New Religions As Global Cultures

Making The Human Sacred

Irving Hexham, Karla Poewe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429978326
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Although the Great Anti-Cult Crusade links new religious movements to dangerous cults, brainwashing, and the need for deprogramming, Karla Poewe and Irving Hexham argue that many cults are the product of a dynamic interaction between folk religions and the teachings of traditional world religions. Drawing on examples from Africa, the United States, Asia, and Europe, they suggest that few new religions are really new. Most draw on rich, if localized, cultural traditions that are shaped anew by the influence of technological change and international linkages. With the widespread loss of belief in biblical mythology in the nineteenth century, new mythologies based on science and elements derived from various non-Western religious traditions emerged, leading to the growth and popularity of new religions and cults.

1
The Great Anti-cult Crusade

Today, the kingdom of the cults stretches throughout the world.

Walter Martin (1976:15)

In the past twenty years, the destructive cult phenomenon has mushroomed into a problem of tremendous social and political importance.

Steven Hassan (1990:36)

Throughout the world numerous news reports reflect public concern about "cults." These reports give rise to sometimes puzzling questions: Why do people join cults? Are people brainwashed, or do they make free choices? Are cults sinister groups? How should responsible people respond to cult members? Is it possible to carry on a meaningful discussion with cult members, or must we resort to coercive deprogramming?

Most of us have at one time or another met someone who has joined a new religion. Often it seems impossible to have a reasonable conversation with that person. Faced with probing questions, Jehovah's Witnesses, members of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (popularly known as Moonies), and converts to many other groups seem to give stock answers and don't appear to take seriously questions that are important to outsiders. Cult members may use in-group jargon unintelligible to the rest of us, and when they speak plain English they don't seem to use our language in quite the same way we do.

In this chapter we examine the creation of the public image of contemporary religious movements as "dangerous cults." We expose the poor scholarship and exaggerated claims that have prevented a balanced understanding of such movements. Finally, we caution that although most contemporary religious movements are genuinely harmless, it is unwise to underestimate either the influence or the potential danger of seemingly insignificant groups.

“Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! A-Crusading We Will Go!”

This book deals with cults or, more accurately, contemporary religious movements. By "contemporary religious movements," we mean religions that have gained notoriety during the past twenty-five years. Many of these groups have long historical roots; others emerged in the nineteenth century Some are genuinely new religions. Many more are revitalization movements that seek to breathe life into ancient traditions. Although their critics label them "cults," scholars usually call them "new religious movements."

As we shall see, the names used to identify various types of religious movements are not very satisfactory and need to be redefined. In Chapter 2 we discuss the origins of terms like "church," "sect," and "cult," enabling us to provide working definitions. Later, in Chapters 8 and 9, we discuss the uniqueness of genuinely new religious movements. But before we continue, we need to understand why the word "cult" has such negative connotations.

There can be little doubt that one of the main sources for negative images of contemporary movements is the abundance of books that supposedly expose cults. We must therefore examine some popular anti-cult literature and recognize the existence of what some writers call "the anti-cult movement" (Shupe and Bromley 1980, 1981; Bromley and Richardson 1983).

Since the 1970s a seemingly endless torrent of personal testimonies claiming to expose life in cults has poured forth from numerous presses. These books, which range from enlightening accounts of personal growth to sensational claims about human sacrifice and bestiality, have added an immediacy to what might otherwise be dull polemics. The sheer volume of popular anti-cult literature is an important factor in shaping public attitudes to contemporary religions in secular society.

The Importance of van Baalen

One of the first popular writers to use the term "cult" was Jan Karel van Baalen in his best-selling text The Chaos of the Cults (1938). A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church, van Baalen was a traditional Calvinist pastor with an excellent education in theology and church history. As a result, he approached the topic of contemporary religions, which he called "cults," from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy as defined by the historic Calvinist creeds.

Although van Baalen was devastating in his theological criticism of various groups, he made an effort to be scrupulously fair. His objections were doctrinal, not personal or vindictive. For him, cult membership was an issue of theology and biblical exposition. Thus even though he totally rejected the beliefs of numerous groups, he began his book by telling readers, "We can learn from cultists, not only noting what not to believe, but also bearing in mind that 'the cults are the unpaid bills of the Church'" (van Baalen 1956:14).

