Day speech of August 1987, when he noted that religion had helped many Singaporeans to keep their bearings amid rapid change and social disruption, especially that caused by residential resettlement. He acknowledged the existence of stress and rootlessness in many people’s lives and argued that economic progress should be matched by moral and ethical advances. In the same month the NUS research team was commissioned by the Ministry of Community Development to carry out a study of religion and religious revivalism in Singapore, and specifically to examine the level of anomie among its population. A series of six reports was submitted (see Hill 2001:282–3) and three key ones were released to the press between February and April 1989. Their reporting in the press was substantial, with attention being drawn to the important influence wielded by Christians, together with the argument that religious trends needed ‘careful handling’ and a specific focus on evangelism and religious switching. Overall, the research findings showed a renewed vitality in Christianity and Islam, and they reported some concern among both political and religious leaders. Christians in particular were thought to have grown substantially in number, especially those belonging to charismatic churches, but there was also a significant growth in those professing ‘no religion’. While Islam was in a relatively stable state, there was evidence of a trend towards revivalism in Buddhism. Christian conversionist activity, however, was a particular focus of concern on the part of members of other religious groups, and given the adoption of Christianity by higher-status, English-educated Chinese the problem was seen to be one of continuing importance. Christians were seen to be exerting an influence, politically, socially and economically, far greater than the number they represented in the population. However, no evidence was found for a high level of anomie in Singaporean society. In April 1989 the possibility of legislation to preserve religious harmony was mooted (ST, 1 May 1989), and shortly afterwards it was reported that several religious leaders were in favour of laws ensuring religious harmony (ST, 10 May 1989). The process of consensus construction in the later stage of a moral panic is a feature observed in a number of comparative accounts, and it should be noted that one important function of the Singapore media is to report and construct consensus in relation to major policy issues. The sequence of events leading to the passing of the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (1991) will be summarised briefly, drawing attention to some of the significant features in the light of the framework adopted in this paper. In late December 1989, a White Paper on Religious Harmony was released (ST, 29 December 1989). The Internal Security Department had compiled a report—which was annexed to the White Paper—illustrating the problems caused by over-zealousness in religion, and this was fully reported in the media. Again, the theme of nipping problems in the bud was reiterated in the report. The White Paper’s stated intention was to demarcate between religious and political activity and the media provided evidence of broad acceptance by religious leaders of the need for legislation (ST, 11 January 1990). The Maintenance of Religious Harmony Bill was finally passed in November 1990 (ST, 10 November 1990).
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Its main provisions included the monitoring of religious matters and the prevention of religious organisations from being used for political purposes. In this chapter it has been shown how the state in Singapore has constructed a number of key myths, framed around the notion of the state’s precariousness, in order to legitimate government policies and to mobilise social action, especially with the goal of creating consensus. The concept of moral panic, previously deployed only in Western contexts, provides a valuable framework for understanding the dynamics of crisis amplification as a policy option. In characterising the crisis over religion in the late 1980s as an elite-sponsored moral panic, the chapter drew attention to the extensive deployment of media symbolisation, labelling and iconic presentations of the main ‘folk devils’ to highlight the amplification process. The co-ordination of government rhetoric in the developing scenario further intensified the pivotal focus on alleged subversion. Finally, given the tight bonding between the primary definers of the crisis, the political elite, and the secondary definers, the media, there was minimal slippage in the presentation and interpretation of messages.
Part III Religious freedom and empowerment
11 What’s happening in American church/state jurisprudence? Phillip E.Hammond
Introduction As a major scholar of new religious movements, Eileen Barker necessarily became involved in church/state issues. While this essay does not deal directly with new religious movements, it does take up a matter of concern to people interested in church and state. For an anthology designed to compare the Supreme Court under Earl Warren with the current Supreme Court, I was asked to write an essay on church/state cases. Though the anthology project got put on hold, my essay was published (Hammond 2001). The overall trend during that period has been in the direction of greater and greater separation of church and state, but there is an unmistakable slowing down in this trend after the Warren years. Moreover, there is evidence that, under Chief Justice Rehnquist, efforts exist that would reverse that trend. My essay concluded with a brief analysis of why the Rehnquist Court especially was moving in a conservative direction. The present work expands on this last point. After a brief review of the findings in that initial paper, I locate the church/state issue in the larger political scene, beginning with the New Deal. Then I elaborate on the question of how and why the Court has turned conservative. The Warren Court (1953–69) heard no church/state cases during its first eight years, but starting in 1960 it agreed to hear some interesting issues and handed down some stunning decisions (e.g. outlawing prayer and Bible-reading in public schools, granting conscientious objector status to an avowed agnostic). In church/state cases, justices are asked (1) to allow what is not now allowed (e.g. take public office without having to declare a belief in God), or (2) to prohibit what is now allowed (e.g. school-sponsored prayer before football games). Affirmative votes in both types of cases are ‘separationist’ votes, making it easy to ‘score’ each justice and learn how inclined each is to keep and/or expand the separation of church and state in the United States of America (Hammond 2001; see also Hammond 1998). If we regard a high separationist score as indicating liberalism in church/state cases, there is no question that, of the three Courts since 1952, the Court under Warren is the most liberal and the Court under Rehnquist is the least liberal. The Warren Court’s overall average score was 67 per cent. Scores of the thirteen justices under Burger dropped to an average of 50 per cent, with Associate Justice William Rehnquist leading the decline with a score of 5 per cent. The average score drops further under Rehnquist as Chief Justice—to 45 per cent—and then 37 per cent after the most recent five replacements came on the Court. Clarence Thomas this time is the point man in the decline, with an astounding 0 per cent. As we shall now see, that shift mirrored changing American political values more generally.
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The larger political context The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the American presidency in 1932 set in motion a great number of changes that revolutionised American society. Indeed, the argument can be made that the revolution carried over to the Lyndon B.Johnson years and the passage of both a Civil Rights and War-on-Poverty bill. By this time, of course, Richard Nixon had served five years in the White House and Gerald Ford three, but neither did much to dismantle the New Deal programmes. Earlier, Dwight Eisenhower, in his eight years in office (1953–61) did even less. In fact, William F.Buckley, already an articulate spokesman for the conservative cause, denounced Eisenhower in a 1956 editorial, claiming that Ike’s first term had been marked by ‘easy and whole-hearted acceptance’ of ‘measured socialism’ (1956:6–7). Barry Goldwater’s defeat in 1964 by the largest margin in a presidential vote in American history is further testimony to the settled acceptance of New Deal-type programmes by the majority of American voters, though fears of an expanding war in Vietnam meant that Goldwater’s militant reputation no doubt also worked against him. Although Nixon’s election in 1968 evidenced a growing conservative mood in the electorate, Johnson’s quagmire in Vietnam probably did more for Nixon’s victory than a not-yet-very-active conservative movement. Nixon was not a conservative in the Buckley mould, let alone sympathetic with tax revolters and Christian Righters, who were yet to become vocal and visible. What were the New Deal programmes that were so favoured during these decades? They included emergency relief for the unemployed, bank reform, stock exchange regulations, Social Security, the Wagner Act regarding labour relations, broadened international trade, and the practice of ‘pump-priming’ the economy, à la John Maynard Keynes.1 It is true that FDR had his enemies, but the New Deal prevailed, especially after 1937 when economic conservatives on the Supreme Court, who had rejected the policies of FDR’s first term, left the Court. Progressive legislation could then be enacted and upheld. As Himmelstein writes about both the House and Senate in 1938, opposition to the New Deal remained weak and disorganized. The Republican party was a small minority…and lacked clear leadership. The nascent conservative coalition in Congress never fully solidified; its support shifted from issue to issue and fell apart totally in such areas as farm legislation. (Himmelstein 1990:19) Though interrupted by World War II, the New Deal’s civilian programme was the federal government’s way of mitigating the misfortunes accompanying industrialisation, a cause that had long been recognised but responded to inadequately. The campaign continued after the war with such projects as rural electrification, the GI bill, interstate highway construction, a minimum wage law, Medicare, etc. Altogether, then, at the time of Nixon’s 1968 election, Americans could look back and see the triumph of collective welfare over unregulated free markets, federalism over states’ rights, internationalism over isolationism, and an activist Court over a passive Court. Regarding this last change, Horowitz writes: ‘The New Deal constitutional revolution of 1937 represented a
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fundamental shift in the constitutional relationship of the states to the federal government as well as of government to the economy’ (1992:3).2 This ‘constitutional revolution’ to which Horowitz refers is crucial to the story here, because while some in the conservative movement that was to follow objected to all of these New Deal changes, all in that movement objected to some, and none of these changes evoked more emotional vehemence than those following the decisions of the Earl Warren Court. All over America, but especially in the South, billboards and bumper stickers announced ‘Impeach Earl Warren’. Appointed by President Eisenhower in 1953 and serving as Chief Justice for the next sixteen years, Warren and his Court embodied for liberals all that was good in America, but for conservatives all that was bad. ‘The seventies’ The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan marked the return to power of the conservatives, which, like the liberals’ triumphs of the 1930–68 period, involves the Supreme Court, and within it the matter of church/state separation. The success of conservatism meant, of course, the decline of liberalism. This transition is immensely complex, however, which makes Bruce J. Schulman’s The Seventies (2001) all the more valuable as he clearly sorts out the multiple forces at work during that confusing decade. In fact, a proper rendering of the political-cultural shift associated with the ‘seventies’ begins rather ambiguously in 1964 before it ends unambiguously in the 1980 landslide election of Reagan. This transition becomes easier to comprehend if, following McGirr (2001), we see the conservative movement in four stages, from just before Goldwater’s 1964 nomination to the present day. Stage One was marked by a rabid anti-communism, with the John Birch Society its symbol. By publicly declaring President Eisenhower a dupe of the communists, Robert Welch (founder of the John Birch Society) was attractive chiefly to other ‘crazies’ and easily dismissed by most Americans. Stage Two thus is headlined by Barry Goldwater, who, while himself deeply suspicious of communist nations, not only had a more realistic understanding of the true threat those nations represented, but also had a larger agenda for conservatism, primarily an anti-tax and anti big government platform. His was a ‘libertarian’ appeal, then, as well as an economic conservative appeal and, as such, he and his advisors saw the possibility of attracting disaffected Southern voters as well as traditional ‘big business’ voters. In fact, by defeating Nelson Rockefeller for the 1964 nomination, Goldwater opened the Republicans’ exit doors for many so-called ‘Eastern liberals’ in the party, an exercise recently exhibited by George W.Bush, leading Senator James Jeffords of Vermont to become an Independent, thereby handing over control of the Senate to the Democrats. Goldwater, in other words, broadened conservatism’s appeal. His book, The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) was ghostwritten by L.Brent Bozell, brother-in-law to William F.Buckley, the latter regarded as the person who gave intellectual heft to postWorld War II conservatism. Not only was the book a best-seller, thus attracting a wide range of followers, but the Goldwater campaign also showed conservatives how they could mobilise the electorate. This story is told meticulously by Rich Perlstein in Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001). What motivated those who were mobilised? Here is where Stage Three of the conservative shift emerges, as does Ronald Reagan who, beyond standing for the virtues
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of big business and small government, charged America with moral decline (which brought evangelical Christians into the conservative camp) and exploitation by ‘welfare chisellers’ as well as by those who gained jobs and admission to college not by their credentials but by ‘affirmative action’. Reagan’s campaign was one of resentment, and the resentment arose over one or more of the projects and programmes coming out of the New Deal Order. As Schulman (2001:193) writes: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there had been plenty of discontent with and antagonism toward liberalism: hardhats outraged by hippies and antiwar protestors; parents, mainly northern white ethnics, hostile to forced busing; born-again Christians disturbed about sex on television and sex education in the schools; anti-feminists frightened by the ERA; bluecollar workers fed up with seemingly profligate welfare spending; rightto-lifers fighting against legal abortions; business interests resisting excessive regulation. Reagan won big, and the conservative movement reached a strength not unlike that of the Great Society in LBJ’s first years. Regarding Stage Four, then, one can say that conservatism has dominated America from 1980 to the present, a situation that eight years of Bill Clinton did little to change. Goldwater, for all his failures as a presidential candidate, had set the stage for a conservative take-over a decade and a half later. One other feature of the 1960s and 1970s must be noted: the rise of ‘neoconservatism’. While in some ways similar to ‘old’ conservatives (e.g. favouring a freer play of market forces), neo-conservatives differ in that most if not all are former liberals. Many in fact came out of the radical left movements of the 1930s and 1940s, who, upon seeing the success of New Deal programmes, gave up on utopian plans of revolutionary reform and settled comfortably into democratic liberalism. That is, they were comfortable until the 1960s and 1970s when they witnessed the resurgence of protest politics, forced busing, affirmative action, enlarged welfare assistance and other programmes giving federal government a larger hand in people’s lives. They also witnessed sexual liberation, hippies, and naive but noisy challenges to authority, whether that authority was exercised by university presidents, cops on the beat or federal prisons. Neo-conservatives put great stock in civility, and since the mid-1960s civility has been in short supply in the eyes of many. These neo-conservatives still see themselves as liberals remaining loyal to liberalism even as their former ideological comrades moved far to the left, hence the prefix ‘neo’.3 We will reencounter this movement later. The solidification of conservatism means that America has two ideological camps, each with roots many decades old. American politics now offers a varied picture. Presidential politics is the more volatile branch, of course, exhibited in the Nixon election in a ‘liberal’ climate and the Clinton election in a ‘conservative’ climate. (It is ludicrously illustrated in the non-election of George W.Bush.) Congress is more stable over time, the Senate more so than the House of Representatives. That leaves the US Supreme Court the least volatile of the three branches of the American government, largely because justices serve for life, easily outlasting the power of the presidents and senators who put them in office. There is, moreover, another constraint on volatility in the Supreme Court, a constraint not imposing on the legislative and executive branches. It is this: the judicial
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branch’s very task is to interpret a document—the US Constitution—which is the governmental plan for organising a society in a way that makes possible the pursuit of the goals set forth in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution is thus regarded as ‘unchangeable’, though how it is interpreted of course changes over time. The question of how, even whether, such changes can occur is a matter of profound philosophical difference, as we shall now see.
How the Supreme Court’s decline in separationism came about How and why the US Supreme Court has lost enthusiasm for enlarging the separation of church and state, even to the point of making efforts to narrow that separation, can be understood at three levels: the personal level, the jurisprudential level and the philosophical level The personal level Mention has been made of the response by American conservatives to the Warren Court. For example, during his 1964 campaign for the presidency, Barry Goldwater in a speech at the University of Chicago said that recent Supreme Court decisions were ‘jackassian’ (Perlstein 2001:425).4 Eisenhower, at the end of his presidency, called his appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice his biggest mistake as president. With the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, therefore, came a concerted effort to appoint justices who would challenge New Deal-Warren Court measures. Nixon’s first two nominees were blocked by the Senate on the grounds that both, as lower court judges, had written opinions that too often were overturned by higher courts. Moreover, the two were tainted with scandal, the first for having heard a case involving a company in which he owned stock, the second for his record of running for office as a white supremacist. The appointment of Warren Burger in 1969 as Chief Justice brought in a church/state conservative (separationist score: 24 per cent), as did the appointments of Lewis Powell (40 per cent) and Rehnquist (10 per cent). Believing Harry Blackmun to be conservative enough, Nixon was no doubt surprised at how ‘separationist’ Blackmun proved to be (score: 67 per cent). He was also the author of the Roe v. Wade decision. President Ford had a similar experience with naming John Paul Stevens to the Court, for he proved to be a staunch defender of church/state separation (score: 65 per cent). President Carter served his four years without any vacancy occurring on the Court. Like Nixon, Ronald Reagan was clear about his wish to nominate conservatives to the Court. Sandra Day O’Connor (score: 45 per cent) and Anthony Kennedy (score: 35 per cent) have chiefly lived up to Reagan’s expectations, but not as well as Antonin Scalia (score: 20 per cent). President George H.W.Bush filled two seats, one with David Souter, who later must have shocked him (score: 63 per cent). The other seat went to Clarence Thomas, who may be remembered not only for the grilling he had before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but also for seeming to be little more than a rubber stamp for Justice Scalia.
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President Clinton named two justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Breyer, whose records cannot yet be evaluated, but who show signs of sensitivity to the separation of church and state. In his 2000 campaign, President George W.Bush indicated, when asked, that he would choose to appoint as Supreme Court justices people like Scalia and Thomas, thus declaring his intention of furthering the move toward conservatism on the Court. In sum, the Court has declined in its separationist stance because an increasingly conservative executive branch and an increasingly conservative legislative branch have been nominating and approving increasingly conservative persons to serve in the judicial branch. William Brennan (score: 71 per cent), appointed by Eisenhower in 1956, and Thurgood Marshall (score: 78 per cent), appointed by Johnson in 1967, were the last two nominees to fit the mould of the Earl Warren Court. Marshall’s retirement and replacement with Clarence Thomas symbolises well the profundity of the transition from a New Deal-Warren Court to a Rehnquist Court. The current Court is very divided, as seen in its frequent 5–4 decisions. Linda Greenhouse, who covers the Court for the New York Times, reports that in the seventynine cases handed down during its 2000–1 term, the Court split 5–4 about one-third of the time (2001:4–5). As a rule, a conservative bloc of three (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas) were on the winning or losing side against a bloc of four (Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer) depending upon how two ‘swing’ justices (O’Connor, Kennedy) voted. In December 2000, those swing justices voted with the conservative bloc to declare George W. Bush president in a decision (Bush v. Gore) that nearly all Americans who follow Supreme Court actions recognised as hypocrisy in the extreme. Harvard law professor Allan Dershowitz (2001:93) writes that the five justices ‘were willing not just to ignore their own long-held judicial philosophies but to contradict them…in order to elect the presidential candidate they preferred’ (emphasis in the original). Depending upon the jurisprudential outlook of the next few appointees, therefore, the Supreme Court may maintain, even extend, the thrust of Warren Court decision-making, or else reverse that thrust and undo much that liberal Americans applaud. This is especially true in the area of individual rights, including religious liberty rights. The jurisprudential level To call five justices hypocritical in Bush v. Gore is to charge them with violating convictions that they publicly and firmly hold. What are the judicial principles underlying their jurisprudence? Stephen Gottlieb (2000:63), a harsh critic of the Court, says: ‘The Rehnquist Court has worked a revolution with respect to the underlying jurisprudence of American law, “substantive” versus democratic values… It remains to be seen whether we can, or will want to, live with it.’ But what would result from this ‘revolution’ were it to be fully effected? One succinct answer is that the Rehnquist Court would overturn many, if not all, of the New Deal-Warren Court decisions, especially if Gottlieb is correct in his analysis of the Rehnquist Court. He writes: ‘What unites the core of the conservative group on the Court has been a skepticism about law and government and a hostility toward the underdogs who seek their protection. But they can’t say that’ (Gottlieb 2000:197). Speaking especially about the conservative bloc of three, he goes on:
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[For them] law is simply and properly a matter of following commands. In turn, the commands are understood directly from the language [of the Constitution] or from historical examples. There is no need to explore the effect of changed circumstances on how the draftsmen [of the Constitution] would have reacted. (Gottlieb 2000:35) Some conservatives embrace libertarianism, which leads them to uphold personal autonomy, and defend against government efforts to curtail the liberty of individuals. This is true of the so-called neo-conservatives discussed above. Non-libertarian conservatives, however, justify their choices in terms either of ‘democratic’ values (i.e. defer to the majority) or ‘traditional’ values (the justification employed by so-called ‘Theocons’, such as evangelical Christians who would impose their alleged biblical values on others).6 The conservative bloc on the current Supreme Court, while not particularly sympathetic to religion, are not libertarian either and readily defer to states’ rights and elected officials (i.e. majorities) on religion-related issues. As a result of this deference, if a legislature, under pressure from Theocons, voted to reinstate schoolsponsored prayer, the bloc would not object, at least on jurisprudential grounds. In the church/state area, this jurisprudential outlook has led to a remarkable insensitivity to the variety of religious perspectives found in America. Richard Brisbin (1992:74) says it well: Because these justices indicated a preference for popular values and conceptions of religion influenced by Christian religious institutionalism and because they believed that a law constructed by a majority is neutral, they were not sensitive to…religious differences…[For example] in Smith the Court failed to consider the values of rituals disparate from…mainstream denominations [Use of peyote in the Native American Church]. [T]he majority of the Rehnquist Court has been unable to grasp the significance of religious exercises stemming from a cosmology and a cosmogony that offer different perspectives on time, space, logic, order, and ethics. [By permitting a logging road to be built on ground held sacred by Native Americans.] [I]n O’Lone the Rehnquist court majority evidenced an inability to understand the importance of a religion’s conceptualization of unity, community, and social obligations for its members…[By denying Muslim prisoners in a work gang outside the prison the right to return to prison for Friday noontime prayers.] These cases, and others like them, close rather than open the gap between church and state. For example, consider the fate of the Warren Court’s ‘Sherbert test’. After deciding a number of free exercise cases in an ad hoc fashion, the Court in 1963 heard Sherbert v. Vernon, during which a strategy was devised for deciding that case and subsequent free exercise cases. Called the ‘Sherbert test’, the strategy comprises three questions. Is the petitioner’s free exercise of religion significantly burdened? If so, does the state have a compelling reason to impose that burden? If so, can an alternative means be found that achieves the state’s purpose and also lightens the burden? It will be noted that the
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Sherbert test does not dictate a separationist decision; it is merely a method for arriving at a decision. The Rehnquist bloc wants to do away with the Sherbert test. They have partly succeeded. In 1990, in Employment Division v. Smith, the Court voted 6–3 to uphold the denial of unemployment compensation to two Native American drug counsellors who had admitted their use of peyote in the Native American Church ritual, were fired from their jobs, and thus applied for the compensation. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, noted that the Oregon legislation, in outlawing peyote, had not targeted Native Americans and thus the law was ‘neutral’, and all must abide by the command. Therefore, no state compelling interest need be identified. Whether the Sherbert test will once again be the method of addressing free exercise cases remains to be seen. The situation is similar with respect to establishment cases. In the 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Court, under Warren Burger, unanimously struck down two somewhat different plans by states to aid parochial schools financially. In so doing, it articulated what came to be called the ‘Lemon test’, which, like the Sherbert test, consists of three questions. Is the practice being challenged a result of government’s intention either to aid or inhibit religion? Is aid to or inhibition of religion nonetheless the effect? Does the method by which the answer to the second question is known lead to an ‘entanglement’ of government and religion? (E.g. is government monitoring required to insure compliance?) Like the Sherbert test, the Lemon test does not predetermine the decision but is only a strategy for arriving at a decision. Unlike the Sherbert test, however, the Lemon test has led to seemingly contradictory decisions, especially in the area of state aid to private education. The conservative bloc on the current Court would abolish the Lemon test, with the result, no doubt, that states and communities would have greater freedom to do what they wish. For ardent separationists, this prospect is frightening. The philosophical level Ardent separationists believe they correctly understand what the Framers of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution meant by their choice of words, but so do their judicial opponents. No one, of course, would knowingly admit to violating the meaning of these two documents, indicating that, as divided as they are, conservatives and liberals on the Supreme Court differ profoundly on the philosophical level about what the controlling legal documents of America are. The liberal position is something like this: in rejecting the legitimacy of King George III’s rule, at least most of the leading colonists believed it was possible to create a government capable of ensuring certain ‘unalienable rights’. By ‘unalienable’ they meant ‘natural’ or inherent in the nature of human beings, rights that cannot be taken away because they are part of what being human is. They are rights that exist prior to any design of government and thus are transcendent or sacred, not of human invention. Thus, the Declaration identifies—as self-evident truths—the ‘natural’ rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And the Constitution is the plan for realising those rights. With this goal in mind as the reason to have a government, the Framers of the US Constitution were faced with an excruciating dilemma—the existence in the colonies of slaves. To interpret the right to life and liberty in the Declaration as outlawing slavery, or to prohibit slavery in the Constitution, would, it was believed, doom the cause of the
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Revolutionary War: the ‘nation’s’ independence from England. Such, at least, is the defence of Jefferson, the drafter of the Declaration, and others for their continued ownership of slaves (West 1997: chapter 1). Abolitionists went along, convinced of the rightness of their view even if its vindication had to wait. Vindication did come later in the form of a Civil War, fought not just to end slavery but to preserve ‘one nation’ that would strive to live up to the meaning of its Constitution, even if evidence was abundant that separating from England and adopting a governmental master plan did not, by themselves, achieve the goals set out in the Declaration. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 was an opportunity, following the Civil War, for the US Supreme Court to extend the meaning of the Declaration’s commitment to ‘life’ and ‘liberty’, but it chose instead to uphold ‘separate but equal’ facilities for black Americans. The liberal view therefore sees in the 1954 desegregation of schools decision (Brown v. Board of Education) not only something gloriously American, but also something faithful to the ‘original intent’ of the Framers. Against this unfolding of events is another script. It goes like this: had the Framers intended to outlaw slavery, they would have said and done so. Had the Congress that approved the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments (which did away with slavery) intended to put white and black schoolchildren together, why did that same legislature sustain segregated schools in the District of Columbia? This conservative perspective, therefore, also claims to adhere to the Founders’ ‘original intent’, but does not see the Constitution as capable of an expanding interpretation, as the liberals would have it. Thus conservatives on the Court acknowledge that the Constitution, as amended, did away with slavery, because this was done legislatively. Those who see that Amendment as a constitutional guarantee of other rights are mistaken, conservatives believe; they believe that is the task of legislatures. Or, to cite another example, the basis of the abortion decision Roe v. Wade was the Constitutional right to ‘privacy’, but Court conservatives reject that reasoning on the grounds that nowhere in the Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment, does the word ‘privacy’ appear. In a way, this difference between liberalism and conservatism is puzzling because adherence to the ‘natural rights’ doctrine has historically been associated more with conservatives than with liberals: traditionalists versus radicals; theists versus secular humanists; absolutists versus relativists. But these dichotomies do not apply in the arena of the philosophy of law. Why? Because the concept of the ‘natural rights’ underlying the Declaration and Constitution is seen by liberals as inherently malleable in its meaning and application if not in its wording. Indeed, in this view, failure to allow the Constitution to expand in its meaning and application is a violation of the Constitution itself. Those who imagine this liberal conception of natural rights to be an analogue of, say, the Thomistic conception of natural law are mistaken. And those who fail to see the religious roots of the US Constitution—what some regard as a ‘secular’ document, devoid of a sacred element—are also mistaken. Barbara A.McGraw discusses this issue and the importance of John Locke as a major influence on the Framers. She is quoted here at some length because she so concisely frames the issue:
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Locke provided the formative foundation and language that shaped the American revolutionary mind and emboldened the American spirit. Not all agree with this assessment, however. Locke’s influence on the American Revolution has been questioned in recent years by those who eschew America’s ‘secular’ foundation. In an effort to reclaim the religious roots of America, many are reconsidering the myth of America’s founding by ‘deists’ and maintaining instead that it was evangelical sentiments, not the ‘rational philosophy’ of the likes of John Locke, that fed the revolutionary goal of the late eighteenth century. But this assessment is based on the erroneous idea that Locke’s views had little or no religious import. As we have seen, however, Locke’s views were inspired by his ‘authentic piety’, his political thought is religiously grounded… Locke’s works became the inspiration for impassioned sermons that linked freedom to God and advocated ‘natural rights’, the ‘social compact’, and the right, even the duty, to resist oppressive arbitrary government… The cause of individual liberty, infused with Locke’s ideas, his language, his ‘authentic piety’, became a religious cause. …the traditions and customs of religion gave way to an individualistic religion—a reliance on individual conscience imbued with God discovered through reason and insight. For Locke, that had led to the conclusion that the only legitimate government is one created by mutual consent of the people so that individual conscience imbued with God would remain free, and never legitimately infringed by government. (McGraw 2002:98, 99, 100, 101) The US Constitution, in other words, is fundamentally a ‘religious’, not ‘secular’ document. The basic unit it protects is the individual conscience, which—to be kept inviolate—requires the freedom to exercise it as one wills, free from interference of the state. Hence the separationist interpretation as it unfolded during two centuries, culminating in the Warren Court, is fundamentally faithful to the ends (‘intent’) held by the Framers.
Conclusion It is clear that the conservative bloc currently on the US Supreme Court does not accept this interpretation of church/state history. As Gottlieb (2000:xi, 191) puts it: In part, the culture war over the Constitution is a war about fidelity to the principles of the Enlightenment that put civilized, humane values ahead of parochial, clannish ones, ahead of values that lead to conflict and the subjugation of one group by another… The conservative bloc has chosen to reject two basic principles of the Anglo-American tradition: the principle that law should be guided by the objective of doing no harm, and
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the principle of respect for individual moral autonomy where harm to others is not at stake. Or, as Ronald Dworkin (1996:125) says of Rehnquist and Scalia: They insist that the rights set out in the Constitution, including the right that liberty not be limited except by due process of law, are only a set of discrete rules which neither appeal to nor presuppose any more general principles. They say that the force of these rights is limited to the highly specific expectations of the politicians who created them, and that the rights therefore must be interpreted so as not to condemn any political practices in general force when they were adopted. If, as seems reasonable, we regard William Rehnquist as the spokesman for the conservative bloc, we learn that crucial to that bloc’s perspective are two principles: (1) the authority of the Constitution is grounded in majority rule rather than on any principle of natural law (Rehnquist 1980); (2) all moral judgements are only ‘personal’: laws are accepted as just not because of any idea of natural justice but simply because they have been included in a constitution (Rehnquist 1976). Harry Jaffa (1994:94), already noted here as a co-speech-writer with Rehnquist for Barry Goldwater in 1964, minces no words: The Framers of the Constitution clearly and wisely believed that there must be a lawfulness antecedent to positive law for positive law to be lawful. When Justice Rehnquist says that constitutions do not have any ground in any ‘idea of natural justice’, he is repudiating the Framers… Here we are bound to say, although mortified to say it, that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States accuses himself of not understanding the very first premise of the Constitution of the United States. There is something hugely ironic in charging the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court with failing to understand ‘the very first premise’ of the US Constitution. The irony is compounded by the knowledge that William Rehnquist was, for eighteen months after law school, law clerk to Justice Robert H.Jackson. Jackson is the 1943 author of these words: ‘The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities’ (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (319 U.S. 624 [1943])). He was also America’s Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, which most assuredly found Nazi war criminals guilty—guilty not of any enacted laws but of moral laws transcending such enacted laws had they existed. We must assume that Chief Justice Rehnquist disbelieves his mentor and finds no warrant for the Nuremberg Trials.
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Notes 1 The New Deal is detailed in a large literature, but an especially helpful anthology is Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (eds) Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–80 (1989). 2 See also Bruce J.Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (2001). Lucas Powe (2000:xv) writes,
Scholars seem agreed that the Warren Court consisted of a group of powerful, talented men who were more sympathetic to claims of individual liberty, while being simultaneously more egalitarian than their predecessors, more willing to intervene in contentious controversies, more prone to ignore the past, and more convinced that national solutions were superior to local solutions. 3 The significance of this shift from liberal to neoconservative is difficult to overstate and parallels the incorporation of evangelicals into the Republican Party. Rick Perlstein’s 671page book about the Goldwater campaign in 1964 devoted only five brief paragraphs to the religious right, mainly to Fred Schwartz’s Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, which had far more to do with anti-communism than with pro-Christianity. Such inattention to the Christian right would be unthinkable in writing about the campaigns of 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992 and 2000. 4 William Rehnquist, then an attorney in Phoenix, co-drafted that speech, though whether the neologism was his or Goldwater’s is not mentioned. The other co-drafter was Harry Jaffa, a disciple of Leo Strauss, who is a hero to the neo-conservatives. Jaffa, incidentally, wrote the most memorable line in Goldwater’s 1964 acceptance speech: ‘I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue’ (Perlstein 2001:391). 5 Dershowitz’s Chapter 4 contains, separately for each of the five, the documentation. Dershowitz also called the five ‘corrupt’. Vincent Bugliosi (2001) went further, using the word ‘treason’. 6 The term ‘Theocon’ was coined by Jacob Heilbunn (1996:20–4).
12 Religious toleration in Western and Central European countries Karel Dobbelaere and Jaak Billiet On the basis of data collected with representative samples in eleven European countries, within the framework of the Religious and Moral Pluralism (RAMP) study undertaken in 1997–9,1 we will analyse the tolerance of individuals towards minority religions and towards particular religious beliefs, rituals and norms. We will begin by describing the historical and theoretical background of toleration, and the factors that might influence intolerance and discriminatory behaviour. This will help us to state our research questions.
