Ordinary members: conversion and apostasy

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Ordinary members conversion and apostasy

• 6.10.2005

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Readings

• Bromley and Shupe Joining the New Religions
  Brainwashing or Conversion? (in Bromley and Shupe
  1981)
• Wright Leaving New Religious Movements Issues,
  Theory, and Research (in Bromley 1988)

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Discussion topics

• Theories of conversion
• Relative deprivation theory
• Traditional vs new approaches to conversion
• Selected issues on joining NRMs
• Converts
• Gender
• Recruitment
• Brainwashing
• Apostasy / leaving NRMs

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Early studies of social movements

• Membership
• marginal segments of society
• groups experiencing bad times
• Radical / deviant behaviour
• Caused by pathological personality
• Characterized by irrationality
• Eg. Freud, Adorno

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Studies of 19th century NRMs

• Eg. Jehovahs Witnesses, Adeventists etc
• disproportionately from the lower socio-economic
  strata of society
• pushes and pulls
• Pushes
• Economic deprivation
• Pulls
• promise of reward in the next life
• immediate psychic compensators
• escape from the hardships and humiliations of
  life

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Studies post-1960s movements

• Social movements in the 1960s
• student-led anti-war movement
• members not mentally disturbed or deficient
• turn away from irrationalist theories
• NRMs of the 1960s
• high socio-economic status of sectarians
• Students not poor and abused
• need to review economic deprivation model

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Relative Deprivation Theory

• theories of "relative deprivation
• dominant in 1960s 1980s
• Charles Glock
• The Role of Deprivation in the Origin and
  Evolution of Religious Groups (1964)
• absolute vs relative deprivation
• Relative deprivation
• Perceived discrepancy between social rewards
  entitled to and received

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Relative Deprivation Theory

• Several forms of being deprived
• economic deprivation
• social deprivation
• organismic deprivation
• psychic deprivation
• ethical deprivation
• Shared feeling of deprivation
• Stark and Bainbridge (1987)
• Religious organizations
• provide compensators

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Relative Deprivation Theory

• Criticism
• Link between psychological state and social
  behaviour
• Monocausal
• Reductionistic
• Difficult to test
• Joiners vs nonjoiners?
• With same kind of RD
• Non-deprived also become members of NRMs
• 1980s - new theories
• resource-mobilization theory
• rational-choice theory

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Conversion in the Sierra Juarez

• Motives
• Better answers to the eternal questions of human
  existence
• A strategy for avoiding the constraints of
  Catholicism
• it is less expensive to be a non-Catholic
• Family influences
• Resolution personal problems like illness,
  alcoholism
• a Pentecostal from La Trinidad
• Previously I did not obey anybody, always walked
  around drunk. People talked to me and I reached a
  conclusion. They told me that I was losing myself
  when drinking and leaving my children neglected.
  

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Conversion in the Sierra Juarez

• A member of the Christian Church in Ixtlán
• I converted five years ago because of the
  testimonies that God sent me. I had cancer and no
  doctor could help me. The Christians started to
  pray for me, I started to study their religion
  and God cured me. Now I have no pain anywhere.
  Before I was also very Catholic but despite that
  I felt a bit ridiculous when putting flowers
  before an image made of paper or wood. Initially
  many criticised me but I am already used to this
  and do not pay any more attention to it.
  Previously I had many compadres, and I went to
  their fiestas. But not anymore. Some of them
  still do not talk to me.

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Conversion in the Sierra Juarez

• Conversion as a response to economic
  marginalisation
• Turner (1979)
• a study of conversion in a Tzeltal community in
  Chiapas
• alleviates to three major problems in Indian
  communities
• Poverty, disease, illiteracy
• Sierra Juarez
• True in early years of religious change in the
  Sierra
• religious conversion explicit economic gains
• In the longer run
• no emergence of a particular capitalist spirit
• Increasing marginalisation
• Loss of economically and socially beneficial
  relationships

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Conversion in the Sierra Juarez

• Conversion as a response to political
  marginalisation
• Conversion satisfies
• the need for power and authority
• the desire for prestige and acknowledgement
• a form of political dissent
• weapon of the weak
• an ideological alternative to the established
  order (of caciques)
• independence from the authoritarian folk
  Catholicism
• they want everybody to be similar but we are
  independent, we have liberated ourselves from
  it. (a Jehovahs Witness in Capulálpam)
• But
• power acquired by conversion acknowledged only
  within the group
• increasing political marginalisation and
  alienation

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Religious devotion in the Sierra Juarez

