Report on AFF's 2000 Annual Conference: Cults & The Millennium Dumas Bay Centre Federal Way, Washington April 27-29, 2000 By R. E. Schecter, Ph.D. Editor, The Cult Observer AFF will hold its 2001 Annual Conference May 4-5 in the New York area. There will be preconference workshops for families, ex-members, and mental health professionals on Thursday, May 3rd. Hold these dates in your calendar. Details will be available late in the summer. It is a fact universally acknowledged that conferences are excuses for playing hooky after one or two pro forma appearances at scheduled lectures. This conference was the exception: too many excellent, valuable, and (unfortunately) simultaneous lectures and discussion groups forced Draconian choices on most of us. Even time-out to stroll the beautiful grounds of the Dumas Bay Center - amidst lushly blossoming spring vegetation, with views across Puget Sound to the snow-capped mountains of the Olympic Peninsula -had to be curtailed lest something vital be missed. Degrees of "Influence" AFF president Herbert Rosedale opened the conference with a heartwarming tribute to John G. Clark, M.D., AFF's Founding Scholar. Then followed, for this observer, University of California Santa Clara law professor Alan Scheflin's consideration of "The Outer Limits of Influence." Prof. Scheflin, who said that "freedom of mind" is better served by AFF than by any other organization, stressed that not all "influence" is "undue." Ethical therapy by professionals has done a great deal to help the cult injured, he said, and voiced anger at members of his own profession for attacking therapists wholesale, lumping the good with those who exercised undue, cultic influence on patients and clients. Prof. Scheflin said that AFF must continue to lead the way in giving mind control theory and therapy legitimacy through articles in scholarly journals and other peer reviewed publications. This is especially necessary, he suggested, because organizations like the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association fail to support their own members working in the cult field. He said that AFF studies in the areas of history, data collection, and clinical reporting have all helped validate theories developed by AFF, its professional associates, and kindred scholars. Getting Help In the evening I attended a particularly enjoyable, wide-ranging session, "Getting Help," with social work agency administrator, William Goldberg, Dr. Margaret Singer, exit counselor and AFF web page director, Patrick Ryan, exit counselor Jerry Whitfield and social worker/counselor Livia Bardin. Regarding the "new" Cult Awareness Network - now controlled, after a bankruptcy proceeding, by people associated with Scientology - an audience member said that when a caller to CAN asks, "Is Scientology a cult?", the answer is, "Of course not." Margaret Singer, on lack of take-over management, or the "Hitler Jugend" types take over. When asked why the government and law are so passive even when the elderly are taken in by "travelers" who clean out their bank balances, for example, she replied, "There's a tremendous bias in the country that only lazy, sick, stupid people get into cults." She added that all societies have a tendency to blame the victims. Far Right The next day offered further options. I chose "Religion and the Far Right," a lecture by Hal Mansfield, an indefatigable observer of that scene whose "Aryan" appearance makes him a natural for the work, has infiltrated numerous groups of the sort often reported on in the TV news magazines. His meticulous documentation of his findings can't be summarized here, but further investigation of his work from the point of view of cultic processes should be very rewarding. Heaven's Gate & Democratic Workers Party I next attended "Bounded Choice: The Fusion of Personal Freedom and Self-Renunciation in Two Transcendent Groups," a comparative analysis of Heaven's Gate and the Democratic Workers Party by author and educator Janja Lalich, who was herself a member of the latter group. She made it abundantly clear that high intelligence alone is no protection against the insidious pull of a highly-motivated group and its leader. Cults, Religious Freedom and The Law After lunch, I attended. "Cults, Religious Freedom, and the Law" moderated by Dr. Michael Langone (AFF's Executive Director and Editor of AFF's Cultic Studies Journal). Herbert Rosedale and Alan Scheflin, joined by French and Japanese colleagues. Mr. Rosedale, an attorney with great experience in cult-related matters, spoke of "the continual waving of a small portion of the First Amendment that blinded further examination [of harms caused by cultic groups]." Thus, the right not to be involved in polygamy may be held superior to the religious right that sanctions it. The same is true, he said, of the rights of children not to be beaten or compelled to marry. Alan Scheflin declared that "freedom