Using this idea of cults as "the unpaid bills of the Church," van Baalen sought to explain the rise of new religions in terms of the failure of established churches. In doing so he warned his readers, "Above all, never . .. suspect the cultist of dishonesty or mercenary motives" (van Baalen 1956:366). After making these and a number of related points, he concluded his advice by saying, "Combating cults is not a dunce's task" (van Baalen 1956:369). This reasoned approach is very different from what followed.

Walter Martin’s Ad Hominem Arguments

More than anyone else, Walter R. Martin shaped modern attitudes to contemporary religions. His early books dealt with specific groups such as the Seventh-Day Adventists, whom he defended, and the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, whom he attacked. In 1965 Martin published his most successful book, The Kingdom of the Cults, which sold millions of copies.

What makes this book different from van Baalen's, on which it seems to have been modeled, is the emphasis on the personal failings of cult leaders and their use of "deception" to attract converts. Martin begins reasonably enough by paying lip service to van Baalen's maxim that "cults are the unpaid bills of the Church." But he quickly adds, "They are this and more" (Martin 1976:13). With this "more," Martin departs from van Baalen's intellectual critique.

To prove his point, Martin devotes a chapter to what he calls "the psychological structure of cultism" (Martin 1976:24–33). In the remainder of his book, Martin outlines the history and beliefs of such groups as the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Christian Scientists. He concludes his work with a chapter significantly entitled "The Road to Recovery" (Martin 1976:352–359), in which he outlines his plans for research, propaganda, and the mobilization of Christian resources to counter cults. In many ways he met these aims by establishing the Christian Research Institute.

A good example of Martin's technique can be seen in his discussion of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Instead of concentrating on theological differences between the Witnesses and traditional Christianity, Martin makes a concerted effort to prove that the founders of the movement were "hypocrites" and rogues. This allows him to argue that no one knowingly follows a hypocrite or rogue (Martin 1976:35–42). Central to his case against the Witnesses are his claims that the founder, Charles Taze Russell, was divorced, that he called himself a "pastor" though he wasn't ordained by an established church, and that he claimed to be better educated than he actually was (Martin 1976:35, 39–40).

The irony is that Martin himself was divorced not once but twice. He was charged with "cruelty" in his first divorce and with "extreme mental and physical cruelty" in the second divorce (Brown and Brown 1986:5, 196). And Martin's own ordination was highly questionable: After his first remarriage in 1953, his ordination was revoked and does not seem to have been renewed by another church despite his insistence that it had (Brown and Brown 1986:7–18). Further, he claimed to hold a doctorate at least ten years before he obtained a rather dubious degree from an unaccredited correspondence school. It is also true that he consistently misled his readers about his academic qualifications (Brown and Brown 1986:31–53).

What Martin's personal history shows is that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. We need to be very careful before accepting charges against new religions by people who earn their living denouncing such groups. Even if everything Martin said about the personal lives of some founders of contemporary religions were true, this would not prove their teachings wrong. He indulged in what philosophers call ad hominem arguments, which are directed against the person rather than the person's ideas.

The New Age Crusade¹

The next step in the development of public attitudes toward new religions can be traced to the publications of Constance Cumbey (1983) and Dave Hunt (Hunt and McMahon 1983), who "awoke" people to the existence of the New Age movement, arguing that a vast conspiracy existed to create a new world religion. Following the success of these works, an entire anti-cult literature arose. But few of these books really add to our knowledge of new religions or why people are attracted to them. If we review such works, several serious shortcomings become clear:

First, there is a tendency among anti-cult writers to misuse footnotes. Many authors use quotations from prominent experts to lend authority rather than to convey information. Such usage of authorities is fallacious. But the abuse goes even further: A surprising number of writers seem to think that footnotes in and of themselves make a work scholarly when of course it is the quality of the footnotes that really matters. Notes are intended to direct readers to the sources of an author's argument so that readers can check the truth of the author's interpretation for themselves.

For instance, it is common practice for authors of anti-cult books simply to cite a secondary source rather than the primary source. Thus in What Is the New Age? A Detailed Candid Look at This Fast Growing Movement, instead of quoting directly from the Confessions of Saint Augustine, Michael Cole cites Saint Augustine of Hippo "as quoted" in The History of Christianity (Cole et al. 1990:29; 199, n. 1). Other contributors to that book repeatedly indulge in the same technique (e.g., Cole et al. 1990:44; 45, n. 10; 200, n. 4). It never seems to occur to these writers that the secondary sources they are using may have misquoted the authorities. Such lack of care makes their work of dubious value.

