Hare Krishna Transformed

New York, NY: New York University Press (The New and Alternative Religion Series), 2007. ISBN 978-0-8147-7579-0 (paperback), $22. 288 pages.

Reviewed by Marcia R. Rudin

E. Burke Rochford, Jr.

Because I’ve been involved in counter-cult work for nearly 30 years, one of my major interests today is how cultic groups change and accommodate themselves to new circumstances over time. E. Burke Rochford, Jr., details this process in the ISKON movement in his important new book Hare Krishna Transformed.

Rochford, a professor of sociology and religion at Middlebury College in Vermont, has studied ISKON for 30 years. Hare Krishna Transformed is an excellent examination, via personal interviews and research questionnaires, of how this troubled group has adapted to changing and often dire circumstances in order to survive.

Response to SYDA's letter denouncing the Salon.com article about Eat Pray Love and Siddha Yoga

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Deniers

I personally knew many of the people who have commented on this letter, and who were and are trustees. I personally know that they know the facts about Siddha Yoga. I know that they know the following:

• that Swami Muktananda was a sexual predator who molested scores of women, including minor girls, lied about it, and threatened those who told the truth with violence;
• that Gurumayi, Muktananda's successor after his death, encouraged and enjoyed a campaign of harassment and violence against her brother when she wanted to remove him from power within the organization;
• that Gurumayi routinely lied to her followers, had her followers spied upon, and publicly humiliated followers by revealing information they had shared with her privately;
• that Gurumayi blamed young women in the ashram for what happened to them when they were seduced and molested by male leaders there, and protected and defended the molesters.

These are just a few of the more concrete abuses that can be cited. More difficult to describe is the environment of intimidation, the belligerence, the control over every aspect of the followers lives, the exploitation of workers who are expected to work endless hours without pay or benefits and yet made to feel guilty and ashamed for never giving enough.

Additionally, the premise that there is a human being, in this case Gurumayi, who is self-proclaimed to be a "fully realized master" means what? that everyone else who is not a "realized master" is inferior to her? Such a premise is simply a means by which Gurumayi profits through the subjugation of others who have come to believe that they too can have a little piece of that superior status. All you have to do is follow the leader, no matter where she leads.

Sure, VIPs, or SCs as they are known in the ashram (Special Consideration guests) like Elizabeth Gilbert, wouldn't see any of this or have a clue. They do not have exposure to the hidden world of the inner circles around Gurumayi. The rich and famous get the sanitized Siddha Yoga. Folks without money willing to devote their lives to what they think of as a true religion get a very different experience.

I know that these trustees and many of these followers personally know of all these abuses and so much more deception, corruption and abuse, from the earliest days of Swami Muktananda, to the present. That they continue to choose to deny these facts is tragic, but also despicable. SYDA sells spiritual enlightenment through devotion to the guru, at a very steep price: your integrity, your moral values, and your independent and critical thinking. And after you give all those things up, and delude yourself into thinking you are still aspiring toward enlightenment, your only choices are either to tell the truth and leave Siddha Yoga - or stay and become a denier and defender of abuse, exploitation and corruption.  The facts that SYDA and its apologists want to deny are readily available in media articles and personal testimonies. See the website that I maintain at www.leavingsiddhayoga.net.

Since I left Siddha Yoga, I receive an endless stream of hate mail from the deniers - I'm sure more of that will follow this post. That's what Siddha Yoga spirituality is about - vilify critics, deny abuse, and keep filling those Swiss bank accounts. Caveat Emptor!

Daniel Shaw Nyack, NY

Sex Scandal Has U.S. Buddhists Looking Within

August 20, 2010
Mark Oppenheimer

Sooner or later, every traditional faith has to confront sexual impropriety by its spiritual leaders: extramarital sex, or sex with the wrong people (members of the congregation, minors) or, for supposedly celibate clergy, any sex at all.

But there are great differences in how religions handle these transgressions. For Jews and many Protestants, it is the local congregation that decides what sins are too great to countenance, and what kind of discipline is needed. For Roman Catholics, a worldwide hierarchy decides, depending on reports from local representatives. And for Buddhists — well, the answer is not so clear.

The root of the problem, some experts say, is that the teacher/student relationship in Buddhism has no obvious Western analogy. Priests and rabbis know the boundaries, even if some do not always respect them. Doctors, too, have ethical canons they are supposed to honor. A spiritual figure like a priest, an authority figure like a teacher, a therapeutic figure like an analyst — the Buddhist teacher may be all of those, but is not really like any one of them. Even sanghas, or Buddhist communities, that discourage such relationships often have no process for enforcing a ban, and as one Zen society in New York is learning, that can lead to problems.

Since 1965, Eido Shimano, now 77, has been the abbot, or head spiritual teacher, of the Zen Studies Society, a Japanese Buddhist community with headquarters on East 67th Street in Manhattan and a 1,400-acre monastery in the Catskills. For much of that time, there have been rumors about the married abbot’s sexual liaisons, with his students and with other women. Such rumors could no longer be ignored when, in 2008, the University of Hawaii at Manoa unsealed some papers donated by Robert Aitken, a leading American Buddhist and founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

The papers included files about Mr. Shimano that Mr. Aitken kept from 1964 to 2003. Mr. Aitken, who died Aug. 5, met Mr. Shimano when both men worked in Hawaii in the 1960s, and for more than 40 years he kept notes on his colleague’s liaisons, based on conversations with women who had confided in him.

In a 1995 letter to the president of the Zen Studies Society’s board, Mr. Aitken wrote: “Over the past three decades, we have interviewed many former students of Shimano Roshi. Their stories are consistent: trust placed in an apparently wise and compassionate teacher, only to have that trust manipulated in the form of his sexual misconduct and abuse.” (“Roshi,” or teacher, is a Japanese honorific that goes after the name.)

The Aitken papers were soon circulating on the Internet. On June 15, Mr. Shimano’s board of directors, which exercises ultimate authority in the society, met to discuss the allegations. Mr. Shimano, who was then on the board, was not present, but most board members concurred that the charges most likely had some validity.

“I thought the sources were varied enough” to seem valid, said one board member, who asked not to be named. “I certainly didn’t think it was all a fraud.”

At that meeting, the board members began writing a new set of ethical guidelines for the society. In the text, they included an acknowledgment of past indiscretions by Mr. Shimano. Chris Phelan, another board member, said that Mr. Shimano saw the text of the statement and approved of it. “He didn’t step forward and say he was being libeled,” Mr. Phelan said.

