ICSA Annual Conference: Peace, Violence and New Religions

ICSA Annual Conference: Peace, Violence and New Religions
Eileen Barker; Friday, June 24, 2022; 11:00 AM-11:50 AM - online

New religious movements frequently give rise to conflict with other sections of society. Occasionally this conflict develops into violence which could be initiated by either the NRM or its opponents, but could also be the result of a growing spiral of polarisation between the concerned parties – a process that sociologists have termed deviance amplification. A few NRMs do commit horrific acts of violence – as have representatives of almost all the older, traditional religions. Many NRMs express a yearning for peace and have tried, in a wide variety of ways, to achieve it. Few, however, have shown signs of being successful at achieving peace for society, though some could be as successful (as are some of the older, traditional religions) in offering their members an inner peace. It could be argued that, given the potential tension between NRMs and the rest of society, it is not all that surprising that the very process of attempting to bring about peace can, directly or indirectly, occasionally result in less rather than more peace. Examples will be offered with the aim of illustrating the enormous variety to be found among NRMs in their approaches to both violence and peace. It will be stressed, however, that there are thousands of other NRMs that are not particularly noteworthy so far as their attitudes to either peace or violence are concerned. Most manage to co-exist with the rest of society without being noticed by those not directly affected by their presence. However, when they do engage in acts of violence, this is likely to be noticed in the media, giving rise to the assumption that NRMs are disproportionately violent.

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Eileen Barker

London School of Economics / INFORM, Professor Emeritus
Eileen Barker, PhD, PhD h.c., FAcSS, FBA, OBE , is Professor Emeritus of Sociology with Special Reference to the Study of Religion at the London School of Economics, University of London. Her main research interest is minority religions and the social reactions to which they give rise. Following the Fall of the Berlin Wall, she became interested in the religious situation in Eastern Europe and since the start of the 21st century her interests have extended to East Asia. She has over 400 publications (translated into 29 different languages), which include the award-winning The Making of a Moonie: Brainwashing or Choice? and New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction. In the late 1980s, with the support of the British Government and mainstream Churches, she founded INFORM, an educational charity, now based in the Theology and Religious Studies Department at King’s College, London, which provides information about minority religions that is as accurate, objective and up-to-date as possible. In 2000, Queen Elizabeth appointed her as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for ‘services to INFORM’, and she received the American Academy of Religion’s Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. She was the first non-American elected President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. A frequent advisor to governments, other official bodies and law-enforcement agencies throughout the world, she has made numerous appearances on television and radio, and has given guest lectures in over 50 countries. In 2013 Dr. Barker received ICSA’s Lifetime Achievement Award; in 2020 she received the Association for the Sociology of Religion’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

ICSA Annual Conference: Religious Legitimacy

ICSA Annual Conference: Religious Legitimacy

Phil Lord
Saturday, June 25, 2022
3:00 PM-3:50 PM

This article seeks to demonstrate both the importance of expertise and scholarship in framing a religion’s claim of legitimacy in law, and how expertise can be harnessed by a religious group to gain this legitimacy. From a broad overview of the consequences of religious status in law, the article analyses the tests used to attribute the status, to show the crucial role that their application affords to experts and scholarship. It then argues that new religious movements, and Scientology, are ideal case studies to illustrate the importance of scholars and scholarship. Scientology is indeed the only major religion to have emerged in the twentieth century and is unique in that it has, over this period, gained, lost, re-gained, and grappled with ongoing challenges to its status in law. The article then illustrates these issues with an analysis of two key periods from Scientology’s history: its ultimately successful fight to gain tax-exempt status in the United States in the 1980s, and its response to modern-day challenges to this status. Both periods illustrate, in different ways, how Scientology has recognised the power of expertise and scholarship, and sought to harness it to frame its claim of legitimacy in law.

