CultNEWS101 Articles: 3/4/2022 (Cult Definitions, SGA, Events, Shinto, Japan)

Cult Definitions, SGA, Events, Shinto, Japan

Patheos: What is a religious "cult"?

" ... Indeed it is derogatory. Undoubtedly some — but not all — groups considered to be cults have sinister track records; deceive outsiders; abuse their followers physically, psychologically, sexually, and/or financially; damage family and other relationships; and even resort to violence. The Guy [Adnan Oktar] says such allegations should be fairly pursued on the basis of secular criminal or civil law without judging whether a group's teachings measure up to some cultural standard. After all, the Constitution's Bill of Rights enshrines a religious freedom guarantee.

The U.S. Supreme Court famously settled this in its United States v. Ballard ruling of 1944. The case involved fraud convictions based upon the unconventional New Age beliefs of the "I Am" movement (still extant) and associates of its founder, the late Guy Ballard. He taught that "ascended masters" uniquely authorized him to transmit divine truth and to perform healings. In a 5-4 decision the Court stated, "The religious views espoused by respondents might seem incredible, if not preposterous, to most people," but the "truth or falsity" of a religion is no business of the American government or courts to decide.

Merriam-Webster's phrase about separation from "a larger and more accepted" faith explains why a "cult" differs from the definition of a "sect," that is a direct offshoot from an established religion. Examples would be "Mormon" polygamist cells or snake-handling churches as opposed to mainstream Pentecostalism. "Sect" is not appropriate if the breakaway is sizable, for example 16th Century Protestantism when it left the Roman Catholic Church."

ICSA Annual Conference:What do SGAs want to Cover in Counseling? Cyndi Matthews, PhD, LPC-S, NCC

June 24th (12:00 PM-12:50 PM EST)

"As therapists/counselors, we sometimes assume we know what clients/patients want and need from therapy, especially after leaving and recovering from being in a cult or high demand organization. However, two recent surveys of 414 Second Generation Adult Cult survivors (2019) and 112 counselors/therapists who work with former cult members (2019) showed us this may not be the case that we know what is best for our clients. These research surveys specifically pointed out that clients want to cover different topics/areas than what counselors/therapists want to cover in therapy. This information session will cover not only what SGA clients want from therapy, but also give specific and realistic activities/resources that are helpful in discussing and working through these topics in therapy. The information presented will be based on actual data from 414 SGA individuals who have been clients and their lived experiences from being in therapy."

The Conversation: Japan's Shinto religion is going global and attracting online followers

"American Kit Cox, 35, works as an electrical engineer and enjoys biking and playing piano. But what some might consider surprising about Cox, who was raised as Methodist, is that she practices the Japanese religion known as Shinto.

While Cox's interest in Shinto was originally sparked by her love for Japanese popular culture and media, Shinto practice is not just a phase or fad for her. For over 15 years, she has venerated Inari Ookami, a Shinto deity or "kami" connected to agriculture, industry, prosperity and success.

After several years of study, Cox received a great honor from Fushimi Inari Taisha, one of Japan's most popular Shinto shrines. She was entrusted with a "wakemitama," a physical portion of Inari Ookami's spirit, which is now housed in a sacred box and enshrined in her home altar.

What's more, Cox has emerged as a leader within a relatively small but growing community of Shinto practitioners scattered around the world. Her goal: to help Japan's "indigenous" religion go global.

As an anthropologist of Japanese religion studying the spread of Shinto around the world, I met Cox where most non-Japanese people interested in Shinto do – online. Over several years of studying social media posts, participating in livestreams and conducting surveys and interviews, I've heard many people's stories of what draws them to practice Shinto and how they navigate the difficulties of doing so outside of Japan.
What is Shinto?

Shinto has many faces. For some, it is a reservoir of local community traditions and a way of ritually marking milestones throughout the year and in one's life. For others, it is an institution that attests to the Japanese emperor's divine status as a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu or a life-affirming nature religion.

But at its core, Shinto is about the ritual veneration of kami."

