Cults - What's in a Name

Panorama:

BBC's Panorama Versus Scientology Panorama

Summary: Panorama (Scientology and Me) is a documentary on Scientology.  The BBC show a version of this documentary on Scientology, while Scientology counters with a film about how the documentary was filmed by the BBC.

Because of the one-sided nature of both videos, I learned more about the character of the filmer than about Scientology itself.  From the Scientology version, it was plain to see that Scientology is just like many other religious with regards to manipulating media by showing only the positives aspects of Scientology.  This is not to say that Scientology is a horrible religion or, from the BBC's position, cult.  It is understandable that no religion would want to point out its negatives.  In fact without overwhelming evidence, most churches will not admit a problem (sometimes not even with overwhelming evidence).  What happens in a religion stays in that religion.  *cough* Catholics *cough*


The BBC's version wasn't much better with controlling bias.  It was amazingly clear (without the Scientology guy pointing it out every chance he could get) that the journalist didn't see Scientology as a religion.  This, however, could be contributed by the journalist's country, Britain.  Here, the British state has already decided that Scientology was not a religion.  The journalist goal seemed to be to determine if Scientology was a dangerous cult, not whether or not it was religion.  Moreover, the journalist didn't take into account the feelings of the members of Scientology with his usage of cult in the negative imagery.  How would you like for someone to refer to your religion as a cult, whether it is one or not?  Think, for a moment, the shoes of the Scientologists.  Some how I don't think you would enjoy someone calling your religion a cult with its negative meaning in popular culture.  Thus, to continue to call the religion a cult to the members was not a neutral approach to filming this documentary.  It no surprise that the Scientology response was aggressive and provocative.

Brainwashing & Cults:

There was two repetitive theme throughout the Scientology response to BBC's Panorama.  The first one being the idea that Scientology brainwashes its member.  I thought that my Sociology professor had one the subject of religions brainwashing its members deserves repeating here.  

"If these religions are so good at brain washing its members, then why don't they attract many members and why do they have such a low retention rate?"

I would say that Scientology does 'brainwash', but so does every other religion and for that matter country.  The only difference that I find is the degree to which they socialize (brainwash).  I don't know the rituals or practices of Scientology, so I can't put into perspective the degree of brainwashing that Scientology does with comparison to other religions.  I'd just like to point my reader to the documentary "Jesus Camp".  Some how I think Scientology would be a little less intense.


The second theme involved the usage of cult to describe Scientology.  When labeling one needs a reference.  In this case the reference for normal is a functional society, while abnormal is dysfunctional society, where normal is considered here as the social norm.  The problem with this definition of normal versus abnormal is the fact that not all abnormal things are dysfunctional.  A good example here is polygamy, which is abnormal in today's society.  However, the practice still survives today and has for centuries.  How can something that has survived for centuries by dysfunctional?  After all, dysfunctional things are unstable, and unstable things go toward the stable position naturally.  I think that the idea of abnormal is more of something being dangerous the social norm.  Abnormal 50+ years ago was the idea of women working.  It was dangerous to the social norm.  It would change the very way people think.  Cults are similar here.  They are dangerous to mainstream religion, but that doesn't make them dangerous to the populous.  They could even have a positive effect.

This brings me to the creation of religions.  When Judaism was first created, it was a cult.  Today, no one would openly call Judaism a cult.  Maybe incorrect or outdated, but not a cult.  The same can be said of Christianity, both Catholicism from Judaism and Protestantism from Catholicism.  

What is a Cult?

So far, I've used the word cult, but I have yet to define it.  There have been many definitions of cult through out the year.  From Becker:

A “cult” is a loose association of persons sharing a private and eclectic religion that originated out of popular devotions to holy men or holy shrines. They are individualistic in orientation with little in the way of set doctrine and that they were inclusive, pluralistic, and loose in their membership. Cults were often in tense relationships with their broader religious environments since they “threatened” dominant religious authorities and were, as a result, often persecuted because of their perceived threat to the religious social order (Systematic Sociology, 1932).

To Stark and Bainbridge:

"Cults” were either new or transplanted religious groups or movements which were in a tense relationship with the broader social and religious environment (The Future of Religion, 1985).

The common component of both of these definition that Panorama does not take into account is religion.  In both definitions, cult is always considered a religion.  The BBC journalist is not using cult in this way (since he don't believe Scientology to be a religion).  The Scientology spokespersons also don't use the definition of cult to their advantage.  I would have been impressed if Scientology had said, "Yes, we can be considered a cult because of our tense relationship with mainstream religion as shown be Britain not approving Scientology as a religion." or something like that.  However, even I can see that editing could make that into something else entirely.


