Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Spring 1981

Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Alumni News Archives Spring 1981 Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Spring 1981 Connecticut College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews Recommended Citation Connecticut College, "Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Spring 1981" (1981). Alumni News. 218. https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews/218 This Magazine is brought to you for free and open access by the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Archives at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Alumni News by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. The ~'~( Connecticut College Alumni Magazine ) i Editorial Board: Vivian Segall '73. Editor (ISA Latham Lane. Noank. Alumni Association Executive Board: Helene Zimmer Loew '57. CT 06340) / Katherine Gould '81 J Sarah Hargrove Harris '57 / President / Michael J. Farrar '73, Vice President / Warren Eri.ckson Wayne Swanson / Marilyn Ellman Frankel '64 I Marion vibert Clark '74, Secretary and Chairman of Programs Comrnutec / Cynthia '24. Class Notes Editor I Elizabeth Damerel Gongaware '26. Caravan Holden '74, Treasurer and Chairman of Finance Committee I Assistant Editor I Helene Zimmer Loew 'S7 and Louise Stevenson Joan Jacobson Kronick '46, Joann Walton Leavenworth '56 and Jane Andersen '41. ex officio Muddle Funkhouser '53, Alumni Trustees. The Connecticut College Alumni Magazine (US PS 129-140). Nancy L Close '72. Suzanne Krim Greene '57 and Carol J. Ramsey·74. Official publication of the Connecticut College Alumni Association. All Directors / Committee Chairmen: Ellen Lougee Simmons '69 publication rights reserved. Contents reprinted only by permission of (Nominating). Ann Crocker Wheeler '34 (Alumni Giving). Barbara the editor. Published by the Connecticut College Alumni Association at Vosburgh Omohundro '72 (Clubs), Nancy L. Close '72 (Classes). Sykes Alumni Center, Connecticut College. New London. CT. four Roy D. Taylor '74 (Undergraduate/Young Alumni Relations)! Jay B times a year in Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. Second-class postage Levin '73. Legal Advisor / Louise Stevenson Anderse~ '41 (Exect:t~:e paid at New London, CT 06320. Send form 3579 to Sykes Alumni Director) and Vivian Segall '73 (Alumni Magazine gduor). ex 011100 Center. Connecticut College. New London, CT 06320. CASE member Above: Harkness Green on Parents Day, 1952. Communications to any of the above may be addressed in care of the Photograph by Philip L. Carpenter. Alumni Office. Connecticut College, New London. CT 06320. The Connecticut College Alumni Magazine Volume 58, Number 3, Spring 1981 2 Religious cults in America: Even Moonies have rights Eugene Gallagher 6 Religious cults in America: Parents, too, have rights Rabbi James Rosenberg 8 On taking risks: The parable of the talents The Rev. David Robb 12 Women priests: The human in response to the divine The Rev. Margaret Brown Gunness '59 15 On with the wind: Ten watts of WCNI Nicole Gorden '81 18 Not a lot of hot air Seth Stone '82 20 Connecticut athletics come of age Seth Stone '82 22 Round & About 26 Letters 27 In Memoriam 29 Class Notes Perhaps the most significant aspect of our conception of what it means to be modern is the idea that we can consciously change the character of our society and the condi- Religious cults in America: lions of our lives.-Bryan Wilson, Con- temporary Transformations of Religion. Even Moonies have rights Religion, no less than other areas of human life, has changed in the modern period. The changes have taken two primary forms: Converts aren't passive dupes. "Deprogramming" secularization, the decline of traditional has no place in a democratic society. religions, and sectarianism, the rise of new ones. Each process has captured the public eye at times. Time magazine asked on its April 8, 1966 cover "Is God Dead?" and By Eugene Gallagher Harvey Cox's The Secular City became a best seller. More recently, chanters in saf- fron robes occupied airport lobbies and street corners, while parents and children made the rounds of talk shows detailing the horrors of their involvement with strange sects. During the past election campaign the size and tenacity of fundamentalist Christian groups received national attention as all three major candidates declared themselves to have been "born again" and as the Rev. Jerry Falwell's "Moral Major- ity, Inc." manoeuvered for political power and moral influence. If secularization wasa key issue of the 60s, sectarianism domi- nates the religious scene in the 70s and 80s. Although the new religions in this country form a motley group, they share to a remarkable degree the notion that both self and society can be transformed. Whether inner peace is sought through chanting or meditation, or a new society is sought through voluntary association, or a moral renovation is sought through political or social action, change is the goal of the new religious groups. Their passion for change carries an implicit indictment of the status quo. The variety of groups shows that there Gene Gallagher, assistant professor of religious studies, takes on his colleague, Rabbi James Rosenberg, In a debate about deprogrammlng. 