Prophets, gurus, and charisma

1
Prophets, gurus, and charisma

• continued

2
Accusations against religious leaders

• Attacks of anti-cult movements
• mostly against the leaders
• Four main themes (Bromley and Shupe)
• wealth and greed / get-rich-quick schemes
• political ambitions (beyond the group) as real
  agenda
• satisfaction of lust for power (over group
  members)
• insincere / charlatans
• Testing the claims on 6 religious leaders
• David Berg, Prabhupada, L. Ron Hubbard, Guru
  Maharaj Ji, Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon

3
Accusations Wealth and greed as motives

• Difficult to generalize
• Entirely different lifestyles
• eg. Prabhupada vs Guru Maharaj Ji
• Most leaders
• selfish but not necessarily greedy
• rich beforehand
• the churches' immortality as their prime concern

4
Accusations Political Ambitions I

• does not apply to most leaders
• David Berg
• seclusion in Europe
• Prabhupada
• life of ascetic retreat until death
• L. Ron Hubbard Guru Maharaj Ji
• no political ambitions
• Jim Jones
• involved with a variety of civic projects in San
  Francisco
• against repression of blacks
• support of international socialism and rejection
  of the US
• actions largely defensive in nature

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Accusations Political Ambitions II

• Sun Myung Moon
• greatest interest in politics
• anti-communist, pro-Nixon
• vision of worldwide theocracy
• the source of all mankind's problems
• refusal to live up to God-given responsibilities
• close working relationship between church and
  state
• in which the church is the ultimate authority
• Moon
• The time will come, without my seeking it, when
  my words will almost serve as law. If I ask for a
  certain thing, it will be done. If I don't want
  something, it will not be done.
• "I will conquer and subjugate the world. I am
  your brain."

6
Accusations Power and domination as motives

• dictatorial power over church members
• brainwashing allegations
• manipulation and abuse of members
• Guru Maharaj Ji
• So whatever extra you have got, give it to me.
  And the extra thing you have got is your mind.
  Give it to me. I am ready to receive it. Because
  your mind troubles you, give it to me. It won't
  trouble me! Just give it... So just try to be
  holy and try to be a good devotee, a perfect
  devotee of that Guru who is Himself perfect, who
  is really perfect!
• Moon
• "I am your brain"
• Communal vs larger movements
• The former more authoritarian

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Accusations Lack of sincerity

• Three tests
• Religious background of the leader
• L. Ron Hubbard as an exception
• Persecution, personal sacrifices in the course of
  developing churches
• L. Ron Hubbard, David Berg not clear
• Jim Jones constant persecution
• Prabhupada, Guru Maharaj Ji - renounced their
  families
• Sun Myung Moon - imprisoned twice
• The degree of exploiting the church for personal
  advantage
• sexual manipulation
• Sun Myung Moon

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Ordinary members conversion and apostasy

• 26.2.2004

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Readings

• Bromley and Shupe Joining the New Religions
  Brainwashing or Conversion? (in Bromley and Shupe
  1981)
• Wright Leaving New Religious Movements Issues,
  Theory, and Research (in Bromley 1988)

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Discussion topics

• Theories of conversion
• relative-deprivation theory
• Lofland-Stark model of conversion
• Traditional vs new approach to conversion
• Generalizations about conversion
• Social attributes of converts
• gender
• Brainwashing
• arguments for and against
• Apostasy / leaving NRMs

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Relative Deprivation Theory I

• Early studies of social movements / collective
  radical behaviour
• originate in irrational deviant behaviour
• By marginal segments of society
• By groups experiencing bad times
• Caused by pathological personality
• Eg. Freud, 1921 Adorno et al., 1950 Blumer,
  1951 Toch, 1965
• Social movements in the 1960s
• student-led anti-war movement
• Not mentally disturbed or deficient
• turn away from irrationalist theories

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Relative Deprivation Theory II

• Studies of 19th century NRMs
• Jehovahs Witnesses, Adeventists etc.
• disproportionately from the lower socio-economic
  strata of society
• pushes and pulls
• Pushes
• Economic deprivation
• Pulls
• promise of reward in the next life
• more immediate psychic compensators
• escape from the hardships and humiliations of
  life
• NRMs of the 1960s
• socio-economic status of sectarians is rising
• Students not poor and abused
• need to review economic deprivation model

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Relative Deprivation Theory III

• theories of "relative deprivation
• dominant in 1960s 1980s
• Charles Glock
• The Role of Deprivation in the Origin and
  Evolution of Religious Groups (1964)
• absolute vs relative deprivation
• Perceived discrepancy between
• social rewards entitled to and received
• several forms of being deprived
• economic deprivation
• social deprivation
• organismic deprivation
• psychic deprivation
• ethical deprivation
• Shared feeling of deprivation