Toleration, religious diversity, privatisation and equality In his seminal article, Wilson (1996) analyses the evolution from intolerance towards religious liberty in Western culture. The legal right of corporate religious minorities to exist and to practise their religion was slowly and unevenly achieved. A limited expression of tolerance, which ‘is not an avowal of religious liberty’ since ‘it implies only the absence of prohibition and persecution’, was attained only following pressure from philosophers like John Locke (Wilson 1996:14–16), and, more powerfully, under the impact of functional differentiation which secularised the social system and the state. The first truly secular state was the United States, where a strict separation of church and state was institutionalised. In order to integrate religiously diverse collectivities in one nation, a higher principle than that of mere toleration, typical of Europe, had to be institutionalised, ‘civil religion’ (Bellah 1967), transcending the particular beliefs and moral principles of corporate religions which became mere denominations. The denomination ‘is a via media between the old conceptions of the institutionalized church and the marginal sect’. Henceforth, ‘all Christian organizations were potentially equal’. Consequently, toleration was not merely ‘a negative concept of restraint on the state’s coercive power against dissenters’ as in Europe: it implied ‘a great deal more, namely the equal right for people of various religious denominations freely to worship, to preach and proselytize in their own way’ (Wilson 1996:16). Religious corporate pluralism was, however, only one step towards complete religious freedom. The privatisation of decisions, inherent in a functionally differentiated society (Luhmann 1977:232–42), linked to the cherished Christian assumption ‘that the individual chooses to adopt his religion’, must ‘eventually entail an increasing measure of tolerance for individual choice of belief’ (Wilson 1996:21–2). This was furthered, from the nineteenth century onwards, by the import of Christian movements from the USA,
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and after the Second World War by immigrants from Islamic countries. Subsequently, from the 1960s various new religious movements (NRMs) emerged in the West and later in central-Europe. However, religious diversity does not necessarily imply equality of all religions before the law. In Belgium, the state does not pay the salaries and pensions of the clergy of religions that are not constitutionally recognised. Nor do they receive legal recognition and indemnities for moral assistance given, for example in hospitals and prisons. In England, the Anglican Church is ‘by law established’ and there is no general constitutional provision that protects all religious groups. They are protected so far as the blasphemy law goes ‘only to the extent that their fundamental beliefs are consistent with those of the established church’ (Barker 1987:273). Reviewing several court cases in England, Barker (1987:274–9) demonstrated that religious discrimination occurred in England in favour of more traditional, socially accepted religions. Agencies influencing intolerance and discriminatory behaviour Neither Barker nor we wish to suggest that in Britain religious minorities are the victims of more intolerance or discrimination than in other Western countries in which there is not a by-law-established church or which, in contrast to the situation in Belgium, have no constitutionally protected religions. Historically, intolerance and discrimination against new religions has been normal (Wilson 1990:25–45). In the past they were considered as a challenge to conventional religious beliefs, an explicit, or at least implicit, attack on the ‘rightness’ of traditional beliefs and practices held by the majority. Now, they are considered more ‘a challenge to the general, secularized social norms…a deviant and abnormal religious threat to conventional, generally a-religious practice. Sects thus become an issue of social rather than of explicitly religious concern’ (Wilson 1989:160). Indeed, some sustain moral norms that run counter to the moral norms of the wider society: Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse blood transfusion for themselves and their children; Rastafarians want to use marijuana (‘ganja’) in their religious services; some religious organisations object to bearing arms, to voting, etc. (see Wilson 1989:165–73). Consequently, they have been portrayed as less than fully integrated into the society in which they are accommodated (van Driel and Richardson 1988b:55), and for some people they represent a threat to national integrity, a conspiracy against the prevailing social order. In France, for example, the initial reaction to the NRMs was similar to the earlier response to the old Protestant sects, according to Beckford (1983:200–8): ‘All are suspected of undermining the natural, organic order of French society; all are characterized as dissidents.’ ADFI, the main French anti-cult organisation, suggested that the NRMs have ‘secret arms’ and plot against the ‘national interest’, to which is added a note of xenophobia: it is ‘the work of foreigners’ (Beckford 1983:201). According to Introvigne and Richardson (2001:183), this attitude is typical of the ‘old right’ that ‘still claims that “cults” represent foreign and alien influences threatening French national identity’. The anti-cult movements have played a major role in stigmatising sects and NRMs (Shupe and Bromley 1994). Such movements distribute very selective information about sectarian movements and are active in political lobbying and public debates (e.g. on TV). In these debates, sect members are not only numerically marginal, but they rarely receive
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a fair amount of time to make their points, and people representing the anti-cult position usually dominate the debates. Impartial observers might easily point out that some of the negative reactions towards sectarian movements might, with justification, easily be transferred to mainline churches or to some of their voluntary groups—for example: rape and paedophilia by clergy in the Catholic Church; financial irregularities in the Catholic archdiocese of Chicago; one-way communication, e.g. preaching; catechetical indoctrination; employment in a parallel economy, e.g. Communione e Liberazione; infiltration into industry and politics, e.g. Opus Dei; etc. (see also Beckford 2001b:12– 13). These facts cannot be denied. However, criminal acts in the mainstream churches are explained as deviancies of particular individuals; on the contrary, such acts committed by members of a sectarian movement are explained as structural characteristics of the movement itself. Consequently, some national and regional parliaments and governments of European countries have taken action (Richardson and Introvigne, 2001a). In France, according to Hervieu-Léger (2001a:22–8)—but this is typical of Belgium too—the legal model that was institutionalised to control existing religions—Judaism, Protestantism, and in Belgium also Anglicanism, the Orthodox Church, and Islam—was on the model of the structure of the Catholic Church. NRMs and the sectarian movements that are not affiliated with official religious bodies do not fit this model and are thus not easily controllable. The religious market appears to be deregulated. Confronted with this situation, some states have institutionalised new legislation and controlling agencies, e.g. Belgium and France (Richardson and Introvigne 2001a:147–50). Thus, Soper is correct in suggesting that ‘the policy responses…throughout Western Europe are, in large part, a function of two important factors: the inherited church—state practices of each country and secularism’ (2001:178). For our purpose it is important to point out the effect of secularism (Introvigne and Richardson 2001:183), which has also played an important role in Belgium: the initiators of the Belgian report and leading officers of the parliamentary commission were Freemasons of atheistic lodges. This negative attitude to sects and NRMs is supported and stimulated by the mass media (see e.g. Beckford and Cole 1988; van Driel and Richardson 1988a; Richardson and van Driel 1997). They have exploited the fears of the public and have made sweeping pronouncements, chronicling the alleged wrong-doings of one movement or another (e.g. Aum and the Solar Temple) and implicitly attributing these allegations by using a general designation ‘sects’ although discussing only some particular groups (e.g. Paris Match, 8 February 1996:66–71), but sometimes also explicitly (see the references to the Belgian and French parlia-mentary reports on sects in the press), to each and every movement that might be subsumed under the derogatory labels: ‘sects’ and ‘cults’ (van Driel and Richardson 1988a: 177–81). The newspaper France Soir asked on its first page on 8 February 2000: ‘Sectes: à quand l’interdiction?’ (Hervieu-Léger 2001a: 13). The press generally invokes explicit ‘negative summary events’ (Beckford 1985:235). An analysis of clippings about the Unification Church and ‘sects in general’, published in Belgium during the first five years of the 1980s, makes this clear (Dobbelaere et al. 1987:239–43). Beckford’s analysis of the press (1985:135–40) and Dobbelaere et al.’s give an accurate picture of the media towards sects and endorse one of Beckford’s conclusions:
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NRMs are newsworthy less for their novelty than for the way in which they offer an opportunity for the expression of long-standing obsessions of contemporary journalists. Stories about ‘cults’ are not particularly frequent, but they are remarkably standardized. The effect is therefore enhanced by sheer repetition of the same images and arguments. (Beckford 1985:240) Indeed, sects and NRMs are news only ‘when they are objects of opprobrium’; that they ‘maintain standards of behaviour which excel those of both religionists and secularists…[and perform] various good works…goes unsung’ (Wilson 1989:178). However, such reporting has its consequences. A case study about atrocity tales told by opponents of the Unification Church in newspaper articles (1974–7) points out how a social construction of evil is thus created which supports individual and collective actions (Bromley et al. 1983). Finally, we indicate the influence of churches and clergy. Christian churches have rarely taken an official stand against sects, though in a recent visit to Latin America the pope, calling all minority religions ‘sects’, explicitly warned against them. Occasionally, bishops or spokesmen of a church have spoken out against sects, e.g. in an interview on Antenne 2 at the occasion of his election to the Académie Française, Cardinal Lustiger did so (see also Beckford 1985:239). Laity and clergy have done so on numerous occasions in the media and from the pulpit. According to Barker, in Britain the greatest antagonism has been shown by some of the more conservative sections of the Catholic Church and by some evangelical Christians; and ‘while the Jewish community has been prominently involved in anti-cult activity in the United States, that has not been the case in Britain’ (Barker 1989b:188). In Germany, members of the clergy—two Protestants and one Catholic—were among seven persons setting up the first anti-cult group. However, ‘they represent more conservative stances than the larger church groups’ (Shupe et al. 1983:185–6). The attitude of traditional religions is not uniformly negative or at its best neutral: the British Council of Churches took ‘the new religions on board as part of its agenda in its committee for Relations with People of Other Faith’, and the World Congress of Faiths ‘has shown a willingness to inquire beyond media reports’ (Barker 1989b:189). However, those who have responded positively to initiatives from sects for a better dialogue have sometimes themselves been liable to criticism (Barker 1989b:189– 90). More recently, in France the mainline churches have reacted negatively towards the turn taken by the anti-cult legislation.
Research questions First of all, is there congruence between the attitudes of the opinion leaders, politicians and the media, and the general public towards sectarian movements? Is there a generally negative attitude towards sects and NRMs, or do people make a distinction between sects with a Christian background and the NRMs—in the research design represented respectively by the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Scientology.2 Some of the controversial norms of sects and NRMs have been in the press: parents preventing blood transfusions for their children, collective religious suicides, and the use
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of soft drugs in religious services. What is the public attitude towards these religious norms? Do the answers vary according to the issue involved, or is there a generally negative attitude towards particular religious norms whatever the issue? What is the relationship between the answers of the interviewees to the question of religious suicides and suicides committed by people in full possession of their faculties? In other words, do they object more to religious suicides because they might think, influenced by the media, that people who are not in full possession of their faculties commit them? What kind of further variations do we expect in the answers? Taking the actions of the religious leaders into account—the recent condemnation of sects by the pope and some bishops—we expect that Catholics might be more opposed to sects and NRMs than Protestants. We also expect that members of the churches will be more opposed than the unchurched. However, having described the actions of atheistic politicians in some countries, it might be that there is after all no difference between church members and the unchurched. We further expect that tolerance towards controversial religions and towards religious particularities will be lower among the most committed church members, and among those who were raised as committed church members. Since younger people, women and better-educated people are over-represented in NRMs (see e.g. Barker 1989a:15; Wilson and Dobbelaere 1994:42, 45–6, 112–13, 122; Dobbelaere 2001:31–2, 34–5), we expect that they will be more open to so-called sectarian movements and their particular mores. We anticipate that the degree of urbanisation, where pluralism prevails more than in rural areas, and geographical mobility, which disrupts stable relations and brings people into contact with other mores, will promote a more liberal attitude towards sectarian particularities. Finally, we expect that people who have a positive attitude towards religious diversity will also be more open towards NRMs and so-called sects, and some of their particular rituals, beliefs and norms. We might also assume that the more ethnocentric people will manifest a higher degree of negativity towards these movements and their mores.
Data and measurements The RAMP data were collected in 1997–9 by means of face-toface interviews in representative samples in eleven countries: Belgium (N=1,630), Denmark (N=606), Finland (N=785), Great Britain (N=1,466), Hungary (N= 1,000), Italy (N=2149), the Netherlands (N=1,004), Norway (N=503), Poland (N=1,134), Portugal (N=982) and Sweden (N=1,032). In these countries, the principal investigators who are sociologists (of religion) controlled the data collection. They met several times during the preparation of the questionnaire. Since we are working in a cross-cultural context, we must assume that all the variables that are used in the analysis are equivalent. How plausible is this presumption? In the case of the single indicator variables, one can only trust the questiondesigners who have discussed the indicators and the single question wordings in the preparatory meetings. Moreover, country-specific variations are explained in the codebook that was prepared by the Central Archive for Empirical Research ZA No. 3170 (Cologne). In the case of multiple indicators that are combined into constructs, the situation is different. There we can rely on the concept of construct equivalence (Poortinga 1989). Following Rensvold and Cheung (1998), construct equivalence is
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operationalised here as ‘factorial equivalence’. We will test the hypothesis of ‘factorial invariance’; this means that the factor loadings of the indicators of each latent variable (construct) are invariant (or equal) in all countries. This is done by multiple group comparisons of measurement models with structural equation modelling (Bollen 1989) using LISREL 8 (Jöreskog and Sörbom 1993). Each test starts with a measurement model in which all the factor loadings and residual (co)variances are equal. The variances and co-variances of the latent variables (factors) are not constrained; they can vary over the countries. When the model does not fit with the observed data, some of the equality constraints are relaxed. This means that for one or more countries, differences in the relations of some indicators to the latent variable are accepted. These differences in loadings are reported. Minor differences are not a problem, but when substantial differences in the indicators occur in a particular country, one should be careful about the interpretation of the analysis for that country since the concept can have a somewhat different meaning in that case. In other words, the measurement quality of the indicators in the different countries is evaluated by controlling structural relations between observed indicators and latent variables. As was already mentioned in the section about the research questions, six indicators measure two dimensions of our dependent variable ‘religious tolerance’. Two of the indicators are intended to measure the attitude towards religious movements that are controversial in the media. These indicators deal with the acceptance in the country of public practice by Jehovah’s Witnesses (v123) and by Scientologists (v124), and are both measured by 7-point response scales ranging from completely disagree (1) to completely agree (7). The other dimension deals with the attitude towards some controversial practices of religious groups: the ‘chador’ among young females as part of a religious tradition (v116); the use of soft drugs in the context of religious rituals (v117); the prevention of blood transfusion for children by their parents (v118); committing suicide for religious reasons (v119). These attitudes are also measured by 7-point scales (completely disagree (1) to completely agree (7)). These two dimensions, which we call tolerance towards controversial religions and tolerance towards controversial religious practices, are confirmed. However, the first indicator of the attitude towards controversial religious practices (the ‘chador’) is not included in the final measurement model because it is responsible for a number of residual co-variances in various countries (correlated error). This item is somewhat contaminated by another latent variable that we will also use in the analysis, the attitude towards immigrants that has no religious connotation. In none of the four items was the specific religion mentioned, but the ‘chador’ clearly refers to Muslims. According to the test criteria, this model is acceptable (RMSEA<0.05 and NFI is close to 1). The factor loadings and the residual variances are invariant over the eleven cultural groups (countries). Moreover, all error co-variances (correlated error) are fixed at zero, except for the residual covariance between the first and fifth indicator in Great Britain. The correlation between the two dimensions ranges from 0.11 in Italy to 0.45 in Great Britain. In most other countries, the correlation is higher than 0.25. (See Table 12.1.)
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Table 12.1 Measurement model for the two dimensions of religious tolerance. Model with equal factor loadings and equal residual variances over the eleven countries (standardised regression coefficients and t-values) Factor 1 Religious particularities
Observed indicators
Factor 2 Controversial religions
Standardised
(t-value)
Standardised
(t-value)
v117 Ritual soft drugs
0.48
(fixed)
–
–
v118 Blood transfusion
0.40
(25.969)
–
–
v119 Religious suicide
0.63
(24.675)
–
–
v124 Jehovah’s Witnesses
–
–
0.62
(fixed)
v125 Scientology
–
–
0.93
(17.402)
Notes: x2=251.77; df=73; RMSEA=0.047; p-value of close fit=1.0; NFI=0.970
The most important explanatory variable is church commitment. This construct is made in two steps and contains six observed variables of which some are built on sets of observed indicators. The six variables are: (1) church involvement, the frequency of participation in public religious services (v98 and v103); (2) the frequency of private religious practices (praying, v88); (3) the saliency of one’s religion measured by the selfassessment of one’s religiosity (v83), the degree of influence of religion in one’s daily life (v84), and the perceived influence of one’s religiosity on important decisions in life (v85); (4) Christian orthodoxy, measured by a set of beliefs in God (v73) and by the Christian conception of Jesus Christ3 (v92, v93, v94 and v95); (5) the degree to which one’s religion is perceived as having moral consequences (v47); (6) the importance of religious rites of passage on the occasion of birth (v89), marriage (v90) and death (v91). These six compound variables all measure one latent variable, church commitment. (See Table 12.2.) The measurement model is nearly completely factorial invariant with only one deviation in the factor loadings for one indicator in one country (Italy). However, there are differences in residual variances (mainly in Italy) and even a number of correlated errors. The model is good according to our criteria of model fit. The data quality of this instrument is also good. There are high loadings for all the loadings of the constructs with the latent (secondary order) variable. The model also meets the criteria in terms of Cronbach’s a (0.89).
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Table 12.2 Measurement model for church commitment (standardised regression coefficients and t-values) Factor 1 Church commitment All countries Observed indicators
Standardised
(t-value)
1 Participation in public services
0.73
(fixed)
2 Private religious practice
0.80
(86.637)
3 Saliency of religion
0.81
(85.407)
4 Christian orthodoxy
0.66
(69.635)
5 Moral consequences
0.74
(76.638)
6 Importance of rites of passage
0.58
(58.918)
Deviation in Italy Standardised
(t-value)
0.81
(37.602)
Notes: x2=686.423; df=179; RMSEA=0.051; p-value of close fit=1.0; NFI=0.980
Next, we tried to construct a latent variable: pluralism, to wit religious diversity; however, this attempt failed. The five observed indicators in the questionnaire did not measure one common concept. Therefore, we decided to use two single questions. The first item (v120) states: ‘The increasing variety of religious groups in our society is a source of cultural enrichment.’ We name this the attitude towards religious diversity in the country. The following statement measures the second variable, openness to other religions: ‘Even if people belong to a particular religion, they should still feel free to draw on teachings from other religious traditions’ (v122). Both variables are measured with a 7-point scale (strongly disagree—strongly agree). The respondent’s actual denomination is measured by the question about the subjective feeling of belonging to a church or religious group (v98 and v99). The following major categories are used in this study: Catholics, Protestants, other Christians, other religion, and unchurched (this is the reference category in the regression analysis). Another dimension of religiosity is church commitment in childhood. This is measured by the questions about belonging to a church in the past (v103) and participation in weekly church services at the age of 12 (v105). In a study about tolerance, it makes sense to measure also ethnic threat, because one can expect that individuals who feel threatened by immigrants transfer this attitude to religious minority groups. Ethnic threat is measured by three items: the feeling that the presence of immigrants in the country threatens ‘our’ way of life (v64), the feeling that immigrants are getting jobs at the expense of citizens (v66), and the feeling that the country has suffered from the arrival of immigrants (v68). According to a study by Cambré et al. (2001), the measurement model for these three items is completely factorial invariant for all the eleven countries. Apart from these attitudinal variables at the individual level, a number of relevant background variables are measured. These are gender (reference category is ‘men’), level
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of education (secondary, higher and lower as the reference category), generation4 (the generation born in 1940–55, the generation of 1956–70, the youngest generation born after 1970, and the generation born before 1940 as the reference category). These are classical variables that appear in all studies. We have included two variables that deal with the degree to which respondents have lived in lasting, stable and traditional relations. This aspect is measured by the degree of geographical mobility (v55) and by the degree of urbanisation (v162) of the place where he or she lives. The first variable, geographical mobility, consists of three categories: those who have lived in different countries or societies (very mobile), those who have lived in a number of places within the same country or who have moved several times in the same region (moderate mobile), and those who have always lived in the same neighbourhood (not mobile, this is the reference category in the analysis). The other variable, level of urbanisation (v162) is rather a context variable, but it cannot be used that way since there is no identification of the villages or cities in the dataset. Therefore, this variable is used at the individual level. However, we can use country as a context variable. This is a typical grouping variable, which is included in the random part (intercept) of the regression equation.5 In the fixed part of the equation, in order to investigate the differences between the groups (countries), the interactions with the other variables are explored. Two characteristics of the grouping variable are analysed in the random part in a further step of the analysis. These were Gross National Product per head and Index of Religious Heterogeneity of the country. Religious heterogeneity is measured by the diversity index, which takes the number of denominations in a country into account. The formula is: (1-sum (Xn2))/(1−1/k), where the Xs are the different proportions of denominations and k is the number of denominations (source: RAMP data). However, these two variables do not have a significant effect.
Findings There is a stronger negative attitude, expressed on a 7-point scale, towards Scientology than towards the Jehovah’s Witnesses: respectively 39 versus 22 per cent (scores 1, 2 and 3); 18 versus 13 per cent take a neutral position (score 4). The same difference in attitudes towards both groups was found among American religion journalists (Richardson and van Driel 1997:124). A much lower negative attitude towards Jehovah’s Witnesses is expressed in the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden, just above 10 per cent; a higher negative attitude is expressed in Hungary and Italy (respectively 40 and 30 per cent). Towards Scientology, we registered the highest percentage of negative attitudes in Finland, Hungary and Norway, just above 50; the lowest percentage was registered in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden (30), and especially Portugal (15 per cent). It should be added that only 2 per cent of the population stated that they did not know the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but 14 per cent did not know Scientology. It is clear that Scientology is less well known, but when it is ‘known’ a much larger proportion of the population expresses a negative attitude towards this religious movement. This is certainly linked to the stronger negative attitude that prevails in the political world and the media towards this religious body.
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In the media, we find discussions about controversial practices—rituals, beliefs and norms—typical of some religions: the use of soft drugs as part of religious rituals (e.g. Rastafarians), religious suicides6 (e.g. the People’s Temple), and an opposition towards blood transfusion (e.g. Jehovah’s Witnesses). On a seven-point scale, respectively 81, 85 and 90 per cent of the population express their opposition (scores 1, 2, and 3). As the variation according to the issue is very small, we may speak of a generally negative attitude towards such controversial religious practices. In the case of blood transfusion, the question asked was: ‘whether parents may prevent a blood transfusion for their children on religious grounds’. It is clear that nine out of ten persons want to protect the lives of children; only 7 per cent may accept parental opposition to blood transfusions for children on religious grounds (scores 5, 6 and 7). This certainly indicates a defence of powerless people. The same can be seen in the reaction against religious suicides: of the 33 per cent who accept the right to commit suicide for people in full possession of their faculties (v14), 69 per cent do not accept a suicide on religious grounds (v119). In the media, such suicides have mostly been presented as the result of collective pressure, as involuntary actions that are committed by persons stripped of their faculties of discernment. The doubt about such suicides as voluntary acts explains why 85 per cent of the population is opposed to such suicides compared to 55 per cent of the population that is opposed to suicides committed by persons in full possession of their faculties. As explained before, two constructs have been built on the basis of these two types of indicators: tolerance towards controversial religious practices and tolerance towards controversial religions. The preceding analysis of the answers has already revealed that the public discussion, in which the media and the politicians set the tone, strongly influences the attitude of the people towards some of the particular elements of their faith, norms and rituals and towards religious groups. The construct tolerance towards controversial religious practices, based on three such practices (expressed on a 19-point scale), indicates that 52 per cent of the population strongly disagree with such practices (score 0). All in all, 92 per cent of the population express negative attitudes (score 0 to 8). As far as tolerance towards controversial religions is concerned, 46 per cent of the population are unfavourable to these religious movements (measured on a 13-point scale); 6 per cent are neutral and only 46 per cent express some degree of tolerance. As a consequence of this general attitude, we do not expect big variations according to contextual or social characteristics of the people. The two contextual factors—the level of economic development, expressed by the country’s Gross National Product per head, and the religious pluralism of the country, measured by our Index of Religious Heterogeneity—do not have a significant effect. The latter result is very revealing and confirms the contradictory results we described above. For example, in two mixed countries, the Netherlands and Hungary, the attitude towards Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientology is very different: the former country is one of the countries with the lowest number of people with a negative attitude towards these religious movements, and the latter country is one of the countries with the highest number of people with a negative attitude. And Portugal, a religiously homogeneous country, has the lowest number of people with a negative attitude towards these religious movements. We turn now towards the effects of some behavioural, attitudinal and social characteristics of the population under study on its tolerance towards, on the one hand,
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controversial religious practices, and, on the other hand, controversial religions (see Table 12.3). The effects are estimated in a multilevel regression model, assessed by the Pseudo R2 (Snijkers and Bosker, 1994, 1999). The explanatory power of the models is not very high.
Table 12.3 Results of the multilevel regression analysis on the two dimensions of tolerance Explanatory variables
Tolerance of religious particularities
Tolerance of controversial religions
Standardised parameter
(tvalue)
Standardised parameter
(tvalue)
0.030
(0.41)
0.012
(0.19)
(4.52)
0.063***
(7.37)
(0.50)
0.035**
(3.30)
(3.63)
0.072***
(7.43)
1940–55 0.020
(1.77)
0.045***
(4.19)
1956–70 0.078***
(6.74)
0.066***
(5.74)
1970–82 0.117***
(10.55)
0.073***
(6.16)
Fixed part Intercept Gender Men 0.40*** Reference: Women Level of education Secondary 0.005 Higher 0.036** Reference: Lower Generation
Reference: Born before 1940 Geographical mobility
0.015
(1.68)
0.009
(1.06)
Degree of urbanisation
0.052***
(4.53)
0.036**
(2.84)
Church commitment in childhood
−0.007
−(0.62)
0.006
(0.50)
Actual denomination Roman Catholic −0.080***
(−4.89)
−0.030
(−1.83)
Protestant −0.133***
(−7.61)
−0.016
(−0.94)
Other Christian −0.024
(−2.11)
−0.013
(−1.20)
Other religion −0.012
(−1.16)
0.016
(−1.51)
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Reference: Unchurched Church commitment
−0.072***
(−5.71)
−0.012
(−1.00)
Attitude to religious diversity
0.070***
(6.47)
0.111***
(11.91)
Openness to other religions
0.022**
(2.31)
0.165
(14.63)
Ethnic threat
−0.053***
(−4.85)
−0.109***
(−10.17)
−0.111**
(−3.65)
Urbanisation * Belgium Urbanisation * Hungary
−0.070
(−2.53)
−0.199***
(−7.07)
Urbanisation * Italy
−0.065**
(−3.02)
−0.082**
(−3.73)
0.157***
(4.21)
Openness other religions * Great Britain
0.083**
(2.65)
Openness other religions * Italy
0.150***
(7.54)
Rel. pluralism * Finland Rel. pluralism * Netherlands
0.210***
(6.21)
Rel. pluralism ** Great Britain
0.217***
(6.98)
Rel. pluralism * Belgium
0.147***
(5.85)
Openness other religions * Netherlands Ethnic threat * Italy
0.128*
(2.76)
0.053
(2.42)
0.106***
(4.87)
Level 1 Countries (variance of intercept)
0.060
(2.19)
0.048
(2.19)
Level 2 Individuals (residual variance)
0.818**
(75.34)
0.804
(75.42)
Random part
2
0.13
0.16
2
0.13
0.14
R at individual level R at country level Notes: * p 0.01; ** p 0.001; *** p 0.0001
There is no significant difference in attitude towards controversial religions between Catholics, Protestants, members of other Christian religions, members of other religions, and the unchurched. However, Catholics, but more so Protestants, express greater intolerance towards controversial religious practices than do members of other religions and unchurched people. Controversial practices are also more negatively evaluated the more committed church members are, although this is not the case for controversial religions. Church commitment in childhood does not produce a significant impact on tolerance towards either controversial religions or practices. Contrary to our expectations, men are more tolerant towards controversial religions and religious practices than women, In the USA, women more than men agree with FBI surveillance of religious cults, which points in the same direction (Bromley and Breschel 1992:48). Higher levels of education enhance tolerance towards both controversial issues, and the two youngest generations are significantly more tolerant than older ones,
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especially compared to the generation born before the Second World War. Geographical mobility has no impact on religious tolerance, but people living in more urbanised regions are more tolerant towards controversial religious practices and controversial religions. However, this is not the case in Hungary and Italy, and in Belgium concerning controversial religions. The overall positive effect of living in urbanised regions is reduced to zero in these three countries. In Italy, tolerance towards controversial religions is rather stronger in urbanised regions, but there is no additional effect of urbanisation on tolerance towards controversial religious practices. As was expected, the more people feel an ethnic threat attributed to immigration, the more they are negative towards controversial religions and controversial religious practices, but this is not the case in Italy because there this effect is wiped out. We observed that a positive attitude towards religious pluralism and openness to other religions has a positive impact on the two aspects of tolerance. This positive effect of a positive attitude towards religious pluralism on tolerance towards controversial religions is greater in Finland than in the other countries. A positive attitude towards religious diversity has a greater impact on the positive attitude towards controversial religious practices in Belgium, Great Britain and the Netherlands than in the other countries. Openness towards other religions has a greater positive impact on tolerance towards controversial religions in Great Britain and Italy; and in the Netherlands towards controversial religious practices.
Conclusions Attitudes towards Jehovah’s Witnesses are more positive than towards Scientology: 65 per cent state that Jehovah’s Witnesses should be allowed to practise their religion against 43 per cent for Scientology. The overall attitude towards controversial religions splits the population into a majority that is in favour (52 per cent), 16 per cent that is rather neutral, and about one third (32 per cent) that is opposed to allowing these persons to practise their religion. Analysing the explanatory variables that have a significant impact on tolerance towards these religions, we notice that men, better-educated people and the generations born after 1940 are somewhat more tolerant than women, people with a low degree of education, and the generation born before World War II. The effect of urbanisation is not uniform: contrary to the general trend, rural people are not more intolerant in Belgium, Hungary and Italy. Church affiliation, to whatever church, has no effect, nor does the degree of current or childhood church commitment. A positive attitude towards religious diversity promotes more tolerance towards controversial religions. The same is true for the general attitude of openness towards the beliefs of other religions. Finally, the feeling of ethnic threat promotes greater intolerance towards controversial religions. Contrary to our expectations, women are more negative towards controversial religions than men, although they are more likely than men to become members of controversial religious movements. Since younger, unmarried persons are overrepresented in NRMs, it may be that this generally negative attitude of women is a consequence of motherhood. They are more family-oriented than men and, as Jim Richardson and Liliane Voyé suggested in a discussion on this issue, ‘losing a son or a
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daughter to a cult’ (or for that matter a grandchild) may support a strong disposition for women to entertain this generally negative opinion towards such groups and also towards controversial religious practices, as we shall see. Although two-thirds of the population think that Jehovah’s Witnesses should be allowed to practise their religion, 90 per cent express their opposition towards their norm that parents may prevent a blood transfusion for their children. People may be positive towards a controversial religious body and its right to practise its religion, but at the same time be negative towards its controversial religious practices. Men, people with a higher education and the two youngest generations are somewhat more tolerant towards controversial religious practices than women, people with a lower or secondary education and the two oldest generations. In general, urbanisation promotes more tolerance towards controversial beliefs, norms and rituals, except in Italy. Roman Catholics and especially Protestants are more intolerant towards controversial religious practices than the others, and this intolerance is highest among the most church-committed. A positive attitude towards religious pluralism promotes more tolerance towards controversial religious practices, especially in Belgium, Great Britain and the Netherlands. An open attitude towards the beliefs of other religions also promotes a slightly greater tolerance towards controversial practices, especially in the Netherlands. And as expected, people who feel threatened by immigrants are more negative towards such practices, except in Italy. We expected that if there were to be differences in tolerance between members of religious bodies and the unchurched towards controversial religions, Catholics would be the most intolerant towards such groups. The lack of significant differences, church for church, in intolerance towards controversial religious movements may indicate that such attitudes are first and foremost influenced by the ‘negative summary events’ about sects and cults in the media and reports on political actions against NRMs, since most people know these movements through the media. However, there is a significant difference in intolerance towards controversial religious practices on a church-by-church basis. Catholics, but more so Protestants, are more intolerant than members of other religions and the unchurched, Members of other religions are a minority in European countries, and this may promote a higher degree of tolerance for the sake of their own religious position in these countries and their own particular beliefs and practices. Both Catholic and Protestant churches condemn suicide, but the mainline Protestant churches are less ritualistic than the Catholic Church. They are religions of the book, without interpreting the Bible literally. This may explain why they are most intolerant towards the controversial religious practices we have studied. Indeed, they, more than the other churches, have arguments against particular rituals and the refusal of blood transfusion in reference to the Bible. We may conclude that the general attitude is one of hesitant tolerance towards allowing members of controversial religions to practise their religion (only 52 per cent are more or less positive). However, the general attitude towards controversial religious beliefs, rituals and norms is overwhelmingly negative. The youngest generation is the most tolerant generation. Overall, Great Britain and the Netherlands are the most tolerant countries, according to the different questions we asked.
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Notes 1 RAMP was initiated by W.Jagodzinski and K.Dobbelaere, who, together with E.Barker and L.Voyé, successfully applied to the European Science Foundation for support. The grant received made it possible through a series of seminars to develop the scientific project that resulted in a core questionnaire, which was applied in the following countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Sweden. The goal of the project was not only to study morality and religion, and to measure the extent of existing pluralism, but also to investigate their interrelationship. In order to pursue these goals, the RAMP project widened the scope of traditional studies concerning, on the one hand, religious beliefs and practices—by including different dimensions of religiosity, aspects of popular religiosity, syncretism, spirituality, and attitudes to so-called sectarian movements—and, on the other hand, morality—by taking into account, besides the traditional bio-ethical and sexual questions, such ethical issues as ethnocentrism, tax evasion, the death penalty, volunteering and solidarity. Articles based on cross-national data have been published in Ralph L.Piedmont and David O.Moberg (in press). A regional study of the Nordic countries by G.Gustafsson and T.Pettersson (2000) and a national study by S.Allievi, G.Bove et al. (2001) have already been published. 2 Both presented as controversial in the media, albeit for different reasons, and consequently better known to the public than other religious movements. As far as the Jehovah’s Witnesses are concerned, people know them also from their conversion activities. 3 A cumulative scale built on beliefs in Jesus as God and Man (v92), as a prophet (v93), as a religious leader (v94), and the denial of the existence of Jesus (v95). 4 Based on Becker’s generational studies (1991 and 1992). 5 We will test a multi-level regression model by means of the MIXED MODEL procedure of SAS. 6 See Barker 1989a:53–5.
13 Religious minorities in France A Protestant perspective Grace Davie Very early on in my career in the sociology of religion, I presented a paper on the political aspects of the French Protestant community (the subject of my doctorate) at the graduate seminar at the London School of Economics. That was the first time that I met Eileen Barker, who asked me a question about new religious movements in France and their overlap with the work that I was doing. My answer was sketchy to say the least, since I knew little about the subject; here—several decades later—is a better one. Eileen: please forgive the delay. Several things have changed since that seminar, not least the unusual degree of scrutiny directed towards sects (the French persist in using this word) in the French context. Nowhere else in Europe has there been quite such a degree of unease, leading to a series of controlling mechanisms, initiated almost entirely by the French state (Champion and Cohen 1999; Messner 1999; D.Hervieu-Léger 2001a). There is continued debate in sociological circles about why both French people and the French government find this issue so disturbing, well exemplified in the important exchanges that have taken place in a recent issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (Richardson and Introvigne 2001a; Robbins 2001a; Soper 2001; Introvigne and Richardson 2001). The principal focus of these articles lies in the concept of brainwashing as it appears (in a variety of guises) in the reports produced by governmental agencies in several European societies. The discussion moves, however, from description to explanation, prompting the inevitable question: why is the French case particularly problematic?1 In this paper I will argue that the reasons for French preoccupation with sects lie, largely, in the specificities of French history which has pitched against each other two opposing monopolies: the French Catholic Church and the secular state, a point that needs a certain amount of expansion in order to understand the pressures of the present situation. These pressures quite clearly influence the sects themselves, not least the lives of those that join them. Precisely the same factors, moreover, are formative with respect to the second, and less well-known, issue raised in this chapter: that is, the reactions of the small but highly significant French Protestant community to this ongoing and difficult question.