Nonetheless, several board members told The New York Times that they believed that Mr. Shimano’s relations with students had ended long ago, and they saw no reason that Mr. Shimano could not continue teaching.

“As far as I knew, there had been a hiatus of 15 years,” said Joe Marinello, a board member who is the abbot of the Seattle Zen Temple.

But then, on July 19, the board announced that Mr. Shimano had resigned from the board after being confronted with allegations of “clergy misconduct.” The statement was sent in response to inquiries from Tricycle, a magazine about Buddhism. Since that time, the board has said that Mr. Shimano will continue as abbot until 2012, but a vice abbot has been appointed and Mr. Shimano will not be taking new students.

So what had changed?

A week after beginning work on new ethical guidelines — which in their final form forbid “sexual advances or liaisons” between teachers and sangha members — the board was confronted with a new revelation.

In interviews over the past two weeks, four board members, including Mr. Marinello, said that on June 21 a woman — whose name he would not reveal — stood up during dinner at the Catskills monastery and announced that for the past two years she had had a consensual affair with Mr. Shimano, who was at the dinner. Several board members have said that Mr. Shimano later admitted the affair in conversations with them. On Wednesday, the society issued a statement acknowledging that “in June of this year, a woman revealed that there was an inappropriate relationship between herself and Eido Roshi."

Mr. Shimano did not return several phone calls.

In two ways, this small, symbolic statement — Mr. Shimano’s resigning from his own board — reflects how American religion has changed in the last 15 years.

First, this more recent affair occurred in a different news media culture. Clerical impropriety is a hot topic, of course. And on the Internet, where several bloggers were scrutinizing the Aitken papers, the new affair was sure to be mentioned. “The Internet was turning the heat up,” one member said. Board members had to act; they could not afford to be seen as indifferent.

Second, there has been a shift within the American Buddhist community, which has become more concerned about relations between teachers and students.

Historically, because that relationship is considered sacrosanct, affairs were not always condemned, or even disapproved of.

“Unlike the therapeutic environment with analysis, with Buddhist teachers and students there are debates about what is appropriate and what isn’t,” says James Shaheen, editor of Tricycle. As to sexual relationships between teacher and student, “most people would come down on the side of ‘Let’s just not do it.’ ”




But there has also been a cultural aversion among Zen Buddhists to seeming censorious about sexuality. In a 2002 review of “Shoes Outside the Door,” a book by Michael Downing about Richard Baker, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center in the 1970s and ’80s, Frederick Crews wrote that Mr. Baker’s “serial liaisons, hardly unique in the world of high-level American Buddhism, could have been forgiven, but his chronic untruthfulness about them could not.”

Sex, alcoholism and drug abuse by major Buddhist leaders have all been tolerated over the years, by followers who look the other way, or even looked right at it and pretend not to care. For example, the Tibetan Buddhist master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who founded the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) in Boulder, Colo., was often publicly drunk. The Buddhist journalist Katy Butler wrote a 1990 article called “Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America,” in which she described the public alcoholism of Mr. Trungpa Rinpoche, Mr. Baker and another Buddhist leader in Los Angeles.

“We habitually denied what was in front of our faces, felt powerless and lost touch with our inner experience,” Ms. Butler wrote.

Clark Strand, who led Mr. Shimano’s Upper East Side zendo from 1988 to 1990, said that on American soil, Asian Buddhism’s sexual ethics, in particular, had to change.

“What you see in America is a lot of Asian Buddhist teachers coming into contact for the first time with spiritual communities that include women,” Mr. Strand said. “And they weren’t necessarily prepared for that.”

“To be blunt about it, a Japanese Zen monk could go over the wall and visit a prostitute and a blind eye could be turned to that.” In America, he added, “it wasn’t as easy to turn a blind eye to going over the wall in his own monastery.”


E-mail: mark.oppenheimer@nytimes.com; twitter.com/markopp1

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."

Book raises alarms about alternative medicine

USA Today

Liz Szabo

June 18, 2013

PHILADELPHIA — The 12-year-old girl arrived at the hospital wracked with abdominal pain.

Doctors diagnosed her with acute pancreatitis, in which pancreatic enzymes begin digesting not just food, but the pancreas itself.

The most likely cause of the girl's condition: toxic side effects from more than 80 dietary supplements, which the girl's mother carried in a shopping bag, says Sarah Erush, clinical pharmacy manager at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where the girl was treated last summer.

The girl's mother had been treating her with the supplements and other therapies for four years to treat the girl's "chronic Lyme disease," a condition that, experts say, doesn't actually exist. While some Lyme infections cause pain and other lingering symptoms, the infections don't persist for years. And, according to the Infectious Disease Society of America, the infections don't require years of antibiotics or other risky therapies given by some alternative medicine practitioners.

Doctors were able to control the girl's illness with standard therapies, Erush says, and she was discharged from the hospital after two weeks.

Although the child's story was unforgettable, Erush says, it wasn't unusual. Parents now "routinely" bring children to her hospital with a variety of alternative remedies, hoping that nurses will administer them during a child's stay.

There are an ever-growing number of supplements from which to choose: More than 54,000 varieties sold in stores and the Internet, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

About 50% of Americans use alternative medicine, and 10% use it on their children, notes Paul Offit, Children's Hospital's chief of infectious disease.

The girl's story illustrates the serious but often little-known risks posed by some forms of alternative medicine, a loosely regulated industry that includes everything from herbal supplements to crystal healing and acupuncture, says Offit, author of Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine, (HarperCollins, $29.99), being published Tuesday.

Obituary: Rev. Dean Kelley, 70, Champion of Religious Freedom

New York Times    May 14, 1997
By GUSTAV NIEBUHR

The Rev. Dean M. Kelley, a leading proponent of religious liberty who used his position at the National Council of Churches to speak out for the rights of religious groups large and small, died Sunday at his home in West Swanzey, N.H. He was 70.

The cause was cancer, the council said.

Kelley, a minister in the United Methodist Church, served as the council's executive for religious liberty for 30 years until 1990, during which he filed friend of the court briefs in many church-state cases, testified before congressional committees on  religious freedom issues and defended controversial groups like the Church of Scientology, the Unification Church and others.

After his retirement, Kelley served as the council's counselor on religious liberty, at one point reviewing government documents on the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, by federal law-enforcement agents, which ended in a fire that killed about 80 members of the religious sect.

Kelley wrote that the FBI had been fundamentally mistaken about the Davidians, viewing them as hostages to a "cult leader" rather than as "a band of adults voluntarily and devotedly following a visionary."

