Giving Cults a Good Name

Esquire magazine/June 1997
"Reality Check" column

A former cult-bashing organization is now doing PR for some sects.  Shortly
after the Heaven's Gate mass suicide, the Cult Awareness Network, which has
long battled cults, sent reporters a list of "experts" on the subject.  One
of them, J. Gordon Melton, is considered by many cult foes to be an apologist
for the groups.  Melton, who has written extensively on cults and religions,
has come out in defense of Aum, the Japanese cult linked to the gassing of a
Tokyo subway in March 1995 that killed twelve people, and the Church of
Scientology has asked him to testify in court on its behalf.  What's more,
Melton, whom CAN identified as "executive director, Institute for the Study
of American Religions, University of California, Santa Barbara," is not a
professor at the school; he works in the library.  

Why would CAN list someone known to be a sympathetic to these groups?  "We
have a different philosophy here now," says Isadore Chait, CAN's new
director.  "We're an information source on religions."  He adds that Melton
has written "the authoritative book on religions in America."

Chait was appointed after CAN lost a recent lawsuit, went bankrupt, and saw
its name, logo, and hot line bought by a Scientologist. 

"We figured this would happen," says a source.  "The foxes are guarding the
henhouse."

Combatants in Cult War Attempt Reconciliation / Peacemaking conference is held near Seattle

Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer Monday, May 1, 2000

Seattle -- They're calling it the "Camp David of the cult wars."

Leaders from both factions in the decades-long dispute over danger posed by new religious movements came together over the weekend at a woodsy retreat center on the shores of Puget Sound.

There were a few screaming matches, and a bit of the old backbiting and rumormongering, but it was a largely peaceful gathering of defectors, devotees, heartbroken families and assorted cult experts.

"We've reached the point where we're no longer throwing bricks," said  J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, and someone long labeled as an "apologist" by leaders of the "alarmist" anti-cult movement.

Melton was among those attending a weekend conference at the Dumas Bay Centre south of Seattle, sponsored by the American Family Foundation and titled "Cults and the Millennium."