The historical context How then can these formative influences be explained? Martin (1978) explored different versions of the secularisation process in Europe: one of these, the Latin variant, characterised those parts of Europe historically dominated by the Catholic Church. In
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other words, it is the pattern that emerges in the parts of the continent least affected by the Reformation. The argument can be summarised skeletally. Where the Catholic Church resisted reform from within, those opposed to or critical of the clerical model or indeed of Catholicism itself were driven outside the churches altogether. In much of Latin Europe, there was no room for a Protestant alternative; there emerged instead (and somewhat later) a much stronger version of anti-clericalism, aligned this time not with Protestant versions of Christianity, but with political and frequently anti-religious (as opposed to anti-Catholic) tendencies. In other words, the choice between different forms of Christianity is replaced by a much starker alternative: a Catholic monopoly on one side and an ideologically committed, markedly secular state on the other. Neither has much time for collectivities or groups who do not fit easily into the bipolar pattern. The division is particularly sharp in France, where the politico-religious conflict has dominated political life since the Revolution. It is true that the virulence of the conflict has diminished since 1945; no longer are political choices made solely, or even principally, in these terms. The historical deposits remain, however, profoundly influencing the manner in which the public discussion about religion (including that about sects) takes place. The basic categories are set: what, for example, counts as ‘religion’ and who, primarily, should be responsible for the decisions/actions in this field? The implications of this way of thinking for the existence of sects in France, not least the legal frame that surrounds them, form a major theme within this chapter; it is an argument that draws not only on Martin’s seminal thinking but on Hervieu-Léger’s more recent analysis of the current situation (D.Hervieu-Léger 2001a). A second emphasis lies in the reactions of the Protestant community to this ‘problem’. The specificities of French history are equally formative from this point of view, tendencies that go back to the Reformation itself. In the sixteenth century, much of France was under the influence of the Protestant reformers. Calvin, after all, was French (and wrote in French), even if the practical aspects of his theology were worked out in Geneva rather than in France. Indeed, there were moments when the religious history of France hung in the balance; it could have gone either way. The alliance of throne and altar proved, however, decisive: what followed was the suppression by military means of Protestantism in France and the flight of many thousands of Huguenots to other parts of Europe, and beyond. The persecution came and went in terms of its brutality, but the underlying message was clear: in the building of France as a nation-state in the early modern period, those who did not conform to the religious norm were obliged either to leave the country, or to convert, or to keep a very low profile indeed. The Protestant community had few legal rights until the ancien régime came to an end, With this in mind, a natural affinity between Protestants and republicanism is hardly surprising; it took, however, the best part of a century to establish definitively. There are two dimensions of this story, both of which should be kept in mind. The first can be found in the historical narrative itself, the second in the way in which this carefully nurtured memory interacts with the evolution of French society, and more especially with the many and varied political regimes that succeeded one another in the course of the nineteenth century. This interaction is described in some detail in my doctoral thesis (Davie 1975). It was a crucial element in helping me to appreciate the political aspirations of French Protestants in the twentieth century, the subject of the
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seminar with which I started this chapter. It is equally important when it comes to understanding the reactions of French Protestants to other religious minorities in France. To cut a long story short, the Protestant churches acquired legal recognition at the time of the Revolution, a settlement which finally allowed those of the Reformed faith an official existence in France. The twists and turns of French history in the following century ensured, however, a variety of experiences for what was in many ways a naturally conservative community. On the one hand, the Bourbon Restoration in 1815 was a disaster for French Protestants; it was a further example of the collusion of throne and altar at Protestant expense, leading eventually to armed revolt in the Cévennes. In contrast, the Orleanist Monarchy (1830) was a genuinely positive experience enabling both consolidation and growth—no one mourned the untimely death of the king (Louis Philippe) in 1842 more than the Protestants of France. Most of them, moreover, were appalled at the excesses that took place at the time of the Paris Commune in 1870 and it was not, in fact, until the final decades of the nineteenth century that the republican instincts of the community finally bore fruit, in consistent support for the Third Republic and its policies. These included two pivotal pieces of legislation: the first was the creation of a public school system based on the principle of laïcité,2 the second was the 1905 law that brought about the separation of church and state in France. Protestants were disproportionately active in both fields (Encrevé 1985:216–28; Encrevé and Richard 1979). The 1905 law became, moreover, a defining moment in church/state relations in France: from this point on, religion is effectively managed within the framework of the Republic. To be more precise, religious belief becomes a private activity, with its ‘normal’ public manifestations taking place in collective worship, in assemblies protected and guaranteed by the state (D.Hervieu-Léger 2001a). The crucial point to grasp is that the model of ‘normality’ is essentially Catholic, a fact which reveals the pervasiveness of both Catholic history and Catholic culture in what appears at first glance to be a precociously secular nation. Indeed, the interdependence of the Republic and the Catholic Church becomes more and more visible: the former constitutes the alter ego of French Catholicism, a kind of Catholic Church without the Christianity (Martin 1978:24; Willaime 1996). The essential point follows from this: neither the church nor the Republic is able to deal effectively with forms of religion that do not conform to the assumptions of belief and practice that are embedded in the Catholic norm. The current crisis has come about in that new forms of religious belief and the activities that accompany them increasingly violate these assumptions. Before turning to this question in more detail, it is necessary to say a little more about the role of Protestantism in the French system. In terms of the 1905 settlement Protestantism, like Judaism, found its place (indeed, an honoured one, given its past as a persecuted minority) as a ‘recognised’ form of religion, at least in its traditional or historic forms. Newer, more independent Protestant groups3 have, on the other hand, had far greater difficulties in this respect (see below). The Protestant model, moreover, has become a form of blueprint. For example, among those responsible for the system of recognised cults in the later post-war decades (a status that offers a considerable degree of privilege to the groups that are included), there are some who have made strenuous efforts to extend this to the more recently arrived faith communities—notably the Muslims. Indeed a former minister of the interior (Jean-Pierre Chevènement) explicitly
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suggested that Muslims in France should aim at establishing an organisation somewhat similar to the Fédération Protestante de France in order to represent their interests.4 The problems in achieving this aim lie beyond the scope of this chapter. The particular nature of French Protestantism is, however, critical if we are to understand fully the role of this constituency in the debate concerning sects and new religious movements. On the one hand, the Protestant community has been definitively accepted by the republican system—almost too much so, in some respects. The latter point can be illustrated by the increasing difficulties that Protestants have in maintaining a distinct identity insofar as their ideals become increasingly those of the French population as a whole (Baubérot 1988; Willaime 1992). On the other, the Protestants in France have never entirely forgotten their own past, not least the centuries through which they endured persecution. Religious liberty is of paramount importance to this community. With this in mind, it is hardly surprising that French Protestants react sharply when they see others who are persecuted for their faith, even if that persecution takes the form of harassment (legal or financial, for example) rather than physical duress. How, then, have first the Republic and then the Protestant community reacted to the question of sects? And why has the discussion become so acute in recent decades? It will be these questions that preoccupy us in the following sections of this chapter. The question of timing must be tackled first in order to appreciate fully the context of the current debate.
The current crisis Sects and new religious movements are by no means new in the European context. There have always been innovative forms of religion as schismatic groups seek new ways of expressing religious sentiments. Until the second half of the twentieth century, however, these innovative groups could by and large be contained within the system. In the 1960s and 1970s, in contrast, two things happened simultaneously, and not only in France. Right across Europe, the historic churches began to lose their capacity to control both the beliefs and the practices of the population as a whole at precisely the point when the range of religious choices became wider than ever before. New currents of religious life found their way into Europe (an influx largely determined by the need for labour), and Europeans increasingly travelled the world, coming across new ways of being religious. The consequences of this increased mobility were many and varied. It was at this point, for example, that significant communities of faiths other than Christian began to establish themselves in Europe: a noticeable presence of Muslims in France, Germany and Britain, and in the latter additional, though rather smaller, groups of Hindus and Sikhs. More directly related to the theme of this chapter was, however, the explosion of multiple religious groups manifesting an enormous variety of beliefs and practices. Such groups, for the most part, are numerically small and are primarily concerned with their own business. Some, however, have gained considerable notoriety and all have been affected, directly or indirectly, by events such as Jonestown, Waco or the Solar Temple deaths. Documenting, explaining and assuring justice for these communities has been a central feature of Eileen Barker’s professional life.
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But why was this situation particularly difficult for the French? A first step in understanding the specificity of the French case in this respect was taken by Beckford in 1985. In this account, Beckford underlines the fact that neither the impact nor the fortunes of sects or new religious movements can be understood without attention being given to the specificities of the context as well as to the movements themselves. Sects interact with their surroundings to produce a particular controversy in one place which is avoided in another. Conversely, sects and new religious movements flourish differentially; their success (or otherwise) depends on a huge variety of factors. In documenting these differences, Beckford draws directly on Martin (1978): just as the historic churches form different ‘patterns’ across Europe, so too do the minority groups. The patterns, moreover, are far from random—particular features can be identified which are likely to have predictable effects. One of these features is the role of the state in the management of religious life. France, moreover, displays this feature more than most, if not all, of her European neighbours, and for the reasons already outlined. Given the explosion of innovative forms of religious belief both inside and outside the historic churches in France, the system so carefully worked out at the beginning of the twentieth century, and in which the state is unusually dominant, is thrown into disarray. It simply cannot cope with the forms of religion that are presenting themselves some eighty to a hundred years later. HervieuLéger puts this as follows: [T]he system topples when the mesh of the confessional net is strained by the multiplication of groups and movements claiming religious status and demanding the benefits of a freedom taken for granted in democratic societies. In reaction to the anarchic proliferation of self-proclaimed and extradenominational religious groups, laïcité’s deep-rooted suspicion that religious alienation poses a constant threat to freedom is tending to resurface. (D.Hervieu-Léger 2001b: 254) A second fact is, however, equally important. Such innovations in belief and practice are in fact permissible if they take place within the recognised faith communities—the increasing numbers of charismatic groups within the Catholic Church, for instance, do not cause comment. It is, it follows, the institutional deregulation of religion which strains the republican system, not the innovations in belief themselves. A Protestant example illustrates this point perfectly.5 A small and initially independent evangelical church (L’Eglise évangélique de Besançon), founded in 1963, describes itself as Christian and Protestant—more specifically as a cross between Pentecostal and Mennonite. In the decades following its foundation, the church grew to the status of a small denomination, comprising twenty or so congregations in eastern France with a total of 2,800 members, with its largest group located in Besançon. There were no major difficulties about its status until the mid-1990s. From then on the church experienced a degree of administrative harassment, finding itself eventually among the ‘dangerous sects’ listed in the parliamentary reports published in 1996 and 1999 (see below). The details of what happened next reveal, among other things, considerable ignorance on the
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part of those acting on behalf of the state, a situation repeated many times over in connection with the application of recent laws.6 It is, however, the solution to the problem that brings to the fore the crucial importance of recognised status. Such status was achieved by the Besançon group through its affiliation (albeit a loose one) to the Fédération Protestante de France, which offered itself as a kind of umbrella body. Such an attachment has been sufficient to protect this and other similar groups within the French Protestant community from bureaucratic harassment. It has not altered the belief system and practices of the community in question. Before turning to a more general consideration of the Protestant response to the current crisis, it is important to complete the historical account.7 Since the late 1970s the French government has signalled its concern about sects by publishing a series of official reports, and by creating in 1995 a parliamentary commission (the Mission interministérielle de lutte contre les sectes, MILS) charged with reporting on the ‘sectarian threat’.8 The debate moved in stages, becoming notably more aggressive in the mid-1990s. For example, in 1996, the Mission published its report, in which a number (173 to be precise) of religious groups appeared on a black list, measured against criteria claiming to identify religious organisations that presented a particular danger to the individual—they should, in consequence, be kept under close surveillance by the state. The report led in turn to legislation—a bill that was introduced to the National Assembly in June 2000. An important clause within this piece of legislation concerned the concept of ‘mental or psychological manipulation’ as a category in law, i.e. a recognised crime to be incorporated into the Penal Code. The fact that this notion was softened somewhat in the final draft of the bill (which became law in May 2001) has only partially mitigated the punitive measures endorsed by the French parliament with a view to controlling the activities of numerous religious associations, and by all shades of the political spectrum. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of the whole process has been the unanimity of the political class in dealing with this question. This is, in fact, one of the very few political issues which allows the ideological families that exist in France to set aside their differences—whether they are driven by their own convictions or by the pressure of their constituents is, however, rather more difficult to say. Whatever their origin, such convictions are firmly endorsed by the media, resulting in a series of mutually reinforcing and almost inescapable pressures. Such pressures have caused comment, not least in the sociological community in France—a group which necessarily takes a more detached view than either the public or the politicians, in that its representatives are primarily concerned with sects as one element within the larger religious scene. It is simply not possible to draw a definitive line between ‘sects’ and ‘religion’, disapproving of the former and approving the latter, in that all religions to some extent manifest sect-like aspects (Willaime 2000). But quite apart from the reactions of the sociological profession, the apparent intolerance of both the French public and its political representatives towards minority forms of religion has, as we have seen, raised eyebrows in much of Europe and, indeed, in the United States. No other European country has reacted to the problem in quite such a negative way.
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The Protestant response and a British comparison How, though, have the French Protestants responded to this situation? A crucial source of data in this respect can be found in the series of articles brought together by Benoît Hervieu-Léger in a special issue of Réforme (a journal of the French Protestant community) under the title Sectes…entre panique et confusion, published in June 2000. Its editorial sets the tone. In this, Jean-Luc Mouton refers to a ‘permanent and emotional fixation’ with the question of sects in France. Of course, there are aspects of the problem which provoke public concern and which require appropriate sanction (nobody denies this), but why should the government play such a prominent role in these affairs? More precisely, why should the French state become so concerned with religious groups that find themselves outside the framework of ‘recognised’ cults when, technically at least, the secular Republic does not officially recognise any religion? Given their history, French Protestants are understandably wary of such initiatives, the more so when small, independent but theologically orthodox churches (such as that in Besançon) are harassed by the authorities. With this in mind, the Protestant community has a particular contribution to make to the current debate. Hence the special issue. The articles that follow are grouped into three sections: those concerned with the image of sects in France, those concerned with the law and those, finally, that reflect or suggest policy. The first is primarily informative, describing three very different groups which come under the category of sect: Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Given such diversity, the question of definition is inevitably raised. Four definitions are offered (two of which are sociological, one Protestant and one ‘official’); these are followed by two short articles written from a Catholic point of view. In connection with the latter, the old paradox re-emerges: the supporters of the secular (laïque) Republic are as committed as their Catholic adversaries to a model of religion which derives from a particular (and Catholic) understanding of religion. More profoundly, however, the debate raises an ongoing and persistent ambiguity within laïcité itself—that is between a liberty of conscience (the freedom to practise the religion of one’s choice) and the freedom of belief (not least the right to protection from false dogma).9 What the latter meant in the early days of the Republic was, of course, the freedom to resist or to oppose Catholic teaching, seen as necessarily intransigent, an attitude now generalised to all forms of religion. The fact that all religions, including Catholicism, have evolved into something very different and much less dogmatic in the late twentieth century, implies a fundamental rethinking of the categories. So far, the French—both Catholic and secular—have failed to engage this issue. Precisely this is called for in the subsequent sections of the special issue in order to avoid the manifest misapplications of the law already described. Further points become clear in the material that follows; they lead moreover to an interesting comparison with the British case. Unsurprisingly, French Protestants react with particular distaste when groups that remind them of their own struggles for religious freedom are harassed by the state. This sympathy is all the more acute when the
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community in question is part of the Protestant ‘family’. It extends, however, to those groups who—though theologically less orthodox—are recognisable as religious organisations, and are asking for nothing more than the freedom to conduct their own business and to worship as they choose. In other words, there is a considerable degree of sympathy for all religious minorities, a sympathy which crosses the line between the theological mainstream of French Protestantism and rather more innovative forms of belief. The role of the French state in the management of the religious field has been repeatedly stressed. In Britain, things are rather different. Here the opposition to sects or cults (more often referred to by the more neutral term ‘new religious movements’) is spearheaded by the anti-cult groups rather than the state. These groups, sociologically speaking, are not unlike the organisations that they oppose, and both form part of the voluntary sector. A further paradox follows from this: anti-cult groups in Britain often attract disproportionate numbers of evangelical Christians. Here we find gatherings of people who are opposed to new religious movements on doctrinal grounds, but who may well come, in some if not in every case, from the smaller and more independent churches—in other words, from religious organisations which in many respects resemble the groups which they are inclined to oppose. For this constituency the resistance to new religious movements is primarily theological: ‘orthodox’ Christians oppose unorthodox belief and the practices that derive from this. In France, however, precisely these groups—i.e. small independent churches—are themselves harassed by the French authorities. In France, therefore, the line of division lies not between differently convinced and therefore opposed voluntary groups, but between the recognised religions on the one hand and the non-recognised groups on the other (including at least some that are plainly part of a necessarily fissiparous Protestant ‘family’). All Protestants in France, moreover, are more sensitive than their British counterparts to questions of religious liberty. When push comes to shove, therefore, their instincts, continually reinforced by a retelling of their history (something that French Protestants do frequently and very well), lead them in a different direction from their British equivalents—they become supporters of religious liberty rather than antagonists of false teaching. Such contrasts should not, of course, be exaggerated. There are anti-cult groups in France, those for instance outlined in the final section of Sectes… entre panique et confusion, which (just like their British or American counterparts) are often motivated by concern for the family.10 Conversely, the state does play a role in Britain, indirectly if not directly, deciding for example precisely which religious groups will be able to enjoy the benefits of charitable status and the tax advantages which follow. There is, however, markedly less enthusiasm on this side of the Channel to control the religious field by means of specifically designed legislation. In this as in so many other ways, the British approach works primarily on the basis of problem-solving. It resists creating categories of legal transgression, such as ‘mental manipulation’, which apply solely or even primarily to the religious field. It makes use, instead, of a form of ‘tolerant discrimination’, a phrase coined by Eileen Barker herself, and which captures perfectly the British attitude towards minority religions. The British are indeed tolerant—considerably more so than the French, but not perfectly so. Elements of discrimination remain, some of which are more justified than others (Barker 1987, 1989b).
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Some concluding remarks So much for the French/British comparison. In her conclusion, however, Hervieu-Léger (2001a) goes further and situates the French debate in an increasingly global context. There are two dimensions to this. On the one hand there is an international discourse of human rights (including the right to practise the religion of one’s choice), within which there is a distinctively European version; on the other there is a parallel tendency towards globalisation in the religious field, and hence an inevitable pluralisation of religious experience. How then can each European nation, France included, come to terms with what is happening within the parameters established by their respective histories? The solution lies not so much in abandoning the concept of laïcité in favour of another, more ‘tolerant’ system, but in rethinking the implications of the quintessentially French concept in the entirely new situation of the new century, i.e. almost a century after the pivotal law of 1905. Both dimensions of laïcité must be kept in mind (the protection of the citizen from the abuse of religion and the right to worship freely). Careful thought must also be given to the relationship between the major world faiths now present in most of Europe and the existence of a multitude of smaller religious communities. Bearing such pressures in mind, two things need to happen: there must be (a) parity before the law for all religions, and (b) recognition of the distinctive contribution of the major world faiths to a shared system of values and to the common good. In order to achieve such goals, the concept of laïcité must take on new meaning in a religiously plural society— becoming increasingly the focus of mediation rather than conflict.11 At this point the discussion draws as much on the work of Jean Baubérot (1990, 1997 and 1998) as on that of Hervieu-Léger. Both scholars want not only to discern but to affirm an appropriate mutation in a quintessentially French idea. A final paradox relates to the shifts in the sociological agenda. In the 1960s, it was the Anglo-Saxon world that dominated the field of new religious movements, a fact explained by the relatively high presence of such groups in both Britain and America. It was in this field, moreover, that Eileen Barker played such a decisive role. Catholic Europe, on the other hand, was felt to be relatively immune to these incursions and remained rather more preoccupied by popular religion (D.Hervieu-Léger 1986). Since then, the sharp edge of the debate about new religious movements has moved both south and east—to the rather particular case of France discussed in this chapter, to Italy (where the outcomes are very different), and to the formerly communist parts of Europe in which Eileen has, once again, been particularly active. In every case, it is the rapid deregulation of the religious field that has prompted the debate, where forms of religion multiply within systems unable to cope with what is happening. Faced with new demands, each European nation has to find its own way forward, given both the limits and opportunities of its own past but respecting the framework of international law. The principal argument of this chapter lies in the fact that the societal context needs to be taken into account if the place of sects and new religious movements, together with their antagonists, is to be properly understood. The same point can be made institutionally. It is in this situation, moreover, that we begin to appreciate the role of the Information Network Focus On New Religious Movements (INFORM), an organisation that owes its origins to Eileen Barker’s commitment, enthusiasm and organisational abilities.12 The structure and funding of INFORM tell us, in fact, a good deal about the
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British situation. It is an independent charity, founded in 1988 with the help of the British Home Office and some support from the mainstream churches. It is not, manifestly not, a creation of the British state. Its primary aim can be seen in its title: that is, to help very different groups of people by providing them with accurate, balanced and up-to-date information about new and/or alternative religious or spiritual movements. It is located within the London School of Economics and combines an academic and, indirectly at least, pastoral focus. In its financial support, structure, legal status and aims, it could hardly be more different from the French Mission interministérielle de lutte contre les sectes. I will end with a question. Could a version of INFORM be envisaged in the French context? I doubt that even Eileen could have achieved this.
Notes 1 See also Introvigne (2001), which is effectively a summary of and reaction to Hervieu-Léger (2001a). The text is available in both English and Spanish. 2 Both the word laïcité and the concept that it describes are difficult to translate into English. It means, essentially, the absence of religion from the public sphere (most notably from the state and from the school system), something that is hard to imagine in the British system. 3 That is, those that lie outside the Fédération Protestante de France, the umbrella body of French Protestantism. 4 Interview in Le Monde, 19 February 2000. 5 This case study can be found in B.Hervieu-Léger (2000:32–3). More detail can be found on the website of the Italian Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni (CESNUR)— http://www.cesnur.org/. 6 See, for example, the note regarding the Eglise réformée de La Rochelle in B.Hervieu-Léger (2000:30). 7 A succinct account of the various episodes in this process can be found in D.Hervieu-Léger (2001a:45–55) and B.Hervieu-Léger (2000:27–8). The record is continually updated on the CESNUR website (see note 5). CESNUR has followed the French situation in considerable detail and offers useful background information. 8 Initially this organisation operated under a different title—the change in nomenclature, from l’Observatoire interministériel de lutte sur les sectes to Mission interministérielle de lutte contre les sectes, is indicative of a shift in attitude on the part of the French authorities. Observation gives way to action. 9 Interestingly, the same ambiguity forms a dominant theme in Richardson’s and Introvigne’s coverage of the European reports on religious minorities (Richardson and Introvigne 2001a:163). 10 It is important to remember, however, that anti-Cult groups in France, for example the Association de defense de la famille et de l’individu, receive at least some of their funding from the state. That is not so in Britain. 11 An example of the mediating role that Hervieu-Léger has in mind can be found in an episode that took place in New Caledonia in 1988, at the height of the civil war. Representatives of the major spiritual families of France went together in an attempt to resolve the situation and met with considerable success. This episode is described more fully in D.Hervieu-Léger (1998a:264–73). An English version can be found in D.Hervieu-Léger (1998b). 12 Further information about INFORM can be found on their website: mailto:http://
[email protected]. Eileen Barker’s extremely successful New Religious Movements. A Practical Introduction (Barker 1989a) should be seen as part of the same venture.
14 Gendered spiritualities Meredith B.McGuire Many religious movements—NRMs, as well as movements within ‘old’ or ‘official’ religions—encourage specific religious practices that address adherents’ material bodies—their health, gender and sexuality (see Barker 1993; Palmer 1994; Puttick 1997). Such body practices are important ways by which adherents come to experience and literally ‘embody’ their spiritual lives. This essay focuses on religious movements that emphasise beliefs and practices linking the gendered self with the spiritual self. Gendered spirituality involves an ongoing process of mind-body-spirit practice by which the individual’s gender identity can be expressed, produced and transformed. I am using the concept of ‘gender’ broadly, not so much as a tidy dichotomous social role (masculine or feminine) assigned to most people at birth, in accordance with their society’s expectations for men and women. Rather, in late modernity, gender seems to include a relatively wide range of options for performing gender roles, as well as somewhat malleable expectations for gender identity (see Giddens 1991). Like ethnic identity and religious identity, gender identity involves a sense of ‘who I am’ that, in modern societies, individuals and groups continually negotiate. While the range of options for ‘doing gender’ may be greater now than in earlier times, I wonder if gender was ever so neatly divided, so arbitrarily fixed, as mid twentieth-century sensibilities portrayed ‘traditional’ gender roles to have been. Many spiritual practices identified in this chapter suggest that gendered spiritualities of earlier eras may have represented similar negotiations and confrontations at the margins. I first noticed the themes of gender and sexuality early in my study of ritual, nonmedical healing among suburban middle-class persons in New Jersey (McGuire 1988). Many of the groups I studied had developed rituals addressed to gender-specific physical/emotional/spiritual needs of members. For instance, many women spoke of seeking healing in response to troubling reproductive events (e.g. infertility, stillbirth) or for illnesses attributed to their stress and pain from their roles as women, as daughters or as wives. Other respondents described using religious rituals and meditations for healing scars of sexual abuse, spousal abuse or troubled relationship with a parent. For example, several men sought healing for their relationship with their deceased (or living) fathers. Many recent women’s and men’s spiritual/religious movements appear to be similar to these healing movements, in part because they also use the metaphor of healing. In the 1990s, men’s mythopoetic group rituals (inspired by writers such as Robert Bly) addressed what they considered to be the crippling effects of inadequate socialisation into masculinity, especially members’ problematic experiences with their fathers. These rituals emphasised emotional catharsis, especially grieving hurt relationships. Similarly, women’s spirituality group rituals often used the metaphor of healing to address physical and emotional hurts and painful memories—especially those caused by men’s power, such as spousal abuse, rape, incest and emotional abuse (see Jacobs 1990). Their spirituality groups ritually transformed women’s bodies and their material concerns into
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valued bodies, sites of womanly power, and worthy concerns for the well-being of all (see Northup 1997).
Contested boundaries: defining ‘religion’ and prescribing ‘gender’ Traditionally, Western gender prescriptions have been firmly legitimated by official religions, even in modern times. Religious rituals and individual spiritual practices have long served to socialise males and females into ‘gender-appropriate’ behaviours and feelings. For example, historically, public rituals for marriage, for initiating knights, for purifying new mothers after childbirth and for ordaining priests embedded gender roles. Traditional gender prescriptions have been embodied also in individual religious practices, such as Victorian domestic piety that was clearly feminine in both its Protestant and Catholic versions (McDannell 1986; Taves 1986). In many Christian denominations, certain devotions, devotional literature and inspirational objects have been promoted for gender-specific audiences (McDannell 1995; Morgan 1998). At the same time, however, often a gendered spirituality has been a counter-assertion against the mainstream norms. For example, the spirituality of fifteenth-century Beguines, the asceticism and ecstatic dance of eighteenth-century Shakers, and the spiritual practices of twentieth-century Rajneesh devotees all included gendered religious practices that deviated from some mainstream Western norms. These alternative practices appear most frequently as non-official religious expressions. The dichotomy between official and non-official religious expressions is the result of identifiable historical processes, in which the boundaries of what would be defined as ‘properly religious’ were contested and, eventually, delimited (see McGuire 2002). The consolidation of what social scientists now consider to be ‘religion’ was the outcome of contests of social and economic power. Official religion came to be connected with the viewpoints and interests of privileged, enfranchised and educated social classes, as well as males, colonial powers and dominant ethnic or racial groups. The experiences and interests of subordinate groups generally were relegated to non-official religion— expressed in folk healing cults, witchcraft and spirit possession cults—religious expressions that were marginalised or actively suppressed. Sociology has inadvertently accepted, as definitive, dichotomous analytical boundaries that were historically constructed. Specifically, such dichotomies as sacred/profane, religion/magic and supernatural/natural, have been uncritically incorporated into our definitional boundaries (McGuire 2002). One important feature of religion that was ‘defined out of bounds’ in this historical contest was religion’s link with materiality. People’s quotidian material concerns (such as the need for healing, fertility, good harvest, etc.) were routinely linked with religious practices in earlier eras. In Europe and the Americas, between roughly the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, materiality—especially the human body—became viewed as inferior to things of the spirit (mind and soul), inappropriate for spiritual focus, or downright impure and dangerous (Burke 1978; McGuire 2002; Muir 1997). Within Christianity, this historical development resulted in greater dichotomising of gender roles, because men were identified more with matters of spirit, while women were identified with matters of the body. When we eschew such dichotomous thinking, we can better understand women’s
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ritual and spiritual practices as both meaningful and powerful (see Fornaro 1985; Sanday 1981). To include the experiential aspects of religion, we must take seriously the connection between embodiment and spirituality (see McGuire 1990).
Spiritual and ritual practices for the transformation of self How are spiritual practices linked with individuals’ bodies and very selves? Bell’s (1992) work on ritual theory reminds us that ritual practices, such as kneeling, do not merely ‘symbolise’ their meanings, but rather accomplish their messages through the bodily and emotional experiences of those practising them. For example, a pilgrimage or other spiritual journey involves the body and spirit simultaneously in moving through space, in reaching a special place. The mindful body’s journey both represents and accomplishes a spiritual development or change in the individual.1 Experiencing the journey physically, emotionally and spiritually at the same time, the individual’s very self is profoundly involved. A pilgrimage, thus, becomes more than a long and meaningful hike, more than tourism to a symbol-laden place, more than just thinking about or even praying for spiritual growth. The very practice of a journey in mind-body-spirit can, thus, accomplish transformation. All religious groups promote (at least for some members) a measure of transformation of self towards a spiritual ideal. Alternative and virtuosi religious groups, however, do so more self-consciously, because they aspire to an ideal that they consider to be higher or better than the one promoted by other religions or held up for the masses. Thus, they are particularly likely to encourage some form of ‘mortification of the self’ (Goffman 1961) in order to resocialise members’ very selves. Goffman reminds us that religious or spiritual ‘mortification of the self’ (e.g. in a monastery) is not utterly different from the dismantling and remaking of the self that is wrought by non-religious total insti-tutions (e.g. insane asylums or military academies). The process involves concrete practices that strip the individual of vestiges of the ‘old self’, of control over the individual’s own time and personal space, and of individual choice in a wide range of matters. Mortification of self is accomplished by mind-body practices such as wearing uniform clothing and hairstyle, accepting a new assigned name, and forgoing bodily adornment or use of mirrors. Religious groups ask adherents to sacrifice, not because these things are wrong in themselves, but because using them supports the ‘old self’. Kanter’s (1972) study of nineteenth-century communitarian groups (mainly religious or quasi-religious communities) found that most of the relatively successful groups consciously patterned their daily practices to transform the very selves of adherents. These daily practices addressed every aspect of members’ lives, and notably their bodies. For example, Shakers lived together in celibate communities, believing that the Second Coming had already occurred and that they had only to put the millennial dream into practice. Their communities had numerous ‘millennial laws’ and other directives, specifying such exact ‘mindful body’ practices as the order for dressing oneself each morning, the correct posture for sitting during meeting for worship, and even the appropriate way for a Sister to handle the Brethren’s clothes when cleaning or sewing them (see Andrews 1953). Because these communities’ way of life was dramatically different from that of the dominant society, even routine domestic habits and everyday
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etiquette required unmaking and remaking. For example, radically egalitarian communities had to retrain members who had been habituated since childhood to engage in rituals of deference (such as doffing their hats or bowing) toward their social ‘betters’. Both the ritual life of an intentional community and the training of novice members reveal much about the nature of the embodied self as continuously changing. Because modern religion often involves groups of people committing to developing ‘new’ selves (no matter how interpreted—as ‘spirituality’, ‘healing’, ‘self-realisation’, etc.), we must revise or refine our conceptualisations of ritual practice that are based on anthropological studies of relatively homogeneous and stable societies.2 Particularly when a religious group contests the dominant society’s meanings of gender, sexuality and other bodyrelevant aspects of the self, it must actively promote spiritual practices to re-shape its members’ bodily experience and expression. The following are but a few historical and contemporary examples of how gendered spiritualities address unmaking and remaking adherents’ selves through embodied practice.
Spiritual practices for dominance Body postures, gestures, use of space and time are, simultaneously, metaphorically expressive and actually performative of political arrangements (Bourdieu 1977, 1990).3 Thus, when members of political or social elites engage in virtuoso spirituality, their ritual practices are particularly likely to include specific embodied practices of hierarchy and superior status. Secret or exclusionary rituals are, as Simmel (1906) reminds us, linked to assertions of status, dominance, autonomy and boundaries. Religious movements promoting exclusive ritual initiations may be especially important in periods when those very features are threatened. A special ritual to separate the in-group (i.e. men) from the out-group (i.e. women) may be particularly salient when men are experiencing less autonomy or control, for example in the workplace. A medieval Christian pilgrimage illustrates the connection between spiritual practices and the embodiment of dominance. In the twelfth century, the pilgrimage to ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory’, a cave on an island in Ireland’s desolate Lough Derg, was transformed into a pilgrimage exclusively for the noble male elite of Europe (French 1994). Other pilgrimages of the time were typically accessible to all, without regard to social class or gender, and their structure generally minimised social distinctions while promoting communitas (see Turner and Turner 1978). Transformed into a voluntary male initiation rite, St Patrick’s Purgatory became a spiritual practice for inculcating new class-based ideals of masculinity. The central ritual was a gruelling 24-hour vigil in the cave, described by Knight Owein as a real (not metaphorical or visionary) journey into the Otherworld of heaven and hell. The ordeal offered initiates the ‘opportunity’ to undergo the tribulations of Purgatory, followed by ritual ‘rebirth’ of those who proved worthy. Dire warnings reminded the pilgrims that many who went before them ‘perished in body and soul’ when they were not ‘strong enough to endure the torments’ (quoted in French 1994). The men prepared for the central ordeal by intense prayer and fasting for fifteen days, making out wills and receiving the ritual office for the dead. Knights’ spiritual practices served to resocialise elite young men into a new, militarised ideal of masculine virtue—linked to
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the growing militarisation of upper-class society in that era. Young knights developed a militant lay piety, braced for battle by a dramatic religious experience that rendered them heroic in the eyes of others and assured of their personal salvation (French 1994). More recently, during the Victorian era in America, there arose several widespread movements that similarly emphasised exclusive male initiation rituals. By 1897, more than one quarter of all US adult males (and in urban areas, half of all men) belonged to fraternal lodges such as Freemasons, Knights of Pythias, Odd Fellows and Red Men. Indeed, membership figures for that period strongly suggest that the women were in the churches and the men were in the lodges (Hackett, forthcoming). These gender-specific quasi-religious movements developed many complex layers of secret fraternal initiations. Initiates ritually died or descended into darkness, confronted a frightening (often masked) judge figure, were given symbolic feats to perform, and were sworn to secrecy about the initiation and group symbolism, and about even seemingly mundane practices of the brotherhood (e.g. secret handshake). Often, fraternal orders adopted even the symbolism and rhetoric of knighthood—somehow transposed on to the middle-class American urban scene at the end of the eighteenth century. These fraternal orders appealed directly to men whose work and domestic lives were undergoing threatening changes (Carnes 1989:69– 90). Endless layers of fraternal initiations asserted status, dominance and boundaries between members and non-initiates. Today’s masculine gendered spiritualities have some features of voluntary male initiation, but they are clearly also rituals of transformation of the self. Like the Victorian fraternal organisations, men are struggling to define masculinity and men’s relationships in the face of challenging and changing gender roles of women—especially their own wives. Like the knight-initiates, they exclude from key rituals those over whom they expect to hold dominance. Promise Keepers, a US evangelical Christian men’s movement, relies heavily on male subcultural appeals, such as the use of warfare and team sports, as metaphors for Christian commitment. Mass rallies held in sports stadiums include some of the same enthusiasm-building practices as (US) football—cheers (and cheerleaders), performance of ‘the wave’, loud music and spectacle. The movement urges men to accept responsibility for authority in the home and involvement with parenting, to become sexually self-disciplined, and not to diminish their essential strong and ‘ruthless’ manliness (see Bartkowski 1999). Group ideology is based on gender essentialism, identifying authentic manhood as intrinsically aggressive, competitive and dominating (Donovan 1998). It holds that men should exercise their (proper) headship over wives and children, but allows the possibility of a tender approach to patriarchal control. Simultaneously, it is adamant about manliness, heterosexuality and male authority (Bartkowski 1999; Donovan 1998). Like the Victorian brotherhoods, Promise Keepers may appeal particularly to men in the throes of dramatic social and economic change. Earlier forms of hegemonic masculinity may be unsustainable in a socioeconomic system where neither physical strength nor craft skills nor other gender advantage guarantees a good income. According to one interpreter: their cultural politics redefine masculinity such that it is no longer contingent on the breadwinner role. Promise Keepers remove male
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authority from social contingency by arguing that all men have power by virtue of a Christ-like maleness, not by their paycheck or physical strength. (Donovan 1998:837–8) By linking their dominance with masculine virtues (e.g. in spiritual warfare) and masculine subculture (especially sports), Promise Keepers’ group practices literally embody authoritative masculinity (see Bartkowski 2001).