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Relative Deprivation Theory IV

• Stark and Bainbridge model of religion (1987)
• Religious organizations
• Primary purpose to create, maintain and exchange
  supernaturally-based compensators
• Criticism
• Monocausal link between psychological state and
  social behaviour
• Reductionistic
• Difficult to test
• Joiners vs nonjoiners?
• With same kind of relative deprivation
• Non-deprived also become members of NRMs
• 1980s - new theories
• resource-mobilization theory
• rational-choice theory

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The Lofland-Stark Model of Conversion

• more multi-factorial and processual approach
• the study of early Unification Church in the US
• seven-step model of the process of conversion
• (1) experience enduring, acutely felt tensions in
  their lives
• (2) within a religious problem-solving
  perspective
• (3) which leads them to think of themselves as a
  religious seeker
• (4) encounter the cult to which they convert at a
  turning point in their lives
• (5) form an affective bond with one or more
  members of the cult
• (6) reduce or eliminate extra-cult attachments
• (7) be exposed to intensive interaction with
  other converts
• Critique and praise

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Traditional approach to conversion

• St Paul on the road to Damascus
• Prototypical conversion
• Normative features of Christian conversion
  experiences
• Traditional approach to conversion
• Sudden, dramatic
• Emotional, even irrational
• Singular event
• Creates total life changes that last a lifetime
• Individual experience, not a collective
  phenomenon
• Received passively through actions of external
  agency
• convert as passive

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New approach to conversion

• Conversion as a process
• struggles of conscience and identity
• mouting tension and discontent
• Conversion as career
• Seekereship period
• serial affiliation with various groups
• Conversion as collective phenomenon
• result of interaction between oeple
• negotiation of rewards
• Conversion as rational choice
• calculation, experimentation, assessment,
  weighing
• Conversion as role playing
• not actual transformation of personalitites
• learning of taking the members role

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Generalizations about conversion

• 1) Personalized recruitment most successful
• Recruitment primarily through pre-existing social
  networks
• Friends, family members, neighbours etc
• Aggressive public proselytizing
• Eg. Unification Church, Krishna Consciousness,
  COG
• Relatively unsuccessful
• Eg. Nichiren Shoshu
• 6 per cent of converts through the impersonal
  agencies
• 2) Importance of affective ties
• Eg. Nichiren Shoshu in Britain
• 1/3 - the quality of the membership' as the
  primary reason for initial attraction
• 3) intensive interaction between recruits and
  other members of the group
• eg. Bo and Peep UFO cult
• elaborate schedule of daily routines
• to promote the regular and intensive interaction

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Generalizations about converts to NRMs I

• 1) disproportionately young
• No social responsibilities
• drop out when they reach middle age
• eg. Unification Church in Britain
• 50 per cent between 21 and 26 years of age
• eg. Krishna Consciousness
• 56 per cent of the members between 20 and 25
• NRMs that demand less commitment
• Eg. Scientology, Eckankar, Nichiren Shoshu,
  Eastern meditational groups
• better spread in the age distribution
• Heaven's Gate
• the dead ranged from 24 to 72

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Generalizations about converts to NRMs II

• 2) Disproportionately highly educated
• teachings demand
• Literate intelligence
• Willingness to study
• Unfamiliar concepts and language
• Eg. Scientologists
• 57 percent - professional training or college or
  university degrees
• Eg. Soka Gakkai in Britain
• 24 percent - attended university
• 8 percent of the total population

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Generalizations about converts to NRMs III

• 3) Disproportionately from middle to upper middle
  class households
• Scientology, the Unification Church, Krishna
  Consciousness, Rajneesh etc
• 4) Disproportionately from unchurched
  background
• Varies from group to group
• Eg. Converts of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish
  background
• Protestants underrepresented
• Catholics proportionately the same as in total
  population
• Jews overrepresented
• Eg. 50 percent of the San Francisco Zen Center
  Jewish

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Generalizations about converts to NRMs IV

• 5) Disproportionately female
• Complex issue
• more so in the past
• Christian Science in the 1920s was 75 per cent
  female
• Now
• no strong evidence
• developmental shift in the sex ratios of NRMs
• Eg. Krishna Consciousness
• male phenomenon both sexes
• Eg. Unification church
• Female phenomenon both sexes
• Eg. Protestants in the Sierra Juarez (Mexico)

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NRMs and gender I

• Common claims
• the rise of NRMs coincided with feminst movement
  in the 1960s
• NRMs increase the status of women
• offer a refuge from patriarchal society
• Reality
• Angela Aidala (1985)
• Secular vs religious communes
• Most NRMS reinstate and reinforce traditional
  gender roles
• Idealization of family life
• women supportive, nurturing role
• male leadership
• eg. Krishna Consciousness, Unification Church