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Japan's Shinto religion is going global and attracting online followers

Kaitlyn Ugoretz (PhD Candidate, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California Santa Barbara)

The Conversation
February 9, 2022


Disclosure statement
Kaitlyn Ugoretz received support for her dissertation research on the globalization of Shinto in 2021 from the Social Science Research Council's International Dissertation Research Fellowship, with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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American Kit Cox, 35, works as an electrical engineer and enjoys biking and playing piano. But what some might consider surprising about Cox, who was raised as Methodist, is that she practices the Japanese religion known as Shinto.

While Cox’s interest in Shinto was originally sparked by her love for Japanese popular culture and media, Shinto practice is not just a phase or fad for her. For over 15 years, she has venerated Inari Ookami, a Shinto deity or “kami” connected to agriculture, industry, prosperity and success.

After several years of study, Cox received a great honor from Fushimi Inari Taisha, one of Japan’s most popular Shinto shrines. She was entrusted with a “wakemitama,” a physical portion of Inari Ookami’s spirit, which is now housed in a sacred box and enshrined in her home altar.

What’s more, Cox has emerged as a leader within a relatively small but growing community of Shinto practitioners scattered around the world. Her goal: to help Japan’s “indigenous” religion go global.

As an anthropologist of Japanese religion studying the spread of Shinto around the world, I met Cox where most non-Japanese people interested in Shinto do – online. Over several years of studying social media posts, participating in livestreams and conducting surveys and interviews, I’ve heard many people’s stories of what draws them to practice Shinto and how they navigate the difficulties of doing so outside of Japan.
What is Shinto?

Shinto has many faces. For some, it is a reservoir of local community traditions and a way of ritually marking milestones throughout the year and in one’s life. For others, it is an institution that attests to the Japanese emperor’s divine status as a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu or a life-affirming nature religion.

But at its core, Shinto is about the ritual veneration of kami.

These myriad deities can take different forms. Many are associated with features of the natural world, like lightning and the sun, while others look after human concerns, from marital relationships to acing one’s college exams.

One of Shinto’s primary concerns is the management of spiritual impurities through ritual purification. According to Shinto thought, impurities accumulate simply as a product of living in this world, as well as through contact with sources of impurity, such as death or disease, and committing inappropriate acts. Because spiritual impurities offend the kami and are capable of threatening social order and people’s well-being, Shinto priests must purify them regularly through ritual.

Besides purification, Shinto also provides what contemporary Japanese religion experts Ian Reader and George Tanabe Jr. call “practical benefits.” These innumerable benefits include good health, prosperity and safety.

At Shinto shrines and in other sacred spaces, both priests and regular folks from all walks of life perform rituals to express gratitude for the deities’ protection and pray for their continued blessings.
Why do people choose Shinto?

While Shinto is often characterized as the “indigenous” religion of Japan, it is not limited by geography, nationality or ethnicity.

Non-Japanese people have received certification as Shinto priests, and Shinto shrines can be found around the world, including in the United States, Brazil, the Netherlands and the Republic of San Marino.

Global practitioners stress that, unlike many organized religions, Shinto has “no founder, doctrine, or sacred texts.” The majority identify as “spiritual but not religious,” a growing category of people who define spirituality as “personal, heart-felt, and authentic,” as opposed to the hierarchy and dogma of institutional religion.

For people of Japanese descent, Shinto rituals often provide a way of maintaining relationships with ancestors and a connection with their cultural heritage. As I found during my field research, non-Japanese practitioners find Shinto particularly appealing for a number of reasons.

First, Shinto reflects their values: a positive perspective on life, a focus on gratitude and harmony, care for the environment and compatibility with other traditions. Members find the community welcoming to people of diverse gender identities, sexual orientations and abilities.

Second, they appreciate Shinto’s focus on ritual. Cox jokes that if she were to be a Christian, she would probably be a Catholic for the rituals. Shinto practitioners describe rituals as an opportunity to reflect, reconnect with the divine and renew or refresh their own spirit.