Spiritual practices for submission Body practices and body symbolism have long been identified with submission to dominance or authority. The supplicant who goes ‘on bended knee’ and the worshipper who bows in prayer not only demonstrate their submission but also subjectively experience a sense of submission. When religions conflate hierarchical social relations with the individual’s position relative to their god(s), then gender, class, age and other statuses are particularly likely to be expressed in postures, body rituals and other ways of embodying submission. The connection with gender roles and sexuality is sometimes complex. Neitz (1995) points out that the dominant narrative of religious transformation assumes a male perspective. Accordingly, a man whose ‘old self’ enjoyed many privileges subsequently renounced these and voluntarily submitted to a transforming discipline and surrendered to his new vision, his ‘new self’ and his new life. She argues that such a path to religious experience is gender-specific, because the men in the narrative began from a position of autonomy from which they could choose submission and renunciation. Without pre-existing autonomy, could women’s religious practices of submission or renunciation possibly lead to the same kind of transcendent religious experience? Male medieval Christian ascetics, for example, sought to renounce worldly privileges and possessions. In order to experience God more deeply, they engaged in body practices of submission, such as prostrating themselves at the altar or cross-dressing. Female ascetics of the same period could not accomplish by renunciation the same experience as their male counterparts, because they could not give up privileges of dominance that they did not, by virtue of being female, ever have. Some historians suggest that the apparently high rate of ‘holy anorexia’ among medieval nuns may be due to the fact that food was just about all that women could renounce (Bynum 1987). Many ascetic women employed postures and gestures of submission, but these could not have the same effect for mortification of the ‘old self’ as they did for men. For women, submissive body practices were only slightly more exaggerated ritual deference than would have been routinely expected of them by husbands and fathers. Numerous recent religious and quasi-religious movements also promote spiritual practices to embody submission. The various Twelve-Step groups (e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous) are a widespread example, with their emphasis on yielding to a ‘higher power’ in order to overcome alcoholism, addiction, overeating and so on. Although these movements are not narrowly gender-specific, women often do not benefit from the
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Twelve-Step methods, because their prior socialisation as women prevented them from a sense of self-determination from which they could choose submission to a higher power (see Foltz 2000). Many evangelical and pentecostal Christian groups value submission as a regular religious practice. For example, several Catholic charismatic communities have elaborate systems of headship and submission, urging members to submit fully to the authoritative judgement of their ‘Head’. In the home, thus, the husband/father is the Head of all, and the wife and children are expected to submit to his authority and discipline for the sake of their own spiritual growth. Similarly, the pentecostal Women Aglow movement expects women to submit to men’s authority and spiritual discipline. For example, all members must have their husband’s permission to run for office in the organisation, and chapters must have male advisors’ authoritative guidance for all decisions. In principle, ‘Headship’ means that all members submit to God’s will as discerned by his/her ‘Head’, but in practice it means that most women’s submission is to the authority of a male (e.g. husband, father) who discerns God’s will for her. For example, if a woman thought and prayed hard about whether to resume her career after her children started school, her sense of God’s will on the matter would be subordinate to her husband’s sense of God’s will. These groups encourage specific ritual practices to embody submission. For example, some encourage women to seek their husband’s physical blessing (e.g. laying his hand on her bowed head) at the outset of the day’s activities. Healing rituals, likewise, emphasise body practices that socialise women towards gender-specific virtues—submission and giving up one’s own control of a problematic situation (see Griffith 1997; Ingersoll 2002). While both men and women in these evangelical or pentecostal Christian religious movements seek self-transformation through submission, the experience of these practices is dramatically different for women than for men. Submission to the authority and discipline of one’s spiritual ‘Head’ is clearly a gendered practice and experience.
Blurring, transforming and subverting boundaries What if spirituality and the individual’s relationship with the deity are not necessarily hierarchical and, thus, based on dominance and submission? Religious movements that challenge the established hierarchies (in religion, politics, gender) are especially likely to promote alternative spiritual practices. Some alternative religious movements try to invert hierarchies, but many movements challenge the very social boundaries on which the hierarchical religions are based. Such religious movements are likely to promote gendered spiritualities that challenge both tidy gender dichotomies and tidy hierarchical boundaries. One such image of spirituality was described by the medieval mystic Hadewicj, a member of a lay community of devout women, the Beguines. Hadewicj was an accomplished poet who wrote extensively, in poetry and prose, of divine love and her mystical experiences. Unlike male mystics of the period, however, Hadewicj described mystical union as mutual (e.g. mutual mirroring of love, mutual penetration), with little or no hierarchical imagery of God and humanity. Perhaps the spirituality of the Beguine lay women blurred or transformed the cultural boundaries between dichotomous gender
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roles, dichotomous sexualities and even the dichotomy between material and spiritual or body and spirit. Petroff (1994:61) writes: beguine writers envisioned love as…a kind of boundaryless sexuality in which desire and satisfaction cannot be distinguished. This indistinguishability of masculine and feminine, the inherent bisexuality of loving, seems to be another common element in the beguine writers’ representations of desire…body is deeply implicated in their epistemology: knowing is performed not by the soul alone, but by the whole person—body, soul, and heart. Such blurring of boundaries was clearly a form of dissent in the context of the medieval church’s power (Finke 1993). More importantly, it raises the question of whether sociologists of religion are too constrained by dichotomous images of gender and sexuality, as well as by the dualistic boundary between body and mind/spirit. Historian Caroline Bynum traced medieval men’s and women’s notions of embodiment and gender, as related to their spiritual practices of ‘imitation of Christ’. Never denying the maleness of Christ, medieval men and women nevertheless associated Christ’s humanity with his (incarnate) body—and the body was identified with woman. Thus, according to Bynum (1989:175–6): they often went so far as to treat Christ’s flesh as female, at least in certain of its salvific functions, especially its bleeding and nurturing—we find that neither medieval gender contrasts nor medieval notions of soul and body were as dichotomous as we have been led to think by projecting modern contrasts onto them. Thus, I would like to argue that we must consider not just the dichotomy but also the mixing or fusing of the genders implicit in medieval assumptions. While religious virtuosi of both sexes sought to imitate Christ in their concrete spiritual practices, women imitated Christ bodily more than did men. Bynum (1989:187) notes that: female imitatio Christi mingled the genders in its most profound metaphors and its most profound experiences. Women could fuse with Christ’s body because they were in some sense body, yet women never forgot the maleness of Christ…women mystics often simply became the flesh of Christ, because their flesh could do what his could do: bleed, feed, die and give life to others.4 Since even religious expressions as ‘traditional’ as medieval Christian mysticism could produce such non-hierarchical spirituality, we should not be surprised to find, today, spiritualities that challenge hierarchical notions of relationship with the deity and tidy dichotomous notions of gender, sexuality and the Other. Thus, religious responses to racism, sexism and colonial oppression may develop spiritual practices that do not assume dominance and submission. For example, in the United States, many women (and
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indeed, some men) within Christian, Jewish and Buddhist traditions seek to develop feminist spiritualities that allow them ritually to develop and express egalitarian and holistic relationships (with God, as well as other humans). The most obvious examples are emerging spiritual practices of persons who are openly challenging norms of the wider society—gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities. Neitz (2000) suggests that contemporary witchcraft imagines a postpatriarchal heterosexuality that is not based on a ‘hetero-homo binary’. These highly diverse emerging religious movements employ (and often create) spiritual practices that enable people to experience their bodies and emotions in new and transformed ways. These spiritual practices break down the tidy boundaries implicit in norm-laden dichotomies of gender, race/ethnicity and sexuality, and they open new possibilities for religious experience. Spiritual practices that embody dominance and submission are linked with social boundaries of power and privilege; challenges to those boundaries are, likewise, expressed and accomplished by ritual practices transforming the self.
The significance of gendered spiritualities today These expressions of ‘gendered spiritualities’ are not merely accidental products in the veritable supermarket of religious and spiritual alternatives, but are linked with contemporary identity concerns. I argue that concrete body practices are involved in how gendered selves are socialised throughout life. If transformations of gender roles and identities are occurring, they are accomplished through embodied practices. For many, but not all, persons who engage in such personal transformations, religious and spiritual practices are paths to embracing ‘new’ gender roles and literally ‘becoming’ a new kind of person. These practices, over time, enable the individual to experience the emotions appropriate to the ‘new’ self and to learn (bodily, as well as cognitively) the postures, gestures and the very senses appropriate to the transformed self-identity. I also surmise that further empirical study will reveal how similar concrete body practices contribute to all religious experiences and spiritually meaningful emotions. Religion and spirituality have been connected with gender-linked body practices throughout the ages, but in the twentieth century the range of options for ‘doing gender’ expanded dramatically. Interestingly, the same period produced a plethora of religious movements giving attention to body practices for health, gender and sexuality as spiritual concerns (McGuire 1993). These gendered-spirituality movements, like the healing movements, reflect a larger societal change in which individuals may be relatively freed of many external constraints on the self (McGuire 1988:252–6). Since traditional gender roles and moral constraints can no longer be taken for granted, both those groups which reaffirm traditional roles and those groups seeking new gender roles and opportunities must actively engage in practices that accomplish and sustain gender identity. Religious movements, especially those employing identity-transforming religious experiences, can thus be prime sites for accomplishing that gender project throughout individuals’ lives.
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Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank Eileen Barker for numerous conversations that contributed to the development of these ideas, including particularly relevant discussions at Scherpenheuvel, Leuven, Montségur and St-Girons. Other colleagues and friends whose helpful comments contributed to the preparation of this paper include Peter Barker, James Beckford, Paula Cooey, Cynthia Richardson, James Richardson, James Spickard and Sheryl Tynes.
Notes 1 Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) proposed the concept of a ‘mindful body’ to explain the deep interrelatedness of body-mind experience in producing illness and healing. And I have suggested (McGuire 1996) that such a mind-body interconnectedness is also involved in religious experience. 2 In such limited space, I cannot discuss critiques of these studies in any depth, but appreciate especially Csordas’ (1994) careful and critical building upon Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990) theories. Csordas accepts Bourdieu’s ideas about how a shared habitus enables members’ ritual practices (especially such practices as healing) to accomplish—not merely metaphorically—the ‘sense’ of community and the transformation of their selves. He is (correctly, I believe) critical of Bourdieu’s assumption of homogenised habitus among members of a society or class. This assumption is particularly problematic for understanding groups that address gender and sexuality as contested issues, rather than ‘given’ and dichotomous (masculine versus feminine, male versus female) categories of thought and practice. 3 Bourdieu suggests that positions in social space (e.g. hierarchical positions) are linked, through the individual’s relationship to his/her own body, ‘to shape the dispositions constituting social identity (ways of walking, speaking, etc.) and probably also the sexual dispositions themselves’. He explains further that ‘elementary acts of bodily gymnastics…most importantly, the specifically sexual, and therefore biologically preconstructed, aspect of this gymnastics (penetrating or being penetrated, being on top or below, etc.) are highly charged with social meanings and values’. Thus, the socially informed body experiences as very real the political significance of body metaphors for domination and submission, such as ‘standing up to someone’, ‘looking down on someone’, ‘prostrating at the feet of someone’, ‘getting the upper hand’ and ‘the will to be on top’ (Bourdieu 1990:71–2). 4 Bynum (1989) argues that the embodied imagery in mystics’ visions was valued by the church, for the time, because it was ‘evidence’ against the Cathars’ dualistic separation body and spirit. The Cathars, a popular heretical movement of the period, also represented dissent against the dominant stratification system, legitimated by the church. The Cathars preached a radical dualism that identified the physical world as a product of diabolic evil. They believed that sexual difference was instituted by the devil, but that both sexes could become ‘perfects’, preach and administer the sacrament (Lansing 1998:106–25).
15 The making of a survivor Rhetoric and reality in the study of religion and abuse Nancy Nason-Clark
Preamble In 1984, Eileen Barker published The Making of a Moonie. Here she introduced readers to the Unification Church, with a view to helping scholar and novice alike consider the available data and decide whether followers of Sun Myung Moon were making informed choices or being brainwashed. That was the same year I graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Like most newly minted scholars, who reflect from time to time on their educational journey, I knew first hand about the twin pillars of ‘choice’ and ‘brainwashing’. Delighted to participate in this Festschrift, I have chosen to appropriate not only selected words from Barker’s famous title, but also the tradition of challenging what seems like ‘common sense’ with social scientific data. For both the rhetoric and the reality surrounding the issue of abuse in religious families need closer scrutiny.
Introduction Picturing violence in the family setting is never easy. Usually it comes with a cost. Sometimes that cost is personal, linked to our own family narrative, such that when we attempt to see the suffering of others, the faces of our own loved ones come into focus. Here, amid anguish, we relive, at least temporarily, our own childhood or adolescent vulnerabilities. In the past, but never far from the present: intrusive, painful memories that threaten to interrupt or control, once again, our daily lives or future possibilities. Understood from this vantage point, violence can only be framed as my abuse, abuse, as if there is no other story than one’s own. For others, it is very difficult to picture violence in the family setting because we personally have been relieved of the clinging tentacles of its suffering, humiliation and long-term impact. We want to understand and to empathise, but our hearts are cold—not because we are callous or indifferent by design, but because we have never seen or heard the heart-cry of a victim, told first hand, in the first person, face-toface, with tears and silences that cannot be (easily) deciphered. Such disclosures are so unlike the news reports that flow uninterrupted from the lips of a broadcaster, or the clipped scenes from a television documentary. If we have never heard or seen a victim disclose, it is nearly impossible to comprehend the shame, or the fear, or the impact. The story of what happens when a religious woman looks to her faith community for help in the aftermath of domestic violence has been etched on the conscience of my research programme for many years now. It is a complicated narrative, that can be told
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from a variety of perspectives: that of the victimised woman herself; from front-line shelter workers, seeking to offer her refuge; from pastors, often ill-equipped to respond to the devastating personal disclosures of followers; from congregants, attempting to provide comfort amid crises; and from professionals in the therapeutic community, mandated to offer help but stretched sometimes beyond limits, particularly in their ability to challenge religious ideation. Then, there are the tales of family and friends, neighbours and coworkers, most of whom want to help—though sometimes they hinder—the pathway from despair to hope. Does religion augment or thwart the healing journey of a woman victim of abuse?1 To use the categories employed by Barker in discussing Moonies: what is the role of personal choice versus deliberate, relentless outside pressure2 in how a victimised woman’s options are presented to her? Are religious women ‘brainwashed’ into believing they must stay in abusive marriages for ever?3 Is a secular shelter for battered women a safe place for a victim to disclose that she is religious?4 The construction of the healing journey for a victim of domestic violence is sometimes co-opted by care-givers, agencies and professionals who claim that they know best what a battered woman needs.5 Thus, whether one is considering a secular or a sacred perspective, the line between coercion and choice can be somewhat blurry. There are many ways that one could begin to address the role of religious ideology6 in the life of a victim of battery. In this chapter we will consider some of the spiritual dimensions to the making of a survivor, by reference to social science data collected from a myriad of sources, including survey research, indepth interviews, focus groups and fieldwork in religious congregations, and community consultations.7 Over one thousand clergy and laity from five Protestant denominations8 across eastern Canada have participated in specific funded research projects and hundreds more have shared their stories and their experiences during informal gatherings. Taken together, these snapshots of individual lives and congregational communities help us to understand the prevailing patterns and interesting nuances in the link between faith and abuse. Troubled families differ, even as individual responses to abuse are framed in part by individual, cultural, religious and situational factors. There is not one narrative that fits all.9 And if we are to disentangle the threads woven through the stories of victims, we must be very careful to unravel both the structural and cultural elements, together with their religious and secular complexities.10 As we become more skilled at picturing violence in all of its ugly forms, we will enhance our ability to name it and thereby augment the probability of responding appropriately and compassionately to its victims. This is the link between knowledge and social responsibility; between scholarship and social action. Empowering victims and their families to see what choices is theirs to make and to assess the struggles and benefits of various alternatives is an essential part of walking alongside a woman victim as she journeys towards healing and wholeness. So, it is in that spirit of uncovering the complexities and riddles of living in—and with—violence that we begin to take a closer look, first at one woman, and then an integrated programme of research, where data has been collected over a ten-year period.11 The story below was chosen because it illustrates so clearly and concisely the nature and severity of abuse and poignantly displays the religious overtones at each stage of the healing journey. In the narrative, told in the words of the minister who offered
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assistance,12 we see the cry for help, the validation of the pain upon disclosure, the securing of safety, the ongoing supportive services and the maintenance of stability through regular contact. Later in this chapter, we will reflect more fully on the religious contours of the making of a survivor, focusing in particular on issues of identity on the road towards healing and wholeness.
Narrating the story Mildred Jennings was a deeply spiritual person. She was described by her pastor as ‘a beautiful Christian, very active in the church’. She had five grown children, all of whom were high achievers. Mildred’s plight came to the attention of the minister about three months after he had moved to the area; she began to talk about aspects of her marriage, and before long revealed that things were not as they seemed. While she was regarded as ‘a very together person’, Russell, the husband, was a most controlling man. He hungered after both power and status. To satisfy his desire for flashy goods, he was continually borrowing money, and as a result the family was going further and further into debt. The financial liabilities resembled a black hole, a vortex that sucked them all into a downward spiral. The incident of violence that the pastor recounted began like this. Mildred was having a telephone conversation with her eldest daughter, a physician in a neighbouring region of the country. Apparently Mildred had retrieved some notes detailing past abusive incidents from a secret hiding place in her home. Russell came home to find his wife on the telephone, with the papers scattered on the desk around her. He flew into a rage, something she had witnessed before when once he tried to kill her. Russell gave his 60-year-old wife and her 83-year-old live-in mother two hours to leave the family home for ever. ‘So…it was Sunday morning…when this took place.’ The clergyman found a note on the pulpit asking him to meet with Mrs Jennings after the morning’s second service. They met, he listened to her story, and that very afternoon, he escorted these two frightened older women to temporary lodging: a church family living in a neighbouring community who were willing to offer a few days’ respite to Mildred and her mother. ‘And I remember the very first day, when I was driving her…saying someday you’ll see this was the best thing that ever happened to you. But it was a terrible time, terrible time.’ The minister conceptualised the abusive man’s problem as his desire to control his wife. He controlled the money. He controlled where Mildred went, and with whom. He tried to keep her from going to church, going to movies and going to visit her friends. When Mrs Jennings stood up to his unreasonable behaviour, he would either get very loud or threatening…or he would turn silent. Sometimes he would not talk to her for a month… And her self-esteem was low because she had grown up in a family where there was abuse…she had seen her grandfather knock her grandmother out, leave her on the floor in a pool of blood. She saw her father treat her mother very negatively…so she had very low self-esteem.
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Russell, too, was a childhood victim of abuse, a man who learned as a little boy to use his fists to get his own way. After Mrs Jennings and her mother had been ‘turfed out’, she spent the next four or five months feeling sorry for her husband. ‘She was feeling even though he was the one that put her [out] with two hours’ notice, she felt that she was hurting him by having blabbed.’ As he told this story, the pastor’s mind went back to his intervention and he said in a soft voice, ‘I felt so bad for her, she was so vulnerable. And he was always calling her…she would pity him so much. Pity him because he never knew what love was as he was growing up.’ Mildred turned to the minister for help, because she knew nowhere else to turn. ‘I was the one who was right here for her…she wondered if God could forgive her for leaving him. After taking the marriage vows, better or for worse, for life, and I helped [her] over that. I did a lot of listening’, the pastor confided. ‘I reminded her that she would have never have left that day…it wasn’t her…decision.’ The pastor tried to challenge Mildred’s erroneous beliefs—that she was at fault, responsible for her husband’s misery, or that the break-up was her doing. For the first few months after this episode, the minister and the woman talked every day, and then for over two years there was contact at least once a week, sometimes for 15–20 minutes, sometimes for over an hour. Russell, on the other hand, blamed the abuse and its associated misery on Mildred, on other people, on everyone but himself. Russell was unwilling for the minister, or for anyone else, to offer him assistance. He preferred to be left alone. Pastoral care of a rather intense nature continued for a sustained period of time. Additionally the minister intervened with other professionals so that they could understand more fully Mrs Jennings’s spiritual life. For example, the lawyer involved with Mildred was having problems making sense of her religious values, in particular how she could so easily forgive this abusive man. With Mildred’s permission, the minister explained to legal counsel her religious ideology, even as he tried to challenge it through counselling. Spiritual intervention in this case involved the minister helping Mildred to be less forgiving, helping her to see that the God of her faith was not asking her to ignore the pain and the abusive events, but to hold her husband accountable for his own behaviour. In the life of Mrs Jennings and her mother, spiritual needs were primary on the road to healing and recovery, even as rescue was primary at the beginning. There were religious overtones to Mildred’s suffering which also had the potential to impede her therapeutic journey towards wholeness. Such erroneous ideation of a religious nature can only be challenged by one with spiritual credentials. The language of the spirit was needed to supplement the language of contemporary culture.
Constructing the victim to survivor identity For Mildred, as for others in our research programme, identity issues were pivotal on the road to recovery and central to how their (public) narrative unfolded and (private) lives were held together. Whether one conceptualises the road from victim to survivor as a series of discrete stages or as a continuous, but arduous, process of growth and
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empowerment, there are markers along the way. And there are some unique or specific guideposts for women whose Christian faith is a core construct in their lives. Our research programme has identified the salience of (re)interpreting or (re)framing some basic Christian values in light of abused religious women’s dual identity: a victim of abuse and a woman of faith. Condemning abuse in the language of the spirit offers an abused religious woman the opportunity to simultaneously remain true to both her faith and her experience of violation. Religious components to the therapeutic journey involve using the language of the spirit to: affirm the pain; (re)claim the woman’s sense of selfworth; give a name to the problem of battering; initiate practical interventions; and offer hope.13 On this therapeutic journey, many religious women are then able to claim I have overcome when their initial experiences of disclosure were I have failed. Abuse and identity issues Identity is a social construct that has both ideological and behavioural components.14 It helps to answer the basic questions of ‘who I am’ and ‘what I do’ as a result of who I am. To be sure, identity is constructed, at least in part, by reference to ‘who I am not’. I am not ‘someone else’ and I do not do, therefore, as she does. For most women everywhere—sacred and secular sisters alike—there is great reluctance to assume the identity of an abused woman.15 Part of this resistance is a result of the ideological and behavioural components believed to be part of this identity—the identity of the battered wife or violated woman. Consequently, there is incongruence between the (personally held) mental image of a victim and the woman’s view of herself. For religious women, in particular, the early stages in the recognition of abuse often begin with a general description of a ‘feeling of malaise’, an acknowledgement that something is wrong, that things are not going well. My marriage is in trouble might be the first words spoken to the pastor, or I need help to cope with my husband. Framed in this way, the woman is taking personal responsibility for the problems she is facing and for their eventual solution. My marriage… I need help. Since identity is socially constructed, and often victims are very isolated from family and friends, it is very difficult for a woman victim in isolation to interpret her life experiences as abuse. As a consequence, there is often a moment of eureka when a woman first enters a transition house or support group and hears other women articulate what she sees as her own private, unique experience. Identity disclosure is fluid and malleable. It depends, in part, on the social context. For example, at this hour and in this place, a woman may be comfortable telling her story; in another place, on another day, she may feel too vulnerable, or the context may not be safe enough for her to unburden her life’s narrative. The subjective and partial nature of identity disclosure means that an abused woman can choose—exercise agency as it were—when, where and with whom she shares her experiences of violation. What happens at the point of disclosure, in large measure, frames either the journey towards healing and wholeness, or a lifetime of continued silence. To be sure, a large number of victimised women decide not to disclose their abuse to anyone. For example, a Statistics Canada (1993) document reported that one in five of the women who revealed that they had been victims of abuse in a nationally representative sample of 18,000 had never disclosed before, in any context, their experience of
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violation. In other words, they chose to reveal their pain and suffering for the first time ever to an anonymous telephone interviewer.16 Identity is also embodied and, thereby, gendered. Who I am is integrally linked to the body I inhabit, what it is able to do and not do, what it experiences and fails to experience. My identity cannot be separated from its bodily manifestation.17 Victimisation in the family context is experienced in cognitive, emotional, spiritual and physical ways. Often, women do not identify their experiences as abuse until it impacts the physical body with bruises, broken bones and/or scars. Sometimes, even then, a woman identifies the behaviour as abuse, but does not yet identify herself as an abused woman. Sometimes at the point that the abusive behaviour threatens her physical health and well-being, and not just her emotional or spiritual health, a woman might seek help. Identity can be resisted, embraced, celebrated, despised and altered. It cannot be easily abandoned, forgotten or lost. Thus, the road from victim to survivor for abused women involves coming to terms with the past (abuse), the present (fear) and what the future may hold (hope or despair). It involves choices, strategies and resignations, sometimes made in isolation from others, often with the support of workers in the anti-violence movement, from health care providers, and from family, friends and others, some of whom have survived abuse themselves and are willing to share their story. There are many obstacles and road-blocks, frustrating both the woman on her journey and those that accompany her. Beginning to construct the survivor identity in a religious context Fear is a central construct in the life of any abused woman: fear of the violence; fear of reprisal; fear for the children; fear that the future will be worse than the past. For many, fear becomes paralysing terror that can immobilise a violated woman, disturbing her sleep and controlling her waking hours (Martin 1981 [1976]). Fear sometimes inhibits women from seeking help or shelter. Transition houses are well acquainted with the twin towers of fear and reprisal, which is why their addresses and their residents must be hidden from the public (cf. Timmins 1995). For religious women, there is an added fear—fear that the abuse will disqualify them from their identity as a religious woman. Moreover, there is also the fear that their personal response to the intimidation and the battering will cast doubt on their continued identity as a woman of faith. Thus, both the behaviour they have endured and their response to it are perceived by abused women to jeopardise personal religious identity within their own community of faith. Added to this is the fear that God has abandoned them and that the congregation will abandon them when their experience of abuse is made known. Religious women also worry that the pastor, God’s representative on earth, and the congregation, God’s community on earth, will side with the abuser. Fear, then, has both religious and secular overtones, and is experienced in specific ways by abused women who have a journey of faith. Fear and the negotiation of identity for abused religious women Most women do not make explicit decisions for actions in the aftermath of violence in their own lives based simply on an objective knowledge of the alternatives open to them.
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In contexts where their identity as a religious woman is known, there is tremendous pressure to downplay the salience of their identity as an abused woman, or to keep the abuse a tightly held secret. As a result, abuse identity is negotiated in terms of where and when disclosure can be made in religious contexts without violating the authenticity of their religious identity. Often these women choose not to disclose the fact of their abuse to religious leaders or other members of the faith community. They fear that at first they may not be believed (a fear not dissimilar to other women in mainstream society), but they also fear that even if they are believed, their religious identity may be called into question, minimised or somehow altered. When abused religious women seek help in a community agency or secular therapeutic environment, they often feel a pressure to hide their religious identity, for fear that it will cloud the response of caregivers to their identity as an abused woman, or that it will provide a unitary explanatory lens for the abuse. In the secular context, the religious woman wants to shelter her faith community from reproach and to protect her religious identity from secular scrutiny. Most victims have learned this protection motif well, because the victim, as a battered woman, has sheltered (perhaps for a long time) her abusive husband and his behaviour from private or public accountability. Since the hiding of details and the emotion of shame are so intimately connected with the experience of abuse, it is no wonder that many religious abuse victims feel caught between the rock of the faith community and the hard place of the shelter or transition house. In both environments, one of the two salient identities in her current life is compromised. She learns, as a result, to negotiate how much of her identity is revealed in either context: how much of who she really is can be disclosed. Religious women and the identity of the abuser Another point of narrative negotiation for religious women involves the religious identity of the abuser. Is he a believer? Is he a member in good standing of the faith community? How salient is his religious identity? Through our series of studies, we have learned that when the abuser’s religious identity has faded, been challenged by others or been the subject of scrutiny, the negotiation of the identity of the victim is a little less onerous. Thus, if the abuser is clearly regarded as having forfeited his religious identity, or if others have independent reasons to challenge the authenticity of his spiritual walk, then the abused religious woman often feels less fear about the challenge of her religious identity in the aftermath of the disclosure of battery. Where identity negotiation is most delicate, and intensive, is in situations where the abuser is regarded by the faith community as a dedicated believer, active in the church, and perhaps in a leadership role. The scenario the victim often plays out in her mind is a conversation between two members of the congregation, where they say something like: Can you believe that our beloved Jim is really abusive? Or, do you think that Mary is exaggerating? Fear of such a conversation silences her own lips. If he once was a believer and committed to a local faith community, and now is no longer exhibiting behaviour consistent with that community’s beliefs and practices, then identity negotiation for the abused woman is made a bit easier. But if he was never closely associated with the faith community and she was a believer at the time of marriage, then the negotiations are made delicate for another reason: why did she marry
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an unbeliever and become unequally yoked? For the abused religious woman, then, the religious identity of the abuser plays a part in the level of fear she experiences concerning disclosure in a religious context and how it permeates the unfolding of the therapeutic journey. Religious women and the question of divorce The issue of divorce looms like a black cloud in the minds of most abused religious women. They are fearful that their initial disclosure of abuse in the home will call into question the authenticity of their spiritual status as a believer, or at least its maturity level, and religious victims fear as well that their individual responses to the abuse they have suffered will tarnish their religious identity. In part, they fear that they may be disqualified from continuing to identify with a particular faith tradition. This prompts questions such as: Can a spiritual woman leave her husband temporarily? Can she leave him for ever? Is divorce ever permitted? Advisable? Can she seek a divorce without severing her ties to the local body of believers? These are central issues as abuse victims chart how much of their story to tell, and to whom. The degree to which a Christian identity is rooted in an anti-divorce sentiment suggests a proclivity to erect a boundary separating married sheep from divorced goats. These boundaries tell us more about the perceived need to identify the group by what it is not, coupled with the fact that such boundaries, once erected, not only define the group from the outside, but highlight differences on the inside as well. Counter to what one might think, the perception of victims that divorce might serve as an impediment to their continued contact with the congregation and its programmes was not linked specifically to those from more conservative denominations. In evangelical traditions, though, it was framed more specifically in biblical language. Does God’s Word ever permit divorce? What did Jesus say about this subject? Can I still teach Sunday School if I’m divorced? Helpful religious intervention in these cases involved the pastor using the Bible to show a victim that God condemns violence and holds perpetrators accountable for their behaviour. In the case of Mildred, the minister provided comfort by noting that she did not decide to leave, it was not her decision to terminate the relationship. By employing Scripture, the pastor helped Mildred see that even the Christian concept of forgiveness has boundaries. In many mainstream congregations, it was not unusual for advice to be sought from ministers who themselves were divorced: in these cases pastoral counsel sometimes involved clergy sharing their own personal experiences of fear and then empowerment. The making of a religious survivor Abused religious women display a myriad of situationally relevant, sometimes conflictual, emotionally authentic identities. There can be a simultaneous pride in the survivor status (no longer identifying as a victim) and embarrassment of the religious identity in contexts where feminism is celebrated and patriarchal religions are constructed as the enemy of woman. Alternatively, in other contexts this manifests itself as a simultaneous pride in the religious identity and embarrassment of (past) victim or (present) survivor status, where family unity is celebrated under the umbrella of faith.18
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While critical self-reflection often enables a religious woman to strengthen her identity rather than dilute or destroy it, the continuous renegotiation of identity boundaries within the community of believers and within the feminist survivor movement can be taxing and sometimes re-victimising for the individual abused woman. It too can lead to empowerment or slow demise: hope or discouragement. The language of contemporary culture highlights the need for women to take control over their own lives in the aftermath of victimisation: something very difficult for a frightened woman with low self-esteem and possibly very little social or financial support to do. The language of the spirit highlights healing, empowerment through connectedness with God and, by extension, with other believers on earth, God’s family: this connectedness is very difficult for religious women to achieve when they feel they have failed in their own families.19 In contexts where both the language of contemporary culture and the language of the spirit are offered to religious women who have been violated, their personal journey towards healing and wholeness can be augmented. When religious victims are silenced, or a holy hush pervades the religious community, the road towards survivorship is made more difficult. As social scientists we need to have loud voices when we condemn abuse in the public square or in the sacred sanctuary, but soft, compassionate tones when we walk alongside victims, hear their stories, interpret the complexities inherent in the words they speak, and then cheer them on as they journey towards survivorship.