• How religious do you consider yourself to be?
• very or quite religious
• 44 of non-Catholics
• 5 of Catholics
• Non-Catholics
• if, then completely
• Catholics
• I am a Catholic by birth
• by tradition
• whenever there is a fiesta
• one is never perfect

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Traditional approach to conversion

• Traditional approach to conversion
• Sudden, dramatic
• Emotional, even irrational
• Singular event
• Creates total life changes that last a lifetime
• Individual experience, not a collective
  phenomenon
• Received passively through actions of external
  agency
• convert as passive
• St Paul on the road to Damascus
• Prototypical conversion

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New approaches to conversion

• Convert as an active agent
• Conversion as a process
• struggles of conscience and identity
• mounting tension and discontent
• Conversion as a career
• seekereship period
• serial affiliation with various groups
• Conversion as a collective phenomenon
• result of interaction between people
• negotiation of rewards

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New approaches to conversion

• Conversion as rational choice
• calculation, experimentation, assessment,
  weighing
• Conversion as role playing
• not actual transformation of personalitites
• learning of taking the members role
• (Fightclub)

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The Lofland-Stark Model of Conversion

• multi-factorial and processual approach
• the study of early Unification Church in the US
• seven-step model of the process of conversion
• (1) experience enduring, acutely felt tensions in
  their lives
• (2) within a religious problem-solving
  perspective,
• (3) which leads them to think of themselves as a
  religious seeker,
• (4) encounter the cult to which they convert at a
  turning point in their lives,
• (5) form an affective bond with one or more
  members of the cult,
• (6) reduce or eliminate extra-cult attachments,
• (7) and be exposed to intensive interaction with
  other converts

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Generalizations about converts to NRMs

• 1) Disproportionately young
• No social responsibilities
• Drop out when they reach middle age
• eg. Unification Church in Britain
• 50 between 21 and 26
• eg. Krishna Consciousness
• 56 of the members between 20 and 25
• Eg. Scientology, Eckankar, Nichiren Shoshu,
  Eastern meditational groups
• NRMs that demand less commitment
• better spread in the age distribution
• Eg. Heaven's Gate
• the dead ranged from 24 to 72

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Converts

• 2) Disproportionately highly educated
• Teachings demanding
• Literate intelligence
• Willingness to study
• Unfamiliar concepts and language
• Eg. Scientology
• 57 professional training or college or
  university degrees
• Eg. Soka Gakkai in Britain
• 24 - attended university
• (8 of the total population)

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Converts

• 3) Disproportionately from middle to upper middle
  class households
• Eg. Scientology, the Unification Church, Krishna
  Consciousness
• 4) Disproportionately from unchurched
  background
• Churched background varies
• Eg. Converts of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish
  background
• Protestants underrepresented
• Catholics proportionately the same as in total
  population
• Jews overrepresented
• Eg. 50 of the San Francisco Zen Center Jewish

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Converts

• 5) Disproportionately female
• More so in the past
• Christian Science in the 1920s 75 female
• Now
• No strong evidence
• Developmental shift in the sex ratios of NRMs
• Eg. Krishna Consciousness
• male phenomenon both sexes
• Eg. Unification church
• Female phenomenon both sexes

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NRMs and gender

• Weber
• great receptivity in women to all religious
  prophecy.
• Ioan Lewis
• women are particularly prone to join marginal
  possession cults
• eg. possession by sar or zar spirits in Eastern
  and North Eastern Africa
• a form of indirect protest against men
• enable women to manipulate their husbands

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NRMs and gender

• Common claims
• the rise of NRMs coincided with feminist movement
  in the 1960s
• NRMs increase the status of women
• NRMs offer a refuge from patriarchal society
• Angela Aidala (1985)
• Most NRMs reinstate and reinforce traditional
  gender roles
• Idealization of family life
• Women in supportive, nurturing role
• Male leadership
• eg. Krishna Consciousness, Unification Church

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NRMs and gender

• Palmer (1994)
• diversity of gender relations in NRMs
• Three types of NRMs
• Sex-polarity groups
• Sex-complementarity groups
• Sex-unity groups
• Sexpolarity groups
• Sexes spiritually distinct
• Spiritual superiority of one sex
• Highly controlled relationships between sexes
• Eg. Krishna Consciousness, 3H0, the Rajneesh
  movement, feminist / lesbian Goddess worship

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NRMs and gender

• Sex-complementarity groups
• Different spiritual qualities of sexes
• Importance of marriage for uniting the two halves
  
• Eg. Unification Church, the Mormons
• Sex-unity groups
• Body and gender - a superficial layer of false
  identity
• Sexless spirit
• Distancing oneself from gender roles (eg.
  surgery)
• Eg. Raelians, Heavens Gate, Scientology