The article can be accessed at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3798780

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Phil Lord

Assistant Professor

Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, Lakehead University

Phil Lord is an Assistant Professor at Lakehead University’s Bora Laskin Faculty of Law. He was appointed (at age 24) and remains the youngest law professor in Canada. Phil previously served as an instructor at Carleton University's Department of Law and a law clerk at the Federal Court of Canada. Prior to that, he started a few companies, worked in the financial services industry, and practiced civil and commercial litigation in Montreal. Phil graduated from the McGill Faculty of Law with degrees in civil and common law, on the Dean’s Honor List and with the highest standing in property law and constitutional law. He subsequently pursued an LL.M. as a Bombardier scholar. Phil is called to the bar in New York, Massachusetts, and Quebec. He is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and holds three financial services designations. Phil has authored over twenty academic articles, most peer-reviewed. His research focuses on public law (principally employment and taxation law), behavioral economics, and new religious movements. Phil also writes on other things, such as Quebec’s Bill 21, children’s literature, and the porn industry. A free version of each of his articles can be accessed at https://ssrn.com/author=2790633 Phil has also failed at a lot of things. His first three grades in law school were B-s, and his final law school transcript lists two B-s and a C — the latter being a particularly unusual grade at McGill. Although the selection rate seems to hover around 75%, Phil wasn’t selected as an editor of the McGill Law Journal. With four manuscripts, he spent almost two years trying to get his first publication. It would be another year before he published in a law review. Phil welcomes discussions about his failures, as he thinks law professors too often lack humility. (He even wrote an article on that: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3726628.) 

Over the past two years, Phil has given interviews to or briefed journalists from six media outlets. He welcomes media inquiries in his areas of expertise. French Bio: Phil Lord est professeur adjoint à la Faculté de droit Bora Laskin de l'Université Lakehead. Il était au moment de sa nomination (à l'âge de 24 ans) et demeure le plus jeune professeur de droit au Canada. Phil était précédemment chargé de cours à la Faculté de droit de l'Université Carleton et auxiliaire juridique à la Cour fédérale du Canada. Avant cela, il a fondé quelques entreprises, travaillé dans le secteur des services financiers et pratiqué en litige civil et commercial à Montréal. Phil a obtenu ses diplômes en droit civil et en common law de la Faculté de droit de l'Université McGill. Il figure sur la liste d’honneur du doyen et a reçu des prix pour avoir obtenu les meilleurs résultats en droit des

Cults on TV!

How stereotypes influence our ideas about what is and isn’t legitimate religion.

Allison Miller
JSTOR
January 14, 2021

Thinking of submitting to a leader, cutting off all your hair, and moving to a commune in the desert, or is that just the type of thing Netflix seems to be recommending? TV stereotypes of “cults,” or new religious movements (NRMs), may have primed that algorithm over the past fifty years. As religion scholar Lynn S. Neal argues, TV has influenced what generations of viewers expect cults to be. Which is to say, really, really bad.

Analyzing episodes of The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond, Law and Order: SVU, and other shows, Neal finds that they all show people dressing unusually, living communally as a substitute for family life, having “delusional and infantile” beliefs, and being visibly abnormal. This can be humorous, as with the “Movementarians” on The Simpsons, or grimly dramatic, as with a girl driven to shoot her leader on SVU in order to break free of the cult once and for all.

NRMs “often appear as a joke or as some type of threat—ideas that can wield tremendous power in American culture.”

These elements, Neal argues, add up to a negative stereotype that reinforces ideas about true and false religions. Neal points out that in these TV portrayals, there’s usually no discussion of any theology. “[B]y defining and showing what is strange or deviant, these programs help delineate what religious behaviors and norms are deemed acceptable and legitimate,” she writes. Those, naturally, are “vaguely Christian.” NRMs “often appear as a joke or as some type of threat—ideas that can wield tremendous power in American culture.”

The stereotype has roots that probably go deeper than TV itself, to portrayals of non-Western religions as exotic. Representation of “cults” on TV at first focused mainly on practices like these. But in the 1970s a “cult scare and intense media scrutiny of NRMs” launched the stereotype full blown on the small screen. In 1975 a show called S.W.A.T. featured an episode called “A Coven of Killers,” and dangerous NRMs appeared on teen-oriented sitcoms like What’s Happening and Welcome Back, Kotter. Even as news media coverage of NRMs went down in the ’80s—and gawking coverage of televangelism increased—the cult stereotype reliably plumped ratings on dramas and comedies.

That boom peaked around the year 2000, Neal posits, because the U.S. was grappling with fallout from a spate of violence surrounding real NRMs like the Branch Davidians and Heaven’s Gate. They made bankable nonfiction headlines for fictional TV to rip from. But as reality TV took over the industry, and as Y2K came and went, living communally and holding infantile beliefs didn’t come as often from fictional TV…but they were all over The Real World and its copious copycats.

Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

"They're Freaks!": The Cult Stereotype in Fictional Television Shows, 1958–2008
By: Lynn S. Neal
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 14, No. 3 (February 2011), pp. 81-107
University of California Press

https://daily.jstor.org/cults-on-tv/

The Korean “Rush Hour of the Gods” and Daesoon Jinrihoe

PierLuigi Zoccatelli

Pontifical Salesian University
pierluigi.zoccatelli@gmail.com

The Journal of CESNUR

ABSTRACT: This issue (Volume 2, Issue 5 September—October 2018) of The Journal of CESNUR is devoted to Daesoon Jinrihoe, the largest contemporary new religion in South Korea. New religions in South Korea are among the largest and fastest-growing religious movements in the world, yet they are understudied outside of their home country. Their growth confirms that in our allegedly “secularized” world, new religions continue to be  born, flourish, and expand internationally. The case of Daesoon Jinrihoe is discussed by contributors of this issue in its own merits, without relying on generalizations on Korean new religions. On the other hand, both the Korean and the larger East Asian contexts are considered in all articles.

Introduction: The Korean “Rush Hour of the Gods” and Daesoon Jinrihoe

PierLuigi Zoccatelli

Cultural Identity and New Religions in Korea

Kang Donku

New Religions and Daesoon Jinrihoe in Korea

Yoon Yongbok

Daesoon Jinrihoe: An Introduction

Massimo Introvigne

Personal Lineage as the Main Organizational Principle in Daesoon

Jinrihoe

Park Sangkyu

Theories of Suffering in East Asian Religions: The Case of Daesoon

Jinrihoe

Cha Seon-Keun

The Yeoju Headquarters Temple Complex as a Center for Social Welfare

and Humanitarian Aid

Rosita Šorytė

Problems in Researching Korean New Religions: A Case Study of Daesoon

Jinrihoe

Yoon Yongbok and Massimo Introvigne

View full issue

Cult weddings in Church of England buildings could become a reality, bishop warns

Bishop of Winchester Tim Dakin.

Harry Farley 
ChristianToday
February 23, 2018

Cult-type 'New Religious Movements' could hold weddings in Church of England churches if proposals contained in a new bill pass, according to an Anglican bishop.

John Gummer's ecumenical marriage bill, which passed its second reading in the House of Lords on Friday, could allow 'New Religious Movements', which include controversial groups like Scientologists, the right to use Church of England buildings for weddings.

That is according to Tim Dakin, the bishop of Winchester, who spoke against the bill this morning.

The private member's bill is designed to allow Catholics, Methodists and other Christian denominations' marriages to take place in Church of England buildings.

But Bishop Dakin warned it also 'affords potential legal rights to the use of churches to New Religious Movements with which the Church of England does not have any existing formal ecumenical relationship'.

He said parliament was 'addressing questions of doctrine, creed and ecumenical dialogue, all of which ought properly to sit with the churches themselves'.

He warned 'there is a longstanding constitutional convention' that parliament does not interfere with Church matters. 'This Bill represents a departure from that convention,' he told peers in the House of Lords.

Gummer, Lord Deben, is a former Conservative party chairman and environment secretary who converted to Catholicism 1992 after previously being an Anglican and serving on the CofE's ruling General Synod. He introduced the bill after finding his daughter could not marry in his local Anglican church in Suffolk because she wanted the Catholic ceremony.

He hit back at the bishop's claim and said the bill 'does not tell the Church of England to do anything'.

'It is entirely fictitious to suggest we are breaking the convention,' he said. 'What we are doing is removing a legal impediment for the Church of England to make up its own mind. That is clearly different.'

There is no great difference in the different wedding liturgies between Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists and Methodists but marriage law in the UK is designed around a buildings-based system meaning ceremonies must take place either in a register office, approved premises or in an officially registered place of religious worship. If in a Church of England building, the wedding must be carried out 'according to the rites of the Church of England', according to the 1949 Marriages Act.

Gummer's bill would remove this restriction meaning other denomination's weddings could, if the CofE agreed, take place in Anglican buildings.

Before the debate he told Christian Today: 'My bill doesn't force the Church of England to change. It merely allows them to. At the moment parliament stops the Church of England doing this and all my bill does is remove that impediment. It does what parliament would want.

'It gives the Church of England freedom and if the Church doesn't want to do it, it doesn't have to.'