Notes 1 This is a question on which there has been some speculation, but very little solid data. For a critique of how religious institutions have responded in the past to the needs of abused women, see Brown and Bohn 1989; Bussert 1986; Clarke 1986; Fiorenza and Copeland 1994; Kroeger and Nason-Clark 2001; and Livezey 1997. 2 Pressure comparable to strategies of military combat; that is, extraordinary measures of a wartime magnitude. 3 See Dobash and Dobash 1979; Copeland 1994; Horton and Williamson 1998; and ThorneFinch 1992. For an alternative point of view, consult resources prepared for religious institutions wishing to respond more appropriately to the issue of abuse, such as the Fire in the Rose Project (1994). Halsey (1984), Fortune (1991) and Kroeger and Nason-Clark (2001) also offer suggestions to congregations vis-à-vis responding to abuse victims. 4 See Nason-Clark 2001; and Beaman-Hall and Nason-Clark 1997a. 5 See Barnsley (1995) for an overview of the dangers of partnership in the anti-violence women’s movement. For the politics of struggle relating to woman abuse, see Loseke (1992) and Walker (1990). 6 Our research has considered the role of the Christian tradition only. Obviously, some of the patterns and features may be applicable to other religious groups as well. 7 Over the last ten years, there have been a variety of integrated research projects involving Anglican, Baptist, Salvation Army, United and Wesleyan churches, their pastors and their people. Financial support for the research and community consultations has been provided by the Louisville Institute for the Study of Protestantism and American Culture, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Department of the Solicitor General, Secretary of State Canada, Status of Women Canada, the Lawson Foundation, the Constant Jacquet Award of the Religious Research Association, the Fichter Fund of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre for Family Violence Research and the University of New Brunswick Research Fund. Financial
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and inkind contributions have also been provided by the participating denominations. For a fuller description of the various studies and their methodologies, see Nason-Clark 1997 or Nason-Clark 2000b. The dissertation of Beaman-Hall (1996) was connected to one of these projects. 8 There was also a smaller study of Roman Catholic congregations responding to sexual abuse perpetrated by their parish priests. 9 For a general discussion concerning woman abuse, see DeKeseredy and MacLeod 1998; MacLeod 1987; Martin 1981 [1976]; and Straus and Gelles 1986. 10 Nason-Clark (2001), Weaver (1993), Wood and McHugh (1994) and Horton and Williamson (1988) all discuss the important role that clerical leaders should play in any coordinated response to abuse in the family context. Whipple (1987) points out some of the challenges for secular agencies and therapists as they respond to the needs of religious victims. 11 See Nason-Clark 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998a, 1999, 2000a, 2000c, 2001. 12 Italics are used in the narrative of Mrs Jennings’s story (her name is fictitious) to refer to verbatim text from Interview 396, held with a minister of the United Church, a mainstream denomination in Canada. Sometimes the quotations contain grammatical errors; these are not altered, nor do I specifically draw attention to them at the time they occur. To do so would be to interrupt the flow of the text. 13 See Nason-Clark 1997 and Nason-Clark 2000a. 14 Dufour (2000) discusses the creation of a Jewish feminist identity where women appropriate selected portions of both Judaism and feminism; see also Ellenson (1996) on the formation of Jewish religious identity and Winland (1993) on Mennonite identity. 15 See Profitt 2000. 16 For a discussion on this point, see Nason-Clark 1997: chapter 1. 17 See Freund and McGuire (1995:158–66) and Eiesland (1994). 18 Emphasis on family togetherness in many contemporary conservative religious circles may put violated women in those communities at risk (Nason-Clark 1997). 19 In a book review of Eiesland’s The Disabled God, Dunn (1997) argues that, for Christians, God in the person of Jesus is a wounded God, or at least a vulnerable God. She argues that through shared woundedness the religious community finds inner strength.
Part IV Philosophy and methods
16 Aspects of the constitution, construction and reconstruction of human reality Thomas Luckmann
Introduction When human beings try to understand the world in which they live, they are most often guided by common sense; occasionally they follow theoretically more ambitious inclinations. For the social sciences two of these ways of thought are especially relevant, not only as being an important part of the human reality investigated by the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of religion, but also as ways which they follow in their own attempts to describe and explain human reality. In providing the theoretical foundation of social science they replace the naive realism of common sense as well as the older mythological, religious and metaphysical canopies of common sense. They rest upon what may be called an anthropological and an epistemological axiom. In its first modern formulation the anthropological axiom is to be found in Marx’s early writings. It postulates that the world in which human beings live is, in an important sense, of their own making. Even if mostly undeclared, this axiom supported the methods employed in analysis and explanation of societies employed by many if not most members of successive generations of sociologists. The epistemological axiom is of Cartesian origin. The starting point for any serious attempt to account for the world is one’s own clear and distinct awareness of the world; lifting the axiom from its dualistic ontological context. Edmund Husserl and, after him, Aron Gurwitsch, Alfred Schutz and others developed modern, i.e. non-Hegelian, phenomenology in order to describe the constitution of the human life-world. Phenomenological description, sociological reconstruction I should first like to explicate certain elementary aspects of the subjective constitution and the social construction of the human world. I shall try to show that the phenomenological description of subjective constitution and the sociological reconstruction of social construction complement one another or, more precisely, that the latter logically presupposes the former. The only immediate evidence available to each one of us regardless of any— historically changeable—state of scientific knowledge is our own consciousness. Phenomenological analysis uses this evidence first to clarify the presuppositions of its own theoretical activities and then to describe the specifically human nature of the reality with which the social sciences are concerned. It is a reality constituted in human consciousness (the epistemological axiom) and, looked at ‘objectively’, a reality preconstructed and reconstructed1 in human action, especially, although not exclusively, in
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communicative interaction. The phenomenology of the life-world provides a general proto-sociology for specific sociological reconstructions of historical social worlds. In common sense it is taken for granted until further notice that whatever forces itself upon our awareness from the outside or from the inside is real: a pebble, the rain, the book in the library, a handshake, hunger and toothache. All these are automatically constituted in our consciousness as varyingly distinct experiences of objects, events, etc., and, on the basis of preceding experiences sedimented in the subjective stock of knowledge, as instances of types of objects, events, etc. We tacitly know that we could not experience anything without such conscious activities as perceiving, remembering, thinking—but we also know that what we are experiencing is independent of our consciousness, perhaps with the exception of the special cases in which we think about our thinking, remember what we thought some time ago, daydream about the future. This basic axiom of common sense may be considered naively realistic. At least partly motivated by reflection on these special cases, elaborate theoretical positions developed over the centuries and millennia which interpreted the relation between consciousness and that which is grasped by consciousness in different ways. Two of them, entirely abandoning common sense, followed diametrically opposed directions leading to radical materialism and radical idealism. Returning to common sense as a starting point but substituting the anthropological and epistemological axioms for its naively realistic assumptions, one may take another look at the relation between consciousness and that which is grasped by consciousness. I shall take that look from the complementary vantage points of a phenomenological description of the life-world and a sociological reconstruction of socially constructed historical worlds. I would like to proceed with the help of an example rather than by abstract argument.
An example: the boundaries of the social world The example I have chosen is the distinction between a natural and a social (‘cultural’) world.2 This distinction is at the heart of an old debate in the history and sociology of religion: is animism a ‘primitive’ religion?3 It seems obvious to common sense—to common sense prevailing today—that only human beings live in a (‘cultural’) social world. We take it for granted that rocks, trees and animals belong to different domains from the one in which there are aunts and grandmothers, cookbooks and dictionaries, policemen and parliaments. In short, social reality consists of human affairs. The boundary that separates the social from the nonsocial affects our practical enterprises, our moral sense, our religious conceptions and our legal systems. Obviously, the inclusion of human beings and the exclusion of everything else, and even more obviously, the inclusion of some kinds of human beings and the exclusion of others, has serious consequences in all areas of life. What is the origin of this seemingly obvious division of reality? Is it that the human mind simply reflects fixed ontological regions or is it one of the many things that are different on the other side of the mountain, and different today from what they were yesterday? Is our view the only ‘normal’ one, and are all others primitive, infantile, even pathological? Or are there different kinds of ‘normality’ in this regard?
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Our common sense and several philosophical positions opt for the first possibility. According to them, the division of reality into a human, sense-endowed social domain, and a physical, sense-less, non-social domain is ontologically pre-established. The human mind is capable of apprehending this division. Specific circumstances may prevent the undistorted operation of reason and result in various forms of cultural and psychological animism, as well as in totemistic principles of social organisation. In principle, however, this division of reality is considered to be universal. Another view entertains the possibility that the distinction between a meaningful social world (‘culture’) and a mindless nature is not an ontological but a socially constructed fact. The boundaries and contours of social worlds are thought to have been generated in complex historical processes. This view does not necessarily exclude the possibility that such variable collective interpretations of the world are grounded in common features of cognition, features ultimately reducible to universal structures of human consciousness. The social sciences sensibly proceed from this view. Furthermore, unless analysis of the lifeworld shows that the present commonsense division of reality corresponds to one of its universal structures, the view is compatible with phenomenological principles. A phenomenological excursion: the transcendental ego is not human Phenomenological analysis reveals the invariant structures of human conscious processes by stripping away, step by step, the biographically and historically variable components from their invariant, elementary structure. These structures underlie any concrete experience; without them no experience would be thinkable. The methods of reduction and eidetic variation4 developed by Husserl have been applied by successive generations of phenomenologists to the analysis of different kinds of intentional processes, from perception to logical reasoning and, by a few, foremost among them Aron Gurwitsch, Alfred Schutz and Alphonse de Waehlens, to the social dimensions of the life-world as well. This is not the place to describe the results of these investigations in detail. It may be pointed out briefly that Husserl, a contemporary of Frege, began with a study of the foundations of logic and continued by describing the elementary automatic syntheses of inner time which are presupposed in the awareness of inner and outer aspects of experience as being continuous or discontinuous, and by showing that the syntheses of identity across various modalities of perception are presupposed in the experience of objects as appearing as tokens of types, identical to themselves, occupying distinct locations in space and time. The most obvious illustration of the phenomenological study of the social dimensions of the life-world can be found in Schutz’s analysis of the complex5 constitution of immediacy, intimacy and anonymity in the structure of social relations. It was stated earlier that any concrete experience may be either ‘reduced’ to its invariant formal features in phenomenological investigations or analysed as a complex sociocultural phenomenon in social research. Accounting for the temporal dimension of social interaction, for example, phenomenological analysis will ‘de-constitute’, level by level, first the categories of language and the social stereotypes employed in defining schedules of collective projects, then the intersubjective synchronisations of inner time in reciprocal action, all the way ‘down’ to the subjective articulation of inner time in ‘flying
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stretches’ and ‘resting places’ (William James). On the other hand, for most research purposes sociological analysis will take all this for granted and turn its interest precisely to those levels of social phenomena that are bracketed in phenomenological reduction. It will investigate institutionally determined categories of timekeeping, political, economic, religious, familial schedules, ‘down’ to the communicative strategies of openings and closures of interaction as defined in a historical ‘vocabulary of motives’ (Mills 1940). Returning to the example of the division of reality into a social (‘cultural’) and a nonsocial (physical, natural) domain: the question was whether the limitation of the former to human beings, which is now commonly taken for granted, can be supported by phenomenological analysis.6 Is it or is it not a universal structure of the life-world? Husserl (especially 1950:§53 and §54; 1962) argued that intersubjectivity is constituted in the transcendental sphere, after reduction of the empirical ego, that the ‘pure’ ego constitutes alter ego. Schutz (1957) pointed out the difficulty involved in Husserl’s assumption that the ‘apperceptive transfer’ from my own living body (Leib), which is experienced in my own primordial perceptual field in a unique manner, should bestow the sense of ‘living body’ on other bodies which, after all, appear in my perceptual field in a radically different manner. With regard to the question at hand, the more specific difficulty in Husserl’s argument is that from the outset both ego and alter ego surreptitiously carry the subscript ‘human’. The implication is that a human alter ego is constituted in intentional processes by an ego whose humanness is a priori. This implication cannot be justified on the premises on which Husserl’s argument rests. The transcendental reduction places within brackets the ‘empirical and worldly ego’—and this means that what remains is the ‘pure transcendental ego’, not a human self. The exclusion of the humanness of the empirical ego from the transcendental reduction cannot be justified. The humanness of the self is a consequence of historically specific social processes, and a human personal identity is socially constructed (Luckmann 1979). The living body of which ego is aware in automatic syntheses of inner time is not a priori ‘human’, and the bodies to which the sense of ‘living body’ is transferred are not ‘originally’ (the term understood in its phenomenological sense) constituted as ‘human’ alter egos. Within the primordial sphere, the sense of ‘living body’ can be originally transferred to any body that stands out in ego’s perceptual reach. This ‘apperceptive transfer’ has the character of what I propose to call a universal projection. Only when we leave the ‘reduced’ primordial sphere may ego, whose humanness is constituted, not constituting, become human. Restrictions of the universal projection to distinct kinds of—rather than all—bodies are determined by typifications that form a part of a historical stock of knowledge. However, such typifications are not arbitrary. One must ask what qualities of bodies appearing in the phenomenal field of ego are likely to induce subsequent modifications and restrictions of what is ‘originally’ a universal projection. It should be understood that such qualities are merely a subjective substrate of worldviews, of socially constructed systems of interpretations. If they are ignored in that system, they will tend to be ignored in subjective perception. Boundaries of the social world in historical life-worlds: worldview and socialisation
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Transfers of sense from one object to another are tentative. They may be confirmed or modified or they may fail entirely, depending on the relevant qualities of the bodies to which some specific sense is transferred. However, the perception of objective qualities does not by itself directly affect the process of confirmation of the sense transfer. It is the apperception, the interpretation that is automatically evoked with the perception, that counts. I argued that the ‘apperceptive transfer’ in which the sense of ‘living body’— originating in the experience of ego’s own body—is transferred to other bodies in the world within reach of ego has the character of a universal projection. This projection is an elementary component of the experience of reality, yet, like all sense transfers, the universality of the projection is open to a process of confirmation. With regard to this process there is a significant difference between the universal projection and other elementary sense-transfers. Whereas the latter are automatically confirmed, refuted or modified by interpretations of direct perceptual evidence,7 the evidence for the universal projection is circumstantial. Ego does not have direct evidence of any stream of consciousness but its own. It never experiences the ‘inside’ of the thing to which the sense of ‘living body’ was transferred. Consequently, the potential restriction of the universal sense transfer of ‘living body’ (like ego’s) is affected by the interpretation of potentially ambiguous perceived qualities either as symptoms of an ‘inside’ (like ego’s) or as indications of its absence. Like all other interpretations, such interpretations, too, are evoked and become operative in the context of an interpretational scheme, and interpretational schemes are structural elements of an entire worldview. For the empirical ego, born into an existing social world, restrictions of the ‘universal projection’ are therefore determined by socially derived systems of relevance in which interpretational schemes have their origin. This means that while the sense of ‘living body’ is at first tentatively transferred to all bodies within reach, the original transfer may subsequently be confirmed, modified or cancelled under the influence of intersubjectively transmitted rules of what evidence is admissible. The perceived qualities of objects will tend to be interpreted by the empirical ego in accordance with the collectively defined, institutionally established systems of classifications within a historical worldview. The empirical ego ‘inter-nalised’ the worldview during its socialisation. This means that it has a socially constructed personal identity whose moral centre is located within the boundaries of a historical social world, and that it has a subjective stock of knowledge that is largely derived from a social stock of knowledge whose most important classificatory systems divide the social from the non-social
Different worldviews, different boundaries of the social world Worldviews are influenced by a variety of factors such as the topography and ecology of the habitat, dependence on particular plants and animals, the level of hunting and agricultural technology, the differentiation of the kinship system, etc. These determine the conditions of life and influence somewhat less directly the forms of social organisation. They also play an important role in the formation of worldviews. Because ‘objective’ perceptual qualities of things do not necessarily restrict the universal
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projection in any particular way, the universal sense transfer of living body’ may be transformed in collective communicative processes into a system of classification which fits the overall relevance system of collective life. The paradigms of classification systems and the contours of the social and the non-social therefore differ from hunting and gathering societies to ones based on horticulture, from the ‘hydraulic’ despotisms of the ancient Near East to medieval Christian societies, from Tokugawa Japan to contemporary North America. Many of these differences are traceable to a combination of the factors just mentioned. An ideal-typical construct is only approximated by the worldviews of concrete societies to a greater or lesser extent. Although this is the case with all ideal-types, the ideal-type of a worldview which ‘freezes’ the universal projection at the unrestricted level at which it ‘originally’ operates for ego, and in which the entire life-world is animated, finds closer approximations in reality than worldviews with more complex patterns of dividing the social from the non-social.8 Such a worldview defines all relations between an individual and his or her world as social relations. The entire world is experienced as a social world, all actions are morally significant. The forms of ‘classificatory totemism’ found among tribes of Australian aborigines come closest to this type. They group human beings and all relevant natural phenomena in one system, subdivided by clan or moiety principles that do not distinguish, as we would, between human beings, animals, plants and physical objects (Elkin 1964 [1938]). Although in this instance the entire world is experienced or, more precisely, interpreted as a social world, it is not necessarily seen as homogeneous. In one way or another, practical requirements will influence the operation of the classification systems. Societies of this kind defuse some of the potential difficulties of having lightning, rocks, eucalyptus trees, wallabies and members of another tribe classified by criteria which have nothing to do with their being ‘natural’ events, minerals, plants, animals and human beings, by defining some members of the animated universe as ordinary, others as beings on a different plane. Social relations with the former occur in everyday routines, with the latter in ritualised performances. In the absence of such an animist worldview—or if such a view had lost some of its former plausibility—a potentially significant difference may be noticed among the objects in the perceptual field of an individual to which the sense of ‘living body’ was ‘originally’ transferred.9 Some of them do, and others do not, change their expression. The changes are interpreted as outward signs of internal changes. Other things (the collective system of interpretation) being equal, the sense of ‘living body’ in the original transfer is supported by such changes, weakened or refuted by their absence. A threatening mountain face may lose its threatening quality if it keeps looking the same and if a collective system of interpretation has not established it as a mountain spirit with a fixed expression. This points to a weak link in the plausibility of worldviews that come close to the animistic ideal-type. Once changing expressive qualities become relevant and motivate a redrawing of the boundary of the social world, another type of worldview may form. That ideal-type is characterised by de-socialisation of one segment of the encompassing social world according to the criterion of physiognomic mobility. An approximation to this type can be found in Dobu society on an island now belonging to Papua New Guinea. Dobuans and certain plants, especially the yam,
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extremely important in Dobu subsistence, are tomot.10 Objects characterised by physiognomic immobility are left outside the social world. But so are some plants and animals. Nor are white men tomot. Yams, on the other hand, are not only capable of emotion but also of sensory perception,11 locomotion12 and speech.13 The match between ideal-type and reality is imperfect. The example illustrates the power of an established worldview to maintain its plausibility by ‘explaining away’ perceptual qualities seemingly contradicting the sense transfer. On the island of Dobu, yams walk. When Fortune (1963) persisted in questioning the full Dobu social status of yams because they cannot be seen to walk, it was explained to him that it is not easy to see them walk because they roam about at night! But, in principle, they can be seen, although it is dangerous to frighten them. The example of Dobu also anticipates two further criteria by which the universal projection may be systematically restricted even further. One of them is locomotion, the other speech. Of course, seeing how bodies—to which the sense of ‘living’ body was originally transferred—not only change expression but also walk, does not require the complicated alibis that must be produced if the classification of them as walking beings is to be maintained in the absence of direct evidence. Trees are seen to change expression in the wind, over the seasons, but they are not seen to walk. Although the apperception of what is walking may differ between different worldviews, the perception is still pretty much the same. Other things being equal, a worldview which requires locomotion to serve as a criterion for inclusion in the social world and includes in that category bodies which are seen by everybody to walk, seems to have less difficulty in maintaining its plausibility than one in which locomotion is required on the classificatory plane although objects are included that do not normally and perceptibly walk about. Many societies which are classified as totemistic approximate this ideal-type. A good example is the hunting tribes of Siberia (Lot-Falck 1953). Although they are located in different climatic zones, differ from one another in the forms of social organisation, and are of different linguistic and ethnic stock, they all depend on a limited number of animal species with fluctuating, restricted populations. In these societies, no significant difference between human beings and animals is (ap)perceived. On the contrary, similarities are found in all relevant qualities. Some of these are perceived; others are derived from common knowledge. The weak link in the plausibility structure of this type of worldview is not locomotion but communication. Being able to talk is posited as one of the criteria of membership in the social world. Yet normal, reciprocal communication is possible only with some bodies to which the sense of ‘living body (like mine)’ was originally transferred. If many categories of beings otherwise qualifying for membership are not to be excluded, the apparent muteness of these beings requires special explanation. In order to maintain the lines between the social and the non-social in this type of worldview, plants (Fortune 1963) and animals Lot-Falck (1953) must be capable of speech. And they are—but their language can be understood only by those who, after appropriate rituals, are initiated into its secrets (see, for example, Eliade 1967:319). In consequence, social relations with animals must be shifted to a different domain. However, special explanations continue to be accepted only if the plausibility structure of the worldview as a whole is not weakened. If for one reason or another it is weakened, and if social institutions no longer decisively support it, perception of ‘objective’
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qualities of the bodies that resist the successful sense transfer of ‘living body’ may gain sufficient weight to subvert the traditional classification system, put in doubt the received boundaries of the social world and engender its further de-socialisation. Language is a strategic but ambiguous criterion in the de-socialisation of ‘nature’. If special explanations (secret languages of plants and animals) are no longer believed and enter the realm of fairy tales, various possibilities arise. The most obvious—and for a long time the most frequent one—is to admit to full membership in the social world only those whom I and others of my tribe understand. The others are barbarians (‘babblers’ in Greek) or mutes (the word for Germans in several Slavic languages).14 It is not unusual for the word by which a tribe or ethnic group names itself to be roughly equivalent to the meaning of our word ‘human being’.15 On the other hand, the facts that one language can be translated into another and that there are bilingual speakers counteract such ‘tribalistic’ divisions of the social world. Different ‘anthropological’ conceptions of the boundaries of the social world arose in ancient civilisation. The ‘anthropological’ de-socialisation of the universe was typically connected with the construction of increasingly more specialised religious universes. These endured until the ‘parallel’ religious universes began to lose their plausibility; they also lost their place at the core of the worldview. What followed was the maintenance of some more or less enlightened anthropological conception of the social world in common sense and the rise of a fully de-socialised mechanistic universe in cosmological theory.16
Conclusion I hope to have shown with the help of this example in what way formal phenomenological description of the universal structures of the life-world precedes, logically speaking, concrete analyses of historical worldviews and societies. In this instance it was shown that the identification of a meaningful, moral social world with the human species, whatever else it may be,17 is not constituted as a universal structure of the life-world. It is an essential part of historical social constructions of reality. The fact that it is taken for granted by us in common sense does not give it a privileged status in social theory. Analytically it is just as much of a problem as is the totemism of Australian aborigines.
Notes 1 It hardly needs to be stressed that reconstructions are not limited to the generation of data in the social sciences. Pre-theoretical reconstructions are part of everyday communicative activities (Bergmann and Luckmann 1995) and theoretical reconstructions are at the core of mythology, theology and philosophy. 2 That is, a world that is meaningful, and in some sense collectively meaningful, to those who live in it. 3 To my knowledge, Eileen Barker, for many years a colleague in the effort to understand the forms and the functions of religion, and the variety of its meanings to human beings, has not dealt with the issues of ‘primitive’ religion, nor are her reflections on the methodological questions directly influenced by modern, i.e. non-Hegelian, phenomenology. Nonetheless, I hope that she will accept this contribution to the volume in her honour as a token of old
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friendship. The old problem of the dividing line between human beings, gods, animals, trees, rivers and mountains at first may seem antiquated and rather remote from, e.g., the organisational problems of ‘new’ religions and the mental and emotional states of their adherents. But this first impression is misleading. The issue of belonging, of exclusion and inclusion, is central to both social structural and cultural aspects of religion and it pertains to both ‘primitive’ and ‘modern’ religion. 4 Reduction: the bracketing, level by level, of the constitutive features of an experience from its most concrete to its most formal. Eidetic variation: investigating by a sort of mental experiment which features on any given level of the constitution of an experiences it is possible to vary without contradiction while remaining on that level. 5 More complex because they already presuppose all other automatic intentional syntheses as well as the presence of other selves, a problem that Husserl thought he had solved within his transcendental phenomenology. Jean-Paul Sartre (1936–7) and Alfred Schutz (1957) later demonstrated that Husserl’s claim was unfounded. 6 With this example I return to an old interest of mine. Cf. Luckmann 1970. The essay contains references to the sources of my argument about a ‘universal projection’ in the work of Wilhelm Wundt, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Arnold Gehlen, Claude Lévy-Strauss, Friedrich Tenbruck and others, and provides ethnological documentation for a typology of worldviews differing in the setting of boundaries for the social and the natural. Although I shorten some observations and include additional ones, I generally follow the argumentation in my old paper. 7 Such worldviews characterise societies with a more complex division of labour, a higher degree of functional differentiation and a more complex social distribution of knowledge. 8 When I walk around a tree I find that its unseen side conforms to what I automatically associated with—in Husserl’s terms: appresent to—its front side; when I hear the first passages of the Italian Concerto I am surprised that the piece continues with the Bolero. 9 The plausibility of the sense transfer of ‘living body’ is supported by physiognomic mobility, weakened by immobility—unless immobility can be ‘explained away’ by the dominant worldview. In general, it is likely that perception of ‘objective’ qualities that support the original sense transfer carries must be neutralised by special interpretation if the perception contradicts the ‘official’ system of classification. 10 Fortune 1963:109 reports a Dobuan saying about a yam: ‘O he is angry and he shoot up strongly.’ 11 ‘The yams see it (smoke)’ (Fortune 1963:109). 12 ‘Now they roam the forest’ (Fortune 1963:108). 13 ‘One says that there he charms. What about me?’ (Fortune 1963:109). 14 The ‘logic’ of this type of worldview does not appear as consistent as that of the simpler ones. It certainly does not separate human beings from animals. The sense of ‘living body’ acquired in the ‘original’ projection is not necessarily cancelled with respect to all categories of beings that do not meet the ‘language’ criterion. Some such social worlds include not only speakers of the same language but also some animals, for example animal gods with whom ritual communication can be established. 15 One may speculate that a total de-socialisation of the universe is to be found in certain psychotic states. 16 The religious conception of the ‘chosen people’ degenerates in radical modern secularist ‘tribalism’ in which terms such as ‘master race’, ‘Untermensch’, etc., draw a collectively psychotic contour of the social world. 17 Evidently, there are things which yams, ravens, bears cannot do. For the genetic priority of a human social structure in socialisation and for the pragmatic precedence of human social relations in everyday life, see Luckmann (1970:96ff).
17 The sociology of wisdom Douglas Davies
Approaching wisdom? Eileen Barker is to sociology rather like those holding chairs ‘in the public understanding of ‘science’, and it has not been unusual to hear her professional comments on religious trends or some new ‘cult’, as the media put it. Travels, publications, presence at seminars and activities of the INFORM network have all made her a familiar figure among fellow professionals. In her ‘Confessions of a methodological schizophrenic’—the catalyst of this Festschrift chapter—she acknowledges that, in her work on the Unification Church, she ‘learned much that was wise and helpful’ in a task that inflicted severe and conflicting demands on ‘cognition, intellect and affect’ (Barker 1978:87, 70). While such facts of social scientific life, well known to field researchers, do not easily succumb to formulaic chapters on research method, they alert us to the topic of this essay, viz., the notion of ‘wisdom’ as applicable both to social scientists in relation to the wider public and to those they study. This we pursue by seeking an ideal-type of ‘wisdom’, by comparing it with that of ‘charisma’ and by using as an example the office of Archbishop of Canterbury. Out of the depths of the Bible’s ‘wisdom literature’, Job, beset by calamity, asks where wisdom may be found (Job 28:12). While his answer—‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’—might suffice theologically, our sociological analysis is more descriptive than prescriptive in arguing that wisdom is the property of a person whose judgement transcends immediate constraints and whose opinion is valued by others sensing themselves to be under those constraints. This partly explains the biblical emphasis on wisdom as a divine gift perceived as ‘coming to’ someone, resembling the religious experiences of revelation and conversion and the psychological process of problem-solving experienced as discovery (Batson and Ventis 1982).
Method, reflexivity and wisdom As the task of sociological interpretation shifted from modernism’s liberal observation and analysis to the post-modern hermeneutic of self-engagement in the process of understanding others, the very nature of the observing-self became increasingly subject to scrutiny. Eileen Barker’s work catches this transformation somewhere en route, not least her ‘Confessions’ paper, whose dual hermeneutical purpose is to understand a group whose essential beliefs she does not share and to interpret it to a wider public. Motivated by the belief that ‘the world is one’ and that she, herself, is ‘one’ as a sociologist, she sought some ‘single Gestalt’ to unify her venture. But this oneness is constantly challenged by her sense of the opposition between perspectives, by strong ‘dichotomies’ pulling in different directions, not least between sociological and religious forms of
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understanding. One reason why her desired unity of endeavour is not achieved lies precisely in, on the one hand, her commitment to the logical rule that something cannot be ‘X and not X at the same time’ and, on the other, to an awareness of a deep sense of division between things (1978:73). Eschewing the possibility of a ‘safe relativistic position’ (1978:78) she comes to the ‘knowledge of the limitations of our knowledge and a tolerant awareness of the different ways in which the world can be experienced’ (1978:87). Is this grasp of the ‘limitations of knowledge’, typical of the reflexive sociological mind, also a mark of wisdom?
Verstehen and wisdom Grounded in fieldwork on the Unification Church, her paper reflected on how one makes sense of other people’s and of one’s own interpretation of the world, but in so doing she found herself forever set between the ‘dangerous quicksands of schizophrenic paradox’ and ‘eclectic goo’ without achieving the self-set goal of ‘verstehen’—the insightful grasp of what another intends (1978:71). That kind of ‘understanding’ emerges when oppositions are overcome in some higher-order level of comprehension which may take the form of the conclusion that ‘the limitations of knowledge’ do not permit such a rational resolution. It is at that meta-level that ‘understanding’ has the potential to become ‘wisdom’. Such a wise person possesses the capacity to identify competing claims within their own and in others’ lives, to set them in wider, meaningful contexts and to have their interpretation welcomed by others.
Searching for wisdom In contemporary culture, ‘wisdom’ is not necessarily linked with academic status as such but with particular individuals acceptable to the public. While this is problematic for sociology, given the difficulty of describing subtle elements of character, the task remains because ‘wise’ people are identified within many groups, with some structured to draw out the influence of wise people and others to marginalise them, as an incidental example will demonstrate. During June 2002 British Freemasons engaged in a public relations programme, opening their temples to the public. At one I had the opportunity to ask if ‘wisdom’ or if speaking about Masons as ‘wise’ was done within the brotherhood. While the host’s considered response indicated that ‘wisdom’ did possess an explicit place in Masonry but was not pursued as such, his further reflection identified several fellow Masons as people whose words were few but weighty: men little concerned with decorations, insignia, status and furtherance in the Masonic movement but possessing a deep sense of life’s significance and of Masonry’s contribution to it.
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Wisdom’s ideal-type An ideal-type of ‘wisdom’ might, then, be of some use within the sociology of religion, whether, for example, as a development of theoretical interest in virtue ethics (Flanagan and Jupp 2001) or in identifying particular individual characteristics. As a type, ‘wisdom’ describes an individual reckoned to possess the capacity to see existential quandaries and to help others in coping with their problematic circumstances. This does not necessarily equate wisdom with intellectualism. Whereas experts tend to be judged as socially superior to their clients, this is not so for the ‘wise’. Indeed, a degree of equality is involved in their existential encounter and might be pursued through numerous concepts such as Victor Turner’s sociological ‘communitas’, Martin Buber’s theologicalphilosophical distinction between I-Thou and I-It aspects of relationships, or Paul Tillich’s notion of ‘depth’ in human symbolic worlds; in each, wisdom demands relational contexts for its operation (Tillich 1953; Buber 1958; Turner 1969). Lester Grabbe’s attempt at describing what he called a ‘gestalt of the wise’ when characterising the ‘wise and their work’ in biblical and near-eastern ‘wisdom literature’ encountered numerous problems because he found that wisdom covered many trades and related to intellectuals without constituting any profession as such: for him wisdom ‘cannot easily be summarised’ (1995:179). An ideal-type analysis would offer one easier resolution of Grabbe’s problem than did his description of Gestalt. So, too, perhaps for Eileen Barker, who also employed Gestalt to indicate her desired goal of a unity of diversities. In a formal sense, of course, the ideal-type is but one form of a Gestalt and I would not wish to drive too fixed a distinction between them, but the advantage of the ideal-type format lies in suggesting a higher-order form of encompassing mixed realities.
Charisma and wisdom Weber’s ideal typology is well known, especially his formulation of ‘charisma’ (Käsler, 1988:180–96). His focus on wisdom, by contrast, was very brief and prompted by his interest in biblical wisdom literature, in ‘leisure for reflection’ and in relation to his category of the ‘teacher of ethics’ (Weber 1965 [1922]:52, 127). Here, I use an ideal-type of ‘wisdom’ to ponder attributes of leadership within the Church of England, aware that this inevitably involves the traditionally hazardous zone between sociological and psychological forms of describing individuals. Without entering that ageing discussion here, I would echo Serge Moscovici’s commitment to a positive liaison between these disciplines (Moscovici 1993). The ideal-type of ‘wisdom’ and ‘wise-leader’ pursued here is related to a single institution without the assumption that such an institution will prescribe one and only one type of leader. It might be argued that, on a continuum of the church-sect type of organisation, the latitude given to pre- or proscribed types will vary and that, with the Church of England being a very definite example of the sociological type of ‘church’, we would expect to find a variation within leaders. ‘Wisdom’, like charisma, I take to be relational and contextual, rooted in the perceptions and actions of people towards each other. Unlike charisma, however, it is
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more likely to involve one individual’s relation to another in an individual rather than a group context, for the wise person need not be an authoritative leader even though there are particular occasions when an institution may prize such a wise leadership. In terms of Rodney Needham’s anthropological distinction between jural and mystical forms of authority, wisdom is likely to reside more in the mystical than in the jural domain (Needham 1980:63ff). I have explored this particular distinction at some length, though in terms that did not involve the notion of wisdom, for Mormon social organisation in the distinction between the jural domain of bishops and the mystical arena of patriarchs (Davies 2000:196–208). Other theoretical notions that might be invoked to consider ‘wisdom’ in particular groups include the classical history of religions’ notion of Homo religiosus, sociology’s development of the notion of habitus, and the broad anthropological sense of embodiment: each refers to the pragmatic expression of abstract ideals and desired values. In this very process, those describing someone as wise also express something of their own perceptions and needs in a complex self-appraisal not without sociological interest, for these people do not see it as denigrating of themselves to portray another as possessing that which they lack. In this relative balancing of attributes it may even be that individuals are acknowledging their own measure of wisdom as they identify its higher measure in another. In the history of religions, wisdom has its place in the characterisation of certain influential people without restricting it to any one category such as kings, priests or prophets. The biblical ‘wisdom literature’ is well known, already alluded to above, proverbial in Solomon’s wisdom and echoed in other ancient near-eastern cultures. Indeed, we have already seen how some have found real difficulty in trying to pin-point ‘wisdom’ and the ‘wise’ to any specific profession (Grabbe 1995:152–80). This suggests that distinctive individuals rather than classes of people fall into the domain of wisdom. We might, then, not expect each individual office-holder to be wise even if that office is sometimes enhanced by wise holders of it. Following the broad Durkheimian tradition, it is easy to see that society does not impress itself upon or manifest itself equally through all its members, though paragons ensure the occasional visibility of prized values through their embodiment in select individuals. Here, Pierre Bourdieu’s intriguing discussion of taste and of an individual’s ‘relation to culture’ relates well to wisdom (1984:331, original emphasis). To think only of sociologists and their own ‘relation to culture’ is to see how wisdom may or may not emerge. Indeed, the polarity between wisdom and folly is itself instructive, as when popular critics describe sociology as only ‘telling us what we know already’, albeit perhaps with a statistical profile attached. Telling us what we know’ is, precisely, the diametric opposite of wisdom. This may explain why sociology has not always held as respected a status as anthropology for, generally speaking, media anthropologists display wisdom by telling of alien peoples and places that we ‘do not know’. Intrinsic to this evaluative scheme is the very fact of engagement and communication. When ‘experts’ engage with the public they open themselves to a wider form of appraisal than they receive from their narrower peer group, and it is against that kind of background that we turn to an example taken from the Church of England, where Bourdieu’s ‘relation to culture’ is explored through the ideal-type of ‘wisdom’ in relation to archbishops.
