The Politics of Religious Apostasy

[_beastie]

I'll think about it, Scratch. She's already setting up a scenario to get me in trouble by saying I'm violating fair use copyright policy by providing so many citations from the book. (by trouble I mean - getting the MAD mods on my tail the second I step foot over there)

I will admit though, that it is annoying to see her get away with distorting not only the Bromley text, but my responses to her. She's now acting as if I haven't already clearly stated that brainwashing is discredited.

[_beastie]

The Brainwashing Debacle

This particular reply should win some sort of award, at least in regards to revealing the difficulty Juliann has in processing text – mine as well as others.

Juliann posts:

First quoting me:
Citation: Now you have decided that the context of certain phrases do not matter. If the word “brainwashing” is used by the scholars in Bromley’s text, then if exmormons also use the word it must mean the same thing. You can only conclude this by deliberately ignoring the clarifying context.

The brainwashing referred to in the Bromley text is describing the actual, formal process of engaging in “mind control” with individuals through certain practices: sleep deprivation, repeated chanting, restricted diet, intense attention in a short amount of time, etc. This type of “brainwashing” totally removes free will in that it makes the person a sort of obedient robot. I have never seen an exmormon use the word “brainwashing” to connote this actual process, often suspected of being used by communists and cults in the past (before largely being scientifically debunked). Exmormons are using the term to refer to the intense social programming that LDS believers inculcate in their children.

Juliann responds:
This is problematic. We can know that because I have already addressed Seven-beastie's erroneous ideas about the "isolation/deprivation/etc" idea she has about "cults" and she ignored it. She needs it to be true and will withhold information to maintain the illusion.

Do "the scholars in Bromley's text" support Beastie's redefinitions? No.

Richardson describes Beastie's fantasies as "a feat that could have only been possible through the use of some magical and powerful psychotechnology that came to be described using rubrics such as "brainwashing" and "mind control." [James T. Richardson, “Apostates, Whistleblowers, Law, and Social Control in The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements, ed. David G. Bromley (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998), 174.]

This is such a shocking misrepresentation of my comments that it is troubling.

Juliann, I never said that I adhered to the theory of brainwashing, or that I was personally accusing the UC of brainwashing. In fact, I clearly stated already in my previous replies right on this thread that brainwashing has been debunked.

What I am doing is describing why the UC was viewed as a Subversive organization, and how the oppositional coalition attempted to escalate already present tension between it and the larger culture. Every author in the Bromley text that mentioned the UC did the same thing – they shared what occurred to make the UC a Subversive organization. Were you able to understand that the authors, themselves, were not accusing the UC of engaging in brainwashing? Apparently, because you cite Richardson’s references.

So why are you not able to understand that I am not accusing the UC of brainwashing – I don’t believe such a thing exists, as popularly understood. In fact, I even shared a link to a page that discredited brainwashing. Now you are trying to pretend that I believe in brainwashing and am accusing the UC of it?

The authors described, (and discredited,) the type of brainwashing that Subversive organizations were accused of enacting. This is a fundamentally different use of the term than when exmormons use it. I am not suggesting that the authors “redefined” brainwashing to mean what exmormons mean, which is extreme propaganda and social coercion. I am saying that simply seeing the same word: “brainwashing” – does not mean that the same act is being described.

Are you really incapable of understanding this? Sometimes I think you’re playing some sort of game on MAD, and hoping that people aren’t actually reading my comments and are just relying on your interpretation.




From the previously linked original thread on the topic:

Juliann posted:

Citation: [T]he potential recruit makes an implicit cost/benefit analysis of the consequences of accepting the new role and engaging in the activities expected in that role, including the new biographical reconstruction. . .The process is not, of course, irreversible, for on the same cost/benefit basis, a convert might move through a series of counterpart roles (such as “doubter”) eventually to the “apostate” role, which has its own demands for the defector, and its own mandatory “account” of the process of defection.

Armand Mauss, Research in Social Movements and in New Religious Movements: The Prospects for Convergence, in Religion and the Social Order: The Handbook on Cults and Sects in America, eds. David G. Bromley and Jerffrey K. Hadden (Greenwich, CT:JAI Press Inc., 1993), 139.

Juliann’s comment:
This leads us to the requisite conversion accounts and guess what...they are not deciding which ones are "true"! That is up to the individual! Beastie has offered Roger Loomis' conversion narrative and I have offered McCue's. Sociologists would include the Mormon narratives right in there with the rest of them. But we are only allowed to dissect those Mormon narratives apparently. Guess what! I'm going to dissect the "apostate" narrative!

I don’t have a problem with dissecting the apostate narrative. I don’t have a problem with you just making up, on your own, what constitutes an ‘apostate narrative’. I do have problem with you constantly referring to the Bromley text as the source of your definition of an apostate narrative when the text itself does not support your use.

