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AFF 2002 Annual Conference

Understanding Cults and New Religious Movements

June 14-15, 2002

Crowne Plaza Hotel Orlando (FL) Airport

Continued, Part 2

Jehovah’s Witnesses

A panel of former Jehovah’s Witnesses spoke of the movement’s cultic aspects — extensive control over individuals’ lives, failure to deal with the sexual abuse of children in the group, the encouragement of “informants,” shunning, and disfellowshipping. Serious psychological problems, they say, are commonplace results. They also reported that a majority of new Jehovah’s witnesses are now Black and Hispanic. Barbara Anderson, who formerly worked at the group’s world headquarters, told how she was ex-communicated after protesting that the church had not dealt with the multitude of sexual abuse cases that she discovered in its archives.

Jerry Bergman, Ph.D., a psychotherapist, and a professor at Northwest State College, in Ohio, who has published widely on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, discussed the group’s doctrine of lying, especially in court. He concluded that the longer someone is a Witness, and the higher the rank attained, the more likely a person is both to understand and use the doctrine.  His article on lying in court was published in CSR.

William H. Bowen related some of his experiences in leadership roles in the group and told of his founding of Silentlambs, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to helping survivors of Jehovah’s Witnesses abuse.

La Luz del Mundo

Paul Cardin, Executive Director of the Centers for Apologetics Research in San Juan Capistrano, CA, chaired a session that opened with a presentation by Jorge Erdele, Ph.D., Director of the Research Center of the Mexican Christian Institute and Editor of the Latin American Journal for the Academic Study of Religions) on La Luz Del Mundo, a “transnational” group based in Mexico, with many members in the United States. Dr. Erdele indicated the ways in which La Luz, which has significant political influence and therefore protection in Mexico, exemplifies cultic processes, and detailed how sexual abuse is theologically justified and institutionalized among the leadership cadre. Ph.D. candidate Marcos Marin, formerly Professor of Anthropology of Religion and Ethnicity at the Unversidad La Habana, in Cuba, discussed his research, including cultic aspects of the Palo Monte religion, which has migrated to Florida.

Waldorf Schools

Sharon Lombard, MFA, a religious studies student at the University of Miami, recounted how she sent her daughter to a Waldof School thinking that it was an art-based, non-sectarian progressive place, only much later to learn that the school practiced Anthroposophy, a religion, as she characterized it, begun in the early 20^th Century by Austrian philosopher and mystic Rudolph Steiner. Dan Dugan, an audio engineer, who is secretary of an organization opposed to taxpayer funding of Waldorf education, spoke of the history of Anthroposophy, the religious content of Waldorf teacher training, and the problems posed by public and charter schools influenced by the Waldorf movement.

Kashi Ashram

The panelists in this program, coordinated by Rosanne Henry, M.A., L.P.C., related their experiences in this small Florida group, founded by a New York housewife-turned-guru. All were seekers who had achieved real success before involvement — one as a physician (Harry Brodie, MD, a family doctor from Colorado), another as an award- winning journalist (Richard Rosenkranz, author of Across The Barricades), the third as a singer (Lyn Deadmore, now a marketing consultant). They explained how the leader’s encouragement and cultivation of their talents — sometimes to unethical ends — was connected to her ability to control their lives. Discussant Dr. Paul Martin, who has studied the group and worked with former members, called Kashi the “quintessential 1970s cult.” (It still exists and is involved in litigation with some of the panelists). Discussant Steve K. Dubrow Eichel, Ph.D., a counseling psychologist and researcher, noted that the “backroom” information provided by Dr. Martin and the former Kashi followers offers a perspective that traditional sociological approaches tend to ignore.

Political Groups

Rod Marshall, Ph.D., head of the Department of Human Sciences at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, in Wycombe, England, led off the discussion by showing how the cultic practices of a left-wing British group to which he once belonged affected the group’s belief system. Free expression was so limited that the ideology tended to conform to practices.

Dr. Marshall also spoke about how members were manipulated to conform or treated as enemies, about the reification of “sacred” texts (Trotsky’s writing, for example), and about how their careers were directed (if they were students).  He also noted paranoia about spies in their midst, and how their “evangelizing,” to save mankind, through conversion, reinforced identity in an exclusive revolutionary “vanguard.”