Now that we are getting into typologising religion, let's consider the Stark and Bainbridge's definitions for church, sect, and denomination:

“churches” are organizations which dominate society, “denominations” are organizations which accommodate to society, and “sects” are schisms within churches or denominations which attempt to purify the church or denomination and restore it to its “original” primitive pristine form  (The Future of Religion, 1985).

What says that a religion can be only one of these?  Does this make the definitions too flexible?  We as human are hard to catalog.  When we are young we can be in one category, but as we grow and mature so does that label.  A child can be nerdy, but in the teen years become athletic.  While a young fit man in his twenty, but lazy and fat in his forties.  The same principle applies here.  Who says a religion cannot be all of these as time and place varies?  If humans are this way, and humans create religion, then it logically follows that religion can also have more than one category.  Whether is helps individuals is another matter completely.  An example of this is any religion from Asia in America.

Buddhism, Hinduism, Yogis
It doesn't matter which Asian religion we are talking about.  They all could be considered cults at the time of their founding in America.  The different Yoga styles, however, have a more every day place in American society.  One will find a devote Catholic who practices a style of yoga, or an Evangelical who might have yoga class once a week.  This is an example of the difference between popular religion and official religion.  One doesn't really consider Yoga as a religion.  

Unification Church 

The Unification Church, or Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, founded in Korea, and like the Buddhism and Hinduism can be considered a cult upon it's introduction to American society.  Despite being Christian in origin, founder Sun Myung Moon's interpretation of both old and new testament make it farther from traditional Christianity than the Latter Day Saints.  Moon's interpretation on original sin in Divine Principle places the Unification Church firmly in the cult category in America for several years to come.  In fact, the Unification Church has been accused of brainwashing just like many other cults in spite of the high drop-out rates and low interest.  The future of the Unification Church is still uncertain as Moon still lives.  It will be interesting to see the progression of this religion.  Will it be able to transition from a cult to a church?

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp

Summary: Jesus Camp follows several children going to a summer Evangelical camp and the camp leader.  It includes Evangelical ideas of global warming and the education of the homeschooled children.  The watcher observes several sermons during and before the camp, however, the majority of the movie is the reactions of the children to the sermons and the ideology of the speaker.

The beginning of the movie sets the tone as the Pentecostal children minister gives a sermon and mentions American's as being to 'fat and lazy' when she herself could be considered obese.  From here the minister continues to say several hypocritical comments.

This Means War

The children minister's main goal with her conferences, sermons, and camps were to 'train' children in the way of the lord.  The opening scenes of the conference the children minister held and the camp demonstration this with the children performing a war dance including the use of face paint.  The children minister believed that children were the future.  The minister wanted to train the children as the Muslim train their children in religious practices.  In fact many, if not all, religion have some form of training of children with some being more extreme then others.  However, this minister wanted to train the children to the point that they would lay down their life for Christ similar to Muslim suicide bombers.  This brings the Crusades to mind, where war was waged in the name of the lord.  The fact that the children saw themselves as part of God's army makes me think that the minister was some what successful.  The children saw themselves as warriors, peace warriors, and saw martyrdom as being 'cool'.

Evangelical Children

In the Evangelical belief, to be saved one must experience a born-again baptism.

43% [Evangelicals] born-again before age of 13

After watching this documentary, I can easily believe this statistic.  Moreover,

75% of homeschooled children are Evangelical

This brings about the question of education among the Evangelical, who have a strong belief in creationism.  One of the children in that this documentary follows happens to be one such homeschooled Evangelical.  We observe one of his lessons from his mother with highlights explaining how there is no global warming occurring and the fallacies of evolution.  This particular scene starts off with the boy finishing watching a Christian cartoon, then having lessons with his mother about the global warming and then evolution.  Here, anyone familiar with the melting of the polar ice caps and the change in ocean currents would have pity for the child's one-sided education.  Moreover, it reminded me of Sarah Palin who at first said there was no such thing as global warming during her campaign as vice president during 2008 elections.  During that time, I couldn't understand how she could have come up with that conclusion.  Now, I see the influence of her religion on her knowledge.  The evolution discussion, however, was far more one-sided bordering on the side of hate for the theory.

"...[creationism] is the only possible answer to all the questions..."

One of the mothers reasons for fallacy of evolution was that "....science doesn't prove anything...".  It's interesting to note that she is saying this while living in a house with all the conveniences of science.  

There is also a sense of nationalism to God being taught as well.  Another child is shown plaguing allegiance to the Christian through the Christian Flag.  The philosophy of there being 'two kinds of people in the world: those that love Christ and those who do not' as gives support to this group of Evangelicals nationalistic behavior.