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Anglican wisdom? The election of a successor for the current Archbishop of Canterbury furnishes an apposite case as Dr George Carey retires and potential names are explored in the secrecy of an ecclesiastical election committee, while the media prompt general public interest in various possible candidates. These debates raise questions over desired leadership traits and provide opportunity for sociological analysis, not least of the notion of ‘wisdom’. While space demands brevity, we can still indicate something of the scope that a major study might involve as we briefly compare several archbishops with apparent candidates and contrast some current candidates among themselves, always remembering the speculative nature of these names since the actual candidates are known only to a small selection committee that is, itself, sworn to secrecy, not least over the two names presented to the prime minister for the final choice. In his popular analysis of the election procedure and supposed candidates, journalist Ted Harrison—well informed on matters ecclesiastical and Anglican—provides a valuable profile of the qualities reckoned as valuable in an Archbishop of Canterbury. He moves from the least to the most favoured in the popular stakes. Michael Langrish of Exeter and Tom Butler of Southwark are of doubtful inspirational quality. Christopher Herbert of St Albans is ‘erudite, witty and a safe pair of hands’ (Harrison 2002:141). John Sentamu, of Stepney at the time Harrison wrote his book, was then named in June 2002 for Birmingham to succeed the retired and relatively charismatic bishop Mark Santer. Of Sentamu Harrison wrote, ‘his experience of life is wide, his wisdom sound, his delivery impelling and his wit sparkling’, yet he is seen ‘to lack a certain gravitas’, though Harrison does not agree with that lack (2002:142). John Gladwin of Guildford is, rather cruelly perhaps, portrayed as an ‘identikit bishop’ in terms of his track record but, once more, Harrison asks whether he, too, would ‘inspire the nation’. Here the link between ‘inspiration’ and ‘wisdom’ is notable. Passing by these candidates, however, Harrison turns to the four front runners, each possessing a beard—a factor he half-relates to a human preference for impressive leaders, be they bearded or tall. One depicted as resembling Rasputin, with ‘charm, charisma and intellect’ but widely regarded as ‘arrogant’ and lacking ‘the common touch’ is Richard Chartres of London (2002:153). James Jones of Liverpool, by contrast, is regarded as a communicator with ‘street cred’, not afraid of writing a major piece for the News of the World instead of his diocesan newsletter. He inspires ‘intense loyalty’, but is, perhaps, politically too incisive for the prime minister. Then comes Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, originating in Pakistan and with the reserve and shyness of a deep thinker; he is not close to people and yet is reckoned to be ‘the wise counsellor’ with a reassuring presence (2002:163). Finally, Harrison comes to Rowan Williams, acknowledging him as a widely supported name. He draws a comparison with Michael Ramsey, though Harrison reckons that the latter possessed a ‘saintly bearing and unworldliness which no future archbishop is likely to match’ (164). Yet it is precisely something of this bearing that many identify in Williams, often labelling it as ‘spirituality’. With that spirituality of wisdom in mind we turn to develop a deeper analysis of descriptions of Williams, who was, in fact, elected Archbishop of Canterbury, albeit only after the original version of this chapter was with the editors.
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Currently Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, Williams is precisely that type of individual deemed to be wise in descriptions that dwell upon his profound ‘spirituality’, itself a word that I suggest belongs to the ‘wisdom’ ideal-type, within which cluster several terms sharing a family resemblance embracing an insight into life that lies beyond most individuals and yet which can be shared with them. Paul Vallely, another insightful religious journalist, describes him as possessing ‘a rare combination of an unpious personal holiness with an impressive theological intelligence’ and reports Barry Morgan, Bishop of Llandaff, as describing Williams in terms of reflecting ‘the spirituality of Michael Ramsey with the social conscience of William Temple. He is a great man’ (Vallely 2002:7). The Times broke with all convention and ran a front page story leaking a supposed decision that Williams had been elected archbishop, and talked of his ‘spiritual presence…mystical spirituality’ and ‘ability to inspire confidence both on the national and international stage’ (Gledhill 2002:1). Williams is a professional theologian with an unusual ecclesiastical career. After a first degree at Cambridge and a doctorate at Oxford he trains for the ministry at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, where he becomes a tutor. Then follows a university lectureship and non-stipendiary priesthood, the deanship and chaplaincy of Clare College, Cambridge, and, when only 36 years old, a canonry and the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford. Six years later he becomes Bishop of Monmouth, returning to Wales, his homeland, in 1992. Some ten years later, 2002, his name appears in the media as the widely supported top candidate for the post of Archbishop of Canterbury. He has not served the usual period as full-time parish priest or as an archdeacon—the key staging posts for many current Church of England clergy being groomed for episcopacy. Rather, he moves from a theological to an epis-copal chair, itself a tremendous rarity of occurrence in contemporary Anglicanism. He has, explicitly, spoken in favour of the disestablishment of the Church of England and is known to be positive in attitude towards aspects of homosexuality and the clergy. Despite those features, which to many would be enormously negative and tell against him, he still attracts very positive support, except from conservative evangelicals who find the homosexuality issue radically problematic and who are said, en bloc, to oppose his candidacy. Yet in this tall, bearded man, born in 1950, married with two children, there is something of both the gravitas of learning and the sparkle of a lightness of humour which, together, often frame an individual deemed to be wise in the British cultural context. A combination, it might be added, that often also works in Buddhist and Hindu contexts, suggesting that it might well possess deeper and more universal resonance as a framing of wisdom. By contrast, the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, another Canterbury possibility, is widely acclaimed as a clever individual, highly competent in church politics and administration, having served as Archbishop Robert Runcie’s chaplain and assistant, but not described in terms of ‘wisdom’. He is more clever than wise, with that distinctive English overtone of ‘clever’ as too clever by half, rather than cleverness in an intellectually praiseworthy sense.
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Comparing wisdom In terms of ‘wisdom’ the one person with whom Williams is likened is Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961 to 1974 and widely viewed as ‘wise’. A quality that was not, it would seem, grounded in the fact that he had been either a professor of theology or a bishop but in the personal qualities perceived by those encountering him and often rehearsed to others. This anecdotal dimension is profoundly important in large hierarchical institutions in which personal knowledge of leaders is absent among most members. Within the Church of England, the national scene with archbishop and the General Synod differs from the diocesan, deanery and parish levels with their bishop, rural dean and parochial clergy and people. Anecdotal knowledge serves both as a shorthand form of recognition of more distant leaders and as a means of communicating prime elements of their character to those knowing little of them. Anecdotes play a significant part in the religious discourse of religious groups, and it remains a moot point as to whether they have become increasingly focused on individual church leaders amid the wider secular nature of society precisely because of that increased secularity, or whether such stories of holy people have long been told in many societies. They at least provide appropriate material to relate to Callum Brown’s hypothesis of secularisation as a post-1960s phenomenon involving changing senses of self, gender and religious discourse (Brown 2001). For Michael Ramsey (1904–88), stories amount to a kind of folklore among many who knew him, and attain formal status, for example, through the Michael Ramsey Lecture given annually at St Mary’s College, Durham, by eminent persons who, invariably, include anecdotes that reflect his ‘wisdom’. They tell of a rather bumbling, untidy man, large and relatively ungainly even when engaged in ecclesiastical rites, and include some account of his incisiveness in acts of judgement and deeply appropriate responses to difficult situations. Never the mandarin chairman of innumerable committees nor yet a political mind steering the church through the secular 1960s, but usually the one given to broad sweeps of imaginative engagement with topics and persons, whether Pope Paul VI, the Dalai Lama or the Mayor of New York. Something of his personal warmth is apparent in talks commemorating persons such as Gandhi or the deceased bishop and scholar Ian Ramsey (Ramsey 1974:137, 171). In Michael Ramsey many saw what they would describe as a godly or spiritual man, and it is no accident that prayer was a topic on which he was happy to speak, for prayer is one aspect of life that relates more to the mystical than to the juridical dimensions of life. This was stressed by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, when noting that ‘Ramsey was never able to speak of God without speaking in the same breath of prayer’ (Carey 1995:170). When Carey offers a detailed analysis of Ramsey’s response to Honest to God, a popular piece of theology, written by John Robinson as Bishop of Woolwich, that stirred the UK, and when he draws attention to something of an error of judgement in Ramsey’s response to Robinson, he still describes Ramsey’s ‘typical theology’ as ‘wise, astute and inclusive’ (1995:163–4). Ramsey’s thirteen years in St Augustine’s chair at Canterbury were followed by the six or so year period of Donald Coggan, an academically clever and evangelically proper
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person whose mark on the church was relatively slight. This could not have been said of the broadly liberal-catholic Robert Runcie, nor of the mostly evangelical George Carey, yet neither of these has attracted descriptions related to wisdom despite being men of insight and faith. Runcie, the war hero, may have seemed too Christian in praying for the Argentinean dead as well as for the British in the Falklands commemoration service, and may also have seemed to be too politically engaged in opposition to Mrs Thatcher and her Tory government, especially in the publication of the Faith in the City report (Carpenter 1996:275, 255). Carey the evangelical, by contrast, may be praised for keeping the church relatively stable over a period of many internal difficulties while also overseeing a major development of the evangelical and charismatic sectors of the church, not least through the immense growth of the Alpha Course which, in its own way, gave substance to the Decade of Evangelism launched in January 1991 and largely developed during Carey’s archepiscopacy. Carey also ensured a growth in numbers of evangelicals among senior leaders, just as Runcie had done with more liberal-catholics, but not even full chapters on his work seem to engage any notion of wisdom (De-la-Noy 1993:247– 71). Yet neither Runcie nor Carey is described as wise or as distinctively ‘spiritual’. Of greater interest, perhaps, is the case of William Temple who, although archbishop for but a brief two years (1942–4), is often regarded as the greatest twentieth-century Archbishop of Canterbury, given his work relating Christian doctrine and ethics to national politics and social welfare. Yet in his case too, ‘wisdom’ is largely absent. In a brilliant account of human personality and social relationships, an early biographer focuses on his genius as an integrated and energy-filled character who inspired many an intellectual and artisan alike. Devoid of any ‘dual personality’ he gave himself to many, yet never gave himself away (Iremonger 1963:210–15). A genius in a full-self, a philosopher and theologian, a social reformer and a great churchman, but not ‘wise’: in every sociological sense, then, charismatic but not wise. Temple’s predecessor, Cosmo Gordon Lang, whose reign as archbishop was long, from 1928 to 1942, has been described as a ‘strangely unintegrated person, a jangle of warring personalities’, whose ‘virtuosity’ as an administrator was more certain than his claim to be a ‘near mystic’ (Lockhart 1949:458, 456). When explicitly discussing the choice of bishops, as the Church of England did in a published document of 2001, practically no attention was paid to these issues of character and leadership, assuming them to be implicit in the diocesan and higher levels of assessment of individuals: there is but the briefest reference to ‘the gift of discernment’ made in a chapter on the theology of choosing bishops (Nazir-Ali 2001:107). One extensive and rather typical analysis of bishops, grounded in the politics and churchmanship nexuses of the Church of England, focused on the growing ecclesiastical trend favouring managerialism, an attitude of efficiency that seldom favours ‘wisdom’ (De-la-Noy 1993). Exceptionally, Trevor Beeson’s extensive study of bishops since 1832 marks a lonely voice not only in tracing ‘a rich variety of men of deep spirituality’ but also in describing, in his own way, something very similar to our ideal-type of wisdom: he speaks of the bishop as ‘the one who sees more clearly than most the essential truths of the Christian faith’ and has time for ‘prayer and reflection’ upon them (Beeson 2002:236, 233).
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Saints? Returning to Michael Ramsey with this classification in mind is to face a challenge, for, while it would be relatively easy to apply some loose notion of charisma to him, it does not seem entirely appropriate. In the more popular British sense of the word he is better described as a ‘saint’, bringing him closer to the ideal-type of ‘wisdom’. Here was someone who ‘knew something more’ about the issues that are of concern to individuals than they did themselves, at least to those with whom he came into personal contact. Such wise persons help others in their own life-situations and do not demand that they become like him or her. Unlike many charismatic leaders they do not demand disciples, nor do they accumulate devoted coteries: they do not need to be loved, accepted and followed, though they may well be, as with Bishop Edward King of Lincoln, often described as saintly (Beeson 2002:86–9). Here, David Aberbach’s account of charismatic leaders marks their difference from the ‘wise’, aligning as he does the ‘aesthetic attraction to the public’ of charismatic leaders along with their ‘cry for help artfully disguised or transcended’ (1996:xi). For him, the followers of many a charismatic leader end up by being ‘swindled’, exploited by an individual whose personal needs are met through their devotees (1996:107). By contrast, Bishop King ‘never sought to impose his likes and dislikes’ on those under his care (Beeson 2002:88). Such a wise person assists the life of others and does not seek to remake them in their own image or insist on conformity to their own will. It is precisely their sense of grasp of the way things are in a particular world, combined with the relatively open and free relationship with the other, that leads to wisdom. This would suggest that wisdom is typically unlike charisma. The charismatic leader makes a new world; the wise person is fundamentally at home in the given world even as they seek its meaning. The ‘wise’ influence others primarily through personal contact on an individual basis. This was possible for Michael Ramsey, as for Edward King, as teachers at a theological college and for Ramsey as a university don, neither context, in England at least, of crowds and massed disciples. So, too, as a bishop, with contact with clergy and others. But the wise may also possess an influence through their writings and through their indirect influence on others in a ripple effect already alluded to in the power of anecdote to evoke the wise presence.
Wisdom and institutional structure Here, religious groups are of particular sociological significance because they embrace people of differing social status and intellectual ability, and in this they differ from other ‘expert’-systems, whether, for example, in science or even in fine art where the divide between expert and lay opinion can be great. Within churches, highly and lesser trained leaders meet with laity of many types of competence, including theological competence, often bound together through constraining theological beliefs such as those of the family of Christ or the Kingdom of God. In a technical sense this means, for example, that theologians have a form of responsibility towards a laity that is unparalleled among academic circles that are seldom related to communities of largely non-specialist individuals. Within such a mixed community, ‘wisdom’ has a distinctive opportunity to
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be perceived and to emerge as a positive dynamic of life because it overrides technical knowledge. So, for example, a lay person might appreciate Ramsey’s ‘wisdom’ without any sense of what his formal doctrine might be. Religion also deals with an aspect of life of irrelevance to some and of profound significance to others. Sometimes background irrelevance is transformed by a leap into the foreground concern of an individual, family or nation, often in relation to death and disaster. Similarly when, for example, a family finds one of its members involved with a religious group quite different from any with which they have previous familiarity. It is precisely with such ‘cult conversions’, with a phenomenological slippage in a family’s universe of meaning, that someone with insight into the situation is welcome. Such moments are often infused with political and media interests and demand wisdom alongside expertise in a supply-side of cultural information that does not come easily.
Wisdom and unified sense This is one area in which Eileen Barker’s endeavours in relation to INFORM have played a valuable role and returns us to her earlier quest for the unified self rather than its schizoid form in the sociological researcher. Here, Georg Simmel’s ideological concern that persons must become themselves is helpful. Almost as an echo of Aquinas’s longestablished theological view that a soul becomes itself as a body, though with no reference to that intellectual stream of thought, Simmel dwells on the ways in which individuals deal with the competing forces of individual desire and social demands through a unified focus that may resolve these tensions. Here he exemplifies that veritable tradition that sees the human being as a dichotomous realm, whether in Plato’s soul versus body, Augustine’s two cities symbolising love of self or love of God, Freud’s unconscious and conscious or Durkheim’s homo duplex (cf. Davies 2000:27–34). Simmel’s focus is regularly identified with God and is associated with a human yearning to be part of a focused realisation of the many competing pressures of personal and social life. Indeed, he speaks of salvation in these terms. One apposite question concerns the powerful role of spiritual values for people who do not believe in traditional notions of God (Simmel 1997 [1911]:16). I refer to this aspect of Simmel’s work because it questions the relationship between wisdom and ‘spiritual’ understanding. From Simmel’s perspective the question would be whether the wise person is the one who has come to terms with the contrariety of opposites that beset ordinary life. In yet other terms, might ‘wisdom’ not usefully denote a secular religiosity accounting for that ‘spontaneous creative power of our human being’ that brings sense and moral value to quandaries of life (Simmel, 1997 [1911]:130)? This is germane for societies whose non-traditional religious and secular movements stress the ‘spiritual’ dimension of life, as in contemporary Britain where ‘spirituality’ is as common a term in secular palliative care of the terminally ill as among New Age spiritualities and traditional Christianity. Both the word ‘spirituality’ and, to a degree, the ideal-type of ‘wisdom’ resemble groups of concepts whose power lies in a degree of vagueness that permits an association of ideas that are, intrinsically, hard to define, not least ideas that have to serve to express deeply personal experience. This I have explored elsewhere in terms of the power of such metarepresentations in relation to religious experiences (Davies 2002:159–9)
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Wisdom at large Against this broad background of reflexivity and with such individuals and groups in mind, one ponders the relationship between ‘wisdom’ and ‘understanding’ in its Weberian sense. While such ‘understanding’ assumes a detailed knowledge of particular social worlds and a commitment to account for it—often utilising the very concept of ideal-type in the process—it increasingly involves communicating its findings to wider society. This does not make sociology a simple adjunct to encyclopaedic knowledge, but a possible arena within which symbolic knowledge may be accessed and deployed. This distinction between encyclopaedic and symbolic knowledge, argued anthropologically by Dan Sperber, is valuable in contrasting the detailed analytic knowledge of many things with the unifying synthetic tendency fostering an insightful grasp of their totality (Sperber 1975). A similar complementarity is entailed by Paul Tillich’s theological distinction between the ‘technical reason’ and ‘ontological reason’ (1953:80). He was one of the few twentieth-century theologians to influence social scientific thought as, for example, Roy Rappaport’s magisterial study of ritual (1999:283). Finally, invoking Sir Isaiah Berlin’s intellectual play on the hedgehog who knows one thing and the fox who knows many things, I advocate a foxy sociology, having argued that when people sense their own increased grasp of things they acknowledge wisdom in its source (Berlin 1997:436–98). There is something about social facts and the comparative method that is a challenge to wisdom: this was apparent in Eileen Barker’s early reflections and it is, perhaps, the fact of a Festschrift that symbolises its vulpine outcome.
18 Cataclysms and the apocalyptic imagination Richard K.Fenn Eileen Barker has stood midway between a number of communities. She has therefore been a prophetic figure, whose liminal presence reminds each community of its limited possibilities and vision. That is enough to make anyone suspect among all true believers, whether they are theologians, sociologists or members of any religious community, and especially suspect among those who know where God is and is not to be found. Eileen Barker has reminded sociologists that their explanations do not explain very much and that they beg the ontological question, just as she has reminded theologians that their explanations are more easily threatened when they are presented as complete in themselves. She has taught us that there is a lack of density in theological and sociological theories that allows them to exist in, with and under each other. Even when you put them all together, they still only point to what might be truly there. If this is what Eileen Barker calls methodological agnosticism, so be it. To stand in the middle between so many communities that would like to be more confident of their own ways of looking at things is to disclose all the disbelief that each community harbours in its own midst but nevertheless denies. Like Simmel, Eileen Barker has helped us to understand the role of the sociologist as a stranger in our midst, whose presence brings out the best and worst in other people, all of which might remain hidden were she not there. Eileen Barker, her courage and her grace have made us proud of the vocation of the sociologist. Wars and earthquakes, explosions and floods can destroy an entire community, Indeed, with the loss of everything that is trustworthy and familiar, all connection with the past is severed. In a cataclysm, no place, no objects or symbols remain to link the living with past generations: no shrines, heirlooms, homesteads and emblems. The past no longer offers any precedent for living in the present, since the survivors, if there are any, are in an entirely new situation. As for the future, it is wholly opaque, even though it has already begun. One lives in an endless present, in which anything can happen anywhere at any time. There is no relief from the terror of time. One is living in the aftermath of an event that is unique and unprecedented, as for the future there is no chance of reversing the passage of time, for there is no end in sight. Under these conditions people despair, lose their will to live, and their souls begin to perish within them. A real cataclysm is indeed terrifying: a sudden destruction of everything that gives life meaning, connects the present with the past, and offers hope of a better future. Therefore, to give meaning to such a cataclysm is absolutely necessary if people are to feel that they have not lost every memory, object and practice: every time and place that could give them a sense of continuity with the past. The past must be searched for prophecies,
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precedents and prologues: for anything that would suggest that it is still linked with the present. As for the future, it must become less opaque if it is to inspire hope as well as dread, revenge as well as suffering. Thus cataclysms breed apocalyptic expectations of a time that will inflict a similar disaster on those who have abandoned or betrayed the community by forgetting the old ways or by going after new gods. Apocalyptic imaginings may also envisage a future that is not only a repetition but also a consummation of the present sufferings: a new age to be ushered in by a final cataclysm to end all cataclysms. The prospect of release from all suffering thus restores the link between the present and the future, but in doing so guarantees a repetition of unpleasant experiences. To put it bluntly, apocalypses are cataclysms that have been given meaning. Those with the capacity to reflect and to remember may eventually suggest that perhaps the present cataclysm was indeed predicted by a prophet or oracle. One is therefore living in what was once the future in the apocalyptic imagination of past generations, and this link with previous foresight spans the gulf between present and past. Perhaps others will find in the past not only a prophecy but a precedent: a plague or invasion, a flood or drought that decimated the community in an earlier generation or epoch and found place in an earlier apocalyptic vision. One is therefore no longer living in an unprecedented time, but in a time that links one with the suffering of forebears. So long as prophecy and precedent link the present cataclysm with the past, one is not wholly at the mercy of the passage of time. Still others will find in the past a cause of the current cataclysm. It was the sin of previous generations whose punishment is being visited on the present: an original sin, or earlier apostasy. Perhaps a transgression of the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, between the community and the alien, or between the generations and genders has caused the present, horrific loss of all boundaries separating the community from the wilderness and order from chaos. Thus the past has come back to haunt the present. Old passions, long ago renounced and repressed, have returned to claim satisfaction. Old grievances, long suppressed or denied, have returned to demand justice and retribution. Indeed, the dead themselves have left their graves and demand a final accounting of what has long been owed them. What had once been hidden is now revealed. Every society tends to run out of time when its normative and territorial boundaries no longer provide it with a defence against outside influences and forces. Normally, therefore, societies try to exclude every possibility of disruption, to anticipate every threat, and to screen very carefully every opportunity for increasing their storehouse of ideas and people, resources and armaments. Certain possibilities are typically excluded: demons, ghosts, and witches have often been placed beyond the border of civilised society and left to wander among the primitives or in the wilderness (Marshall 2000:124). That is, most societies only permit those aspects of the superhuman and supernatural that can be brought under control and subjected to authorised interpretation. Some possibilities are thought to be all too natural: not only microbes of various sorts but animal spirits, sexual or aggressive drives, and the residues of what used to be called human nature. Aliens, enemies, strange people and objects, all may be seen as potentially dangerous, and they therefore fall outside the range of legitimate social contact or permissible aspiration.
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Cataclysms occur as outside influences find their way into the heart of a society. The system has no time to defend and deflect or to adapt and respond. It quite simply has run out of time. To the apocalyptic imagination it therefore seems as if both the past and the future are imploding simultaneously into the present. Old prophecies are fulfilled, and the future begins with a vengeance. The graves give up their dead, demons prowl, ghosts appear, and plagues eliminate both the wicked and the virtuous. Indeed, anything is possible, at any place, and at any moment. It is especially important for any society to be able to identify and recognise the dead: to locate them firmly in space and time. Writing of fifteenth-century Berne, Nancy Caciola (2000:81) notes that when a spirit was thought to be the cause of local disturbances, the community gathered to interrogate the departed individual, often through a medium, and special attention was given to placing it, to finding out its name and the time, place, manner of its death. With regard to space, it is crucial that the dead have an identifiable place where the ancestors gather: a grave, a monument, a mythical mountain, sacred grove or valley, or a subterranean passage for the spirits of the departed. As for time, it is crucial that the dead be consigned to collective memory, honoured or cursed as the case may be, but in any event relegated to a past that is allowed to become present only on the occasions carefully controlled by the rituals of the community. On those stated occasions and in the right seasons, the dead may return, but only for the prescribed moment, after which they are once again not only allowed but also required to return to the past. Cataclysms disrupt any society’s careful arrangements for the dead, who are therefore not always so compliant as to come only on the authorised occasions and to the required places. Especially unruly are the spirits of those who die young or abruptly, from unknown and suspicious causes, and whose lives were blighted or cruelly thwarted. These are the usual suspects when a person is haunted or a when a community is troubled by strange presences and disturbances. What is now called ‘Ground Zero’ in New York City will be for many years an empty tomb, and it is therefore all the more crucial that the site be properly marked, honoured and preserved. Otherwise the dead may well be thought to be profoundly dissatisfied, deprived of collective honour and recognition, and they may well be expected to exact some retribution. It is not surprising, therefore, that the New York Times recommenced the publication of their obituaries in the weeks approaching the first anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Towers. Those who have died in Afghanistan and Palestine may also be equally difficult to lay to rest, and their tombs may also excite the apocalyptic imagination. However, no society is ever immune to small cataclysms or succeeds entirely in eliminating various unwanted possibilities from the social order. These banished potentialities and powers may come back to haunt any society in dreams and apparitions, or in behaviour that the more polite members of the community refuse to mention by name. That is why the custodians of the social order therefore take pains to see that people are not having unauthorised contact with spirits or engaging in illicit sexual or aggressive activities. Certainly those in charge of any social system have a vested interest in maintaining the boundary between good and evil, the civilised and the primitive, the human and the bestial No wonder, then, that these guardians may imagine the apocalypse as bringing with it not only ghosts and apparitions but orgies and bloodbaths. They may even seek to portray the apocalypse as a time when civilisation itself comes to an end in
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violence and licentiousness that defy description. Unfortunately, these prophecies may be self-fulfilling, as in the devastation wreaked by conquistadors against the peoples of the Western hemisphere: an achievement that hundreds of years later fed Hitler’s own imagination of a millennial Reich. Any social system, therefore, attempts to place certain things on the outside: not only death, evil and malignancy, but also the merely haphazard, the untoward, the uncalled for and the unimaginable. Cataclysms destroy public confidence not only in the social order but also in the orderliness of the entire cosmos. The meaning of life, the relevance of the past, the certainty of the future, the difference between one society and another, what is worth living or even dying for, and even the foundations of the self: none of these any longer seem certain. So cataclysmic a moment in the life of any society upsets any sense of how things should be connected with each other, of what should come first and what second. The first are therefore last, and the last first. In cataclysms, what seemed unimaginable now demands to have been foreseen and prophesied. Otherwise there is no limit to the possible, and the authorised version of what is legitimate and illegitimate no longer can contain or satisfy the demand for inspiration and authority. Such conditions feed the imagination of the apocalypse as a time for virgin births and for empty tombs: a time for darkness at noon and for strange lights in the midnight sky, for morning prayers to be said in the evening and evening prayers to be said at dawn (cf. Panourgia 1995:161). The times are so wholly out of joint that one is literally overcome by time itself. In the midst and in the aftermath of cataclysms, traditional priorities seem strangely irrelevant, even meaningless. There is no way to have a solemn procession in which those who lead and those who follow somehow dramatise the ordering of seniority. There is no clear sense of priority, and therefore no authorised version of honour or authority in the community. When the first are last, and the last first, it is no longer clear who or what should take precedence. Instead one has a milling crowd, in which even a little child can be the leader, and a single voice may galvanise the entire throng into precipitous action. Society becomes a lynch mob in which unthinkable things are done, but there are afterwards no witnesses, no records kept, no testimony to give meaning to the cataclysmic events that have occurred or to assign responsibility for horror and death. There is no time or occasion for the conventional funeral procession: no time to incorporate the memory of the dead in the community of the living. The dead may therefore come back, unbidden. Whether for Moslems around the world Osama bin Laden is ever found to be dead, the sheer devastation of Afghanistan will leave his tomb empty, and millions will believe that, living or dead, his spirit is free and will return. In cataclysm the social structures of a society themselves dissolve. The usual roles are ignored, forgotten, vacated or destroyed. In such moments crowds take over, and the society acts as one, without the usual division of labour. Consider, for example, the various ranks joined in the pillage and rape, arson and murder of the urban Tamil and Indian population during the riots in Sri Lanka in 1983. There the soldiers and police joined the urban unemployed in carrying out the violence. In the mobs, it was even difficult to tell the monks from the laity (Tambiah 1992:75). It is not incidental, furthermore, that the Buddhist monks, especially the radicalised ones, developed a millenarian ideology during this period, in which the virtues of a peasant, agrarian past were to be restored in a new society in which old social distinctions between the rich and
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the poor would once and for all be destroyed, and social life would be open and fluid. (Tambiah 1992:91). The apocalyptic imagination not only demands that old scores be settled but that ancient virtues be restored. Societies must therefore avoid cataclysms if they are never to run out of time. To so do, however, societies must contrive a way of offering small doses of apocalyptic satisfactions without paying the price of radical upheaval and the destruction of all social boundaries. If ritual is successfully to allow a society to gather without engaging in acts of random destruction, the crowd’s violence must be orchestrated, and a victim selected whose loss will be the least damaging to the society as a whole. When a community gathers, even in a proto-apocalyptic frame of mind, it is crucial to prevent the crowd from behaving spontaneously and in unison as though it could act on its own authority. In cataclysms, however, crowds act on their own behalf, without intercession and intermediary, and they choose their own victims without the benefits of the priests and the judges who normally pick out those who are to suffer on behalf of the community. Thus it is too late to employ rituals, the usual delaying mechanisms that postpone the worst violence and delay the total satisfaction of all grief and grievance. So long as ritual procedures remain intact and can be usefully deployed, a society can act as if it has mastery over the passage of time. In carefully ritualised roles and relationships, in programmed words and deeds, a community may seek to bring the past and the future together in a single moment without dissolving community into chaos. Within the confines of ritual, the past becomes coeval with the present, but the dead do not come back with a vengeance, and old grievances are satisfied symbolically, rather than in the wholesale bloodshed of a cataclysm. Even the future is allowed a partial and temporary appearance, as in the case of the Christian Eucharist, which is an eschatological meal. In all these ways a ritual acts out, proclaims, dramatises that the social order is proof against the passage of time. In most societies, of course, there are those whose business it is to speak and act in ways that provide reassurance that any rupture in time is not as radical or irreversible as it might seem. For instance, in the wake of the massacres of Tamils in Sri Lanka in 1983, priests and politicians tried to define the meaning of events that were apparently confusing, if not meaningless: so many of the innocent and of those who made a vital contribution to Sri Lankan society had been killed, and their livelihoods destroyed. The purpose of the speeches and ceremonies that followed, Spencer (1990:238) tells us, was ‘to demonstrate underlying continuity, eternal verities, in the face of change and disruption’. Indeed, one can find what is sometimes called civic or civil religion emerging from the smoke of the fires that destroy factories and neighbourhoods, homes and offices, an ethnic group and their way of life. Similarly, in ancient Israel, some explained their exile in Babylon as the consequence of their previous sins, just as years later some interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem as a judgement on Israel for its aggressions against neighbouring peoples. In the aftermath of the Sri Lankan riots, as Spencer (1990:239) goes on to argue, people similarly tried to transform a terrifying and chaotic moment into an event with meaning, and to pretend that, despite the appearance of a radical break in time between the past and the future, continuity reigned. When a society’s rituals are in good working order, of course, the dead have a modest place among the living, and the living share their place in time with the dead. However, when rituals fail and a society is literally imploded with grief, time perspectives collapse.