of 'mentation' should be a constitutional right." In response to a question, Rosedale stated that religious freedom is not absolute, and we should remember that "we live in a society, not what happens when a leader dies, said that ordinarily the cult can wither for above it." The Changing Hare Krishna Movement E. Burke Rochford, Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Sociology-Anthropology Department at Middlebury College, reported that the failure of the ISKCON (Hare Krishna) organization to institutionalize marriage and family life in the U.S. led by the end of the 1980s to a "decommunalization" and the growth of a "congregational" movement, a process which has consequently diminished controls the organization traditionally exercised over individuals. The opening of membership to women in the U.S. led to the creation of formal and ritual relationships between the sexes, the removal of children from their parents' control, and education in schools where they learned "control of the senses" and "deprivation" the better to concentrate on spiritual matters. Children, Rochford said, were in fact a real "encumbrance" to the movement's work of spreading the word. The declining ability of the Krishnas to gain donations from the public, and the consequent need to get jobs outside the commune, have contributed to the growth of "householder ashrams" and the development of independent families free of ISKCON controls. Parents were further repelled by the sexual and other abuse that characterized some of the movement's boarding schools. Today there is only one such school in North America, and some ISKCON day schools. But most followers' children now attend schools unrelated to the group. A Predisposition to Sexual Abuse? Professor Steven Kent of the University of Alberta, after noting the wide range of childhood sexual abuse in both religious and secular contexts in our society, presented his hypothesis that such abuse was more common in alternative religious groups because their ideologies tend toward it and their structures further facilitate it. Patriarcalism, antinomianism (the elect at the millennium are above good and evil), sex as a means of salvation, and a leveling of all forms of sex as equally fallen contribute to an atmosphere in which abuse can flourish, Kent speculated, while communal life, isolation from social service agencies, the use of school systems to recruit victims, and the authority of the pedophilic leader, whose religious revelations cannot be challenged, provide the structural basis for abuse. How to Demonstrate Harms Dr. Rod Marshall, who teaches psychology at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College in Wycombe, England, spoke of his sense, which he would like to demonstrate through research, that processes of intense psychological and social influence - such as those found in cultic groups - can harmfully affect the strength of a member's identity. Dr. Marshall, then, is looking for a specific type of harm related to social identity as a result of group membership. This would help to distinguish preexisting problems suffered by the individual and those induced by group membership. In the end, Dr. Marshall would like to be able clearly to delineate the correlates and contents of specific group harms. It would be easier to do this, Dr. Marshall added, if sociologists, including religious studies scholars, and psychologists began taking more notice of one another's work, and of the ethical dimensions of conversion and maintenance in groups. Control in AUM Dr. Kimiaki Nishida, a professor of psychology at the University of Shizuoka, in Japan, told the conference that the leaders of AUM Shinrikyo - responsible for the infamous Tokyo subway poison gas attack and other serious crimes - were able to gain great commitment from recruits though psychological manipulation, some times using drugs like LSD, that led them to equate Shoko Asahara with God. Prof. Nishida said that the longer one was in the group, the less manipulation of members was needed, but that periodic reinforcement was necessary to counteract regression. He found that the number of anxiety attacks went up with the length of stay in the group and with the degree of involvement in criminal activities. Loyalty to the guru and fear of sanctions if they were to leave (a fear felt even by ex-members) kept most members from breaking with Aum. After The "Moonies" Gary Scharff, a leading activist in the Unification Church until 1976, told how he was recruited following his junior year at Princeton University as he attempted to carry out a participant study of the group, for a senior thesis. He reminisced that his UC experience was "a gift," adding that he gained from it a certain wisdom that he has used in raising his own children - even if the church itself was "not good." Indeed, involvement helped him, Scharff said, to find out who he is, and although he forgives, he does