Camp

The location of the camp is Devil's Lake, and no matter how you look at it this must have been intentional.  I as the viewer only wishes to understand why anyone would want to have a Christian camp at Devil's Lake.  More notable was camp sermons.  From the few scenes we got from the other activities, the camp seemed to be filled with enjoyable activities.  In the sermons however, there wasn't a smile in the crowd, and at times there was crying.  From the few segments we were able to watch, the sermons appeared to be a form a emotional abuse.  Popular fictions like Harry Potter were condemn because of the use of sorcery.  The teaching of pro-life were established without consideration of all sides of the issue with abortion.  I am in no way encouraging abortions.  However, I am a strong supporter of knowledge.  Without knowledge, important decision cannot be intelligently made.  

Popular versus Official - Evangelical

The camp itself doesn't appear to be part of the mainstream religion of Evangelical, but more of a popular religion.  Although the camp is very organized, some of the rhetoric is inconsistent.  There is also an aspect of ethnocentric with both the Christian flag and the belief that there are 'dead churches'.

Religion as a Meaning System

Religion as a Meaning System 

At the center of functionalist definitions of religion is the assertion that religion is a meaning system.

This definition, however, is to broad.  It would be more accurate to say that there are several types of meaning systems and religion is one of those meaning system.  The difference is syntax.  In geometry (although I'm sure not many want to go back to those years) we learned that every rectangle was a parallelogram but not every parallelogram was a rectangle.  The principle is the same here.  If every meaning system was a religion then everything we do, believe in, support, would be considered an action of religious participation.

On that notation we can now consider Nationalism.  Nationalism is a meaning system.  It can bring a country together in times of hardship, take the Revolutionary War in American history or the events of 9-11 for examples.  During world cups around the world, countries come together to support their teams.  They preform rituals.  It could even be said that the teams are worshiped, praised.  Does this sound like the beginning of a religion?

For many social scientists meaning systems like religion, create, manufacture, and recreate human identities and create and recreate human groups and communities including families, cliques, enclaves, regions, nations, and a sense of global community through shared meanings, shared cultural interactions, and shared perspectives. 

Can it not be said that Nationalism creates human identities on a large scale?  

Another interesting idea is atheism as a meaning system.

If, on the other hand, one defines religion in functional terms seeing religion as one form or type of meaning system that gives meaning to people’s lives then atheism can be viewed as a religion or better a meaning system.

This is an example of how the functional definition of religion as a meaning system is to broad.  I find it hard to even call atheism a type of meaning system.  It does not give meaning to the world around it in the say terms as traditional religion or even nationalism.  It is more that with atheism is almost always science.  

Science is a meaning system.  In fact, science could be called a religion as well.  There is a lot of blind faith, known truths, that one must believe are true without doing the calculations oneself (for you would need many a life-times to prove all that has already been proven).  It is a progressive religion that changes with society and the increasing knowledge of the world and universe.  If there is an unanswered question in this world, like black holes and dark matter, then scientist will say the answer can be found in science, but we just don't have the technology yet to prove it.  This is faith.  It gives comfort and meaning to the world without always giving answers.

Religion and the Individual

Humans have two types of identities: social identity and self-identity. Social identity is what other people attribute to someone. Self-identity is the process of self-development through which we formulate a unique sense of self and a sense of our relationship to the world. 

Religion and Age

I find the best examples of religion and age come from the Children of God and the Boston Church of Christ religions.  Both religions targeted young adults, those right out of college or those currently in college.  They targeted an age of discover for human self-identity.  They gave out of work colleges students something to do and a place in the world.  The Children of God used the age they were in (a time of sex and drugs) to their advantage.  Their idea of free sex did well in that time period.  The Boston Church of Christ gave an intense support system to their members.  At a time when the young adults were far from home (most of the time for the first time in their lives), the Boston Church of Christ gave emotional support.  It is no wonder they did well with recruiting.  It should be noted that despite high recruitment rates they also had low retention rates.  The Children of God's type of living arrangements made it hard to leave the church and remain financially stable.

Religion, Ethnicity, and Race

They found, in other words, that American Christianity remains the most segregated institution in the US today just as it was in 1963 when the Reverend Martin Luther King remarked that Sunday beginning at 11 am was the most segregated hour in the United States. ("Hues in the Pews: Racially Mixed Churches an Illusive Goal", Christian Century, 28 February 2008, http://hirr.hartsem.edu/cong/articles_huesinthepews.html).

The British-Israelism and Christian Identity are probable some of the most extreme christian religious groups with regards to religion and race.  The British-Israel rationalized that they were descendants of Israel.

According to British-Israel theology, the true inheritors of the birthright and name of Israel can  be found today as the 'white, English-speaking peoples'. 

This rationale can only lead to race superiority.  Although the British-Israelism racial chauvinism was mostly covert, the Christian Identity another version of the British-Israelism was anything but covert.  The Christian Identity grow out of the face of social changes and a need to preserve the status quo.  Groups like the Ku Klux Klan held similar beliefs.  I'm sure I don't need to elaborate to get my point across.