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Comprehending Cults 3.Pdf 36 1 Comprehending Cults Scientolog)' certainly appears to be one of the most inclusive in its organi- zational commitments, allowing its members to freely retain and practice other faiihs. But at the heart of Scientology is the 'Sea Org' (Sea Organization), an elite body that originally accompanied the reclusive L. Ron Hubbard aboard a fleet of ships. Members of the paramilitary Sea Org sign billion-year contracts of absolute loyally and service to the highest leadership of the Church of Scientology; clearly, these members represent the exclusive end of the continuum within the movement. This son of structxiral pattern varies m form, intensity, and significance regarding a groups development, according to the influence of other factors. For exam- ple, if a group is persecuted, the whole group may implode into the cadre and its more exclusive style; this may have either beneficial or disastrous results for the survival and growth of the new religion. (See, for example, Bainbridges [1978! account of the Process, Girter's [19901 study of Rajneeshpuram, and Palmer's [19961 and Mayer's 11999] analyses of the Solar Temple.) It is conceivable that the same thing may happen because of the unanticipated and sudden success of a group. Lucass [19951 account of The Holy Order of MANS comes close to this pattern. With all the compli- cated d^Tiamics involved, such changes are very difficult to predict. Having taken such a collection of theoretical tools m hand, let us now use them to consider why so many new NRMs have arisen in the West since the 19605. 1 ChRpter Three Why Did New Religious Movements Emerge? AsKing the Right Question First For most people, the first and most important question asked about NRMs is why someone would join one. This is probably also the pivotal question underlying most studies by social scientists. But the social scientists arc more likely to focus on questions that are easier to ar^swer empirically, such as ones about who joins the groups, how they come to join them, and what the organizational structures, procedures, and ideologies are, Enough micro-level analysis has been done to give us good answers to the 'who' and 'how' and 'what' questions; the Nvhy' remains more enigmatic. These all relate to a macro-level question; 'Why have so many NRMs recendy emerged in North America in the first place?' We can readily answer that it must indicate social and cultural changes in our society; deciding what these are might explain a particular person's choice to join a cult. As Marx (1972: 38) said of religion in general, 'religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress.' Have NRMs arisen in response to some experience of distress? If so, what kind? The scholarly literature on conversion to NRMs usually deals either with the 'macro-environment' or the 'micro-environment'. This chapter concen- trates on the 'macro' under two headings: NRMs as a response to cultural change, and NRMs as an expression of cultural continuity New Religious Movements RS n Response to Culturfll ChRnge The scholar Thomas Robbins has remarked thai acadcmics who think of NRMs as responses to a change usually point to a 'distinctively modern dis- t 40 Comprehending Cults location' which is prompting people to search for 'new structures of mean- ing and community' (Robbins, 1988: 60). Opinions diverge on the nature of this dislocation but we can distill the common themes into three sets of changes affecting North Americans since at least the 1960s; (1) changes in values, (2) changes in social structure, and (3) changes in the role and char- acter of religious institutions. One pattern in the academic writing is an eagerness to point out that NRMs offer a complex response to these various iy\>ts of social change; the groups do not simply proxide direct compensation for or an alternative to a persons trou- bles, as Stark and Bainbridge's theory of religion suggests. Rather, they bring into effect ingenious compromises between the status quo and some alterna- tive state of affairs. If we can discern the nature of the compromises, we may gain insight into (1) why some groups have succeeded better than others. (2) how certain internal weaknesses may account for the failure of so many groups, and (3) why NRXis seem to be subject to the polarization, noted in Chapter 1. into groups that are either more traditional, communal, and exclu- sive in their commitments, or oriented more to the modem world, geared to the satisfaction of individual needs, and less exclusive in their commitments.' CHANGES IN VALUES Begmning in the mid-1970s, a number of observers suggested that NRMs were responding to a pervasive crisis in moral cenainty amongst North Americans.