not excuse. He believes that he was vulnerable to recruitment, and lost his freedom of thought and association, because he was very idealistic, a characteristic that the Moonies very effectively tapped. He believes that "surrender" in a social context is not a good thing. Internal surrender to God is one thing; but in external relations, one ought to remain autonomous. Barbara Underwood Scharff, wife of Gary, mother of three, and co-author of the book Hostage to Heaven - about her experience in the Unification Church - described herself as a civil rights radical who wanted more than political community when she was at the University of California (Berkeley) in 1972. Like her spouse, she got it by choosing to study Moon's organization; she traveled to the church's infamous Camp Boone to do a senior thesis on the U.C., took several "workshops" there, did some observing, but then became a devoted member, whose eventual departure was "an arduous process." Membership taught her "how to build healthy boundaries between you and institutions." Born into the Movement Panelist Donna Collins, who was born in the UC (her father was the church's leader in Britain) says that she had a bizarre childhood, with a tremendous amount of indoctrination, although in some ways it was "a normal middle-class upbringing." Because her parents were "absentee" - doing the church's work - she felt that God robbed her of them. She referred to the alcoholism, sadness, and breakdowns that beset many of the kids, like her, who grew up in the UC. When she was 7, she had to sit through 10-hour lectures; at 11, she was sent alone to Korea to "study." Her "disillusion" began at age 15 when she questioned the way American women were looked down on, and felt Moon himself was a hypocrite. The movement was becoming more political, she thought, not really doing things for the world and its people. She showed information critical of the UC to her parents, but it took 8 years "to get them out," although they remain "a family under repair." Dr. Eileen Barker, the London University sociologist who has researched the Unification Church, remarked in the discussion period that while some UC children have been rebellious, others have accepted their situations. Falun Gong Considered The panel on Falun Gong, the mass movement in China that has galvanized human rights concerns internationally, and called up accusations of cultism from the Chinese government and some other observers, opened with Patsy Rahn's call for more independent verification of information about FLG and the events surrounding it than we have until now been able to get. Ms. Rahn, a student of Chinese language at UCLA, reviewed some of the seemingly cultic aspects of FLG and suggested that the Chinese government has banned FLG both because it feels the group's teachings are harmful and because of the organization's potential political ramifications. Ms. Rahn urged us not to demonize either FLG or the Chinese government as we study the issue. Dr. Margaret Singer, whose experience with unethical influence in groups goes back to research from the Korean War era, reported the presence of typical cultic group characteristics mentioned to her by forty-four relatives who have family members involved in FLG in the U.S. Deng Zixian, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of North Texas, noted that FLG literature in English is much milder than what the group produces for Chinese consumption. He also spoke of Li Hong Shi's linking of practitioners' striving for higher-levels of cultivation of the FLG discipline with their willingness to be involved in political activity to "defend," as well as promote FLG. Reports from Europe Representatives of FECRIS, the association of cult monitoring, education, and assistance organizations in western Europe, reported that approaches to the common problem differ from nation to nation, and that FECRIS is trying to facilitate the exchange of information among them to create a common understanding and perspective. They want to present a single voice to the European Parliament and the Council of Europe that proclaims the cult problem without seeming to be the agent of a particular approach to dealing with it. Indeed, the panelists stressed that a single approach would be virtually impossible to effect among countries with such differing constitutions, legal systems, and cultural attitudes. Some are involved in education and legal control, others are simply studying the issues or keeping hands entirely off. The panel questioned U.S. government criticism of the actions of some European countries against cultic groups. Non-Governmental Organizations Representatives of a number of non-governmental "grass-roots" organizations from around the world joined a panel to share news of their activities and clarify their approaches. The panel included speakers from Canada's Info-Cult; CCCM (Center Against Mental Manipulation) of