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The past is brought to a head in the present, and individuals abandon conventional pieties and obligations while demanding immediate satisfaction for old grievances. No longer willing to wait for the future to begin, the people initiate the new order and proclaim themselves free spirits: children of the coming kingdom, and citizens of the new world whose time has already begun. It is not surprising that these various cataclysms feed the apocalyptic imagination of a final, all-consuming cosmic war. When societies respond to suffering and disaster by calling for a crusade against the powers of death, the time for apocalypse has come. It is a point all too well understood by those who call for jihad or for a ‘crusade’ against ‘the axis of evil’. Not only in certain conservative Islamic and Christian circles, however, but also in the Sudan and Nigeria, in Kashmir and the rest of India, the call to prayer is no longer proof against the impulse to kill. How is one to distinguish, then, between Ground Zero and Afghanistan, on the one hand, and these other chronic and repeated places of massacre, where international boundaries and national governments no longer provide any protection against violence and terror? Cataclysms thus interrupt and destroy the illusion of a social order that transcends the passage of time, and they stimulate fantasies of apocalyptic retribution, revelation and restoration. Conversely, apocalyptic notions turn disasters into revelatory moments that disclose what has lain concealed beneath the surfaces of social life in less troubled periods. For instance, in the sixteenth century, when the plague hit Basle, the death of a theologian gave his rivals occasion to identify the demonic forces that had allegedly been latent in his life but that had finally claimed his soul (Gordon 2000:87–9). What had long been hidden below the surface was revealed, and what had been on the surface was finally shown to have been a mere facade or superstructure of the true forces that had been underlying it over many years. This emergence of the subliminal and the subterranean exposes a society and all its members to the full force of time itself. It also exposes the superficiality of all social distinctions and undermines any sense of difference between the officials and the laity, the good people and the bad, the distinguished and the ordinary. In the apocalyptic imagination, it is even difficult to distinguish the living from the dead. In sixteenth-century, plague-ridden Basle, there were so many bad deaths and hasty burials that it is not surprising to find that ghosts were particularly free to come and go on their own recognisance. Particularly in Protestant areas, where the belief in Purgatory had been systematically under theological attack, the laity no doubt had even more than the usual difficulty in knowing how to conclude their unfinished emotional business with the dead. Certainly Protestant theologians understood that ‘The appearance of ghosts is also connected with tumult and change, for great events (battles, plagues, revolts) are announced by forerunners and apparitions’ (Gordon 2000:96.) That is why some theologians sought to school the laity in what to do when they were visited by an apparition of some sort, the counsels tending to make the laity passive and required to leave the hard work of discernment to the clerical experts (Gordon 2000:100). The guardians of priority and precedence are hard at work even in the midst of cataclysms, even though the time may have passed when they could postpone the day on which the ordinary citizen ignores the authorised version and acts on his or her own inspiration and authority. The suicide bombers of Palestine may not know why they are fighting or what
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the goals of the intifada may be, but they are at least fighting for the last chance to affirm their own existence. As the example of the suicide bomber indicates, however, these desperate assertions of selfhood are in fact ways of removing the last traces of one’s own singularity. Indeed, it is difficult to reconstruct the pieces of the suicide’s own body, which in the end are mixed indiscriminately with the remains of the enemy. That is indeed the point of the apocalyptic imagination: it anticipates and longs for a day in which the only remaining markers of difference are wholly destroyed, along with those that distinguish the self from others. Cataclysms endanger the prevailing distribution of satisfaction and weaken the authority of those who have made the larger society seem inevitable or transcendent over the passage of time. Certainly the clerical class stands to lose from any public apprehension that the society itself cannot stand the test of time and that its guardians are no longer able to protect its boundaries against disease, decay, chaos and death. When cataclysms come, they destroy all the boundaries between this world, the civilised, the social and the humane, and the other world of unspeakable possibility. They abolish the attempt of any social order to render certain possibilities unspeakable or beyond the range of legitimate knowledge. That is why societies generally have their calendars for planting and reaping, for collecting taxes and acclaiming or voting for officials, for worshipping or playing, for going to school or for remembering the dead. They resist surprises and abrupt departures. Indeed, a society is an elaborate sort of protection against running out of time. Catastrophes make these temporal sequences irrelevant, unworkable or obsolete. In New York on 11 September 2001, therefore, many churches ran a number of services, all previously unscheduled, throughout the day and, later, throughout the subsequent weeks. School days and parking regulations were changed, as were the times for applying for death certificates or voting for the next mayor. Death and terror disrupted the usual temporal order for the day, the week, the month and the year. The times for living and for dying, for weeping and rejoicing, were all out of joint. In times of disaster, societies are indeed taken by surprise, at a loss for precedent, and hungry for adequate prediction and prophecy. Not only have prophecies and intelligence services failed to give adequate warning, but there also has been no time for preparation for final departures, for leave-taking and sad goodbyes. The few passengers on the hijacked airliners who used their cellphones to say goodbye could hardly offset the literally thousands of abrupt, sudden and silent departures. The deaths, like the subsequent grieving or celebrations, were international. After the bombing on 11 September 2001, the media were full of stories of early warnings by foreign heads of state of a terrorist attack, of prophecies by Osama bin Laden that there would be more ‘good news’ of further attacks in the coming weeks, as well as numerous reports of the failings of intelligence and immigration services. By considering such temporal disruptions to be part of a mythic past or future, a society is able to distance itself from the immediacy of terror. Thus a society may imagine that it will have some sort of continuing identity over time, that it will always be distinguishable from its environment, from the less civilised or more primitive, from the demonic or the bestial in the world around them. Without its boundaries, a society would simply run out of time: disappear, so to speak, into the natural world and be forgotten.
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Gone would be its history, the narrative of its origins and battles, achievements and victories, by which that society came to know itself as set apart from the rest of the world: more advanced than the primitive or barbarian societies still living in the childhood of the human race. Its time over, the ‘advanced’ society will have no memorial and no legacy: its own particular past having been finished and its future terminated. Cataclysms destroy any society’s attempts to make itself seem markedly different from the rest of the world. That is why apocalyptic visions anticipate a time of collective exorcism: a day on which there is no way to distinguish the past and the future from the present, the living from the dead, the natural from the supernatural, the primitive from the advanced, the rich from the poor, those who claim priority from those whose claims are always subordinated and deferred, those whose significance is lasting from those who have lost the battle with time itself. It might therefore seem that more open and complex societies are relatively immune to such collective exorcisms. After all, societies like the United States tolerate a wide range of behaviour previously thought to be illicit or unspeakable, and what social life itself does not provide, the entertainment industry is capable of representing to more or less avid audiences in the safety of the theatre. Angels, ghosts and demons have become surrogates for individual licence and inspiration, rather than the heralds of the death of the society as a whole. Individual greed and ambition, formerly the hallmarks of a personality under the control of Satan, have been found to be the engines that drive competition and innovation, the arts and politics, without destroying the society as a whole. For inspiration the apocalyptic imagination has only had to turn to Hollywood, where the sources of destruction from outside the society can be portrayed in their more horrible aspects: reptilian aliens or viruses from the jungle against which there is no known remedy. However, official rhetoric has become increasingly apocalyptic. The president of the United States has demonised Osama bin Laden in order to prepare people for struggle against an enemy that is thus portrayed as subtle and destructive, pervasive and canny, and hell-bent on final supremacy. That satanic characterisation, used in the imaginary context of a cosmic struggle against the forces of evil, suggests that the present is both unprecedented and filled with potential danger and desolation, while the future is opaque as well as imminent. The president’s current attribution of evil to an ‘axis’ of only three countries includes whole societies in addition to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, while excluding the United States as it inevitably and regretfully inflicts ‘collateral damage’ on innocents abroad. When apocalyptic imagery has moved from the theatre and ritual into official rhetoric, there is no time or place potentially immune to terror. After the bombing of the World Trade Center on 11 September, however, there was a temporary suspension of the more horrific entertainments from Hollywood in view of the public’s allegedly suggestible state of mind. No doubt the public was more than usually suggestible. The droning of an aeroplane overhead suddenly had become at least potentially sinister, as were interruptions of any sort to the flow of travellers from one city to the next. That some of the mail was being laced with anthrax spores did nothing to relieve the intensity of apprehension. No doubt that is why officials from the president on down sought to encourage the people of the United States to go back to normal activities
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like shopping. Typically, officials, whether politicians or priests, do insist on the normal course of events, since their own claims to precedence and priority depend on them. More to the point than the fate of the politicians and clerics is the simple fact that apocalyptic conditions are simply too much for any person or society to bear. For any society they mean quite literally that the whole system has run out of time. That is, time has moved too quickly to allow for defences and preparations against disaster. The pace of change is so great that no one can stand on the usual ceremonies. Notions of who or what takes precedence are strangely irrelevant to a situation in which one is confronted entirely with novelty. As for the future, since anything can happen at any time, prophecies and precautions, the usual stock-in-trade of prognosticators, scientists, priests and prophets, are of equally little use in stemming the tide of terrible circumstance. For individuals, it is as if one were living in the world of Kafka, exposed to the possibility of execution at any moment. Such a threat not only typifies the religious imagination, which exhorts the individual to a life of intense and continuous contrition, but it was also a form of torture used with considerable effect by the Germans against the Greek resistance during World War II, when they took their prisoners out to the courtyard to be shot but used blanks in the hope that the terrified prisoners would reveal their secrets. The Germans also buried their prisoners alive, only to exhume them again in time for further interrogation and torture (Panourgia 1995:143). The state sponsored these little cataclysms in the hope that it could use retribution and restoration to create useful revelations. When protectors become destroyers, the secrets of the heart may be revealed, and there is no sanctuary against terror and death. In the midst of the 1973 student uprising against the junta in Athens, Neni Panourgia (1995:137 ff) tells us, the mother of one young man slain by a Greek officer took to the street corner where she distributed, to anyone who would receive it, the bread of commemoration that Greeks customarily offer weeks and months after the death of someone they love. The bread is offered in the hope that those who receive it will pray for the forgiveness of the soul of the departed, and this mother therefore sought the same reassurance for her son in her own brave attempt to mediate the full force of the terror imposed by the junta. As Panourgia (1995:137) tells the story, ‘There was deathly and deadly terror everywhere. Our prayer of “May God forgive him” was a whisper. We were afraid of who would be listening.’ In the midst of cataclysm, people find the resources for exorcism wherever they can and rely on the kindness of strangers. There is a terrible danger that the souls of those who die suddenly, prematurely and violently will be free to haunt the living. These souls may in fact become free spirits. Certainly, roadsides are places where the dead may indeed confront the living, in times and places outside the usual sanctuaries and occasions for pious commemoration. The roadsides of Greece are marked by shrines at the places where someone has met a sudden and fatal end. Like the roadsides of southern France, where those who died in the Resistance find their commemoration, these reminders of death bring to the consciousness of passersby the possibility of the unexpected, the ubiquity of terror, and the fact that no place offers sanctuary against the end of time. It is no accident that Sophocles places the aged Oedipus in his last days at a roadside shrine dedicated to the disturbing goddesses of the underworld.
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Disastrous as it was, the destruction of the World Trade Center was only a small foretaste of genuine cataclysm. Cataclysmic disaster destroys the fabric of the whole community and with it the institutions that orchestrate collective grief and commemoration. In the aftermath of a genuine cataclysm, life for everyone will never be the same again. The Law is cancelled, and antinomian spirits alone know what to do. That is because no precedent or prophecy tells one what to expect or what obligations and constraints still have binding force in a situation that is as unprecedented as it is irreversible. As a people is cut off from its own past, the time ahead becomes as opaque as it is dreadful. Nonetheless, the memory of the past remains poignant and intense: filled with longings that have now become impossible to fulfil. As for the present, it is a time in which a surfeit of possibility makes it all the more imperative and yet risky, potentially even fatal, to make decisions, and yet there is no time for hesitation or delay. Any attempt to uproot the terrorists and to destroy the fabric of the nations that support them might precipitate new dangers from new enemies, some of them armed with nuclear missiles and willing, even eager, to deploy them as messengers from God. On the other hand, however, even without any concerted attempt by the United States to retaliate, the terrorists could strike again anywhere at any time. However the United States might temporise, therefore, the future has indeed begun. The day in which some awful act of terrorism would decimate some part of the United States has arrived, and yet the future has become even more uncertain and precarious than ever before. No one now knows whether, when or even in what form a new attack will come. People simply do not know whether to be afraid of crossing a bridge or going through a tunnel, and they do not know whether to expect the next attack in the form of explosion or germ warfare, poisoned water or polluted air. Although the bombing was not on the order of a cataclysm, official rhetoric has begun to unleash the dogs of the apocalypse. With no limit to the theatres of war, it is easy to imagine a final conflagration that consumes the forces of evil and allows a new epoch finally to begin against an Islam that, like certain American ‘mullahs’, is hell-bent on war. As for the past, it is over but not gone. People still long for a free, open, democratic society in which it is safe to raise children: one in which parents can promise their children that they can indeed grow up as good people in a good world. Americans have yet to learn, however, what the people of Germany have long known all too well: the horrors of living under official surveillance. American resistance to domestic evil is at a dangerously low ebb. Attempts by other nations to preserve the fabric of an open and democratic society are too easily portrayed by the American administration as collusion with the enemy. Similar proto-fascist tendencies single out civil libertarians in this country, along with feminists and the gay community, as the source of God’s wrath and the reason why the United States had to suffer Osama bin Laden’s attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. It is appallingly easy to legitimate surveillance of the innocent, to accuse the neighbour with a Middle Eastern name, to curtail free speech and movement, and to silence voices of warning and dissent. These have become the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored.
A selection of Eileen Barker’s principal publications in English
1 ‘Watching for violence: a comparative analysis of five cult-watching groups’, in David G.Bromley and J.Gordon Melton (eds) Cults, Religion and Violence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 123–48. 2 ‘New religious movements’, in Neil J.Smelser and Paul B.Baltes (eds) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Amsterdam and Oxford: Elsevier Sciences, 2002. 3 (With Bryan R.Wilson) ‘What are the new religions doing in a secular society?’ in Anthony Heath (ed.) Centenary Volume of the Social Sciences in Britain (in press). 4 ‘Armenia’, ‘United Kingdom’, ‘Brahma Kumaris’ and ‘SUBUD’, in J.Gordon Melton and Martin Bauman (eds) Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices (4 vols) (in press). 5 ‘Democracy and religious pluralism in post-Soviet society’, in David Hoekema and Alexei Bodrov (eds) The Rebirth of Religion and the Birth of Democracy in Russia, Moscow and Calvin College (in press). 6 ‘Why the cults? New religions and freedom of religion and beliefs’, in Tore Lindholm, W.Cole Durham and Bahia Tahzib-Lie (eds) Facilitating Freedom of Religion and Belief: Perspectives, Impulses and Recommendations from the Oslo Coalition, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer (in press). 7 ‘Overview of new religious movements and differing European responses’, in Donatas Glodenis (ed.) Law, Religion and Civic Society, Riga, Lithuania: Ministry of Justice, 2001. 8 ‘A comparative exploration of dress and the presentation of self as implicit religion’, in William J.F.Keenan (ed.) Dressed to Impress: Looking the Part, Oxford: Berg, 2001, pp. 51–67. 9 ‘General overview of the “cult scene” in Britain’, Nova Religio, 4, 2, 2001:235–41. 10 ‘INFORM: bringing the sociology of religion to the public space’, in Pauline Côté (ed.) Frontier Religions in Public Space, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2001, pp. 21–34. 11 ‘Divine principle’, in W.Clark Roof (ed.) Contemporary American Religion, New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 2000. 12 ‘The Opium Wars of the new millennium: religion in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union’, in Mark Silk (ed.) Religion on the International News Agenda, Hartford, CT: The Pew Program on Religion and the News Media, 2000, pp. 39–59. 13 ‘Bringing them in: some observations on methods of recruitment employed by new religious movements’, in Martyn Percy (ed.) Previous Convictions: Conversion in the Present Day, London: SPCK, 2000, pp. 44–57. 14 ‘Beyond mere toleration—for sects? However small? Or seeming strange?’ American Baptist Quarterly, 19, 4, 2000:336–43.
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15 ‘Quo vadis? The pursuit of understanding church-state relationships in Central and Eastern Europe’, in Irena Borowik (ed.) Church-State Relations in Central and Eastern Europe, Krakow: Nomos, 1999, pp. 99–118. 16 ‘Taking two to tango: the new religious movements and sociology’, in Liliane Voyé and Jaak Billiet (eds) Sociology and Religions: An Ambiguous Relationship, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999, pp. 204–26. 17 ‘What might we do about the new religions?’ Occasional Papers No. 16: Current Issues in the Social Sciences and Humanities, Tokyo: Hosei University, 1999, pp. 133–41. 18 ‘But who’s going to win? National and minority religions in post-communist society’, Ethnic Religious and Confessional Relations in the Balkans, Facta Universitatis Philosophy and Sociology, 2, 6, 1999:49–74. 19 ‘New religious movements: their incidence and significance’, in Bryan R.Wilson and Jamie Cresswell (eds) New Religious Movements: Challenge and Response, London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 15–31. 20 ‘Changes in new religious movements’, in Michael E.Fuss (ed.) Rethinking New Religious Movements, Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1999, pp. 3–9. 21 ‘New religious movements’, in Alan Bullock and Stephen Trombley (eds) The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, London: Fontana, 1999, pp. 585–6. 22 ‘State imposed secularism: yet another dimension?’ in Rudi Laermans, Bryan Wilson and Jaak Billiet (eds) Secularization and Social Integration, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1998, pp. 191–210. 23 ‘Unification Church’, in Robert Wuthnow (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, London: Routledge, 1998, pp. 747–9. 24 (Editor with Margit Warburg) New Religions and New Religiosity, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1998; 302 pp. 25 ‘New religions and new religiosity’, in E.V.Barker and M.Warburg (eds) New Religions and New Religiosity, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1998, pp. 10–27. 26 ‘Standing at the cross-roads: the politics of marginality in “subversive organizations”’, in David Bromley (ed.) The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements, Westport CT: Praeger, 1998, pp. 75–93. 27 ‘The scientific study of religion? You must be joking!’ in Lorne L.Dawson (ed.) Cults in Context: Readings in the Study of New Religious Movements, Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 1998, pp. 5–28 (originally published in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 3, 1995:287–310). 28 ‘Unification Church’, ‘Salvation Army’, ‘James Beckford’, in W.H.Swatos (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira Press, 1998. 29 ‘But who’s going to win? National and minority religions in postcommunist society’, in Ulrich Nembach, Heinrich Rusterholz and Paul M.Zulehner (eds) Informationes Theologiae Europae: Internationales ökumenisches Jahrbuch für Theologie, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1998, pp. 11–39. 30 ‘Many are the ways: a sociological perspective on a pluralistic future’, The Shape of Religion in the 21st Century: In Search of World Co-existence, Proceedings of the 3rd International Shinto Foundation Conference held at the United Nations University, Tokyo, 1997, pp. 83–96. 31 ‘But who’s going to win? National and minority religions in post-communist society’, in E.Borowik and G.Babinski (eds) New Religious Phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe, Krakow: Nomos, 1997, pp. 25–62. 32 ‘A religious landscape of England’, in W.Grieve and I.Lukatis (eds) Suche nach einer Sprache für mein Leben. Zum Umgang mit der Vielfalt gegenwärtiger Religiosität, Loccumer Protokolle 57/96, 1997, pp. 75–87. 33 ‘Cult status: what should we make of the new religious movements?’ Demos, 11, 1997:27–9. 34 ‘New religious movements in Britain’, in Helle Meldgaard and Johannes Aagaard (eds) New Religious Movements in Europe, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1997, pp. 99–123.
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35 ‘You don’t get Marxists in fundamentalist boots: a comparative exploration of the presentation of self as implicit religion’, in Helen Sasson and Derek Diamond (eds) LSE on Social Science, London: LSE Books, 1996, pp. 195–215. 36 ‘Joseph Fichter and the new religions’, Sociology of Religion, 57, 4, 1996:373–7. 37 ‘New religions and mental health’, in Dinesh Bhugra (ed.) Psychiatry and Religion, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 125–37. 38 ‘New religious movements’, in Paul Barry Clarke and Andrew Linzey (eds) Dictionary of Ethics, Theology and Society, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 602–6. 39 ‘The scientific study of religion? You must be joking?’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 3, 1995:287–310. 40 ‘The cage of freedom and the freedom of the cage’, in Eileen Barker (ed.) LSE on Freedom, London: LSE Books, 1995, pp. 103–18. 41 ‘The cage of freedom and the freedom of the cage’, Society, 33, 3, March-April 1996:53–9. 42 ‘Plus ça change…’, Social Compass, 42, 2, 1995:165–80. 43 (Editor with Jean-François Mayer) Twenty Years On: Changes in New Religious Movements, special edition of Social Compass, 42, 2, 1995; 137pp. 44 (With Jean-François Mayer) ‘Introduction’, Social Compass, 42, 2, 1995:147–63. 45 ‘The Unification Church’, in Timothy Miller (ed.) America’s Alternative Religions, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995, pp. 223–9. 46 (Editor) LSE on Freedom, London: LSE Books; 357pp. 47 ‘Sociology of religion’, and all (thirty-five) entries on new religions in John R.Hinnells (ed.) A New Dictionary of Religions, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. 48 ‘New religious movements: the inherently changing scene’, in Irena Borowik and Przemyslaw Jab3oñski (eds) The Future of Religion: East and West, Krakow: Jagiellonian University Institute for the Scientific Studies of Religion, 1995, pp. 73–92. 49 ‘The Unification Church’, in theEncyclopedia Americana, Danbury CT: Grolier, 1995. 50 ‘The post-war generation and established religion in England’, in Wade Clark Roof, Jackson W.Carroll and David A.Roozen (eds) The Post-War Generation and Establishment Religion: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, pp. 1–25. 51 ‘Europe: new religious movements’, in Harper’s Dictionary of Religion, New York: Harper and Row, 1995, pp. 347–9. 52 ‘Unification Church’, in Harper’s Dictionary of Religion, New York: Harper and Row, 1995, p. 1109. 53 ‘But is it a genuine religion?’ in Arthur L.Greil and Thomas Robbins (eds) Between Sacred and Secular: Research and Theory on Quasi-Religion, Greenwich CT and London: JAI Press, 1994, pp. 97–109. 54 ‘The New Age in Britain’, in Jean-Baptiste Martin (ed.) Le Défi Magique: Esotérisme, Occultisme, Spiritisme, Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1994, pp. 327–37. 55 ‘Whatever next? The future of new religious movements’, in Roberto Cipriani (ed.) Religions Sans Frontières? Present and Future Trends of Migration, Culture, and Communication, Rome: University of Rome, 1994, pp. 265–76. 56 ‘New religious movements in Europe’, in Sean Gill, Gavin Costa and Ursula King (eds) Religion in Europe: Contemporary Perspectives, Kampden, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1994, pp. 120–40. 57 ‘Will the real cult please stand up? A comparative analysis of social constructions of new religious movements’, in David Bromley and Jeffrey Hadden (eds) The Handbook on Cults and Sects in America. Religion and the Social Order, volume 3, 1993 (Part B), Greenwich CT and London: JAI Press, 1993, pp. 193–211. 58 ‘Behold the New Jerusalems! Catch-22s in the kingdom-building endeavors of new religious movements’, Sociology of Religion, 54, 4, 1993:337–52.
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59 ‘Charismatization: the social production of “an ethos propitious to the mobilisation of sentiments”’, in Eileen Barker, James A.Beckford and Karel Dobbelaere (eds) Secularization, Rationalism, and Sectarianism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 181–201. 60 ‘Cults and the health of society’, Proceedings of the Medical Society of London for 1992, London: Medical Society of London, 1993:35–45. 61 (Editor with James A.Beckford and Karel Dobbelaere) Secularization, Rationalism, and Sectarianism: Essays in Honour of Bryan R.Wilson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993: xvi+322pp. 62 The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? Aldersbot: Gregg Revivals, 1993: ix+305pp. 63 ‘Authority and dependence in new religious movements’ in Bryan R.Wilson (ed.) Religion: Contemporary Issues. The All Souls Seminars in the Sociology of Religion, London: Bellew, 1992, pp. 237–55. 64 ‘The whole world in his hand? Ways and means of establishing a unificationist theocracy’, in Roland Robertson and William R.Garrett (eds) Religion and Global Order, New York: Paragon House, 1991, pp. 201–20. 65 ‘Changes in new religious movements’, in Michael Fuss (ed.) New Religious Movements, volume II, Rome: International Federation of Catholic Universities, Center for Coordination of Research, 1991, pp. 759–81. 66 All (nineteen) entries on founders of new religious movements in John R.Hinnells (ed.) Who’s Who of World Religions, London: Macmillan, 1991. 67 ‘New religious movements’, in N.Lossky, J.Bonino, J.Pobee, T.Stransky, E.Wainwright and P.Webb (eds) Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1991, pp. 721–2. 68 ‘The opium of the people?’ in Helen Gilmour (ed.) The Opium of the Masses? London: Churches Council on Alcohol and Drugs, 1991, pp. 3–14. 69 ‘A Moonie challenge to the churches’, in Dan Cohn-Sherbok (ed.) Tradition and Unity: Sermons Published in Honour of Robert Runcie, London: Bellew, 1991, pp. 237–42. 70 ‘Moonie myths: values and value relevance’, in Patrick McNeill (ed.) Society Today, London: Macmillan, 1991, pp. 200–2. 71 ‘New lines in the supra-market: How much can we buy?’ in Ian Hamnett (ed.) Religious Pluralism and Unbelief: Studies Critical and Comparative, London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 31– 42. 72 ‘Kingdoms of heaven on earth: new religious movements and political orders’, in Dan CohnSherbok (ed.) The Canterbury Papers: Essays on Religion and Society, London: Bellew, 1990, pp. 190–209. 73 ‘And what do you believe? Methods and perspectives in the investigation of religion’, in Robert Burgess (ed.) Investigating Society, London: Longman, 1989, pp. 32–50. 74 ‘Tolerant discrimination: new religious movements in relation to church, state and society’, in Paul Badham (ed.) Religion, State and Society in Modern Britain, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989, pp. 185–208. 75 ‘Kingdom building: new religious movements’ Utopian attempts’, Studia Religiologica, Cracow, 20, 1989. 76 ‘Clutching at glimpses: a sociologist’s attempts to understand the inexplicable’, the 1988 Alister Hardy Memorial Lecture, Oxford: The Alister Hardy Research Centre, 1989. 77 New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction, London: HMSO, 1989: xii+234 pp. (fifth Impression with amendments, 1995). 78 ‘Defection from the Unification Church: some statistics and distinctions’, in David G.Bromley (ed.) Falling from the Faith: Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy, Beverly Hills and London: Sage, 1988, pp. 166–84.
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79 (With A.O.Dyson) ‘Sects and new religions: introduction’, in Anthony O.Dyson and Eileen Barker (eds) Sects and New Religious Movements, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 70, 3, 1988:3–6. 80 (Editor with Anthony O.Dyson) Sects and New Religious Movements, special issue of the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 70, 3, 1988:240 pp. 81 ‘Explanation in history: comment on Munz’s essay’, in Gerald Radnitzky (ed.) Centripetal Forces in the Sciences volume II, New York: Paragon House, 1988, pp. 290–6. 82 ‘A marriage through divorce: relationships between science and values’, in T.D.Singh (ed.) Synthesis of Science and Religion: Critical Essays and Dialogues, San Francisco and Bombay: Bhaktivedanta Institute, 1988, pp. 130–9. 83 ‘Kingdoms of heaven on earth: new religious movements and political orders’, in Anson D.Shupe and Jeffrey K.Hadden (eds) The Politics of Religion and Social Change: Religion and the Political Order, volume II, New York: Paragon House, 1988, pp. 17–39. 84 ‘Brahmins don’t eat mushrooms: participant observation and the new religions’, LSE Quarterly, June 1987:127–52. 85 ‘Being a Moonie: identity within an unorthodox orthodoxy’, in Jim Obelkevitch, Lyndal Roper and Raphael Samuel (eds) Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarchy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987, pp. 211–25. 86 ‘Why witness? Evangelism from a unificationist perspective’, in Peter B.Clarke (ed.) The New Evangelists: Recruitment, Methods and Aims of New Religious Movements, London: Ethnographica Publishers, 1987, pp. 148–60. 87 ‘New religions and cults in Europe’, in Mircea Eliade (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Religion volume 10, New York: The Free Press, 1987, pp. 405–10. 88 ‘The Unification Church’, in Mircea Eliade (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Religion volume 15, New York: The Free Press, 1987, pp. 141–3. 89 ‘Does it matter how we got here? Dangers perceived in literalism and evolutionism’, Zygon 22, 2, 1987:213–25. 90 ‘A short history, but many changes: a new religious movement’, in Shaul Shaked, David Shulman and Gedaliahu Stroumsa (eds) Gilgul. Essays on Transformation, Revolution and Permanence in the History of Religions, Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1987, pp. 35–44. 91 ‘Quo vadis? The Unification Church’, in David G.Bromley and Phillip Hammond (eds) The Future of New Religious Movements, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987, pp. 141–52. 92 ‘Freedom to surrender with Bhagwan’, Self and Society, XV, 5, 1987:209–16. 93 ‘Bringing them in: some observations on methods of recruitment employed by new religious movements’, in Allan R.Brockway and J.Paul Rajashekar (eds) New Religious Movements and the Churches, Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1987, pp. 69–83. 94 ‘Moral responsibility of the media in the construction and maintenance of conceptual boundaries’, in Harry O.Thompson (ed.) Global Outreach: Global Congress of the World’s Religions, 1982–1983, New York: G.C.W.R., 1987, pp. 237–53. 95 ‘The Unification Church’, in Peter Bishop and Michael Darton (eds) The Encyclopedia of World Faiths, London: Macdonald, 1987, pp. 152–3. 96 ‘New religious movements in modern Western society’, in Peter Bishop and Michael Darton (eds) The Encyclopedia of World Faiths, London: Macdonald, 1987, pp. 294–306. 97 ‘The British right to discriminate’, in Thomas Robbins and Roland Robertson (eds) ChurchState Relations: Tensions and Transitions, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987, pp. 269–80. 98 ‘Religious movements: cult and anti-cult since Jonestown’, Annual Review of Sociology, 12, 1986:329–46. 99 ‘Self-presentation as an ideological statement’, in Edward Bailey (ed.) A Workbook in Popular Religion, Dorchester: Partners, 1986, pp. 22–3. 100 ‘Cultural syntheses: epistemological and moral’, in Absolute Values and the Cultural Revolution, New York: International Cultural Foundation, 1986, pp. 123–38. 101 ‘Krishna and science’, in ISKCON Review, II, 1986:133–47.
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102 ‘New religious movements: yet another Great Awakening?’ in Phillip E.Hammon (ed.) The Sacred in a Secular Age: Towards Revision in the Scientific Study of Religion, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985, pp. 36–57. 103 ‘The conversion of conversion: a sociological anti-reductionist perspective’, in Arthur E.Peacocke (ed.) Reductionism in Academic Disciplines, Guildford: SHRE and NFER-Nelson, 1985, pp. 58–75. 104 ‘Let there be light: scientific creationism in the twentieth century’, in John R.Durant (ed.) Darwinism and Divinity: Essays in Evolution and Religious Belief, Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1985, pp. 181–204. 105 (With Hilde Himmelweit) ‘Brainwashing or choice?’ LSE Magazine 69, 1985:21–7. 106 ‘And so to bed: protest and malaise among youth in Great Britain’, Concilium: Review Internationale de Theologie, 1985:74–80. 107 ‘The ones who got away: people who attend Unification Church workshops and do not become Moonies’, in Rodney Stark (ed.) Religious Movements: Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, New York: Paragon House, 1985, pp. 65–93. 108 All (twenty) entries on new religious movements in John R.Hinnells (ed.) The Penguin Dictionary of Religions, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984. 109 ‘The British right to discriminate’, Society, 21, 4, 1984:35–41. 110 (Editor) Of Gods and Men: New Religious Movements in the West, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984: xiv+347 pp. 111 The Making of a Moonie: Brainwashing or Choice? Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984:x+ 305 pp. 112 ‘New religious movements in Britain: the context and the membership’, Social Compass, 30, 1, 1983:33–48. 113 ‘Doing love: tensions in the ideal family’, in Gene James (ed.) The Family and the Unification Church, New York: Rose of Sharon Press, 1983, pp. 35–52. 114 ‘Supping with the devil: how long a spoon does the sociologist need’? Sociological Analysis, 44, 3, 1983, pp. 197–205. 115 ‘With enemies like that…some functions of deprogramming as an aid to sectarian membership’, in David G.Bromley and James T.Richardson (eds) The Brainwashing/Deprogramming Debate: Sociological, Psychological, Legal and Historical Perspectives, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983, pp. 329–44. 116 (Editor) New Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982:xxvi+398 pp. 117 ‘New religious movements: a perspective for understanding society’, in Eileen Barker (ed.) New Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982, pp. ix–xxv. 118 ‘From sects to society: a methodological programme’, in Eileen Barker (ed.) New Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982, pp. 3–15. 119 ‘Religion in the UK today: a sociologist looks at the statistics’, in Peter Brierley (ed.) UK Christian Handbook, 1983 edition, London: Evangelical Alliance, Bible Society and Marc Europe, 1983, pp. 5–9. 120 Introduction to Eugene P.Wigner’s “The existence of consciousness”’, in Richard L.Rubenstesin (ed.) Modernization: The Humanist Response to its Promise and Problems, Washington, DC: Paragon House, 1982, pp. 275–7. 121 ‘Who draws the lines where?’ Intermedia, 9, 2, 1981:12–14. 122 ‘Science as theology: the theological functioning of Western science’, in Arthur R.Peacocke (ed.) The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century, London: Oriel Press, 1981, pp. 262– 80. 123 ‘Who’d be a Moonie? A comparative study of those who join the Unification Church in Britain’, in Bryan R.Wilson (ed.) The Social Impact of New Religious Movements, New York: Rose of Sharon Press, 1981, pp. 67–109.
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124 ‘And ye shall be as gods…’ in Religion, Values and Daily Life, Acts of 16th International Conference for the Sociology of Religion, Lausanne, 1981, pp. 117–42. 125 ‘The limits of displacement: two disciplines face each other’, in David Martin, John OrmeMills and W.S.F.Pickering (eds) Sociology and Theology: Alliance and Conflict, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980:15–23. 126 ‘Free to choose? Some thoughts on the Unification Church and other new religious movements’, part 1, Clergy Review, October 1980:365–8. 127 ‘Free to choose?’ part 2, Clergy Review, November 1980:392–8. 128 ‘Science and theology: diverse resolutions of an interdisciplinary gap by the new priesthood of science’, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 5, 4, 1980:281–91. 129 ‘The professional stranger: some methodological problems encountered in a study of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church’, Open University Course Media Notes for D207: An Introduction to Sociology, Milton Keynes: Open University, 1980, pp. 3–13. 130 ‘In the beginning: the battle of creationist science against evolutionism’, in Roy Wallis (ed.) On the Margins of Science, Keele: Keele University Press, 1979, pp. 179–200. 131 ‘Whose service is perfect freedom: the concept of spiritual well-being in relation to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church in Britain’, in David O.Moberg (ed.) Spiritual Well-Being, Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979, pp. 153–71. 132 ‘Sun Myung Moon and the scientists’, Teilhard Review, 14, 1, 1979:35–7. 133 ‘Thus spake the scientist: a comparative account of the new priesthood and its organisational bases’, Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion, 3, 1979: 79–103. 134 ‘Religious consciousness’, Chairman’s contribution in The Re-Evaluation of Existing Values and the Search for Absolute Values, Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, New York: International Cultural Foundation, 1979, pp. 95–7, 133–4, 147–8. 135 ‘Living the divine principle: inside the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church in Britain’, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 45, 1, 1978:75–93. 136 ‘Beyond the individual: an anti-reductionist philosophical anthropology’, Group Analysis, 11, 2, 1978:173–80. 137 ‘Selfish altruism: the social optimization of genetic potential’, in The Search for Absolute Values in a Changing World, New York: I.C.F., 1978, pp. 833–5. 138 ‘Confessions of a methodological schizophrenic: problems encountered in the study of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church’, Institute for the Study of Worship and Religious Architecture Research Bulletin, Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1978, pp. 70–89. 139 ‘DNA in the age of Aquarius’, Theology, November 1978:463–6. 140 ‘Value systems generated by biologists’, Contact, 55, 4, 1976:2–13. 141 ‘Apes and angels: reductionism, selection and emergence in the study of man’, Inquiry, 19, 4, 1976:367–87. 142 ‘Yes, but we’ve still got problems’, in The Centrality of Science and Absolute Values, New York: I.C.F., 1976, pp. 235–40. 143 ‘Ideology and social knowledge’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 5, 1975:215–21. 144 ‘Biologists on religion: contributions offered by contemporary biology to religious knowledge in the face of the changing image of modern science’, in Religion and Social Change, Acts of the 13th International Conference on Sociology of Religion, Lille: C.I.S.R, 1975, pp. 253–84. 145 ‘Facts and values and social science’, in Science and Absolute Values, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, New York: I.C.F., 1975, pp. 757–76. 146 ‘Philosophical keys to the social sciences’, Inquiry 15, 1972:463–84.