Apostate narrative has a very specific meaning in the Bromley text. I have recited it ad nauseum. From Wright’s essay, page 98:

Apostate Narrative
Captivity Narrative

For the apostate, one’s previous involvement in a NRM is readily dismissed or discredited as a pseudo-conversion resulting from deceptive “mind control” practices. The account is formulated in a captivity narrative emphasizing the alleged manipulation, entrapment, and capture of the idealistic and unsuspecting target. Personality factors or defects may be identified as contributing to heightened vulnerability of some individuals, including dependency needs, unassertiveness, gullibility, low tolerance for ambiguity, cultural disillusionment, naïve idealism, undiscerning desire for spiritual meaning, and susceptibility to trance-like states. For the most part, however, the captivity narrative stresses the potent, external forces of group pressure, alternately called “brainwashing”, “thought reform”, “mind control”, or “coercive persuasion”. With some minor variation, the captivity narrative follows a very familiar pattern. Carefully orchestrated, behavioral conditioning practices induce ego-destruction and overstimulation of the nervous system, resulting in diminished capacity for rational decision making, radical personality change, impaired psychological integration, dissociation, split personality, and other mental disturbances converging to manufacture and sustain the pseudo-conversion. Personal accountability is now excused since no exercise of choice or free will is made in joining. The new convert is held mentally captive in a state of alternate consciousness due to “trance induction techniques” such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, self-hypnosis, visualization, and controlled breathing exercises. With trance-induction techniques destroying the individual’s natural ego-defenses, and exacerbated by information control, language manipulation, confession sessions, demands for purity and group primacy, the cultist is reduced to performing religious duties in slavish obedience to the whims of the group and its authoritarian or maniacal leader.

This careful definition presents problems for Juliann, or anyone, who wants to use the Bromley text as an authoritative source for the use of the “apostate narrative” in the manner Juliann has done. It is problematic due to the fact that there is no accusation of captivity through the form of literal brainwashing, as I bolded above.

Note: although it is painful to have to be this explicit, if I am not, these comments will be completely distorted by Juliann. The author is not actually saying that the brainwashing charge was valid, or even that the phenomenon of brainwashing actually exists. The author is sharing the charges that are made against Subversive organizations and are embedded in the Apostate Narrative.

After stating she was going to dissect the Apostate Narrative, Juliann shared this citation, again from Bromley. (does anyone wonder why I focused on the Bromley text?)

The archetypal account that is negotiated is a “captivity narrative” in which apostates assert that they were innocently or naïvely operating in what they had every reason to believe was a normal, secure social site; were subjected to overpowering subversive techniques; endured a period of subjugation during which they experienced tribulation and humiliation; ultimately effected escape or rescue from the organization; and subsequently renounced their former loyalties and issued a public warning of the dangers of the former organization as a matter of civic responsibility. . . Emphasis on the irresistibility of subversive techniques is vital to apostates and their allies as a means of locating responsibility for participation on the organization rather than on the former members. This account avoids attribution of calculated choices that would call for invoking the label of traitor. Further, a broad allegation of subversion allows a diverse array of opponents to unite under a common banner and formulate a variety of claims in terms that will mobilize or neutralize a broad spectrum of interests. Upon the rendering of an acceptable narrative, the oppositional coalition accepts pledges and tests of loyalty and professions of regret as the basis for reintegetration into social networks to which it controls access.

David G. Bromley, “The Social Construction of Contested Exit Roles: Defectors, Whistleblowers, and Apostates,” in The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements, ed. David G. Bromley (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers), 37.

This passage says the same thing the Wright passage I cited above says – which is not surprising because the authors in the text all – unless otherwise specified – were using the Bromley model. Note: the potential convert was brought to what he/she believed to be a secure, normal social site, and instead were subjected to “overpowering subversive techniques”. In other words – brainwashed.

It amazes me that Juliann could, in one breath, use this reference to support her use of the Apostate Narrative, and then, in the next breath, use something like Roger Loomis’ or Bob McCue’s statements as an example.

[_beastie]

still from the previously linked original thread

Juliann:

Recap:

We regularly hear the conversion narratives that sustain the myth of the "courageous" apostate who is only searching for "truth" while willing to suffer all sorts of indignity to follow his/her "conscience" in order to "help" others. In their eagerness to "inform" and "help" they are oblivious to the fact that deconversion follows a natural history as surely and consistently as conversion does.

The word "apostate" is not mine and it is a designation that is not limited to religion. It is used by sociologists and describes one set of behaviors that we would designate as "anti-Mormon" ... meaning there is active opposition to the church that distinguishes the "apostate" from the average person who simply does not believe a certain set of teachings but does not devote any time or energy to fighting those teachings or believers. I do not want to get into personal discussions as to which poster is an "apostate" as opposed to a "defector" or "whistleblower". We have plenty of public figures to discuss.