Steve K. Dubrow Eichel, Ph.D., a counseling psychologist and co-founder of RETIRN, which works with former cult members, spoke about right-wing cultic groups, noting that former Nazis made the best communists after the Second World War, and that Lyndon Larouche is a good example of the ease of transition from one totalistic system to another, in his case from left to right.

Dr. Dubrow-Eichel’s research suggests, however, that personal needs and family problems are more important in explaining recruitment to right-wing than to left-wing groups. He used Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy as an example of cultic thought and behavior on the right.

Janja Lalich, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Chico, stressed that political groups with cult characteristics need more scholarly attention; she believes that all cults are on some level political because they restrict people’s freedom, and that one misses a great deal that is cultic by continuing to use a religious paradigm when considering the nature of a group. She said that right-wing groups are an especially great threat in America today because they have more mainstream support than radical left-wing groups. She also finds some radical environmental groups to be cultic.

Polygamous groups

Andrea Moore Emmet, an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for the Salt Lake City Weekly, detailed the institutionalized physical and psychological abuse of women (especially sexual) and children in polygamous families and communities. She also discussed the exploitation of state and national welfare systems by individuals in numerous polygamous Mormon offshoot groups in Utah. Some groups, Ms. Emmet said, practice theologically justified incestuous marriage, which leads to a high rate of birth defects in offspring, and trafficking in women, many of them under age, for the purpose of polygamous marriage. She emphasized the social isolation of individuals in many polygamous communities, deficient home schooling, faith healing, and the great difficulty women have in leaving their untutored situations and making their way on the “outside.” She said that there was “closet polygamy” within mainstream Utah society, and that “conversions” to a polygamous life style there are still taking place.

Social Science Research

On Being a Female Former Member

Miriam Williams Boeri, Ph.D., a former member of the Children of God, and Author of Heaven’s Harlots: My Fifteen Years as a Sacred Prostitute in the Children of God Cult, spoke about what it means to be an “ex-cult” member in contemporary mainstream society. The salient issues that emerge are alienation, depression, spiritual confusion, confusion of wife and mother roles, limited friendships, sexual abuse, lack of education and work history, and health concerns.

Describing a Fourth Generation Cult

Marie-Andrée Pelland, a doctoral candidate at the Université de Montréal spoke of her study of a century-old Canadian group called the Mission. Her analysis, she said, raises questions about the kinds of abuse or harm done to children and women, and about the adequacy of systems in place to protect children.

Terrorism and Cults

Hal Mansfield, M.A., Director of the Religious Movement Center, in Colorado, said that small terrorist groups, such as the Symbionese Liberation Army and the white supremacist group called The Order, employ destructive cult methodology as described by Lifton in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.

But it is not at all clear, he said, that large international terrorist groups measure up to Lifton’s criteria. Generally, in large groups, “milieu control” does not seem important, nor is the financial exploitation of followers. And cults do not enjoy state support, as do some terrorist organizations, whose leaders, moreover, do not enjoy lavish lifestyles, as do many cult leaders. In addition, most terrorist organizations seem to be able to operate without leaders exercising centralized, total control over followers’ lives. Finally, the kinds of destructive cults we study usually recruit deceptively; terrorist groups are more truthful about why they want people to join. All of this is not to say, however, that some terrorist groups are not cult-like. But to call them cults without detailed analysis is simplistic.

Arthur A. Dole, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor, Psychology in Education, University of Pennsylvania, began by telling how he had given some of his students, in the wake of 9/11, a “group psychological abuse test,” with Al Qaeda in mind. The students thought that many of the attributes that defined a “cult” were present in the terrorist organization, as indeed there are, said Prof. Dole. But he stressed that the two types of organizations cannot really be equated. In assessing any “terrorist” group, he cautioned, one ought to be aware of the differences. A significant one, he thinks, is that cultic groups are not nearly so violent to non-members as terrorists groups are. Also, terrorists oppose nations, while cults do not. The family dynamic is different, too, and kin do not try to get people out of terrorist groups. Nor is the terrorist group after money, per se, as are so many of the cultic groups with which we are familiar. Prof. Dole concluded by remarking that terrorist and cult leadership styles seem quite different.

Historian Jean-François Meyer, Ph.D., Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, commenting on the others’ presentations, agreed that cults could not be equated with terrorist groups, even if they shared certain features, and even if some cults had been involved in terrorist-style activities. He was upset at the exaggerated parallels many drew today between cults and terrorist groups.

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