Petition/Open Letter to the Legionaries of Christ

February 11, 2009

Dear Fr. Corcuera and the Legionaries of Christ:

As friends of the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi, we are writing to you out of loving concern following the recent news regarding Fr. Marcial Maciel.

While we, the undersigned, may not agree with every particular nuance in this petition, we agree with its overall substance and intention.

As Catholics, our first concern is for any possible victims of Fr. Maciel's conduct. We pray that God's healing grace may bind their wounds and comfort them.

Our thoughts also turn to the many devout members of the movement who must now contend with the revelations of Fr. Maciel's gravely sinful acts.

We pledge our prayers and sacrifices on behalf of any victims as well as the members of the Legion and Regnum Christi.

We are, however, concerned that many important questions remain unanswered since the Legion's disclosure that Fr. Maciel fathered a child and committed acts "not appropriate for a Catholic priest." The lack of official information, and the seemingly haphazard nature of the statements coming from various members of the movement causes confusion and even contributes to a sense of mistrust.

We must state frankly that for many of us, this sense of mistrust began to build in May of 2006. At that time, as the result of its canonical process, the Vatican invited Fr. Maciel to “a life of prayer and penance, renouncing all public ministry.”

The Legion's official public response to the Vatican on this matter included the following: "Father Maciel, with the spirit of obedience to the Church that has always characterized him, has accepted this communiqué with faith, complete serenity and tranquility of conscience.”

Groups listed, described, and/or referred to -- on this site and/or related sites, blogs, social media -- may be mainstream or nonmainstream, controversial or noncontroversial, religious or nonreligious, cult or not cult, harmful or benign. We encourage independent and informed judgments, pertinent to your particular concerns. Always consider a variety of opinions -- negative and positive.

Student kills self, four others with poisoned wine

May 18, 1997

BOGOTA (Reuter) - A crazed nursing student killed himself and four
classmates with poisoned sherry during a day trip to a town just north of Bogota Saturday, police said.

Four men and a woman were dead. At least six other people, all nursing
students, were in critical condition at the hospital in the town of Cajica,
a short drive outside the capital, regional police chief Col. Alonso Arango
said.

Police said one of the victims told them before dying that a male student
on the bus was passing out the wine and he was the apparent killer.

Toxicology checks showed the sherry had been laced with a lethal
insecticide commonly used to combat potato bugs, Arango said. He said no
motive for the murders had yet been established.

Police found a card in the clothes of one of the dead indicating he was a
member of a shadowy sect called the Order of Aquarius. Arango said it was
too early to say whether the bizarre killings were linked to the suspected
religious group, adding that he knew very little about them.

We found a membership card of a sect called the Order of Aquarius on one
of the bodies. We know very little about the group. It is too early to tell
if these deaths are related to a religious cult,'' Arango told Reuters.

The dead and injured were all part of a 200-strong group that set out from
Bogota in several buses to celebrate the graduation of 46 of the nursing
students. They had been going for a meal at the Indiana Jones restaurant between Cajica and the neighboring town of Chia.

AUM gas attack victim tells of terror in court

AUM gas attack victim tells of terror in court

TOKYO, May 26 (Kyodo) -- A man who was gassed allegedly by a senior member
of the religious cult AUM Shinrikyo said Monday he might have been
attacked because he hid a female AUM follower who wanted to quit the
cult.

Standing as an witness for the prosecution at the Tokyo District Court in
the trial of the cult's suspected hitman, Seiichi Endo, Noboru Mizuno said
he has no memory of the VX gas attack on the morning of Dec. 2, 1994, but
he was thrown into confusion after feeling nauseated at the time.

Mizuno, 85, said he recovered consciousness in an intensive care unit at a
hospital that evening and told himself he would never die.

It is the first time for Mizuno to testify in the trial of Endo, who faces
attempted murder charges in the case. Endo quit AUM following the
disclosure of a series of crimes allegedly committed by the cult, including
the March 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack that killed 12 people and injured
thousands.

AUM founder Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, is now
on trial in 17 charges, including murder and attempted murder charges in
the subway gassing.

Arlington Puts Hippie Garden on Trial for Tall Grass, Shows Jurors a Picture of Poop

AMY MARTYN
MARCH 14, 2014

It turns out that Arlington, of all places, is home to a sustainable garden/hippie residence called the Garden of Eden. Naturally, Arlington does not approve.

Suspecting that the hippies were growing weed, officials first sent a manned aircraft over the Garden of Eden last year. Undercover officers paid a visit in person. It all hit the fan in August, when a SWAT team stormed the place looking for drugs.

The SWAT team didn't find a single bud. So instead, a bunch of city code enforcement officers showed up later that day. They cited the residents for having tall grass and storing inside furniture outside, among other violations. Code enforcement also mowed the lawn.

The failed drug raid and subsequent lawn-mowing made international news. Arlington's finest became a symbol of what happens when small-town cops try to fight the drug war and lose. (Here's our cover story about it ).

Arlington is pressing forward with the case. The city put property owner Shellie Smith on trial this Thursday for all those code violations she received back in August.

But the city didn't want to bring up that whole failed SWAT thing in front of the jurors. Probably a good idea.

GoE's Smith, representing herself, had wanted to introduce the SWAT raid as evidence. "I would like to prove that the citations were written in dishonor," she asked the judge outside the presence of the jury.

City Attorney Steven Meyer argued that it was a non-issue. What police did that day "had no relevance, no bearing on the defendant's [code] abatement," he said. Judge Stewart Milner sided with the city.

With no exciting SWAT raids or drug allegations to discuss, the city attorney instead showed a group of bored-looking jurors pictures of tall grass, tarp and other code violations for two hours.

"The defendant needs to be reminded that in the city of Arlington, if you have code violations, every property owner needs to abate them," he said.

Code compliance officer Curtis Jones was a star witness for the city.

"Back over here is where you can see some high grass and weeds," Jones testified.

Things got more exciting after lunch, when Meyer showed jurors a close-up, grainy image of a compost toilet seat. He asked Jones to describe it. "Basically a toilet seat, that was outside," Jones said.

"Did you see what was in it?"

Smith objected to the line of questioning.

Meyer stayed fixated on the toilet. He tried rephrasing the question. "If you had to guess, what would you think is in there?"

Smith objected again.

"Generally, if you see a toilet, what would you think was in there?"

"Probably fecal matter," Jones testified.

Next: a random close-up of a piece of poop sitting in the grass.

"This is some fecal matter," Jones explained.

