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Anti-cult movement |
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Anti-cult movement
The anti-cult movement (ACM) is one of the sources of opposition to cults and new religious movements (NRMs) that it considers harmful. The movement grew out of concerned parents in the USA in the 1970s when their children joined high-demand groups, such as the Divine Light Mission, Children of God, ISKCON, and the Unification Church. See also opposition to cults and new religious movements . The anti-cult movement promotes several methods for warning people about and, where necessary, extricating them from, groups considered harmful: for example, deprogramming techniques (now obsolete), exit counseling, and by providing information, mainly via websites and publications. The anti-cult movement has been widely critiziced by scholars, in particular about deprogramming methods they consider illegal and about the lack of scientific validity of some of the theories esposed by the movement such as mind control and brainwashing. Scholars have also challenged the validity of apostates' testimony, one of the tenants of the movement. __TOC__ HistoryThe anti-cult movement (ACM) developed in the 1960s from parents concerned by the efforts made by new religious movements that were attracting young people at that time. The anti-cult movement of today goes beyond a group of concerned parents, and it includes a diverse platform composed of individuals, ex-members, groups, and organizations who attempt to raise public consciousness about what they feel are serious emotional, spiritual and physical abuses by various new religious movements, cults, new religious movement, or sects. The cult controversies in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in growing interest in scholarly research on alternative religions and the creation of academic organizations for their study. The majority of scholars and organizations that study and critique the anti-cult movement, are criticized by them, and referred to, disparagingly, as cult apologists. A small minority of scholars tend to side with the ACM. In its early days, the movement resorted to conservatorship laws to get hold of cult members and forcibly "treat" them, and tried (and failed) to legalize this practice further by trying to pass deprogramming laws. The anti-cult activities of orthodox Christian groups, are discussed in The counter-cult movement. OriginsThe term was coined as part of the controversy surrounding religious cults. In the 1960s and early 1970s, middle-class youths in the United States started to follow new religious movements, such as the Children of God, the Unification Church, the Hare Krishnas, the Divine Light Mission, and Scientology, that were foreign to their families and often at odds with the traditional middle-class values and ideas. The families of these young people organized themselves because they became worried about what they considered bizarre belief systems and the behavior of their children. Some of these organizations of concerned relatives grew into the anti-cult movement. Types of opposition to cultsTwo main type of opposition to cults are observed, religious and secular*:
Apostates and ApologistsSome critical former members (sometimes called apostates) of cults have joined the ACM or are related to them. Other critical former members have their own networks that are loosely related to the ACM. Testimonies of disaffected former members have been used extensively by the ACM to warn people against cults. The validity and reliability of these testimonies is the source of intense controversy amongst scholars. See Apostasy in new religious movements. The field of cults and new religious movements is studied by social scientists, sociologists, religious scholars, psychologists and psychiatrists. The debates about a certain purported cult and cults in general are often polarized with widely divergent opinions, not only among current followers and disaffected former members, but sometimes even among scholars as well. For example, the American religious scholar J. Gordon Melton holds the view that cults rarely do serious harm and that stories of apostates cannot be relied upon. In correspondence with this view, he went to Japan just after the Aum Shinrikyo's sarin attack to declare that Aum Shinrikyo was innocent. Other scholars challenging the validity of apostate testimonies include Brian R. Wilson, Massimo Introvigne, and Anson Shupe. David G. Bromley questions the veracity only in case the former members are pressured by a countermovement to put them in a theoretical or religious framework, such as the brainwashing theory. Social scientists, such as Professor Brian Wilson have studied the phenomenon called atrocity story as it pertains to apostates of NRMs, explaining that ".. to vindicate himself in regard to his volte face requires a plausible explanation of both his (usually sudden) adherence to his erstwhile faith and his no less sudden abandonment and condemnation of it" and "... [the apostate], seeks to reintegrate with the wider society which he now seeks to influence, and perhaps to mobilize, against the religious group which he has lately abandoned." Opponents of the view that cults are rarely harmless and that apostates testimonies cannot be relied upon are the scholars David C. Lane, Benjamin Zablocki, and Stephen A. Kent. Some anti-cult activists are very critical of these scholars and use the word cult apologist for them. They accuse the cult apologists of being naive, bad scholars and above all reproach them of not warning people who should be warned, as well as of being funded by the cults themselves. These scholars, in turn assert that "Cult apologists,[are those claiming to champion religious freedom and religious tolerance."[1]. Scholarly cooperation between these anti cult-activists and scholars acussed of being "cult apologists" seems to be virtually non-existent. In a paper paper presented to the 2002 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Conference[1], Douglas Cowan presents the political, ethical, economic and personal impact of such distinction and the range of opinion about what "cult apologist" means in the context of three basic domains as follows: Organizational opposition to cultsAccording to a taxonomy proposed by the late Professor Jeffrey K. Hadden, from the University of Virgina's Department of Sociology, there are four distinct classes of oppositions to cults. Note: Professor Hadden was accused to have been not critical enough of cults and being a cult apologist by several anti-cult groups. [1] Religious oppositionSecular oppositionApostatesApostasy: the renunciation of a religious faith. See Apostasy in new religious movements. Entrepreneurial oppositionSocial influence of countermovements on apostatesSocial scientist Dr. David G. Bromley coined the term atrocity story that describes a tendency to give a one sided view of events in case an apostate is recruited into a countermovement and pressured to describe his experience in a negative view.