France, whose former head is a parliamentarian chairing a government study commission there; Britain's FAIR (Family Action, Information, and Resource); UNADFI (Association for Defense of the Family and the Individual), an organization with chapters in much of the French-speaking world; and the representative of an attorneys' group from Japan that offers legal counsel in cult-related matters. Also represented on the panel was INFORM, a British agency partly sustained by government funds that provides informational and referral resources to the public as well as to various public agencies dealing with domestic issues related to cultic groups. The Consul of The Peoples Republic of China in San Francisco made a lengthy statement at the international panel explaining why his government believes that Falun Gong is a destructive cult. For a summary see The Cult Observer, Vol. 17, No. 2 (June 2000). Scholarly Convergence? Conference 2000 was distinguished by the participation of Eileen Barker, Professor of Sociology at the University of London, Dr. G. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute of American Religion, and E. Burke Rochford, Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Sociology-Anthropology Department at Middlebury College. All three have been prominent in the study of new religious movements, including groups that AFF research indicates are in essential ways destructive. Collegial communication between AFF-associated scholars and the majority of academics interested in this field has been marginal. And when interaction has taken place it has often involved polarized interpretations of the phenomenon apparently without serious attempts to take varying perspective into account. This has likely been so because AFF arose among helping professionals and affected families who have seen first hand the social and psychological damage done by many cultic groups. Most academics, on the other hand, have focused on other aspects of the phenomenon: the structure and development of movements, belief systems, the relationship between groups and the wider society, popular responses to such groups, and the like. The first set of observers has been disturbed by the other's perceived indifference to harm, by its apparent sympathy for and defense of the groups in question. The second set, for its part, has been upset by what it sees as a willingness of the other set to condemn "cults" root and branch and to call for excessive remedies. In recent years, however there has been a growing appreciation that neither set of perspectives fairly represents the views of the other and that each has important contributions to make to our understanding and amelioration of the problem. This welcome tendency toward shared and even convergent perspectives seems symbolized and made practical for AFF by the attendance, and active participation, at the conference of Ms. Barker, Mr. Rochford, and Mr. Melton (not to mention a visit from representative of the reform party of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness). We think that academics are beginning to realize that AFF's activity does not stem from an illiberal hostility to new religions, although concentration on harms may make it seem so. They can now appreciate that AFF's view of the reasons why people get involved in groups, the nature of their membership, how families deal with a member's alienation from them, and how they may be ethically helped to leave harmful situations, is much more nuanced and less fanatic than they think. AFF, PMB 313, P.O. Box 413005, Naples, FL 34101-3005. Alternate address: P.O. Box 2265, Bonita Springs, FL 34133. Phone 941-514-3081; Fax 941-649-2267; E-mail: aff@csj.org; Web site: http://www.csj.org. Workshop for former group members. Estes Park, Colorado. July 7-9, 2000. Contact AFF for more information. AFF will hold its 2001 Annual Conference May 4-5 in the New York area. There will be preconference workshops for families, ex-members, and mental health professionals on Thursday, May 3rd. Hold these dates in your calendar. Details will be available late in the summer. Web Site Home Page: http://www.csj.org <http://www.csj.org/> How We Can Help (How to Use Online Resource Guide): http://www.csj.org/rg/rg_howuse.htm About AFF (American Family Foundation): http://www.csj.org/aff/affindex.htm Bookstore Ordering Information: http://www.csj.org/webfrm_autorespond/bookstore_order/ordermethod.htm Books for Sale: http://www.csj.org/rg/rgbooks/rgbkindex.htm Group Resources: http://www.csj.org/infoserv_groups/grp_index.htm AFF Periodicals Index: http://www.csj.org/rg/rgperiodicals/rgperiodicalsindex.htm Cults 101: http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/cult101.htm AFF Study Guides: http://www.csj.org/studyindex/studyIDX.htm Essays: http://www.csj.org/rg/rgessays/rgessayindex.htm It costs money to provide all this information! 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