The proceedings were philosophical at times. Meyer asked Jones to state what rubbish, trash or junk is, as defined under the the city ordinance. "Stuff that a normal person wouldn't maintain on their property," Jones responded. Better watch out, all you Arlington-based weirdos.

An image of a sunflower drew a particularly cold response. "Isn't a sunflower usually considered a weed?," the city attorney asked Jones, apparently trying to show that the sunflower was violating the city's weed ordinance (the plant type of weed, not the drug).

In her cross-examination, Smith attempted to convince jurors that sunflowers are more than weeds.

"Where do you think sunflower oil comes from?," she asked Jones.

"I'm not sure."

At the end of the day, the jury sided with the city, under orders that they couldn't rule on whether or not the nuisance ordinance is fair, only if Smith violated it. Smith would have been on the hook for about four grand in fines, but Judge Milner reduced the amount to $2,432.

"We completely support the judge's ruling," says city spokesperson Sana Syed.

Smith is planning to appeal.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/arlington-puts-hippie-garden-on-trial-for-tall-grass-shows-jurors-a-picture-of-poop-7140578

Raised in a Christian Cult

Michelle Van Loon

Christianity Today
MARCH 11, 2014

‘Girl at the End of the World’ adds to an important line of ex-fundamentalist survivor stories.

If you've ever been stuck in traffic caused by drivers slowing down to get a glimpse of the accident scene, you know we humans are a nosy bunch.

So it's no surprise that readers have devoured a steady stream of recent memoirs penned by people who grew up in abusive, controlling fundamentalist sects. We curiously peek into the barbed-wire edges of different faith traditions—Jewish, Mormon, and Christian—from the perspectives of their former members.

While the theology may differ, the plotlines in this popular genre vary little: the author's childhood was a horror, leaving the group required great courage, and integrating into mainstream society afterwards remains a disorienting, difficult process. Popular blogger  Elizabeth Esther's Girl at the End of the World: My Escape From Fundamentalism in Search of a Faith with a Future, set to release next Tuesday, March 18, is a recent addition to the genre.

Are these stories (and similarly-themed blogs,films, and TV shows) the pulp nonfiction equivalent of gapers' block, giving us a chance to gaze at the wreckage? Or are they cautionary tales about the high cost of blind allegiance? The answer may be yes to both.

Most importantly, though, these memoirs amplify the once-voiceless among us, and no matter how painful, unbelievable, or bitter the accounts, they require us to listen. As followers of Jesus, we are committed to bothgrowing in wisdom and protecting "the least of these." Their candid, painful reflections remind us that sometimes the most vulnerable among us may be abused children now living inside adult bodies.

Esther's Girl at the End of the World follows her upbringing in a network of about 50 or so fundamentalist fringe congregations once known as The Assembly, led by her grandfather, George Geftakys. She introduces her eight-year-old self to readers by telling them, "I'm classically trained in apocalypse stockpiling, street preaching, and the King James Version of the Bible. I know hundreds of obscure nineteenth-century hymns by heart and have such razor-sharp 'modesty-vision' that I can spot a miniskirt a mile away."

While her cult-leader grandfather nurtured his double life of sexual immorality, and domestic violence ravaged her uncle's household, Elizabeth Esther's childhood home-turned-commune was characterized by the rancid fruits of her family's teaching. She recounts a childhood filled with unrelenting physical, spiritual, and emotional abuse.

When she and her husband exited the cult as young adults with three babies in tow, they entered broader society like refugees. "I used TV as my shortcut to understanding pop culture and assimilating into mainstream America," she said. "That made me prime bait for every putrid reality show, game show, cartoon, and newscast. I got emotionally involved in everything from Barney and Friendsto The Bachelor. One night I went to bed crying because I couldn't believe Tony left Billie Jean at the altar on a trashy show called Married By America."

She struggled to learn how to make even simple choices for the first time in her life. Decisions about everything from whom and when she could marry to how she was to discipline her children had been prescribed by her authorities (which, in her case, also often happened to be family members) in The Assembly.

The stories in these memoirs contain details far more unsavory and titillating than a jilted bride's meltdown on a reality TV program. While the ex-fundamentalist genre may tap into our hunger for bits of juicy gossip, a thoughtful reader will imbibe these stories with the sobriety they require.

No one ever wakes up one day and decides to join a cult. It happens bit by bit, as members surrender over time to the will of a "visionary" leader. They practice their special version of True Faith, in the single, all-or-nothing manner prescribed by the cult leader and his revelation. Children of members don't get to opt out of their parents' journey down a destructive path.

The children who've grown up in fundamentalist cults are not just exiting a sour church situation, but the only lives they've ever known. They leave behind their families, their social networks, and their identities. Memoirs written by ex-fundamentalists show us in slow motion what courage can look like. These stories detail the excruciating emotional journey a cult member must make to work toward a decision to leave. These books allow us to hear the sound of a door handle turning for the last time as the author departs.

And these stories allow us to follow them as they begin to build a life for the first time on the other side. Even the most acid-toned memoirs penned by ex-fundamentalists (and there are plenty of these books out there) are a reminder that abuse done in God's name affects all of us in the body of Christ.

Leavers face the lonely task of jettisoning the rule-laden, fear-drenched version of "faith" they grew up with. Many never return to any form of organized religion. Elizabeth Esther reports that counseling, medication, time, and a mustard seed of faith in Christ that survived the dysfunction of her childhood has grown into a connection with Catholicism. "I once heard a story about a woman who asked God to move a mountain," she wrote. "God said okay, and then He handed her a shovel. I think that's a good analogy for how my story ends. I'm still shoveling. I'm still uncovering, sorting, reexamining."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2014/march/raised-in-christian-cult.html?paging=off

American Bar Association: IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL TASK FORCE REPORT ON CHILDREN EXPOSED TO VIOLENCE (“DEFENDING CHILDHOOD”)

RESOLUTION APPROVED ON AUGUST 12, 2013

BE IT RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges implementation of
the December 2012 Report of the U.S. Attorney General’s National Task Force on
Children’s Exposure to Violence, entitled Defending Childhood, and urges federal,
state, territorial, and tribal governments and courts to promptly implement the
Report’s recommendations.

FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association encourages, supports, and is committed to working with the U.S. Department of Justice, state and local prosecutors, state and local bar associations, legal services organizations, law schools, child welfare and juvenile justice agencies, public defender offices and court-appointed legal counsel, and other legal assistance providers and entities that promote improvements in juvenile justice to develop training that educates the legal profession on the issues and recommendations contained in the Defending Childhood Report, and to help promote the practices proposed in the Report.

