Joining a 'cult': religious choice or psychological aberration?

• Author: Davis, Dena S.

1. Introduction II. What Is A "Cult"? III. The Civil Liberties Issues IV. Medicalizing A Political Issue V. The Conversion Phenomenon VI. Conclusion

1. Introduction

   America has always been fertile ground for a multiplicity of religious groups, whether homegrown sects like Mormons, Shakers, and Jehovah's Witnesses, or immigrants from abroad like Mennonites, Quakers, and Jews. In the 1970s and 1980s we saw an explosion of new religious groups in America, many of which came to be labeled by their detractors as "cults." The groups were based on a variety of ideologies drawn from Eastern and Western religious traditions and were organized in different ways, but they shared some basic characteristics: all were relatively "high demand" religions, requiring much more of their followers than weekly church attendance and a nominal tithe; all had a charismatic leader; most involved communal living as at least an option and very often a requirement. Further, since these were truly new religious movements, they all needed to grow and therefore to make converts, and they concentrated their conversion attempts upon young, idealistic, mostly white, and middle-class Americans. That, of course, brought them into conflict with the young people's parents, who tried to bring legal pressures to bear against the new religions.

   The parents of these converts, as well as the defenders of mainstream religions from whom the young people were defecting, had some hurdles to overcome in their fight against the "cults." The young converts were almost always legal adults, and the parents--much less the mainstream religious leaders--could hardly claim to be against religious commitment per se, so on what grounds could they forcefully object to their children's new allegiance? The answer they found was to claim that these were not "genuine" religious movements--i.e., not worthy of tolerance and respect--and the converts' choices were not actually free choices at all, but the result of "brainwashing," sometimes called "coercive persuasion," "thought reform," or "mind control."(2) Thus, the parents were not interfering in the converts' right to choose their religion, but rescuing their adult children from the clutches of evil people who had rendered them powerless.

   The "brainwashing" theory has important legal implications. After all, the religion clauses of the First Amendment forbid government from preferring some religions over others, and from interfering in a person's religious practice without a compelling reason.(3) Thus, if parents are to have the law on their side while engaging in activities that are normally illegal--e.g., kidnapping and imprisoning an adult in order to "deprogram" her--they have to find a way to describe these "cults," and the conversion experience, as completely divorced from our usual understanding of religion.

   Two 1980s cases highlight the importance of the "brainwashing" theory. In 1989, Robin George and her mother brought suit against various groups and individuals associated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), claiming, among other things, that they had falsely imprisoned Robin.(4) Since Robin appeared to have had run away from her parents' home of her own free will and was never physically restrained during the nearly two years she spent in the movement, it would have been impossible to sustain the false imprisonment claim (for which a jury initially awarded Robin five million dollars) without the argument that Robin had been "brainwashed" and her "will ... overborne" by the defendants.(5) Similarly, in 1986 David Molko and Tracy Leal, former members of the Unification Church, claimed that they were falsely imprisoned, despite their ostensible freedom to leave at any time, because "agents of the Church had gained control of their minds," "stripped them of independent judgment," and thus rendered them "incapable of resisting the inducement to join the Church and work diligently to further its purposes."(6)

   In this article, I will analyze the different theories about "cult" membership and conversion, specifically focusing upon whether or not conversions to cults ought to be respected by the law in the same way that the law respects conversion to and membership in, mainstream religions. In section II, I attempt (unsuccessfully) to define a "cult." In section III, I discuss the civil liberties issues surrounding "cults" and the public furor they have engendered. In section IV, I discuss the different and competing theories about why young people join "cults," and the implication of those theories for public policy responses. Finally, in section VI I conclude that none of the arguments which attempt to draw distinctions between "cults" and mainstream religions are solid enough to ground legal interventions against those who choose to join new religious movements.