Citation:
The apostate role is typically not only the most acrimonious of the three types, but in its fullest sense it requires an external, oppositional organization or coalition to embrace the apostate and to lend credence and legitimacy to the typical “captivity narrative”explaining both the erstwhile affiliation and the eventual departure of the apostate.

Armand L. Mauss Apostasy and the Management of Spoiled Identity, The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements, ed. David G. Bromley (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers), 52.

Juliann:
Each and every behavior we have seen on these boards is stereotypical to the point it can be analyzed and sorted out as typical social behavior by those who study social groups. In fact, from what I am reading it is actually external events that determine how the individual will react not a lonely quest for "truth" or justice or whatever the lastest popular version of the conversion narrative is (which is also constructed by others for the most part.)

Here again we see Juliann asserting that this is not her theory, her creation, but rather the creation of the sociologists she cites. Once again she cites Mauss from the Bromley text.

This would have been a perfect opportunity for Juliann to clarify that what she was really doing was creating her own theory, using some selective statements made by sociologists. But, once again, she led us to believe she was simply sharing what sociologists had already determined.

At this point, I’m going to assume that it’s not necessary to point out, once again, what a “captivity narrative” means to the cited sociologists in the Bromley text, and how inappropriately Juliann uses it to describe things such as Roger Loomis’s essay.

(oh, and as an aside, this statement: “Scientism, in the strong sense, is the self-annihilating view that only scientific claims are meaningful, which is not a scientific claim and hence, if true, not meaningful.” does not accurately describe my views, as you’ve been told repeatedly)

from a later post:

Good grief....they are still going at it. The most bizarre aspect of the dogpiling is that they are so phobic about documentation. It is almost as if I pulled out a cross and garlic the reaction is so over the top. The next defense has to be that I am so stupid it doesn't matter anyway...that sets the stage for not needing to address what their latest target is saying, of course. But what it looks like from the outside is a bunch of strange people gathered together to grunt, scratch and spit...especially when they are free to actually engage the people they make fun of but choose to stay in the "closed circuit" where they don't get much (if any) dissent. I don't' think it takes a brain surgeon to figure out that the kind of language and mauling you see there eliminates the opposition as effectively as censoring them....while giving the site a veneer of openness. Since about all they do is talk about people instead of ideas it is not a very inviting place to outsiders. I do have to give you credit for actually talking to me while you talk about me, Shades.

Phobic about documentation? Hardly. I value documentation enough that I think it is important to fairly represent one’s sources and to immediately clarify if you are actually constructing your own theory, not simply sharing the theory sociologists already constructed.

You know, the irony is that I recognized even from the wiki sources that there was something hinky about Juliann’s use of Bromley as a supporting source. But there is no need to repeat that here, as it is basically a replay of this conversation.. the only difference is now I have the text and can fill in the holes Juliann left behind.

[_beastie]

Juliann's new response

I always run into this surprising objection to RFM type groups being seen as "organizations". Since Bromley focused on apostates being backed by organizations, I guess the countermos find the existence of that very thing in their community. I find that amazing...first because it is so obvious that it is an organization that backs apostates and second, that countermos would be ashamed of this to the point they deny it. I can't link to the site because of the obscene content but anyone can google "Recovery from Mormonism". It not only gives exmos a forum in which to publish....they provide contacts for, guess what...exit counseling. They call themselves a "foundation". They hold a yearly conference. They are particularly eager to be contacts for the media. They boast of hits to the website and the number of posts that are generated. In other words, they fit all of the criteria. Now why deny it when it is right there in front of everyones' face?

Juliann,

I am not denying that RFM is an oppositional organization. I am denying that RFM, or any other group of exmormons, has joined together with other oppositional groups, some of which are not comprised of exmormons in order to escalate tension between the LDS church and the host society in order to pressure the host society to utilize regulatory units to control the LDS church.

This is the reason I cited so many passages from the text. This is such a basic part of Bromley's model, and Juliann has yet to acknowledge it. This is why RFM fits the model of a support group for exmembers, not the "oppositional coalition".

by the way, I am bolding certain words not to convey "screaming", but rather in the somewhat vain attempt to help Juliann focus on the items she keeps missing.

[_Mister Scratch]

Juliann's new response

I always run into this surprising objection to RFM type groups being seen as "organizations". Since Bromley focused on apostates being backed by organizations, I guess the countermos find the existence of that very thing in their community. I find that amazing...first because it is so obvious that it is an organization that backs apostates and second, that countermos would be ashamed of this to the point they deny it. I can't link to the site because of the obscene content but anyone can google "Recovery from Mormonism". It not only gives exmos a forum in which to publish....they provide contacts for, guess what...exit counseling. They call themselves a "foundation". They hold a yearly conference. They are particularly eager to be contacts for the media. They boast of hits to the website and the number of posts that are generated. In other words, they fit all of the criteria. Now why deny it when it is right there in front of everyones' face?