Report

Informed Consent

Excerpted from Informed Consent

Few principles are as often identified with bioethics as informed consent. In clinical practice, the doctrine of informed consent rose to dominance during the course of the 20th century. It replaced a medical ethos founded on trust in physicians' decisions—often on the assumption that “doctor knows best”—with an ethos that sought to put patients in charge of their own care.

 In medical research on human subjects, informed consent requirements gained prominence in reaction to abuses. One influential response to the cruelty of Nazi experiments was the Nuremberg Code of research ethics, which stipulated, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential” (Faden and Beauchamp 1986, 156). 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/informed-consent/

Ayn Rand

First published Tue Jun 8, 2010; substantive revision Thu Jul 5, 2012

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) was a philosopher and a novelist who outlined a comprehensive philosophy, including an epistemology and a theory of art, in her novels and essays. Early in her career she also wrote short stories, plays, and screenplays. Rand's first and most autobiographical novel, We the Living (1936), set in the Soviet Union, was published only after many rejections, owing to widespread sympathy for the Soviet “experiment” among the intellectuals of the day. We the Living was quickly followed by the dystopian novel,Anthem (1938), written as “a kind of rest” from work on her next major novel, The Fountainhead (1943). The Fountainhead, also published after many rejections because of its individualism, and largely panned by critics, soon became a best-seller by word of mouth. The Fountainhead brought Rand international fame, and Atlas Shrugged (1957) sealed this fame. By 1958, Rand's novels, increasingly philosophical, had won her ideas a sufficiently devoted following for her to form, in association with psychologist Nathaniel Branden (with whom she later broke), an official “Objectivist” philosophical movement, complete with journals and lecture courses. We the Living and The Fountainhead have been made into movies, as has Parts I and II of a projected trilogy of Atlas Shrugged.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayn-rand/

Cognitive Science, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The latest version of the entry "Cognitive Science" may be cited via the earliest archive in which this version appears:

Thagard, Paul, "Cognitive Science", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

The citation above refers to the version in the following archive edition:

• Fall 2012 (minor correction)

Social Science of Religion Theories

Excerpted from The Association of Religion Data Archives.

Social scientists observe that the world of religion consists of regularities and anomalies, seeking explanations for both. A theorist suggests a set of ideas to explain one aspect of religious behavior, hopefully in terms of a few clear statements using words that can be defined unambiguously. 

In the social sciences generally, as well as in the social science of religion, the term theory is actually used in a multitude of applications. In a sense, every specific theory embodies a somewhat different idea of what theory means, so it is not surprising that this word tends to confuse people. For example, fully 93 articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy have “theory” in their titles, yet they approach it from almost as many different directions.

Citing the work of Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge, we offer the following general definition of a theory:

A theory is a set of statements, or hypotheses, about relationships among a set of abstract concepts. These statements say how and why the concepts are interrelated. Furthermore, these statements must give rise to implications that potentially are falsifiable empirically.

Citations: Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion (New York: Toronto/Lang, 1987), p. 13.

Religious Orientation Perspectives Attachment Theory

Attachment theory posits that religion can be explained by understanding the human need for attachment in general, and one’s relationship to her/his parents specifically.  Childhood experience is of particular importance to explaining adult religiosity from this perspective.  Attachment styles are generally divided into a tri-chotomy of:

1. Secure,
2. Avoidant, and
3. Anxious/ambivalent.

Parental relationships are implicated in religiosity in one of two ways:

1. Modeling, where one’s human attachment style serves as the pattern for attachment to religion and the divine or
2. compensation, where religion serves as a substitute for human relationships.

Within the framework of the theory, the need for attachments is underpinned by biosocial impulses and desires that have developed over the period of human evolution.

Used in the psychology of religion, these approaches attempt to delineate the different motivations for the expression of religiosity.  Originally developed by Allport and Ross (1967), the effort was to distinguish internal motivation to be religious from the external or immediate benefits offered by participation in a religious community.  In other words, it seeks to distinguish between “religion that serves as its own end goal” and religion “used in the service of other goals or needs–i.e. as an instrumental value” (Gorsuch 1988: 210).

This research led to many future studies employing and refining the scale, most notably dividing the extrinsic dimension in two, as well as the development of metrics to assess different orientations such as Batson’s (1976) ”quest” dimension.  Debates remain about whether some actions, such as attendance at worship service, are indicative of intrinsic or extrinsic religious motivation.

Attribution and Coping Theories

Originating in psychological studies of religion, these approaches highlight the ways in which individuals utilize religion to cope with difficult situations and make sense of events in their lives.  Research indicates that people typically have naturalistic and religious meaning systems operating simultaneously, and how these systems are combined to make sense of events depends on the characteristics of both the individual and the event in question.  Research on attributions is typically carried out in experimental settings where subjects are presented with scenarios or vignettes and asked how they would explain and understand the situations presented.

Similarly, research and theory indicates that religious coping is more likely to occur in situations perceived as uncontrollable.  As such, levels of religious coping vary not only by individual characteristics, but also by social location (status set).  Together these theories posit that religion helps satiate human need for meaning and explanations addressing existential concerns.

Interactive Ritual Theory

Interactive Ritual Chain Theory (IRC) is a perspective focusing on the interactions and the emotional input and feedback of individuals within those interactions.  Drawing on the work of Durkheim ([1912] 1995) and Erving Goffman (1959, 1967), the theory is formally posited by Randall Collins (1993, 2004; see his 2010 essay on micro-sociological approaches to religion).  IRC asserts that interactions produce or deplete the “emotional energy” of participants depending on key factors.  These factors include the physical co-presence of interactants, exclusivity of the group, a mutual focus and mood, and bodily synchronization.  Given its situational emphasis, IRC is difficult to measure quantitatively, but it is insightful for qualitative research, especially in areas such as worship rituals.  Importantly, IRC theory also situates religious actors in social space and outlines the linkages between ritual, affect, and belief.

Sub-Cultural Identity Theory

This perspective posits that religion survives and can thrive in pluralistic, modern society by embedding itself in subcultures that offer satisfying, morally-orienting collective identities which provide adherents with meaning and a sense of belonging.

In a pluralistic society, religious groups which are better at transmitting and employing the cultural tools needed to create both clear distinction from, and significant engagement and tension with other relevant out-groups (short of becoming genuinely countercultural), will be relatively successful (Smith, 1998:118-119).  Although similar to the religious economies claim that groups at a medium level of sociocultural tension will attract the most adherents, this perspective focuses more on issues of identity and symbolic boundaries by drawing on cultural sociology.

