Cultishness...

[_RayAgostini]

Yes, that's true. But, on the other hand, it's problematic for apologists to totally dismiss the term "cult," because that's basically what scholars are saying when they use terminology like "harmful NRM," or "authoritarian NRM." I remember that Juliann used to be constantly touting this book on apostasy from NRMs--it was a book edited by a guy named Bromley, If I recall correctly. Juliann was using it to forward her theory about how all LDS apostate "exit narratives" are the same, how they all follow a cookie-cutter pattern and whatnot. My sense was that she was seriously misrepresenting the scholarship. So you can imagine her chagrin when somebody--I think it was Kevin Graham--emailed this guy (or one of the other authors from the book) and asked him about what Juliann was up to. The guy was 100% sympathetic with the apostates! His email, which Kevin posted, said something like, "These people are in pain and deserve our sympathy." In any case, the point of the book--or the portion of it that I read, anyhow--was that apostates from especially problematic NRMs ("cults," if you will) tend to be way more hostile, angry, and proactive in voicing their discontent. Juliann wanted to use this scholarship to show that Mormon apostates are rage-fueled mental basketcases, but what she neglected to say is that the scholarly framework attributes this to the degree to which the NRM is authoritarian and/or "cultish." (And the text didn't use the word "cult," btw--they framed it instead in terms of how "outsider-ish" the NRM is. I.e., if it's way outside of mainstream norms, it is more likely to produce these especially hostile apostates.)

I've been through all of that here and on MAD when it was the FAIRboard. They made beastie a pundit so she could argue her cases with Brant and also against Juliann in the Pundit's Forum. I'm pretty sure all those discussions are now gone. If I recall correctly, I agreed more with beastie about Bromley, but I did agree with Juliann on some points. I can agree that Mormonism does produce "especially hostile apostates" (see this board for the evidence. lol), and that it's largely due to "authoritarianism". That's hard to dispute.

[_Mercury]

Public Relations


OK, the scientology asshats have it too....hmmmm

[_maklelan]

Hold on thar young Maklekan ...

I hold that "cult" is not a well-defined enough category to be any use in talking about religions. Slapping on the label "cult" proves nothing.

But that does not mean that there are no religious movements that can (without scare quotes) be dangerous to the people who join them, or which exercise a worryingly high degree of control over the minds of their members.

Obviously there are religious groups that can be dangerous to their members, but the types of definitions that people like Hassan develop are fallacious, reductive, and polemical. Additionally, I side with the modern academic consensus that the notion of "mind control" as used by anti- and counter-cultists does not exist. There is group think, propaganda, and persuasion, but that no more constitutes "mind control" than do the majority of television commercials today.

It's just that each case has to be judged on its merits.

Yes, and slapping a label on a group, whether that label is the polemical "cult" or the more contemporary "NRM" does not get one any closer to a judgment. My concern is with the notion that the label serves as a judgment. That's how the word "cult" is used. People who use "New Religious Movement" are generally (though not always) avoiding such a rush to judgment.

[_maklelan]

NRM is just a PC term for "cult".

I disagree. A "cult" is a bad and dangerous thing from which people need to be saved, and people who use the term generally think it can be defined according to a shortlist of necessary and sufficient features (which neglects contemporary academic approaches to categorization to begin with). A New Religious Movement is just a new religious movement. Many of the religions labelled "cult" are described as NRMs, but not all NRMs would qualify as "cults," even by the more broad definitions anti- and counter-cultists can concoct.

Scholars studying the sociology of religion have almost unanimously adopted this term as a neutral alternative to the word cult.

In addition to a vastly different approach to studying the kinds of religions previously labeled "cults." This is not a formal equivalence, it's a different methodology and a different category. Looking at the rest of the Wikipedia article (as much as it pains me to read Wikipedia), you'll find they rather undermine your assumption:

Although there is no one criterion or set of criteria for describing a group as a "new religious movement," use of the term usually requires that the group be both of recent origin and different from existing religions.

In other words, the category is not just an attempt to corral all the religions I think are icky into a little box that I can then put in the corner. It's just a category for new religious movements.

It's probably "neutral" in the sense that they're trying to understand them better, and avoid labeling them all in one basket.

No, it's neutral in the sense that it's not just the gathering up of religions I don't like.

[_RayAgostini]

Yes, and slapping a label on a group, whether that label is the polemical "cult" or the more contemporary "NRM" does not get one any closer to a judgment. My concern is with the notion that the label serves as a judgment. That's how the word "cult" is used. People who use "New Religious Movement" are generally (though not always) avoiding such a rush to judgment.

In the 1st century, Christianity would have been classed as a "New Religious Movement", or to put it more bluntly, a "cult". The problem here is that the "established religious orthodoxies" seem to be dominating the conversation. Anything that comes after them is a "new religious movement", and ought to be discredited, on the grounds that they "depart from the orthodoxy". They're minors who ought to be scrutinised against "the traditions of men". So in my view, they all start with false premises.

I just saw your post previous to me posting this, about my "assumptions", but I'll nevertheless go ahead and post this.

[_RayAgostini]

I disagree. A "cult" is a bad and dangerous thing from which people need to be saved, and people who use the term generally think it can be defined according to a shortlist of necessary and sufficient features (which neglects contemporary academic approaches to categorization to begin with). A New Religious Movement is just a new religious movement. Many of the religions labelled "cult" are described as NRMs, but not all NRMs would qualify as "cults," even by the more broad definitions anti- and counter-cultists can concoct.

Isn't that what I said about not putting them all into the same basket? Nevertheless, carry on.

[_maklelan]

Yes, that's true. But, on the other hand, it's problematic for apologists to totally dismiss the term "cult," because that's basically what scholars are saying when they use terminology like "harmful NRM," or "authoritarian NRM."