2. What Is A "Cult"?

   According to the anti-cult Cult Awareness Network, a cult is "a closed system whose followers have been unethically and deceptively recruited through the use of manipulative techniques of thought reform or mind control."(7) Probably the best definition comes from sociologists Melton and Moore, who explain, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that "cults are religions that espouse an alien belief system that deviates strongly from the traditional faiths with which most people have grown up."(8) For sociologists, a cult is the starting point of every religion, at the stage where there is simply a charismatic leader and an enthusiastic band of followers, who have not yet developed anything more than the simplest organizational structure. Most cults die before they get beyond this stage; others become more bureaucratized, as happened to Christianity.(9) However, when the term cult is used today, we know that the subject is a controversial "high demand" religion, or some other group which has come to be associated with the term in the minds of the media. As we shall soon see, there is much disagreement even among the most strident anti-cultists as to which groups fit the category. Leo Pfeffer suggests: "[i]f you believe in it, it is a religion or perhaps the religion; and if you do not care one way or another about it, it is a sect; but if you fear and hate it, it is a cult."(10) Meanwhile, social scientists proffer phrases such as "alternative religions," "marginal churches," "new religious movements," and so on.

   Groups that have commonly been identified as cults include those with non-Western flavors such as the ISKCON, the Divine Light Movement (DLM), and the Unification Church ("Moonies"); Christian groups such as the Way International and the Children of God; self-help movements such as Synanon and the Church of Scientology. Robbins and Anthony list six attributes shared by almost all groups which are labeled as cults. These groups are: 1) authoritarian; 2) communal and totalistic; 3) aggressive in their proselytizing; 4) systematic in their programs of indoctrination; 5) relatively new in the United States; 6) middle-class in their clientele.(11)

   Interestingly, the three recent religious groups whose stories have ended in tragedy--the People's Temple, the Branch Davidians, and Heaven's Gate--do not fit the usual profile of a "cult" which attracts primarily young and single adherents. The Heaven's Gate group, thirty-nine of whom committed suicide in March of 1997, included someone who had joined the group when he was nineteen and remained for twenty-two years, but also a seventy-two-year-old grandmother. Particularly striking were the converts who had left spouses and young children behind.(12)

   Cult membership raises important ethical, medical, and civil liberties questions. Courts must decide whether or not parents will be granted "conservatorship" over their adult children who have joined new religions, and whether to convict parents whose adult children charge them with kidnapping and false imprisonment. On the public policy level, the issue seems to have been decided by default, as legislators have failed to design laws that would attack cult membership and still be Constitutional. For example, the law passed twice in New York State but vetoed by the Governor (who went on record as being sympathetic to the bill's goals, but convinced that this particular bill would not stand up in court), reads in part:

   The supreme court and the county courts outside the city of New York,

   shall have the power to appoint one or more temporary conservators

   of the person and the property of any person over fifteen years of age,

   upon showing that such person for whom the temporary conservator

   is to be appointed has become closely and regularly associated with a

   group which practices the use of deception in the recruitment of

   members and which engages in systematic food or sleep deprivation

   or isolation from family or unusually long work schedules and that

   such person for whom the temporary conservator is to be appointed

   has undergone a sudden and radical change in behavior, lifestyle,

   habits and attitudes, and has become unable to care for his welfare and

   that his judgment has become impaired to the extent that he is unable

   to understand the need for such care.(13)

   After reading The Seven Storey Mountain it is hard to see why, using these guidelines, writer and philosopher Thomas Merton should not have been put under conservatorship when he first joined the Trappist monks in his mid-twenties.(14) The odd hours at which he was awakened to chant on a nightly basis, the sparse diet and uniform clothing, the restrictions on reading matter and visitors, and, most of all, the "no talking" rule, are certainly open to the interpretation of mind control. As far as "deception" is concerned, that is very much in the eye of the beholder; certainly the claims of any church to sacerdotal efficacy, the importance of prayer and meditation, etc., have no provable connection to the palpable world.

3. The Civil Liberties Issues

   The...