Juliann,

I am not denying that RFM is an oppositional organization. I am denying that RFM, or any other group of exmormons, has joined together with other oppositional groups, some of which are not comprised of exmormons in order to escalate tension between the LDS church and the host society in order to pressure the host society to utilize regulatory units to control the LDS church.

This is the reason I cited so many passages from the text. This is such a basic part of Bromley's model, and Juliann has yet to acknowledge it. This is why RFM fits the model of a support group for exmembers, not the "oppositional coalition".

by the way, I am bolding certain words not to convey "screaming", but rather in the somewhat vain attempt to help Juliann focus on the items she keeps missing.

She needs to quit using the term "apostate" in connection with Bromley. I know how badly she wants to cling to it, but it's just not accurate in this instance.

Also: I want to urge you again to go take her on on her home turf. It can only reflect well on you. If you get banned, so what? Then you will be able to legitimately say that they booted you out due to their inability to reckon with your well-documented argument.

[_beastie]

I missed this follow up reply:

And they form organizations from which to do that. The internet has democratized the phenonema. Organizations require a career apostate and that career apostate requires a steady supply of new blood to keep them in operation. That creates a situation where apostates have to find niches in order to compete with one another in offering all this "help". Why in the world they see this as an embarrassment and something to deny is beyond me....I am rather proud of the existence of FAIR and the support and backing it gives to believers. Can you imagine us denying that is what we do??

Sigh. I wish I didn't have to keep repeating myself, but until I see some glimmer of recognition in Juliann, I will have to.

Unless you now admit that you are constructing your own model and defining your own terms as you wish, you are still fundamentally missing the meaning of the oppositional coalition in the Bromley model It is not comprised largely of exmembers. That is an exmember support group. It is comprised of different groups joining together, and most of those groups were not ever members of the NRM. They are concerned family members, or theological based groups, or concerned citizens, or whatever. The fact that these different groups even exist attests to the tension between the NRM and the host society. Society, in general, is anxious and concerned about what the NRM may be doing. The book gave so many examples of this, and why society was concerned, it's amazing you still don't grasp this. Then, as a coalition, these groups join together in order to escalate tension between the host society and the NRM in order to influence the host society to CONTROL the NRM through regulatory units.

[_beastie]

She needs to quit using the term "apostate" in connection with Bromley. I know how badly she wants to cling to it, but it's just not accurate in this instance.

Also: I want to urge you again to go take her on on her home turf. It can only reflect well on you. If you get banned, so what? Then you will be able to legitimately say that they booted you out due to their inability to reckon with your well-documented argument.

She can't help herself, scratch. Juliann is enamored of intelligensia and academia, even if she can't quite manage to finish her degree. She believes it is through academia, and, ironically, "the philosophies of men" that the church can armor itself against critics. Her modus operandus is to continually cite scholars to add credence to her statements. The problem is that she so often misunderstands those sources, her use of them is very misleading. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, of course.

Hey, but we have made progress. Did you notice that she is actually backpedaling on Bromley as her primary source? Now it's "other models" and "other scholars" (with no details, of course). She's lost this fight. She will never admit it, and will always reply in snarky, condescending ways, but she's lost and she knows it.

I'm thinking about it (going on MAD) tonight. Each time I consider going back I give myself overnight to consider it. It is just so maddening trying to deal with her, just due to these "issues" already, to try and do so with unfriendly mods breathing down my neck is pretty unappealing.

[_beastie]

I did decide to temporarily return to MAD to address this issue. However, I cannot retrieve my password due to the fact that my email address has changed.

[_Ray A]

I did decide to temporarily return to MAD to address this issue. However, I cannot retrieve my password due to the fact that my email address has changed.

I'm sure the powers that be can help you out. Unless they've changed their minds.

[_Kevin Graham]

Her modus operandus is to continually cite scholars to add credence to her statements. The problem is that she so often misunderstands those sources, her use of them is very misleading.

This is a trend in LDS apologetics that became a huge turn off for me. Kerry Shirts does this too often, and the new guy taking the helm in this dept. is David Bokovoy.

In one of his recent posts he cites an JBL article (available online) and then cites references from within the article separately (as if he stumbled across them separately) in order to stack the deck with citations.

About five years ago JP Holding decimated Kerry Shirts' article that consisted mainly of snippets from textual critics. His purpose was to make the Bible seem like an entirely untrustworthy document, in order to make critics look like hypocrites for criticizing the Book of Mormon for having textual problems.

And now his podcasts ...