2 -------------------------- is no consensus on either diagnosis or cure. ism, based in Utah, thrives in Tahiti; gious traditions, although they suffer inev- and the often hostile response of society Jehovah's Witnesses, founded in Pennsyl- itable change through contact with the shows there is no agreement even that a vania, conduct a vigorous and successful West. Others, like the Children of God, the malady exists. Nonetheless, the prolifera- mission in Africa; communities of Muslim Christian World Liberation Front, and tion of new religious groups and the defen- Sufis can be found in Great Britain. Our Jews for Jesus are offshoots of the mainline sive and bewildered response to them are new religions are local manifestations of a religious traditions of this country, and both symptoms of and reactions to sweep- common response to the complex factors they are viewed with various degrees of ing changes in contemporary life. that constitute modernity. tolerance by those bodies. A variety of If current opinion about new religious Yet despite its distinctively modern "nee-pagan" groups seeks to resurrect the groups is united on anything, it is the fer- character, the rise of new religions has a worship of ancient deities, sometimes vent conviction that some of them are very history. Robert Ellwood has traced the through the practice of "white" magic and dangerous. They are the "cults," Though interest in "an alternative reality" through witchcraft, while satanists court the darker the term "cult" has a well-<:lefined meaning the American past and back through the sides of those powers. Some feminists ha ve in the academic study of religion, that history of Western culture itself. He found spiritual identity in the long- meaning has not been continued in popular observes that "ours has not been the only suppressed worship of the Mother. Still use. Instead, the term has taken on an period in which a struggle between the hec- others, such as Scientology's blend of ther- entirely negative connotation. For exam- tic pace of history, disturbing in its rapidity apy, science, and mythic religiousness, ple, according to journalists Carroll Stoner and ruthlessness, has thrown up a radical seem to be peculiarly modern, as do the and Jo Anne Parke, cults are "psychologi- reaction in the form of movements dedi- various "therapies" with religious over- cally unwholesome," they "discourage crit- cated to living with a different focus." In tones. The diversity of groups makes even a ical analysis by dictating the suppression of the Hellenistic period, the tiny Christian preliminary inventory ada unting task. But negative though ts" and "arrest the matura- movement was part of a flood of "Eastern the general public has evidenced little hesi- tion process," while practicing "ego- cults" that attracted the attention, and tancy. In the pages of mass circulation destruction and thought control." Their sometimes scorn, of the citizens of the magazines, like Good Housekeeping, definition is intended to provide criteria Roman empire. The Middle Ages saw a McCalls, and Redbook, and on programs, which "a person may use to determine the passionate interest in alchemy, magic, and like The Phi! Donahue Show, a generally legitimacy of a new religion." Once such witchcraft. In the Renaissance the redis- accepted categorization emerges. There are judgments are made, condemnation of covery of the religions of Late Antiquity those groups which are merely different or "illegitimate" religions and other actions led to a flowering of occultism. Freema- odd, and there are the "cults" which are against them can be expected to follow. sonary, Swedenborgianism, and other alter- dangerous, both to individuals and to Thus, the rise of new religions is not a native traditions are the legacy of the eigh- society. matter of merely detached academic inter- teenth century. Closer to home, the nine- *** * est; in themselves and beca use of the oppo- teenth century yields Ralph Waldo Emer- Nowhere does the fearful aspect of reli- sition they ha ve aroused they constitute a son's immersion in transcendentalism, giouschange come so quickly to the fore as with the issue of conversion. In conversion crucial social problem. dabbling in Spiritualism by Horace Greeley, Religious cults are not unique to the James Fenimore Cooper, and even Abra- individual and social change intersect. As United States. There are so many new reli- ham lincoln, and, later, the founding of the experience of conversion transforms gions in modern Japan that a recent survey the Theosophical Society by Madame individuals, the cumulative impact of indi- was entitled The Rush Hour a/the Gods. Blavatsky. In a sense, our new religions vidual conversions transforms society.

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