But the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the Church of England and the Anglican Church in Wales all oppose the move.

The CofE said it allows ministers from other denominations to take other services such as funerals and mass and they can help in some parts of the wedding service but an Anglican minister must lead the marriage vows themselves. A spokesman said: 'We see no need for Lord Deben's Bill, and believe that the current arrange­ments give sufficient pas­toral flexi­bility for weddings which are conducted in Anglican churches and chapels, involving ministers of differ­ent denominations.'

https://www.christiantoday.com/article/cult-weddings-in-church-of-england-buildings-could-become-a-reality-bishop-warnsexecute1/126320.htm

Are New Religions Harmful?

From INFORM

Some minority religions sometimes harm some people.

But, simply because a religion is unfamiliar, or new or 'different' does not mean that it is necessarily a cause for concern. Research shows that much of the 'conventional wisdom' about the movements is not always well-founded.

Criminal, dangerous or even 'anti-social' behaviour is by no means typical of all minority religions - and, of course, some mainstream traditional religions have been (and in some instances still are) responsible for appalling atrocities.

Generalisations can be both misleading and dangerous, and each case should be considered individually. However, problems that do arise may share a number of common elements, and certain trends can be recognised.

Although most alternative religions are law abiding, and suicide or murders such as those described below are rare, there are other factors that can more frequently cause concern.  Some groups exert strong social and psychological pressure on their members which can make individuals do things that they would not have considered doing prior to joining; sometimes it is hard for former members to explain or understand their behaviour when they were in the movement. Most frequently, it has been the members themselves who have been harmed, but sometimes individuals whom the group sees as its enemy have been harmed - only very rarely have movements (such as the Manson Family and Aum Shinrikyo) harmed the general public. Some examples of harmful new religions

• In 1969, a group calling themselves 'The Family' under the leadership of Charles Manson (who referred to himself as Jesus Christ) committed a series of high profile murders in southern California. Upon their conviction for seven brutal murders, Manson and four of his followers received the death penalty, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.¹

• In 1978 about 914 members of The Peoples Temple, a movement combining elements of Pentecostalism, socialism and communism, died in a mass suicide-murder at Jonestown, Guyana.²

• Between 1994 and 1997, seventy-four members of the Order of the Solar Temple, a movement based on a variety of esoteric teachings including Templarism and Rosicrucianism, died in a number of incidents involving suicide and murder in Canada, Switzerland and France.³

• In 1995, twelve people died and thousands were injured in a sarin gas attack in Tokyo's underground system by members of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist-based group, founded by Shoko Asahara in 1986.⁴

• In 1997, thirty-nine members of Heaven's Gate, a UFO group, who believed that a spacecraft positioned behind the Comet Hale-Bopp would take them to a higher level of existence, committed suicide in San Diego, California.⁵

•  In 2000, around 300 followers of the Ugandan Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, a movement which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in the late 1980s, were burned to death. Mass graves were later discovered, raising the death toll to more than 1,000 victims.⁶

Some common concerns:

"Once they get involved, they'll never get away..."

• A study of 104 participants in Unification Church (Moonie) workshops showed that 71% dropped out within two days. 29% stayed longer than two days, of these 17% stayed more than nine days. Only 9% of the workshop participants actually stayed over 21 days to join the Unification Church, meaning that in total 91% of the workshop participants had dropped out in under 21 days.⁷

• Out of over 1000 participants who agreed to go to a Unification Church workshop, 90% did not join and the majority of those who did join had left within two years.⁸

• Further research shows that most first generation converts have left, as have the majority of the first cohort of children born within the Unification Church once they reached adulthood.⁹

"Even if they leave, they'll never be normal again..."

• A study of 45 people who voluntarily left new religions showed that a large majority felt wiser for the experience rather than feeling angry or duped.¹⁰

• A study of former members of the Shiloh Community, a fundamentalist Jesus community, indicated that the former members experienced no ill effects of past membership, had integrated well on return to the larger community, and did not differ from the general population on a symptom checklist.¹¹ 

"They must be out of their minds to stay in a group like that..."