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Index
References to figures and tables are in italics; those for notes are followed by n
aarti 43 aborigines 200, 203 absolutism 17–20, 21 abuse see domestic violence; satanic abuse ADFI 143 Adventism 80n, 103 affirmation 27, 33 Afghanistan 79, 221, 222 Africa 92, 94, 97, 100n al Fata 81n al Qaeda 76, 81n, 225 Albania 52 Allievi, S. 158n alternative religions see new religious movements American Baptist Convention 107 American Council of Christian Churches 106 American Family Foundation (AFF) 82, 102 American Psychological Association (APA) 82–90 American Sociological Association 28–9 Andrews, E.D. 173 anecdotes 211 animism 9, 196–7, 201 Ankerberg Theological Research Institute 113n Ankerloo, B. 93 Answers in Action 112 Anthony, D. 76 Anthony, Dick 76, 83, 87 anti-Americanism 75, 77 anti-cult movement see countercult movement apocalyptic imagination 10, 218–28 Aquinas, St Thomas 215 Arcana Dasi 54 Archbishop of Canterbury 205, 209–14
Index
232
art 29 ashrams 54 atheism 57–8, 65–6 Atkins, G.G. 105 Atta, Mohammed 77–8 Attaturk, Kemal 31 Auerbach, David 213–14 Augustine, St. 215 Aum Shinrikyo 14, 76, 144 Auslander, M. 92 Australia 91, 200, 203 Babinski, G. 4 Back to Godhead 53 Baha’i 48, 50–5 Bainbridge, W.S. 25, 26, 31, 34 Baklanova, G. 61 Balch, Robert 48 Baptists 107 Barker, Eileen 1–6, 10, 24, 35, 48, 168, 216, 217; brainwashing controversies 64, 82, 83, 84, 89, 90; ‘Confessions of a methodological schizophrenic’ 205, 206; countercult movement 102, 103; Gestalt 207; INFORM 20, 168, 215; The Making of a Moonie 34, 181, 182; New Religious Movements 25, 68n, 169n; NRMs 36, 45, 68n, 71, 163, 170; post-communism 50, 61, 67, 68, 68n; primitive religions 203n; RAMP study 158n; religious discrimination 143, 145–6, 167; satanic abuse 93 Barnsley, J. 190n Barr, M.D. 117 Barrington, A.H. 104 Bartkowski, J.P. 175 Basle 223 Batson, C.D. 205 Baubérot, Jean 162, 168 Beaman-Hall, L. 190n, 191n Becker, H.A. 158n Beckford, J.A. 49, 64, 68n, 72, 74, 75, 77, 80n, 143, 144, 145, 163 Beeson, Trevor 213, 214 Beguines 177 Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin 85–6, 87–8, 90 Belgium: RAMP study 147, 155, 156, 157; religious discrimination 75, 143, 144–5; satanic abuse 91 belief 16, 97–100
Index
233
Believe the Children 98 Bell, C. 172 Bellah, R.N. 33, 142 Ben-Yehuda, N. 114, 115, 116 Bereslavski, Ioann 60 Bergesen, A. 47 Bergmann, J. 203n Berlin, Sir Isaiah 216 Besançon 164, 165 Bettelheim, Bruno 99 Beverley, J.A. 111 Beyer, Peter 47, 48 Bhagavad Gita 53 Bhagawan Movement 76 bin Laden, Osama 221, 224, 225, 228 bioterrorism 76 Birch, D. 117 Blackmun, Harry 134 blood transfusion 143, 146, 151–2, 156, 157 Bly, Robert 171 Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility (BSERP) 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88 body 9, 172, 178, 180n, 186, 198–9 Bohn, C. 190n Bollen, K.A. 147 Borenstein, E. 57–8, 60 Borowik, I. 4 Bosker, R. 152 Bourdieu, Pierre 28, 29, 173, 180n, 208–9 Bove, G. 158n Bozell, L. Brent 132 brainwashing 2, 7, 20, 33, 181, 182; APA controversy 82–8, 115; conspiracy theories 88–90; countercult movement 110; and terrorism 76, 77 Branch Davidians 14, 80n Brasher, B. 37 Brennan, William 134 Breschel, E.F. 155 Breyer, David 134, 135 Brisbin, Richard 136 British Council of Churches 146 Bromley, D.G. 48, 76, 81n, 144, 145, 155 Brown, Callum 211 Brown, J. 190n Brown, Robert L. 108 Brown, Rosemary 108 Brown v. Board of Education 138 Bruce, S. 48 Brückner, M. 41 Buber, Martin 207 Buckley, William F. 130, 132
Index
234
Bugliosi, Vincent 141n Bulger, James 114 Bunt, G. 41 Burger, Warren 134, 137 Burke, P. 172 Bush, George H.W. 134 Bush, George W. 33, 132, 133, 134, 135 Bush v. Gore 135 Bussert, J. 190n Butler, Tom 209 Bynum, Caroline 176, 178, 180n bypass 49–50, 51, 52, 53–4, 55 Caciola, Nancy 219 Calvin, John 160 Cambré, B. 150 Campbell, Alexander 103 Campus Crusade for Christ 110 Canada 9, 91, 103 Carey, Dr George 209, 212 Carpenter, H. 212 Carter, Jimmy 134 Carter, L.F. 49 Casanova, J. 50 cataclysms 10, 217–28 Cathars 180n Catholic Apostolic Church 18, 23n Catholic Church see Roman Catholic Church censorship 38–9, 53–4 Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) 82, 83, 169n Chambliss, W.J. 116 Champion, F. 159 Chaos of the Cults, The (Van Baalen) 105–6 charisma 9, 205, 207–9, 213–14 charismatic singularity 27, 32 Chartres, Richard 210, 211 Cheng, Vincent 122 Cheung, G.W. 147 Chevènement, Jean-Pierre 162 children 91–3, 95–6, 98–9 Chile 75 China 38, 72, 75, 79, 81n Chirico, J. 48 choice 181, 182 Christian Channel Europe 54 Christian Conventions 18, 23n Christian Reformed Church (CRC) 105 Christian Research Institute (CRI) 107, 108, 111–12, 113n Christian Science 103, 104, 112 Christianity: belief 97–8;
Index
235
countercult movement 8, 102, 103–6, 107–12; ecumenical movements 48; gender roles 172; intolerance 14–15, 16–17, 23n; Singapore 121, 123–4; websites 36, 37; and witchcraft 94–5, 96, 97, see also sects; Word of Life Chryssides, G. 22n Church and the Internet, The 39, 42 Church of England: Archbishop of Canterbury 9, 205, 209–14; website 37 Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints see Mormonism Church of the Last Testament 59–60, 61 Church of Scientology 25; brainwashing controversies 87; France 166; Germany 76; and globalisation 72; Internet 38–9; RAMP study 146–52, 148, 149, 151–2, 153–5, 155–7; US 75 civil religion 32, 142 Clarke, R. 190n Clinton, Bill 132, 133, 134 coercive persuasion 83, 84, 87, 88 Coggan, Donald 212 Cohen, M. 159 Cohen, Stan 114–15, 122 Cohn, Norman 95, 100n Cole, J.R.I. 54 Cole, M.A. 144 Coleman, S. 51, 52, 53, 55 Comaroff, J. 92 common grace 105 communal detachment 27, 32 communism 73, 78, 121–3 ‘Confessions of a methodological schizophrenic’ (Barker) 205, 206 consciousness 195–6 conservatism 131–3, 134, 135–6, 138, 139–40 conspiracy theories 88–90 Constitution (US) 133, 137–9, 140 construct equivalence 147 Cooneyites 18, 23n Copeland, M.S. 190n Cornerstone 111 Council of Europe 22n countercult movement 102–3, 112, 144–6, 169n; beginnings 103–6; contemporary 109–12;
Index
236
Martin 107–9; UK 166–7 Cowan, D.E. 102, 112 Cresson, Warder 39 Cresswell, J. 22n crisis management 116, 117, 118, 119 Csordas, T.J. 180n cult awareness movement 102, 103, 110 cults 6–7, 86–7; and culture 30–5; definitions 24–7 cultural capital 28 cultural communal movements 27 cultural studies 29 culture 9, 24; and cults 30–5; definitions 27–30; and globalisation 47, 48; and nature 196–7; Russia 60, 62–3; Soviet Union 57 Cumbey, Constance 109 cyberfatwas 41 Czech Republic 52 darshan 43 Davidians 80n Davie, Grace 58, 161 Davies, D. 208, 215 Davies, Maureen 97 Dawson, L.L. 47 Deo Gloria Trust 103 DeKeseredy, W. 191n De-la-Noy, M. 212, 213 Demerath, N.J. 111 29 Denmark: Baha’i 52; countercult movement 103; ISKCON 52; RAMP study 147 denominations 142 deprogramming 110 Dershowitz, Allan 135, 141n detachment 27, 32 deviance 7–8 devil worship 8, 91, 94, 95 Dialog Centre 103 DiMaggio, P. 29 DIMPAC (Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control) 83, 84, 85–8, 90 discourses 29 discrimination 143–6
Index
237
disproportionality 114 distortion 114 divorce 188–9 Dobash, R.E. 190n Dobash, R.P. 190n Dobbelaere, K. 145, 146, 158n Dobu 201, 204n domestic violence 9, 181–3; case study 183–5; victim to survivor identity 185–90 dominance 9, 173–5, 177, 179 Donovan, B. 175 Douglas, M. 92 Duddy, Neil 110 Dufour, L.R. 191n Dunn, L 191n Durham, C., Jr 63, 68n During, S. 29 Durkheim, Emile 25, 28, 30–2, 35, 215 Dworkin, Ronald 140 Eastern Europe 50, 51, 73–4, 103, 168 Eck, D.L. 43 ecumenism 14, 18–19, 56–7 Eglise évangélique de Besançon 164, 165 ego 198–9 Eiesland, N. 191n Eisenhower, Dwight 130, 131, 134 Ekman, Ulf 55 electricity 37 Eliade, M. 202 Elisabethkirche 43 elite-engineered moral panics 115–17 elite-sponsored moral panics 115–25 Elkin, A.P. 200 Ellinsen, M. 106 embedded culture 29–30 Employment Division v. Smith 136–7 empowerment 9, 183, 189 Encrevé, A. 161 encyclopaedic knowledge 215–16 Enroth, Ron 109, 110–11 epistemological naivety 57, 64–5, 68n Epstein, Michael 57, 58 European Christian Internet Conference (ECIC) 36 Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR) 108–9, 111, 112, 113n evangelicals: Church of England 211, 212; conservatism 132, 141n; countercult movement 104, 106, 107–12, 145, 166–7 evil 95, 96–7
Index
238
exaggeration 114, 122 exceptionalism 32 Exclusive Brethren 23n experts 114–15 expressed culture 29–30 factorial invariance 147 Faith Movement 51, 55 false consciousness 28 Falun Gong 79 familistic detachment 27, 32 fatwas 41 fear 187 Featherstone, M. 47 Fédération Protestante de France 162, 164, 169n Ferguson, C.W. 105 Ferguson, M. 47 Fields, Karen 30–1 filtering systems 38–9 Finke, L.A. 178 Finke, R. 74, 80n Finland: ISKCON 52; RAMP study 147, 151, 156 Fiorenza, E.Schussler 190n Fire in the Rose Project 190n First International Church of the Web (FICOTW) 41–2, 44 Fisher, Jeffrey D. 85 Fishman case 87 Flanagan, K. 207 Flegg, C.G. 23n folk devils 114, 118, 125 Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Cohen) 114 Foltz, T.G. 176 Ford, David M. 41–2 Ford, Gerald 130, 134 Fornaro, R.J. 172 Fortune, M. 190n Fortune, R.F. 201, 204n Foucault, M. 29, 33 Fournier, M. 29 France: countercult movement 169n; religious discrimination 9, 72, 74–5, 76, 79, 80–1n, 143–5, 146, 159, 162–9; religious freedom 81n; satanic abuse 91; secularism and Protestantism 160–2 France Soir 145 Fraser, Steve 141n fraternal orders 174–5 Freemasons 206–7
Index
239
French, D.R. 174 Freud, Sigmund 215 Freund, P. 191n Froese, P. 74 Fuller Theological Seminary 106 functionalism 28 fundamentalism 73, 112; countercult movement 104–6; and evil 95; and globalisation 48; Singapore 123–4 Funeral Cast 40 Gager, J. 23n Gallagher, B. 100n Geertz, C. 29 Gelles, R.J. 191n Gellner, E. 99 gender 9, 170–1, 178; prescribing 171–2; and spirituality 179; and submission 176–7; and tolerance 146, 150, 155, 156, 157, see also men; women General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) 107 Germany: countercult movement 103; religious discrimination 145; satanic abuse 91; Scientology 76 Gerstle, Gary 141n Gessen, M. 59 Gestalt 207 Giddens, A. 170 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader 134, 135 Gladwin, John 209 Gledhill, R. 210 globalisation 7, 47–8, 55, 67, 167–8; ISKCON, Baha’i and Word of Life 50–5; Kanter’s trends 49–50; and minority religious groups 48–9; and religious persecution 72–5 God-Men, The (Duddy) 110 Goffman, E. 172 Goh Chok Tong 121, 123 Goldwater, Barry 130, 131–2, 133–4 Goode, E. 114, 115, 116 Goody, J. 92 Gordon, B. 223 Gottlieb, Stephen 135, 139–40
Index
240
Grabbe, Lester 207, 208 Gradirovski, Sergey 64 Grady, Catherine 85 grassroots moral panics 115, 116 Great Britain see United Kingdom Great White Brotherhood 60, 64 Greece 103, 226 Greek Orthodox Church 103 Greenhouse, Linda 135 Griffith, R.M 177 Grigorieva, L. 61 Griswold, W. 29 Groothuis, Douglas 109 Ground Zero 219, 222 Gunn, T.J. 76, 79 Gurwitsch, Aron 195, 197 Gustafsson, G. 158n habitus 180n, 208 Hackett, D.G. 174 Hadden, Jeffrey 37, 88–90 Hadewicj 177 Hagin, Kenneth 51, 55 Hali, J. 48, 76, 77, 81n Hall, Stuart 29, 116 Halsey, P. 190n Hamas 81n Hammond, P.E. 129 Hanegraaff, Hank 111–12 Hanko, H.C. 105 Hanley, J. 75 Hare Krishnas see International Society for Krishna Consciousness harm 86, 87 Harrison, Ted 209–10 Hawdon, J.E. 116 healing 170–1, 177 Heaven’s Gate 14, 36 Heilbunn, Jacob 141n Helsinki Accord 22n Henningsen, G. 93, 116 Herbert, Christopher 209 Heresies Exposed (Irvine) 103, 104 heresy 14 Hertogh, Maria 120–1 Hervieu-Léger, B. 165, 169n Hervieu-Léger, D. 74, 75, 144, 145, 159, 160, 161, 163–4, 167, 168, 169n hesitant tolerance 8 Hesse, H. 22n Hexham, I. 72, 73, 74 Hezbollah 81n Hier, S.P. 120
Index
241
Hill, M. 124 Himmelstein, J.L. 130–1 Hinduism 40, 43–4, see also International Society for Krishna Consciousness Hobsbawm, E. 115 Holland see Netherlands Homer, L. 63, 68n Honest to God (Robinson) 212 Horowitz, M.J. 131 Horton, A. 190n, 191n human reality 195, 196–7 human rights 167 Hungary 74; RAMP study 147, 151, 152, 155 Hussein, Saddam 73 Husserl, Edmund 195, 197, 198, 204n identity 179, 185–90 imprimatur 38, 39 Index librorum prohibitorum 38, 39 India 52 individualism 7, 27, 33 INFORM (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements) 1, 3, 5–6, 19–21, 22, 82, 168–9, 169n, 215 Ingersoll, J. 177 interest-group moral panics 115 International Alliance of Web-Based Churches 41, 42 International Association for the Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe (ISORECEA) 4 International Christian Internet Church 42 International Council of Christian Churches 106 International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) 25, 75; and globalisation 50–5, 72 Internet 7, 36–8, 73, 113n; answering prayers and questions 44–5; Baha’i 54; control 38–9; CRI 111; local vs global 39–41; virtual communities and online worship 41–4 intolerance 13, 14–15, 142, 143–6, see also tolerance Introvigne, M. 64, 72, 75, 76, 77, 87, 88, 102, 144, 159, 169n Iran 50 Iremonger, F.A. 213 Irvine, Doreen 100n Irvine, William C. 103, 104–5 Islam: France 162; fundamentalism 73; Internet 41; Malaysia 119;
Index
242
new Muslims 61–2; Russia 7, 65, 67; Saddam Hussein 73; Singapore 8, 123–4; terrorism 81n; Uzbekistan 79, see also Baha’i Islamic Jihad 81n Ispovednik, Maxim 60 Israel 119 Italy 168; RAMP study 147, 148, 149, 151, 155, 156, 157 Jackson, Robert H. 140–1 Jacobs, J.L. 171 Jaffa, Harry 140, 141n Jagodzinski, W. 158n James, William 198 Japan, Aum Shinrikyo 76 Jasper, J.M. 120 Jeffords, James 132 Jehovah’s Witnesses 22n, 72, 158n; countercult movement 104, 107; France 166; moral norms 143; RAMP study 146–52, 148, 149, 151–2, 153–5, 155–7; US 75 Jenkins, P. 93, 95, 103 Jerusalem 40, 44 Jesuits 44 Jesus People USA (JPUSA) 110–11 Jews 22n Joffe, J. 74 John Birch Society 131 Johnson, Lyndon B. 130, 132, 134 Jones, James 210 Jonestown 14, 25, 77, 151, 163 Jöreskog, K. 147 Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 159 Judaism 14, 15, 44, 145 Jupp, P.C. 207 Jurgensmeyer, M. 81n Kanter, Rosabeth Moss 49–50, 53, 173 Käsler, D. 207 Katz, D.S. 39–40 Kennedy, Anthony 134, 135 Keynes, John Maynard 130 Kiev 60 Kikuyu 19 Kilbourne, B. 115
Index
King, Bishop Edward 213–14 Kingdom of the Cults, The (Martin) 107 Kinney, B. 105 Kirienko, Sergey 64 knowledge 215–16 Knox, Monsignor 19 Koresh, David 80n Kroeger, C.C. 190n Kronshtadski, Ioann 60 Krumina-Konkova, S. 74 Krylova, G. 67 Kuznetsova, Tatiana 66 La Fontaine, J.S. 95, 100n, 101n laïcité 74, 80–1n, 161, 166, 168, 169n Lambert, Judge James R. 90 Lamont, M. 29 Lang, Cosmo Gordon 213 Langone, Michael D. 84 Langrish, Michael 209 language 202–3 Lansing, C. 180n large group awareness training (LGAT) 86 Larner, C. 116 Lasch, C. 33 Lash, S. 47 Le Blanc, B.H. 74, 75, 77, 80n Lee, Witness 109 Lee Hsien Loong 119–20 Lee Kuan Yew 121, 123, 124 Leifer, M. 119 Lemon v. Kurtzman 137 Levasseur, M. 49 Lewis, B. 73 Lewis, Gordon R. 109 liberalism 132–3, 138 Liberation Theology 122–3 libertarianism 135–6 Lifton, Robert Jay 76, 83, 87, 88 Lithuania 75 Livets Ord 50–5 Livezey, L.G. 190n living body 198, 199–200, 201, 202 Local Church 107, 108, 109–10 Lock, M.M. 180n Locke, John 139, 142 Lockhart, J.G. 213 Loseke, D.R. 190n Lot-Falck, E. 202 Love Family 48 Luckmann, T. 198, 203n, 204n
243
Index
244
Luhmann, N. 142 Lustiger, Cardinal 145 Maalouf, A. 73 McDannell, C. 171 McGirr, L. 131 McGraw, Barbara A. 139 McGuire, M.B. 170, 171, 172, 179, 180n, 191n McHugh, M. 191n McIntire, Carl 106 McKenna, District Judge 90 MacLeod, L. 191n McRobbie, A. 115, 116 Madsen, Finn 51, 52, 53 magic 93–6, 100n Mahathir bin Mohamad 119 Maideen, H. 120 Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act 1991 (Singapore) 124–5 Makarov, D. 68n Making of a Moonie, The (Barker) 2, 84, 181, 182 Malashenko, A. 68n Malaysia 117, 119–21 Maria Devi Christos 60, 68n Marrs, Texe 109 Marshall, Paul 71, 72–3, 78, 80, 219 Marshall, Thurgood 134 Martin, D. 187, 191n Martin, D.A. 160, 161, 163 Martin, Darlene 111 Martin, Walter R. 102–3, 106, 107–9, 110, 111, 112 Marx, Karl 195 Marxism 28, 29, 78 Masons 206–7 Mayer, Jean-François 36 media: moral panics 114, 116, 117, 118–19, 120, 121–2, 125; and NRMs 144–5 Melodyland School of Theology 107 Melton, J.G. 76, 81n, 102 men, rituals 171, 174–5 Messiahcams 40 Messner, F. 159 methodological agnosticism 217 Middleton, J. 93 Miller, D. 40–1 Miller, Elliott 111 Miller, J. 76 Mills, C.W. 198 mind control 83, 84, 87, 88, see also brainwashing mindful body 180n
Index
245
Minuti, R. 37 Mission interministérielle de lutte contre les sectes (MILS) 164, 169n Mladostarchestvo 61 Moberg, David O. 158n mobility 49, 51, 52, 52, 55 modernism 104, 106, 112 Molko case 84 Monks of Adoration 43 monotheism 16 Moonies see Unification Church moral panics 114–25 Morgan, Barry 210 Morgan, D. 171 Mormonism 72, 80n; countercult movement 103–4, 107, 108, 112; wisdom 208 Morton-Williams, P. 92 Moscovici, Serge 207–8 Mother of God Centre 60, 61 Mouton, Jean-Luc 165 Muir, E. 172 Mulhern, S. 98, 101n multipolarity 49, 50, 51, 52, 54–5 Munchembled, R. 95 Muslims see Islam Namenlosen, Die 18, 23n Nason-Clark, N. 190–1n Nathan, D. 100n nationalism 60, 62–3, 72, 73–5, 78 natural rights 137, 138–9 nature 9, 196–7 Nazir-Ali, Michael 210, 213 Needham, Rodney 208 Neitz, M.J. 176, 178 neo-conservatism 132–3, 136, 141n neo-Marxism 29 neo-paganism 101n Netherlands 91; RAMP study 147, 151, 152, 156, 157 New Age 26, 86 New Caledonia 169n New Christian Right 53 New Cults, The (Martin and Passantino) 108, 110 New Deal 129, 130–1, 132, 133, 141n new religious movements (NRMs) 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 80n; absolutes and relatives 13–22; brainwashing controversies 84–90; countercult movement 102–12; definitions 26–7; France 159, 162–9;
Index
246
and globalisation 48–9, 50–5; and Internet 36–7; intolerance and discrimination 71, 72–5, 80–1n, 143–6; RAMP study 146–52, 148, 149, 151–2, 153–5, 155–7; Russia 56, 59–68; violence and terrorism 76–8, 81n, see also cults New Religious Movements (Barker) 3, 25, 68n, 169n new social movements 26 New Zealand 91 nihil obstat 38, 39 Nixon, Richard 130, 133, 134 Northup, LA. 171 Norway: ISKCON 52; RAMP study 147, 151 Observatoire interministériel de lutte sure les sectes 169n O’Connor, Sandra Day 134, 135 Ofshe, Richard 85, 87, 88, 90 O’Lone case 136 ‘On the Edge’ 111, 112, 113n Online Darshan 43–4 ontological reason 216 Oral Roberts University 55 Order of the Solar Temple 14, 77, 144, 163 Orthodox Church 61, 66, 72, 73–4, 75, 103 paganism 94–5, see also neo-paganism Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) 81n Palmer, S. 76, 81n, 170 Panourgia, N. 220, 226 Pareto, Vilfredo 32 Paris Match 144 Parker, D. 23n Parker, Dorothy 27 Parker, H. 23n Parsons, Talcott 28, 32 Passantino, Gretchen 107, 108, 110, 112 Passantino, Robert 107, 108 Pazder, L 100n Pearson, P 76 Pement, Eric 102, 104, 111 People’s Temple 14, 25, 77, 151, 163 Perlstein, Rich 132, 134, 141n persecution 71, 72–5 persuasion 83 Peterson, D.C 104 Peterson, R.A. 29 Petroff, E.A. 177 Pettersson, T. 158n
Index
247
phenomenology 195–6, 197–9 Piedmont, Ralph L. 158n pilgrimages 174 Plato 215 Plessy v. Ferguson 138 pluralism 49, 50, see also multipolarity Plymouth Brethren 18, 109, see also Local Church Pocock, 96–7 Poewe, K. 72, 73, 74 Poland 74, 147 Poortinga, Y.H. 147 Popkin, R.H. 39–40 Portugal 147, 151, 152 Poulat, Emile 37 Powe, Lucas 141n Powell, Lewis 134 prayer 44 prediction 114, 122 primitive Protestants 80n Profitt, N.J. 191n Promise Keepers 175 proportionality 114, 115 Protestants 80n; France 159, 160–1, 162; and NRMs 146, 164, 165–6, 167; RAMP study 152, 155, 157; and witchcraft 95 puja 44 Puttick, E. 170 radio 106, 107 RAINS 99 Rajneesh, Shree 76 Rajneeshpuram 49 Ralushai, N.V. 92, 100n Ramsey, Ian 212 Ramsey, Michael 210, 211–12, 213, 214 Ranger, T. 115 Rappaport, Roy 216 Rastafarians 143, 151 rationalism 93, 96 Raymond, J. 43 Reagan, Ronald 131, 132, 134 reflexivity 205–6 Réforme 165 Regnier, P. 117 Regular Baptists 107 Rehnquist, William 129, 130, 134, 135, 140–1, 141n Reisman, D. 33
Index
248
relativism 21 religion, definitions 171–2 religious freedom 57, 71, 79–80, 81n Religious and Moral Pluralism (RAMP) study 142, 156–7, 158n; data and measurements 147–51, 148, 149; findings 151–2, 153–5, 155–6; research questions 146 Religious Movements Homepage 37 religious persecution 71, 72–5 religious-ness 26 Rensvold, R.B. 147 renunciation 176 repertoires 29 retreats 44 Revelli, C. 40 Richard, M 161 Richards, A.I. 92 Richardson, J.T. 25, 48, 51, 63, 64, 67, 68n, 72, 75, 76, 77, 81n, 88, 91, 115, 143, 144, 145, 151, 156, 159, 169n Ricks, S.D. 104 Rische, Jill Martin 111 ritual: and cataclysms 221–2; and dominance 173–5; and self 172–3; and submission 175–7 ritual abuse see satanic abuse Robbins, T. 25, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 81n, 82, 159 Robertson, Pat 53 Robertson, Roland 47, 48, 49 Robinson, John 212 Rochford, E.B., Jr 51, 54 Roe v. Wade 134, 138 Roman Catholic Church: censorship 38; countercult movement 104, 105; France 9, 159, 160, 161–2, 166; Internet 37, 39, 42, 43; Liberation Theology 122–3; multipolarity 50; and NRMs 145, 146; Poland 73–4; RAMP study 152, 155, 157 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 130 Rothstein, M 48 Rowland, R. 95 Roy, Olivier 41 Runcie, Robert 212 Russia 7; countercult movement 103; NRMs 56, 59–68, 73–4; religious persecution 75;
Index
249
Word of Life 52 Russian Orthodox Church 61, 66, 72, 73–4, 75, 103 St Patrick’s Purgatory 174 saints 9, 213–14 Salvation Army 75 Sanday, P.R. 172 Santer, Mark 209 sarin gas 14 Sartre, Jean-Paul 204n satanic abuse 8, 21–2, 91–3; academic assumptions 93–7; experience and belief 97–100 satanism 8, 91, 94, 95 Saudi Arabia 38–9 Scalia, Antonin 134, 135, 137, 140 Scandinavia: satanic abuse 91, see also Denmark; Norway; Sweden Schein, Edgar 83, 87, 88 Scheper-Hughes, N. 180n Scholte, J.A. 47, 49, 50 Schulman, Bruce J. 131, 132, 141n Schutz, Alfred 195, 197, 198, 204n science 93–4, 96 scientific atheism 7, 57–8, 65–6 Scientology see Church of Scientology sects 26; RAMP study 146–52, 148, 149, 151–2, 153–5, 155–7, see also new religious movements secularism 144, 159, 160 self 172–3, 179 seminar religion 86 Sentamu, John 209 separationism 129–30, 133–9, 142, 161, see also laïcité September 11 47, 76, 77–8, 219–20, 224, 225, 227–8 Seventh-day Adventist Church 80n, 103 sexuality 9, 170, 179 Shakers 173 shared experiences 27, 33 Sherbert v. Vernon 136 Shterin, M. 63, 64, 67, 68n, 74, 75 Shupe, A.D. 48, 144, 146 Siberia 202 Simmel, Georg 174, 215 Simpson, J.H. 47 simultaneity 49, 51, 52, 53, 55 Sinason, Valerie 99, 101n
Index
250
Singapore 8, 117–25 Singer, Margaret 82–3, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 110, 115 Skog, M. 51, 52, 55 Slater, D. 40–1 Slater, P.E. 33 slavery 137–8 Smith, C.H. 76, 79 Smith, M. 100n Smith case 136–7 Snedeker, M. 100n Snijkers, T. 152 Snowden, J.H. 105 social evolutionism 94 social movements 26 social world: and natural world 196–7; worldviews 199–203 soft drugs 143, 146, 151 Solar Temple 14, 77, 144, 163 Soper, J.C. 77, 144, 159 Sörbom, K. 147 Souter, David 134, 135 Southern Baptist Convention 107 Soviet Union 57–8, 65–6, see also Russia Sparks, Brad 111 speaking in tongues 15 Spencer, J. 222 Sperber, Dan 215–16 Spillman, L 29 Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP) 107, 108, 110, 113n Spiritualism 103, 104, 105 spirituality 171, 172–3; blurring boundaries 177–9; and dominance 173–5; and gender 179; and self 172–3; and submission 175–7 Sri Lanka 221, 222 Stark, R. 26, 34, 74, 80n state, and religion 8, 9, 118–25 state atheism 57–8 Stevens, John Paul 134, 135 Stoddart, J.T. 105 Stoffel, John III Straits Times 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125 Stratford, L. 100n Straus, M.A. 191n Strauss, Leo 141n Student Christian Movement 18 submission 175–7, 179 suicide 151, 152, 157
Index
251
suicide bombers 223 Sunday Times 117 Supreme Court (US) 8, 129, 131, 133–41 survival 117 survivor identity 187, 189–90 survivors 99 Swain, R.L. 105 Sweden: ISKCON 52; RAMP study 147, 151; Word of Life 51, 52 Swidler, A. 29 symbolic knowledge 215–16 symbolisation 114, 122, 125 Tajikistan, Word of Life 52 Taliban 79 Tambiah, S.J. 221 Tannenhaus, Sam 77, 78 Tate, X 101n Taves, A. 171 technical reason 216 television 54 Temple, William 210, 212–13 terrorism 76–8, 79, 222, 223, 227 Testimony 18, 23n Theocons 136, 141n They Lie in Wait to Deceive (Brown and Brown) 108 Thomas, Clarence 130, 134, 135 Thomas, D. 86 Thompson, K. 114 Thorne-Finch, R. 190n Thornton, S.L 115, 116 thought reform 83, 87 Tillich, Paul 207, 216 Timely Warnings (Irvine) 103, 104 Times, The 210 Timmins, L. 187 Tolbert, K.E. 102, 104 tolerance 8, 142–3; and ecumenism 18; RAMP study 146–52, 148, 149, 151–2, 153–5, 155–7; UK 167, see also intolerance tool kits 29 Top of the Pops 53 totemism 200, 203 tradition 64, 74, 115 Trevor-Roper, Hugh 93 Trott, Jon 111 truth 16, 17
Index
Turkey 31 Turner, E. 174 Turner, V. 174, 207 Twelve-Step groups 176 understanding 215 Unification Church (UC) 2, 20, 25, 181, 205; Belgium 145; brainwashing controversy 84, 88–90; and globalisation 72; Russia 66 Unitarianism 104 United Kingdom: countercult movement 103, 169n; NRMs 166–7; RAMP study 147, 148, 151, 156, 157; religious discrimination 143, 145; satanic abuse 91 United States 8; countercult movement 102–6, 107–12; elite-sponsored moral panics 116; exceptionalism 32; fraternal orders 174–5; and globalisation 75; individualism 33; New Christian Right 53; NRMs 26, 49; religious freedom 76, 79–80, 80–1n; satanic abuse 91, 98, 100n; separation of church and state 129–41, 142–3; tolerance 155; violence and terrorism 76–8, 225, 227–8 Universal Church of the Kingdom of God 166 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 22n Uoani Swami 60, 68n urbanisation 146, 150, 155, 156, 157 Usmalos 60, 68n Uzbekistan 79 Vallely, Paul 210 Van Baalen, Jan Karel 105, 106 van Driel, B. 143, 144, 145, 151 Ventis, W.L 205 verstehen 9, 206 violence 76–8, 81n, 222, 223, see also domestic violence Vissarion 59–60 voluntaristic theory of action 32 Vorontsova, L. 57 Voyé, Liliane 156, 158n Waco 14, 77, 163
252
Index
253
Waehlens, Alphonse de 197 Wah Piow, Tan 121–2, 123 Walker, G.A. 190n Walter Martin’s Religious InfoNet 111, 112, 113n Warburg, M. 48, 51, 52 Warren, Earl 129–30, 131, 133–4 Waterhouse, R. 100n Weaver, A. 191n Weber, Max 28, 30, 32, 33, 35, 94, 207, 215 websites see Internet Welch, M. 116 Welch, Robert 131 Wessinger, C. 76, 81n West, Louis J. 84 West, T.G. 138 West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 140–1 Western Wall 44 Whalen, William 107 Wheatley, Dennis 93 Whipple, V. 191n Wicca 100n, 101n Willaime, J.-P. 161, 162, 165 Williams, Raymond 29 Williams, Rhys 29 Williams, Rowan 210–11 Williamson, J. 190n, 191n Willis, R. 92 Wilson, B.R. 22n, 25, 142, 143, 145, 146 Winland, D.N. 191n Winter, E.H. 93 wisdom 9, 205, 215–16; Archbishops of Canterbury 209–13; and charisma 207–9; ideal-type 207; and institutional structure 214; method and reflexivity 205–6; and saints 213–14; searching for 206–7; and unified sense 215; and verstehen 206 witchcraft 8, 21–2, 92–3, 100n, 101n; academic assumptions 93–6; Africa 92; satanic abuse controversy 91 women: ritual and spiritual practices 171, 172, see also domestic violence Women Aglow 176 Wood, A. 191n Word of Life 50–5 World Congress of Faiths 146 World Wide Web see Internet worldviews 200–3
Index
worship 42–4 Wuthnow, Robert 79 Yakunin vs Dvorkin 68n Yeats, William Butler 50 Yonan, G. 22n Young, Jock 114 Zablocki, Ben 82, 83 Zellner, W.W. 26 Zoroastrianism 38, 40
254