Social Network Theory

Studies of conversion, religious schisms, and secularization utilize social network theory to understand the influence of community and networks on the religious life of individuals, groups and societies. In his classic study of suicide, Emile Durkheim used religion as an indicator of how well or poorly a society was socially integrated; other research indicates that religion actively builds social networks (Durkheim 1897, Stark and Bainbridge 1981, Bainbridge 1987, Bainbridge 2006).
Religion may produce strong social networks, but it also depends upon them. Thus religion may feature as either the independent or dependent variable in studies related to this theoretical perspective. There are a number of studies of social networks where religious vitality is the result of levels of social integration (Bainbridge 1990, Stark and Bainbridge 1980, Bainbridge 1989).

Secularization

Secularization has a long history of theory relating to the idea that religion will become less powerful as a social institution with the progress of “modernity.”  For example, Berger defines the term as meaning: “The process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols” (1967:107).  Secularization perspectives are varied, but in general there are three levels upon which secularization is theorized to occur (see Tschannen 1991).  These are: 1) Macro – social differentiation; 2) Meso – the decline of significance of religion in organizations; and 3) Individual – a reduction in levels of practice, belief, or affiliation at the individual level.  A hotly debated topic concerns the degree to which secularization is an inevitable process as societies “modernize,” or whether instances of secularization are “exceptions” (see Davie 2002; Martin 1991).  Another source of contention is whether all three levels of secularization are necessarily linked together or whether processes at one level may occur without those at another.

Secularization was for a long period the dominant perspective on religious change in the social sciences.  Yet there has never been a single theory of secularization.  A family of theories drew on classical sociological theory.   Durkheim posited that increasing social differentiation as a result of the expanding social division of labor would lead to the separation of the sacred and secular realms.   Secular institutions would become predominate, the “collective conscience” generated by religious participation would erode, and the functions performed by religion would be taken over by newly specialized institutions, such as the nation-state and the education system.  Weber proposed that the increasing dominance of instrumental rationality in economic and political institutions was leading to the “disenchantment” of everyday life, and eventually the eclipse of religious reason.  Marx saw religion as little more than an ideological system for the justification and perpetuation of class domination, arguing that as class consciousness and materialism advanced religion would disappear.

In general, contemporary proponents of various secularization theories observe that modernity tends to erode religion’s plausibility, intensity, and authority. Further, these theories tend to posit the contemporary retreat of sacred institutions, the privatization of faith, and the “progressive shrinkage and decline of religion” in public life (Casanova 1994).   Within this broad consensus, however, there are a variety of theoretical positions.

Peter Berger (1967) offers a micro-level version of the theory that focuses on the plausibility of religious concepts.   He argues that changes in religious consciousness are due not only to science and the Enlightenment but also to the expanding social and cultural pluralism that is a central feature of liberalizing societies.  This confrontation with pluralism was posited to damage the plausibility of religious dogma.  When religious adherents encounter credible others with rival and fully incompatible claims to ultimate truth, their own certitudes begin to suffer.  In liberal societies, multiple religious and secular groups jostle for influence on the basis of philosophical and ethical claims, undercutting each of their claims to predominance, and ultimately leading to the privatization of religion in civil society.

There is also a macro version of the theory. In the decades following the Second World War, most social scientists expected convergence among the Western industrial democracies and, with varying degrees of lag, a general move toward modernity by the “developing” societies. Modernization was expected to bring prosperity and opportunity, initiating a “culture shift” to post-traditional values and lifestyles (Inglehart 1990). As Ronald Inglehart and Wayne Baker (2000) explain, “Modernization theorists … have argued that the world is changing in ways that erode traditional values. Economic development almost inevitably brings the decline of religion, parochialism and cultural differences.”  In fact, cross-national research does suggest a generally negative association between development and religiosity, though with some caveats.  More recently, the modernization theory of secularization has been modified. Neo-modernization theory now rejects the linear implications of past formulations and seeks to link the micro and macro-levels in its explanation for religious change.  The key micro-level factor is now held to be existential insecurity; the greater that insecurity, the more likely that people will be religious.  But where economic, political and social conditions have improved such that personal security improves, religion loses its impact.  This does not mean that the world is growing secular, however, since most of the world’s population growth is occurring in the poorest, most unstable, and most traditional societies (Norris and Inglehart 2004).

There is no unified theory of secularization, and some of the mechanisms proposed by secularization theorists seem to remain obscure. In addition, it is not clear why indicators of “secularization” are high in some modern societies – for instance, in many Western European societies – but lower in others such as the United States, or why some countries that are far less developed than the Western industrial democracies are more irreligious.  Berger (2002), once a prominent proponent of the secularization thesis, now declares, “Our age is not an age of secularization. On the contrary, it is an age of exuberant religiosity, much of it in the form of passionate movements with global outreach.”  Social scientists proposing the religious economies model have generally been highly skeptical of secularization theory. Rodney Stark (1999) advised that the thesis be left to “rest in peace”; contrary evidence and theoretical shortcomings effectively consigning it to the dustbin of history.

Others note that secularization often appears to be an intentional political project, rather than a spontaneous socio-cultural development (Smith 2003; Froese 2009).  Many studies identify the central role played by church–state institutions in causing variation in secularization across societies. Political mobilization on the basis of religion is often triggered by the efforts of political elites to reduce the public role of religion (institutional secularization) or extend governmental authority to domains previously organized by religious organizations. State regulation or penetration into areas once dominated by religion often provokes conflict, especially where it threatens the influence of religious authorities. “Reasonable” government regulation of religious expression or activities in the interest of secularization is often viewed as an attack on religion.

Finally, there are the new cultural approaches to secularization theory that argue against linear secularization narratives but still contend that secularization is manifest in the pluralism of religious worldviews and highly individualized assemblages of religious and supernatural beliefs. As is becoming apparent in Europe and the United States, even where belief in the supernatural remains, denominational and confessional attachments appear to be weakening.  As a result, religious preferences are becoming more individualized, the status of orthodox religious authorities is diminishing, and growing proportions of people seek a spirituality divorced from conventional religion (Lambert 2004).  As Phil Gorski (2005) aptly puts it, “the weakening of traditional Christianity appears not as a decline of religion per se … but as a return to polysemism, since the new worldviews are not uniformly theistic.”  Thus it is not that religion inevitably declines but that religion as it has been theologically and institutionally understood in the West for the last several centuries is being irresistibly altered.