Second, many authors accept the fantastic claims of New Age advocates far too easily. Thus Gary North is prepared to believe in the reality of phenomena such as Kirlian photography, which claims to capture the "human aura" on film (North 1988:98–101). He is equally credulous about "spontaneous human combustion" (North 1988:52–56) and a whole range of other occult phenomena that ought to be treated with the utmost skepticism. In other words, North wants to be critical of New Age religions yet uncritically accepts many of their more fantastic claims. Arleen J. Watkins and William S. Bickel show Kirlian photography to be a natural and nonoccult phenomenon (Watkins and Bickel 1986). Joe Nickell and John E Fischer examine and dismiss a number of cases of so-called human combustion (Nickell and Fischer 1987). Yet most anti-cult writers never discuss such works, which they seem to regard as potentially damaging to their own religious beliefs.

Third, many authors create guilt by association. Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon, for example, say, "Since reincarnation is a belief basic to witchcraft, it is not surprising that it is amoral" (Hunt and McMahon 1988:213). Belief in reincarnation may be faulted for many reasons, but it is not necessarily "amoral" or linked to witchcraft. Nor should witchcraft automatically be associated with sorcery and evil.

Anti-cult Literature: A Critique of the Critiques

Another major problem with critiques of new religions is a strong tendency toward reductionism. For example, Douglas Groothuis explains New Age thought under the headings

1. All is One
2. All is God
3. Humanity is God
4. A Change in Consciousness
5. All Religions Are One
6. Cosmic Evolutionary Optimism (Groothuis 1986:18–31).

These ideas, which boil down to monism, pantheism, relativism, and evolutionary philosophy, are central to many critiques (Hoyt 1987:248–255; Miller 1989:17) of New Age thought. Yet despite the importance these authors place on the concepts they use to identify various ideas, few take the time to adequately define their terms.

Monism, for example, is loosely used as a bogey word. No one seems to realize that even Christianity can be seen as a form of monism because it claims all things are created by one being: God. The orthodox Calvinist Gordon H. Clark wrote "actually Christianity is more successfully monistic than Neoplatonism was. God alone is the eternal substance, the independent principle; apart from the creation of the world nothing exists besides him" (Clark 1957:231).

Thus, in taking a strong stand against the use of certain words, anti-cult writers do not seem to recognize that many of the alternatives they prefer are equally problematic. This is a particular difficulty for orthodox Christian writers. In rejecting monism, for example, many writers identify Christianity with pluralism. In doing so, they fail to recognize that Bertrand Russell promoted pluralism in his rejection of Christianity, embracing pluralism because "the universe is all spots and jumps, without unity, without continuity, without coherence or orderliness" (Russell 1931:98). Is this what Christians mean by "pluralism"?

Finally, along with a tendency to intellectual reductionism goes the desire to force opponents into a preconceived theoretical framework. This is most clearly seen in Clark and Geisler's Apologetics in the New Age (1990). In the book's introduction, the reader is told, "We will explore the basic world view of pantheism, examining the views of its greatest defenders. .. . Pantheism is a multiform world view that needs to be understood and evaluated. This is especially true in its New Age manifestations" (Clark and Geisler 1990:14). The authors then devote five chapters to the works of D. T. Suzuki, Śankara, Radhakrishnan, Plotinus, and Baruch Spinoza, who, Clark and Geisler claim, contributed to the creation of New Age thought. The problem is that with the exception of Spinoza it is highly debatable whether any of these thinkers was a pantheist.

Clark and Geisler are correct when they see pantheism as a central tenet of much popular New Age thinking. Where they go wrong is in projecting an essentially modern view onto writers of the past and in identifying pantheism with religious traditions that contain pantheistic elements but are not necessarily pantheistic. The central teachings of these thinkers, other than Spinoza, certainly do not fit Clark and Geisler's definition of "pantheism." Surprisingly, the auth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 The Great Anti-cult Crusade
• 2 From Cults to New Religions and Global Culture
• 3 New Religions as Global Cultures
• 4 New Religions and Primal Experiences
• 5 Myths and Mythological Fragments
• 6 Yogic and Abramic Religions
• 7 The Membership Process
• 8 New Religions: New Visions
• 9 How Dangerous Are New Religions?
• Bibliography
• About the Book and Authors
• Index