^ First broached in Robbins and Anthony's excellent early studies of the American followers of the Indian Sufi mystic called Meher Baba (1972; Anthony and Robbins, 1975). most variants of this explanation have actually taken their lead from a colleague of these two. the eminent sociologist of reli- gion Robert Bellah (1976). NRMS, Bellah proposed, are best conceived as 'successor movements' to the poluical protest and cultural experimentation that flounshed amongst the youth of the sixties. This was the decade of the counterculture, in which the established order of life and power in society was fundamentally challenged in two ways: by relatively organized movements stmgghng for political change, and by more amorphous movements of lifestyle experimentation. Both developments, which tended to go hand in hand, deeply eroded the legitimacy of established institutions of business, government, education, reb- gion. and the family. The changes grew out of a unique combination of three interrelated aspects of life m Nonh America in the time following the Second World War: (1) an unprecedented growth and spread of affluence, (2) an unprecedented rise in birth rates, and (3) a resultant expansion and increase m educational attainment Wky Old New Religious Movements Emerge? 41 NRMs and the Turmoil of the 1960s In the United Slates, the generation of the sixties experienced the civil rights movement, the student power movement, the feminist movement, the war against poverty, the ecological movement, and most importani, the often violent protest against the war in Vietnam, and the military draft. They participated, if only vicariously in many eases, in a decade of civil disobedience, riots, and student strikes (see e.g. Gitlin, 1987). All of those events were captured with new thoroughness and urgency by an emerging system of truly mass communication. In 1968, for example, in the face of the brutal attack by the Chicago police outside the Democratic Presidential Convention, young, largely middle-class, protesters chanted, 'The whole world is watching.' And indeed, through their televisions, they were. In late 1969, they were watching again when President Nixon ordered US forces to carry the war across the Vietnamese border into Cambodia, escalating the war rather than bringing 'our boys' home. This led to protests and disturbances (often violent) at over half of all American universities and colleges, 51 of which were closed for the rest of the term (Zaroulis and Sullivan, 1984: 318-21; cited in Keni, 1987: 20). These were stirring tmies. In the late sixties, much of the largest and most privileged generation of youth the world had known, the so-called baby boomers, vented their discontent and pressed for change, while much of the rest of the United States, Canada, and the world watched in shock and dismay. This was also the era of extensive experimentation with drugs, liberal sexual mores, ahernative li\nng arrangements (such as cohabitation and communes), and new forms of popular music, dress, hairstyles, and psy- chological therapies. The hippies, with their long hair, beads, beards, peas- ant clothing, drugs, psychedelic rock, free love, iransieni lifestyle, organic food, meditation, and incensc, were emblematic of the era. American pop- ular life was dominated by the distinct youth culture and the resultani con- flict of the 'generation gap'. In us more extreme elements, ii was a time to 'turn on, lune out, and drop out' of 'the sysienV. And as Bellah argues, the two pillars of American ideological self-understanding, of the values people had lived by for decades, came under attack: biblical religion and utilitari- an individualism. In the 1950s, alter fifteen years of depression and war. the traditional Chrisiian denominations of North America experienced a rapid and unan- ticipated growth. More people were attending services than ever before, and there was a boom in church construction as North Americans had babies and moved to the suburbs (sec Vv'uihnow, 1988: Chaps 2-4). Yet by the six- m 42 Comprekendlng Cults ties these same mainstream denominations (e.g. Congregationalists, Presbyterians. Methodists, Episcopahans and Anglicans, Catholics, and Jews) were experiencmg a dramaiic loss in numbers as many of the baby boomers, now coming oi age, ceased to emulate their parents and stopped attending church. Some turned East (Cox, 1977) or elsewhere, to other decidedly unorthodox or un-American forms of religious life. But most sim- ply turned away from organized religion altogether, preferring to guide their lives solely by the principles of utilitarian individualism, the other system of values the young had inherited from their parents (Roof and McKinney, 1988; Wuthnow. 1988; Roof, 1993). Life from this perspective is primarily a matter of pursuing ones 'inter- ests' by the best means available. The watchwords of the utilitarian ethos are effective organization and freedom from constraint. In this approach to life, rational behaviour is of paramount importance. Yet as commentators on modernity (such as the founding figure of sociology Max Weber, 1958b: 181-3) have obser\^ed, the rationality in question seems to be purely formal and devoid of intrinsic ends (see e.g.
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