Third, Shinto provides a way to engage more deeply with Japanese culture. Many practitioners first encountered Shinto through anime, video games, martial arts or tourism. Some Shinto priests even use popular culture as a teaching tool, performing rituals and giving lectures at cultural events and fan conventions.
What does the online Shinto community look like?

Much to my surprise when I began my digital research, I found that online Shinto communities have existed since the birth of the internet as we know it today.

In 2000, the “Shinto Mailing List” was created on Yahoo Groups (now defunct) as a space for over 1,000 people to discuss Shinto with like-minded individuals. Fast-forward 20 years, and Shinto communities include some six to 10,000 members hosted across several Facebook groups, other social media platforms and even virtual worlds.

As my research shows, Shinto priests and lay practitioners use social media to talk about their experiences and ask questions. The most frequently posed questions by new members are “Is it okay to practice Shinto as a non-Japanese person?” and “How exactly do we practice Shinto outside Japan?” They also create and share resources, such as guides for ritual practice at home, recommended books and other media, and instructions on how to contact and support Shinto shrines.

While internet-based religion is considered taboo by the majority of Shinto shrines in Japan, some overseas shrines, such as Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America and Shinto Shrine of Shusse Inari in America, have created their own vibrant online shrine communities. They share news on upcoming events and livestream monthly and yearly rituals and festivals. They both have active social media presences, and Shinto Shrine of Shusse Inari in America is even exploring alternative forms of fundraising via crowdfunding sites like Patreon.
A day in the life

Since most practitioners outside of Japan do not live near a Shinto shrine, their everyday ritual practice focuses on venerating the Shinto deities in their home at an altar called a kamidana or “kami shelf.”

In the morning, Cox greets Inari Ookami with a series of deep bows and claps. She recites prayers called “norito” and puts out traditional offerings of rice, water and salt in gratitude for the kami’s blessings.

In the evening, she removes the offerings and consumes them. This practice is meant to bring humans and divinities closer together by sharing the same meal. It’s also a great way to avoid wasting food.

Some offerings can be hard to come by outside Japan. In these cases, Shinto practitioners may offer similar, local substitutes, such as oats instead of rice. They may also make creative additions to their altars, personalizing the space and their relationship with the kami.

Others have difficulty sourcing the materials required to set up a Shinto altar, especially the sacred “ofuda” talisman, which must be received from a shrine. They may build their own altars or pay their respects at a digital altar in an app.

What’s most important, according to Cox, is respect for tradition and the sincerity of one’s intentions and actions. Slowly but surely, as Shinto spreads around the world, practitioners are making it their own.

https://theconversation.com/japans-shinto-religion-is-going-global-and-attracting-online-followers-174924

On the adulteration of Japan’s oldest religion

MICHAEL HOFFMAN
Japan Times
January 20, 2018

Primitive Shinto is one of the loveliest religions in the world. It’s beautiful in its simplicity — defenseless too, as it proved, against the nativists and nationalists who warped it into 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century xenophobia.

Rudimentary, vague, undefined, undefinable, Shinto for centuries didn’t even have a name. It didn’t need one; there was nothing to distinguish it from, nothing it was not. One good sentence can say everything there is to say about it — this one, for example, by historian Takeshi Matsumae: “In some rural areas even today (1993), elderly villagers face the rising sun each morning, clap their hands together, and hail the appearance of the sun over the peaks of the nearby mountain as ‘the coming of the kami.'”

That’s Shinto — the way (“to”) of the kami (“shin”). As to the kami — who might they be? “Gods,” we say in English, the language offering nothing better, but it’s too freighted a word, too suggestive of power rather than innocence, of something specific as opposed to anything, one knows not what.

“I do not yet understand the meaning of the word ‘kami'” wrote Motoori Norinaga in 1771. If he didn’t, who did? Norinaga was the foremost scholar of his age; he devoted his life to studying the native literature from its ancient beginnings. “It is hardly necessary to say,” he continued, “that it includes human beings. It also includes such objects as birds, beasts, trees, plants, seas, mountains and so forth. In ancient usage, anything whatsoever that was outside the ordinary, which possessed superior power or which was awe-inspiring, was called kami. … Evil and mysterious things, if they are extraordinary and dreadful, are called kami.”