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NRMs and gender II

• Palmer (1994)
• diversity of gender relations in NRMs
• Three types of NRMs
• Sex-polarity groups
• sex-complementarity groups
• sex-unity groups
• sexpolarity groups
• sexes spiritually distinct, or irrelevant to the
  other's salvation
• spiritual superiority of one sex
• highly controlled relationships between sexes
• Eg. Krishna Consciousness, 3H0, the Rajneesh
  movement, feminist / lesbian Goddess worship

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NRMs and gender III

• sex-complementarity groups
• different spiritual qualities of sexes
• importance of marriage for uniting the two halves
  
• Eg. Unification Church, the Mormons
• sex-unity groups
• body and gender - a superficial layer of false
  identity
• sexless spirit
• Distancing oneself from gender roles
• Eg. Raelians, the Bo and Peep, and Scientology
• surgery, theories of cloning

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Brainwashing I

• thought control, mind control,
  psychological kidnapping, coercive persuasion
• hsi nao (Chinese to wash brain)
• Russian purge trials in 1930s
• Chinese communists in late 1940s and early 1950s
• revolutionary colleges
• Confucianism Maoism
• thought reform (szu hsiang kai tsao)
• Used on US POWs in Korean war
• of 3500 only 50 made procommunist statements
• Ideological conversion rare
• Edward Hunter Brain-Washing in Red China (1953)
• The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

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Brainwashing II

• Robert Lifton
• Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
  (1961)
• Group identification
• Period of emotional conflict
• Submission and rebirth
• Schein et al
• Coercive Persuasion (1961)
• unfreezing
• sensory deprivation (prison)
• sensory overload (FBI in Waco)
• changing
• imposition of new identity, daily routines,
  relations etc
• refreezing
• consolidation through ritualized activities

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Arguments for brainwashing in NRMs I

• Anti-cult movements
• Ronald Enroth
• sociologist
• Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults
  (1977)
• Steven Hassan
• ex-moonie
• deprogrammer
• Combatting Cult Mind-Control (1988)
• Margaret Singer
• psychologist
• Cults in Our Midst The Hidden Menace in Our
  Everyday Lives (1995)
• mind-control as part of her definition of cult

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Arguments for brainwashing in NRMs II

• 1) systematic recruitment practices
• use of social-psychological techniques
• planned and rehearsed responses
• recruiters trained
• eg. Scientology, COG
• 2) Targetting the vulnerable
• University campuses, counselling waitrooms
• 3) Deception
• disguise of identity at recruitment
• eg. Unification Church (Oakland Family)
• using hooks and plants
• eg. COG (flirty fishing)
• exaggerating membership figures
• eg. Scientology

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Arguments for brainwashing in NRMs III

• 4) Techinques of socialization
• keeping recruits apart
• constant presence of members
• keeping recruits busy (senosry overload)
• love-bombing
• confessional activities (manipulable)
• little sleep and food
• low-key methods of hypnosis
• giving new names to recruits

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Arguments against brainwashing in NRMs I

• 1) Tendency to lump all NRMs together
• using extreme atrocity stories
• anecdotal evidence
• 2) Studies of intended brainwashing
• unsuccessful
• does not produce long-lasting changes
• behavioural compliance not transformation of
  identity
• 3) Sampling bias
• most testimonies
• by those who have undergone deprogramming / exit
  counselling
• 4) Low rates of recruitment / High rates of
  turnover
• 0,5 of those who visit the Unification Church
  there in 2 years

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Arguments against brainwashing in NRMs II

• 5) Generally positive memories of voluntary
  defectors
• therapeutic effects of participation
• satisfaction of needs
• accomplishment of goals
• 6) deprogrammed vs voluntary defectors
• different attitudes
• Deprogramming as brainwashing itself
• fast change of identity

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Apostasy I

• Dropping out, deconversion, disaffiliation,
  disengagement, defecting, leavetaking, exiting,
  disidentification
• Relatively understudied
• Bromley, D. (ed.) 1988. Falling from the Faith
  Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy.
• Bromley, D. (ed.) 1998. The Politics of Religious
  Apostasy The Role of Apostates in the
  Transformation of Religious Movements.
• Wright
• disaffiliation as role exiting
• disaffiliation as sequential disengagement
• disaffiliation as organization failure or change

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Apostasy II

• Deprogramming
• Ted Patrick (1970s)
• When you deprogram people, you force them to
  think.
• I keep them off balance and this forces them to
  begin questioning, to open their minds
• controversial methods
• kidnapping
• Cult Awareness Network (CAN)
• bankruptcy due to unsuccessful deprogramming
• Exit counseling
• less intrusive form of intervention