Religious Economies

Religious economies perspectives are built on rational choice assumptions.  In particular these approaches assume that there are potential benefits to religious participation, both psychological and inter-personal, that people may seek.  With the analogy that overall levels of religion in an area are like a market, it assumes an innate demand for some type of explanation system and posits that differences in levels of participation can be at least partially explained by the supply of “religious goods” in an area.  Producers of these religious goods and individual consumers become central concepts, as well governmental regulation of religion.  Other important concepts include the level of tension between a religious group and the surrounding socio-cultural environment and the level of “strictness” required to be a member of a religious group.

“Individuals act rationally, weighing costs and benefits of potential actions, and choosing those actions that maximize their net benefits.” (Iannaccone, 1997:26)

“Within the limits of their information and understanding, restricted by available options, guided by their preferences and tastes, humans attempt to make rational choices.” (Stark and Finke, 2000:38)
“A religious economy … encompasses all of the religious activity going on in any society.” (Stark and Finke, 2000:35)

Modernization Theory

This theory holds that religion is just as important a feature of modern society as it is of traditional society, but it takes different forms and possesses different characteristics. While compatible with functionalist theories, this theory does not depend upon them, because it concerns the historical transformation of religion, whereas religion’s functions may be constant. Among the most influential variants of this perspective is the pattern variable theory of Parsons and Shils.

According to them, five socio-cultural dimensions of variation together describe modernization and are applicable to religion as well as to all other major institutions of society. With the traditional end of the dimensions on the left, the pattern variables are:

1. Affectivity – Affective Neutrality
2. Self-orientation – Collectivity-orientation
3. Particularism – Universalism
4. Ascription – Achievement
5. Diffuseness – Specificity

Modern religion, as defined by the right end of these dimensions, is emotionally cooler than traditional religion, which is oriented toward very large social collectivities such as all humanity rather than the self and which promulgates universalistic norms and hopes of salvation, placing responsibility for moral choice in the individual. Modern religion becomes differentiated from other institutions of the society. These continua are intended to be five dimensions, rather than aspects of one, implying that prior to the completion of modernization some societies and their religions might be mixed types.

A recent critique of this theory, which grants that it has been exceedingly influential, comes from Nils Gilman (2003).  Various forms of modernization theory are also intertwined with theories of secularization.  Although these links were at one time conceptualized in a teleological fashion (see Gorski and Altinordu 2008), more recent scholarship has suggested that the link between secularization and modernization is more complex (e.g. Almond et al. 2003 Casanova 1994; Warner 1993).

Functionalism

According to this perspective, religion exists because it serves an integrating function for society as a whole. Durkheim suggested this when he argued that God represents the society, and in worshiping God, society really reveres itself. The elements of the culture that are essential to the society’s survival are labeled sacred, in this theory. Unlike theories of the rise and fall of civilizations, functionalists do not consider the survival of a religious culture to be problematic. While flavors of this theory are common in older writings on religion, among the best texts to consult are Durkheim 1915, Parsons 1937, and Parsons 1964.

Some readers of these works would draw the inference that religious individuals are more likely to follow society’s norms than non-religious individuals. However, pure functionalist theory does not rise or fall on whether this hypothesis is true, because it concerns the society as a whole, rather than individuals. In his 1964 journal article, Parsons suggests that the proof of functionalist theories of religion can be found in the fact that all societies have possessed religion – that it is an evolutionary universal necessary for the survival of society. He also considers religion to be a precondition for the development of many of the apparently non-religious features of modern society.

Demographic Transition Theory

According to this theory, fertility and mortality rates change in a predictable manner, when a society evolves from a traditional to a modern form. Initially, death rates are high, because of the primitive technology and economic poverty of a traditional society, so birth rates were also high to sustain a stable population. At the beginning of modernization, technological and economic progress reduces the death rate, but the birth rate remains high through social inertia, so there is a population explosion. Eventually, the birth rate comes down as well, and the result is a stable population with low fertility and mortality rates. A classic statement comes from Kingsley Davis.

By the mid-1980s, however, it was apparent that most advanced industrial or post-industrial societies had birth rates that were too low to offset even a greatly diminished death rate, and after the distorting effect of the changing age distribution had worked its way through, these societies seemed doom to population collapse. The immediate relevance to religion is two-fold, because low birth rates undercut some of the family-related variables that encourage religious participation and because one of the few factors that could sustain fertility at the replacement level is religion. However, as Nathan Keyfitz pointed out, only fundamentalist religions, like radical Islam, may have sufficient fertility, and thus society ironically may become more religious through modernization rather than less (Keyfitz 1987).

This perspective has been used to explain the relative success of more conservative religious movements, in spite of the high numbers of disaffiliates in post-industrial world.

Cyclical Theory

Asian religions, and some classical western philosophers, believed that history consisted of an endless series of cycles: the Wheel of Life, eternal return, or eternal recurrence. This idea can also be found in nineteenth-century European philosophies that related to religion, notably the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, and it is not entirely implausible that processes analogous to the individual’s life cycle occur on larger, societal scales.

Probably the most impressive cyclical theory that gives religion a central role is the one proposed by Pitirim A. Sorokin. For Sorokin, the most influential elements of culture are those that concern the inner experience of people, their images, ideas, volitions, feelings, and emotions. The essence of a culture is defined by the view people have of the nature of reality, the goals they value, and the means they emphasize in reaching these goals.

In his theory, each great civilization emerges out of a period of chaos with a coherent set of spiritual beliefs that give it strength. Often it is born in the development of a new religious tradition. At this point, it is what Sorokin called an ideational culture. A successful ideational culture grows and develops. With success, however, comes complaisance. The society slowly loses its faith in spirituality, doubt sets in, and the culture begins to become sensate, a perspective on existence that is the opposite of ideational. A sensate culture believes that reality is whatever the sense organs perceive, and it does not believe in any supernatural world. Its aims are physical or sensual, and it seeks to achieve them through exploiting or changing the external world.

Depending upon circumstances, most people in a sensate society will exhibit one of three personality orientations. Active individuals use technology and empire-building to take charge of the material world. Passive individuals indulge themselves in pleasures of the flesh. And cynical individuals exploit the prevailing conditions for their own profit without any ideal to provide fundamental values. The entire cycle of which he wrote can take many centuries to complete, but Sorokin believed that western society was approaching a crisis point.