Shinto teaches nothing, enjoins nothing, demands no submission, works no miracles, effaces evil by cleansing it, transmutes dread into joy. There is no heaven, no hell, no nirvana — just “the rising sun each morning,” “the coming of the kami.”

Troubled times such as ours evoke many longings, not least the one known as primitivism. Why couldn’t things have remained in their pristine state? It’s a mood as old as progress “Take away our baneful progress …” wrote the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762, “and all is well.”

A Japanese variant of that mood is traceable back to the sixth century. A civil war fought in 587, says historian Ivan Morris, was “one of the decisive clashes in Japanese history,” though the fighting was on so small a scale that “the battle has not even received an official name.”

At issue was the advent of a strange, foreign religion — Buddhism. Some years earlier a Korean ambassador had come bearing images, books and news of “a wonderful doctrine … of all doctrines the most excellent … hard to explain and hard to comprehend,” but through it “every prayer is fulfilled.”

Emperor Bidatsu (reigned circa 572-585) “leaped for joy” to hear it, says the eighth-century chronicle “Nihon Shoki.” “Never,” said Bidatsu, “from former days until now have we had the opportunity of listening to so wonderful a doctrine.” Wonderful, but unsettling. What would the native gods — the kami — think? What might they do, what havoc unleash, in their anger?

Powerful clans ranged on both sides of the ensuing controversy. The Nakatomi and Mononobe, hereditary ritualists and hereditary warriors respectively, both claiming descent from gods, joined forces in defense of the kami against the upstart Soga, who, on behalf of Buddhism, pleaded, “All the Western frontier lands (China and Korea), without exception, worship it. Shall Yamato (Japan) alone refuse to do so?”

Why not? countered Nakatomi and Mononobe: “Those who have ruled the Empire in this our state have always made it their care to worship … the 180 kami of heaven and earth, the kami of the land and of grain. (If) we were to worship in their stead foreign deities, it may be feared that we should incur the wrath of our national kami.”

Bidatsu leaned toward Soga. A pagoda was built, Buddhist images were worshipped — and pestilence broke out. The kami had spoken. A Buddhist statue was flung into a canal, three foreign child-nuns were publicly whipped in the market-place, and the new faith went underground — only to resurface when, shortly afterward, a recurrence of plague gave it a second chance. Bidatsu’s successor, Yomei, “believed in the law of Buddha and (simultaneously) reverenced Shinto” — seeing nothing mutually irreconcilable in them, worlds apart though they are in spirit. This “Nihon Shoki” passage gives Shinto its name.

Yomei died. A quarrel among would-be successors flared into the war of 587. Soga triumphed. Buddhism was in. Japan’s childhood was over.

Through Buddhism, Japan — primitive, almost prehistoric — entered the dazzling orbit of Chinese civilization. The pivotal figure was Crown Prince Shotoku Taishi (574-622), whose famous “constitution” of 604, fusing Buddhist and Confucian moral precepts, marks Japan’s coming of age.

Harmony, hierarchy and willing obedience from those below to the wise commands of those above became the main themes. On the kami, the document is mute. No wonder, perhaps; the kami had no moral precepts, no morality at all. “All things in heaven and earth are in accordance with the august will of the kami,” said Norinaga 11 centuries later. Good or bad, good or evil, is beside the point: “Among the kami there are good ones and bad ones. Their actions are in accordance with their different natures, so they cannot be understood by ordinary human reason.”

Norinaga’s work contains passages of great beauty. The heart, not the mind, emotion, not reason, lead man to wisdom, he taught. It’s a concept known as mono no aware(the pathos of things). There’s an appealing innocence in his writing. But eschewing “ordinary human reason” is a dangerous business. How he would have felt about the later xenophobic militarists who drew much of their inspiration from him is an open question.

Michael Hoffman is the author of “In the Land of the Kami: A Journey into the Hearts of Japan” and “Other Worlds.”

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/20/national/history/adulteration-japans-oldest-religion/#.WmODo3VOm7M