• Studies of members of several different new and/or alternative and spiritual religious groups find that most members are psychologically healthy.¹²

• The psychologist Marc Galanter used the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to conduct psychological studies on members of a new religion (the Unification Church). He found no evidence for a greater incidence of pathological profiles among members than among the general population.¹³

• Residents of Rajneeshpuram (a township, now defunct, built by followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho) were found to have a high mental health score. Research indicated that Bhagwan's followers had positive self-concepts, and, compared with the general population, lower feelings of personal distress and anxiety, and greater feelings of personal autonomy and independence of thought.¹⁴

Inform aims to alleviate unnecessary anxiety by providing accurate, objective information about alternative religious movements. This involves looking at each particular group and situation and sifting the facts and reliable information from the mass of opinions, assumptions, anecdotes and hearsay.

In some situations, the information Inform can provide about a particular group and its context can be reassuring. However, there are other situations when Inform may provide information that alerts people to potential problems.

It can be difficult for friends and family members to respect the right of an individual to change his or her beliefs and practices while being aware that there may be genuine cause for concern for the member's well-being. Some groups undoubtedly do cause harm to individual members. Some groups encourage high levels of commitment, encouraging economic, psychological, and emotional dependence. Some groups may have beliefs or practices which may lead to the imposition of physical or psychological harm and some practices may be illegal.

Inform can help by providing unbiased and accurate information that is as reliable as possible. For more information about what to do if you are concerned about a member of an alternative religious group, see our  Infom's Guidelines.


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¹ Hutch, R.A. (1995) 'Before I'd Be a Slave, I'd Be Buried in My Grave, and Go Home to My Lord and Be Free'The International Journal for the Psychology o f Religion 5(3): 171-176; Nielsen, D.A. (1984) 'Charles Manson's Family of Love' Sociological Analysis 45(4): 315-337; Bugliosi, V. (1977) Helter Skelter: The Manson Murders. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

² Moore, R. (2006) 'Review Essay: Peoples Temple Revisited' Nova Religio 10(1): 111-118 and 'Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple' a website managed by Rebecca Moore sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University.

³ Lewis, J.R., ed. (2006) The Order of the Solar Temple: The Temple of Death. Ashgate: Aldershot.

⁴ Reader, I. (2000) Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon; Lifton, R. (1999) Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence and the New Global Terrorism. New York: Owl.
 
 
⁵ Balch, R.W. and D. Taylor (2002) "Making Sense of the Heaven's Gate Suicides", in Cults, Religion and Violence, D.G. Bromley and J.G. Melton, Editors, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge: 209-228.

⁶ Walliss, J. (2005) "Making Sense of the Movement for the Restoration for the Ten Commandments of God".Nova Religio, 2005. 9(1): p. 49-66.
 
 
⁷ Galanter, M. (1989) Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 140-43.

⁸ Barker, E. (1984) The Making of a Moonie, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, p147.

⁹ Bird, F. and W. (1983) "Participation Rates in New Religious Movements and Parareligious Movements." Pp. 215-238 in Of Gods and Men: New Religious Movements in the West, edited by E. Barker. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press; Barker, E (unpublished) and van Eck Duymaer van Twist, A. (2008) 'Growing up in contemporary sectarian movements: an analysis of segregated socialization' PhD Thesis, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. Available from the British Library's Ethos service.

¹⁰ Wright, S.A. (1987) Leaving cults: The Dynamics of Defection (Monograph No. 7) Washington DC: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, p87.

¹¹ Taslimi, C.R., R.W. Hood and P.J. Watson (1991) 'Assessment of Former Members of Shiloh: The Adjective Check List 17 Years Later', Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30, pp306-11.

¹² Buxant, C., et al. (2007) "Cognitive and Emotional Characteristics of New Religious Movement Members: New questions and data on the mental health issue". Mental Health, Religion, and Culture 10(3): 219-238 and Lilliston, L. and G. Shepherd (1999) "New Religious Movements and Mental Health", in New Religious Movements: Challenges and Response, B. Wilson and J. Cresswell, Editors, Routledge: London, 123-140.

¹³ Galanter, M. (1989) Cults and New Religious Movements: A Report of the Committee on Psychiatry and Religion of the American Psychiatric Association, Washington, DC: The American Psychiatric Association.

¹⁴ Latkin, C.A., R. Hagan, R. Littman and N. Sundberg (1990)'Who Lives in Utopia?' A Brief Research Report on the Rajneeshee Project', Sociological Analysis, 48, 1987 73-81 and C.A. Latkin 'The Self-Concept of Rajneeshpuram Members', Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 29: 91-98.