Ultimately, a sensate civilization is likely to crash, ushering in a new period of intense cultural chaos out of which a new ideational civilization may be born. Sorokin wrote, “Neither the decay of the Western society and culture, nor their death, is predicted by my thesis. What it does assert… is simply that one of the most important phases of their life history, the Sensate, is now ending and that we are turning toward its opposite through a period of transition. Such a period is always disquieting, grim, cruel, bloody, and painful” (vol. 3, p. 537).

Were Sorokin alive today, he probably would cite the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as confirmation of his theory, suggest that it would result in widespread conflict and religious revival in Islamic societies, even as European Christian culture continued to descend toward at least temporary collapse.
It deserves note that the notion of a cyclical periodicity has been also applied to Western religions, and to more narrow phenomena such as political movements.  For example, some researchers (Jelen 1991; Lienesch 1993) have suggested that religiously motivated political activity in the United States follows a cyclical pattern, based in part on the activation of negative affect toward out-groups (e.g. immigrants, homosexuals), and the subsequent mobilization of religious particularism.

Conversion Theory

Inspired by Lofland’s field research on recruitment to the Unification Church, in its earliest days sending evangelists from Korea to the United States, Conversion Theory offers a series of steps a person must go through in order to become a member of a new religious group:

1. Experience enduring, acutely felt tensions
2. Within a religious problem-solving perspective,
3. Which leads him to define himself as a religious seeker;
4. Encountering the group at a turning point in his life
5. Wherein an affective bond is formed (or pre-exists) with one or more converts;
6. Where extra-cult attachments are absent or neutralized;
7. And where, if he is to become a deployable agent, he is exposed to intensive interaction (Lofland and Stark 1965).

Fifteen years after he had collaborated with Lofland, Stark worked with Bainbridge on a paper that implied that several of the steps of the model were unnecessary, and that frequency of social interaction – the last three steps – could be quite sufficient (Stark and Bainbridge 1980).  Although the process of conversion remains an important idea, the importance of social networks for conversion is the aspect of conversion theories that have had the most impact on further research.  More recently scholars have taken the focus on networks and incorporated it into religious switching, and even de-conversion.

Cognitive Theories

“Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence, embracing philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology.” Paul Thagard in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available online.

Recent cognitive theories have not yet been fully integrated into the social science of religion, but researchers have many opportunities to expand the scope of cognitive science (Bainbridge 2006).  Wuthnow (2007) provides an introductory overview of the issues, extant literature, and potential for research avenues with regard to cognitive theories and religion.
There are actually several distinguishable cognitive theories of religious phenomena, they are:

1. Attribution of Intentionality: Perhaps the most widely influential theory currently in the cognitive science approach to religion holds that faith in supernatural beings is a cognitive error that naturally springs from the way the human brain evolved (Boyer 2001, Barrett 2004, Abbott 2003).
2. Cognitive Consistency: Theories in this sub-category argue that humans have a natural need to form consistent mental models of the world, and thus they will exert effort to resolve any contradiction between two beliefs, or between a belief and a behavior (Festinger et al. 1956, Festinger 1957).
3. Cognitive Efficiency: This kind of theory postulates that the human mind naturally seeks simple models of reality, and that humans will tend to avoid extreme cognitive effort. This perspective is similar to, but distinguishable from, cognitive consistency theories (Miller 1956, Newell 1990, Boyer 2001, Allport 1954, Bainbridge 1995).
4. Modes of Memory: Harvey Whitehouse has argued that different styles of religion are based in different parts of the brain, specifically in different memory structures (Whitehouse 2004).
5. Pragmatic Epistemology: Whereas some theories consider religion to be the result of cognitive errors, this theory argues that religion serves the interests of the individual and thus is true for that very reason (James 1948).

Civilization Theory

Theories in this broad category assert that each major civilization, and perhaps smaller units as well in prehistoric times and remote regions, has a degree of cultural coherence, often marked by a distinctive religion. When two such civilizations come into contact, they compete, sometimes for several centuries, with resultant religious conflict. Also, it seems likely that every civilization eventually will exhaust its central cultural principles and collapse. Thus these theories tend to concern the rise and fall of civilizations (See Gibbon 1776).

Gibbon suggests that the establishment of Christianity as the state religion was an attempt by Constantine and some of his successors to strengthen the Roman Empire. More recent scholars have argued that Christianity did indeed have a characteristic that made it suitable as a stabilizer of the state and perhaps the civilization in which the state was embedded, namely particularism. By rejecting the truth of alternative religions, it asserted a principle of central authority that could be useful to stabilize the governance of a large society (See O’Donnell 1977).

A more general civilization theory was proposed by Oswald Spengler. Spengler asserted that every great civilization was based on a single idea, and when this idea became exhausted, the civilization would fall. For modern, Western civilization the idea was boundless space, and when the Age of Exploration came to an end, by the year 1900, the doom of the west approached. Ideas like Spengler’s continue to be popular among politically conservative intellectuals, some of whom consider Christianity to be the central idea of the West (See Burnham 1964, Buchanan 2002).

Among the modern attempts to develop data that could test or refine civilization theories, the World Values Survey stands out. Publications based on it tend to give a mixed picture, with some evidence that major cultural blocs in the world do indeed have somewhat different values, but perhaps not markedly different (See Inglehart and Baker 2000).  Samuel Huntington was well-known advocate of the idea that civilizations are based on competing and incompatible religious traditions, thereby limiting the extent possibilities concerning inter-civilization cooperation.

Church/Sect Cycle

Definition: Churches are religious bodies in a relatively low state of tension with their environments.

Sects are religious bodies in a relatively high state of tension with their environments.

The sect-church process concerns the fact that new religious bodies necessarily begin as sects or new religious movements and that, if they are successful in attracting a substantial following, they will, over time, almost inevitably be gradually transformed into churches. That is, successful religious movements will shift their emphasis toward this world and away from the next, moving from high tension with the surrounding socio-cultural environment toward increasingly lower levels of tension. As this occurs, a religious body will become increasingly less able to satisfy members who desire a high-tension version of faith. As discontent grows, these people will become dissatisfied that the group is abandoning its original positions and practices. At some point this growing conflict within the group will erupt in a split, and the faction desiring a return to higher tension will found a new sect. If this movement proves successful, over time it too will be transformed into a church, and once again a split will occur. The result is an endless cycle of sect formation, transformation, schism, and rebirth. The many workings of this cycle account for the countless varieties of each of the major faiths (Finke and Stark 1992:44-45).

The church/sect cycle is proposed as a general theory of change in religious organizations over time.  It is rooted in the work of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch, but has recently been taken up by rational choice theorists.