I disagree. The referents may be the same, but the semantic fields of both terms, as well as their rhetorical usage, are quite distinct.

I remember that Juliann used to be constantly touting this book on apostasy from NRMs--it was a book edited by a guy named Bromley, If I recall correctly. Juliann was using it to forward her theory about how all LDS apostate "exit narratives" are the same, how they all follow a cookie-cutter pattern and whatnot. My sense was that she was seriously misrepresenting the scholarship. So you can imagine her chagrin when somebody--I think it was Kevin Graham--emailed this guy (or one of the other authors from the book) and asked him about what Juliann was up to. The guy was 100% sympathetic with the apostates! His email, which Kevin posted, said something like, "These people are in pain and deserve our sympathy." In any case, the point of the book--or the portion of it that I read, anyhow--was that apostates from especially problematic NRMs ("cults," if you will) tend to be way more hostile, angry, and proactive in voicing their discontent. Juliann wanted to use this scholarship to show that Mormon apostates are rage-fueled mental basketcases, but what she neglected to say is that the scholarly framework attributes this to the degree to which the NRM is authoritarian and/or "cultish." (And the text didn't use the word "cult," btw--they framed it instead in terms of how "outsider-ish" the NRM is. I.e., if it's way outside of mainstream norms, it is more likely to produce these especially hostile apostates.)

Anyone should have sympathy for people struggling with these events and decisions. There's no need to polemicize any side of the discussion. Your description of the paper does not really match the scholarship, though, and I don't think Mormonism really fits the types of groups discussed by Bromley and others. Interestingly, the vast majority of the research I've seen demonstrates a correlation between exit narrative hostility and exposure to anti-cult socialization. See, for example, James R. Lewis, "Apostates and the Legitimation of Repression: Some Historical and Empirical Perspectives on the Cult Controversy," Sociologicai Analysis 49.4 (1989): 386–96; Massimo Introvigne, "Defectors, Ordinary Leave-takers, and Apostates: A Quantitative Study of Former Members of New Acropolis in France," Nova Religio 3.1 (1999): 83-99.

[_maklelan]

In the 1st century, Christianity would have been classed as a "New Religious Movement", or to put it more bluntly, a "cult".

You're still trying to insist on a formal equivalence between these terms when it's not there. "Cult" meant something entirely different back then, as well.

The problem here is that the "established religious orthodoxies" seem to be dominating the conversation. Anything that comes after them is a "new religious movement", and ought to be discredited, on the grounds that they "depart from the orthodoxy". They're minors who ought to be scrutinised against "the traditions of men". So in my view, they all start with false premises.

Now we're discussing the Christian counter-cult movement instead of the secular anti-cult movement. The latter does not necessarily have anything to do with established religious orthodoxies.

I just saw your post previous to me posting this, about my "assumptions", but I'll nevertheless go ahead and post this.

Ok.

[_RayAgostini]

See, for example, James R. Lewis, "Apostates and the Legitimation of Repression: Some Historical and Empirical Perspectives on the Cult Controversy," Sociologicai Analysis 49.4 (1989): 386–96; Massimo Introvigne, "Defectors, Ordinary Leave-takers, and Apostates: A Quantitative Study of Former Members of New Acropolis in France," Nova Religio 3.1 (1999): 83-99.

I think this is worth some attention:

Apostasy in New Religious Movements:

"The apostate is generally in need of self-justification. He seeks to reconstruct his own past, to excuse his former affiliations, and to blame those who were formerly his closest associates. Not uncommonly the apostate learns to rehearse an 'atrocity story' to explain how, by manipulation, trickery, coercion, or deceit, he was induced to join or to remain within an organization that he now forswears and condemns."

Bryan Wilson, The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism

"Others may ask, if the group is as transparently evil as he now contends, why did he espouse its cause in the first place? In the process of trying to explain his own seduction and to confirm the worst fears about the group, the apostate is likely to paint a caricature of the group that is shaped more by his current role as apostate than by his actual experience in the group."

David Bromley, Anson Shupe, and J.C. Ventimiglia, The Role of Anecdotal Atrocities in the Social Construction of Evil," in Bromley and Richardson, Brainwashing Deprogramming Controversy, p. 156

"Most former members do not become apostates. They remain — in sociological terms suggested by David Bromley and others — "defectors" (members who somewhat regret having left an organization they still perceive in largely positive terms), or "ordinary leave takers" with mixed feeling about their former affiliation. However ordinary leave takers (and, to some extent, defectors) remain socially invisible, insofar as they do not like or care to discuss their genuine representatives of the former members. In fact, quantitative research shows that even in extremely controversial groups, apostates normally represent less than 15% of former members."

Massimo Introvigne, Religious Liberty in Europe: Apostate

"Neither the objective sociological researcher nor the court of law can readily regard the apostate as a creditable or reliable source of evidence. He must always be seen as one whose personal history predisposes him to bias with respect to both his previous religious commitment and affiliations, the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim but subsequently to have become a redeemed crusader. As various instances have indicated, he is likely to be suggestible and ready to enlarge or embellish his grievances to satisfy that species of journalist whose interest is more in sensational copy than in a objective statement of the truth."

Bryan R. Wilson, Apostates and New Religious Movements

The "leave-taker" who actively and openly opposes Mormonism, I think can justifiably be called an anti-Mormon.

[_Drifting]

Thinking about this, whether an organization is a cult or not seems to largely depend on an individuals mental strength and fortitude in handling the aspects of that organization in relation to their own life and mental well being.

What I mean by that is it seems to me that an organization, such as the Church, can indeed be a cult to some members but not to others. Depending on their resilience and ability to self manage.