Criticism of the anti-cult movementCritics of the anti-cult movement often accuse that it has done the following: Critics of the anti-cult movement include J. Gordon Melton, the sociologist David G. Bromley, and other scholars associated with the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR). Massimo Introvigne from the CESNUR, attributes to the anti-cult movement the following apology: In the same mode, the Association of World Academics for Religious Education (AWARE) claims that the anti-cult movement is vested interest in maintaining the conflict and "have been unresponsive to objective scholarly studies, and has proceeded with business as usual, as if these studies were non-existent. Scholars whose work directly challenges the ‘cult’ stereotype are dismissed [by the anti-cult movement] as either naive or as being in collusion with the cults." Other organizations and institutions studying new religions and the anti-cult movement include: Critics of cults, recognizing the diversity of groups lumped under this label have identified of "cult", or "destructive cults", as the object of their concern. The criteria offered generally involve communal totalism, authoritanism, charismatic leadership, manipulative and heavy-handed indoctrination, deceptive proselytization, violence and child abuse, sexual exploitation, emotional intensity in group life, and alleged use of mind control. Other controversies postulated by these critics, include tax privileges, public solicitacion, faith healing and rejection of modern medicine, mental health jeopardy to participants, and corporal punishment. In the book "Why Waco?: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America" James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher assert that the anti-cult movement exacerbated the fanatical reaction of destructive cults by encouraging a cult phobia among the public and authorities, that helped to precipitate mass tragedies like Jonestown, Waco, and the Heaven's Gate. According to these critics, the most active being American-based cult representatives, the anti-cult movement of today is the main force behind purported discriminative measures promulgated against minority groups in France, Germany, and China. Anti-cult brainwashing theories and de-programming practicesThe most important addition of anti-cult scholars, like Margaret Singer, was the application of existing theory on "brainwashing", or "coercive persuasion", to cult involvement. According to this theory, some followers of "cults" are held there by some psychological phenomenon, not fully explained by modern psychology but presumably similar to hypnosis, which impairs their judgement regarding the cult. Some anti-cult theoreticians argue that if a person has been deprived of their own free will by brainwashing, treatment to restore their free will must be initiated even if it is initially against their will. These anti-cult theories of brainwashing, mind control, or “coercive persuasion” were rejected in 1983 by the American Psychological Association(APA) in an amicus curiæ brief stating that "The coercive persuasion theory ... is not a meaningful scientific concept", that "The methodology of Drs. Singer and Benson has been repudiated by the scientific community" and that the hypotheses advanced by Singer are "little more than uninformed speculation, based on skewed data." [1]. Although there is precedent for this in the treatment of certain mental illnesses that are medically and legally recognized as depriving sufferers of their ability to make appropriate decisions for themselves, the practice of forcing treatment on a presumed victim of brainwashing (a practice known as "deprogramming") has always been controversial and has been frequently adjudged illegal as well. Only a small fraction of the anti-cult movement has ever been involved in deprogramming. Deprogramming was criticized by human rights organizations such as the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, and many deprogrammers, including its pioneer Ted Patrick, served prison terms for the practice. As a result, it has been abandoned by the anti-cult movement in the USA, in favor of the voluntary, legal practice of exit counseling. Debunking of the anti-cult movement mythsEileen Barker and her book, Making of a Moonie, proved with documented research that few people contacted by members of the Unification Church becomes involved and showed how high the attrition rate was for people who "moved in". Her study indicates that conversion to the Unification Church is not a process of brainwashing or mind control that prospective followers cannot resist.The counter-cult movementThe counter-cult movement (also referred as "discernment ministries", "heresy hunters" or "heresiologists" or generically as CCM) is composed of conservative Protestant Christian individuals and agencies who raise concerns about religious groups which they feel hold dangerous, non-traditional beliefs. These ministries are motivated by a concern for the spiritual welfare of people in the groups that they attack. They believe that any group which rejects one or more of the historical Protestant Christian beliefs is a danger to the welfare of its members, and to the Christian faith itself. The counter-cult groups target mainly religious groups which regard themselves as Christian but hold one or more unorthodox beliefs, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Unification church, Christian Science, and Jehovah's Witnesses, although some within this movement also target non-Christian groups, such as Wicca, Neopagan groups, New Age groups, Buddhism, Hinduism and other Eastern religions. They also oppose certain cultural trends such as the Harry Potter books, vampire movies, Dungeons & Dragons, etc. An umbrella group the Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR) was formed as a professional association for individuals and ministries addressing "cults" of Christianity, new religious movements, and world religions. Scholars differentiate the sectarian movement as the counter-cult movement and the secular movement as the anti-cult movement. See also the Christian countercult movement. List of anti-cult activistsThe following people are anti-cult activists who criticize groups that they consider to be cults. Many of these anti-cult activists are apostates and target only the group from which they have become disaffected. Some of them call themselves "exit counselorss". For more activists, see Christian countercult movement.
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