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Converts and gender in the Sierra Juarez

• Women in indigenous / Catholic communities
• suffering from subordination to men
• lack socially accepted means of public
  participation
• more prone to convert?
• Smilde
• Evangelicalism has elective affinity towards
  Latin American women
• Loreto and Das Dores Campos
• Pentecostalism new man and a new woman. in
  Latin America

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Converts and gender in the Sierra Juarez

• Protestant churches in reality
• conservative about gender relationships
• Reproduce the unequal gender relationships of
  patriarchal Catholicism
• Eg. leaders of Adventists and Jehovahs Witnesses
  always men
• Female conversion
• change in stereotypical male and female roles
• increase of domestic violence
• Eg.Jehovahs Witnesses to San Miguel Peras,
  Zaachila,

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Recruitment to NRMs

• 1) Personalized recruitment most successful
• Recruitment primarily through pre-existing social
  networks
• Friends, family members, neighbours etc
• Aggressive public proselytizing relatively
  unsuccessful
• Exceptions Unification Church, Krishna
  Consciousness, COG

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Recruitment to NRMs

• 2) Importance of affective ties
• Eg. Nichiren Shoshu in Britain
• 1/3 - quality of the membership as the main
  reason for conversion
• 3) Intensive interaction between recruits and
  members of the group
• eg. Bo and Peep UFO cult
• elaborate schedule of daily routines
• 4) Brainwashing ?

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Brainwashing

• thought/mind control, psychological
  kidnapping, coercive persuasion
• hsi nao (Chinese to wash brain)
• Examples
• Stalinist purge trials in 1930s
• Chinese communists in late 1940s and early 1950s
• Edward Hunter Brain-Washing in Red China (1953)
• revolutionary colleges (Confucianism Maoism)
• thought reform (szu hsiang kai tsao)
• Koreans on US POWs in Korean war
• The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
• Ideological conversion rare
• Of 3500 only 50 made procommunist statements

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Brainwashing

• Robert Lifton
• Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
  (1961)
• Group identification
• Period of emotional conflict
• Submission and rebirth
• Schein et al
• Coercive Persuasion (1961)
• unfreezing
• sensory deprivation (prison)
• sensory overload (FBI in Waco)
• changing
• imposition of new identity, daily routines,
  relations etc
• refreezing
• consolidation through ritualized activities

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Arguments for brainwashing in NRMs

• Anti-cult movements
• Ronald Enroth
• sociologist
• Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults
  (1977)
• Steven Hassan
• ex-moonie
• deprogrammer
• Combatting Cult Mind-Control (1988)
• Margaret Singer
• psychologist
• Cults in Our Midst The Hidden Menace in Our
  Everyday Lives (1995)
• mind-control as part of her definition of
  cult
• post-cult trauma / post-cult syndrome

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Arguments for brainwashing in NRMs

• 1) systematic recruitment practices
• use of social-psychological techniques
• planned and rehearsed responses
• recruiters trained
• eg. Scientology, COG
• 2) Deception
• disguise of identity at recruitment
• eg. Unification Church (Oakland Family)
• hooks and plants
• eg. COG
• flirty fishing
• exaggerating membership figures
• eg. Scientology

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Arguments for brainwashing in NRMs

• 3) Targetting the vulnerable
• University campuses, counselling waitrooms
• 4) Elaborate techinques of socialization
• keeping recruits apart
• constant presence of members
• keeping recruits busy (sensory overload)
• love-bombing
• confessional activities (manipulable)
• little sleep and food
• low-key methods of hypnosis

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Arguments against brainwashing in NRMs

• 1) Tendency to lump all NRMs together
• extreme atrocity stories
• anecdotal evidence
• 2) Studies of intended brainwashing
• unsuccessful
• does not produce long-lasting changes
• behavioural compliance not transformation of
  identity
• 3) Sampling bias
• most testimonies
• by those who have undergone deprogramming / exit
  counselling

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Arguments against brainwashing in NRMs

• 4) Low rates of recruitment / High rates of
  turnover
• Eg. 0,5 of those who visit the Unification
  Church there in 2 years
• 5) Generally positive memories of voluntary
  defectors
• therapeutic effects of participation
• satisfaction of needs
• accomplishment of goals
• 6) Deprogrammed vs voluntary defectors
• different attitudes
• Deprogramming as brainwashing itself
• fast change of identity

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Apostasy

• Dropping out
• Deconversion
• Disaffiliation
• Disengagement
• Defecting
• Leavetaking
• Exiting
• Disidentification
• Relatively understudied
• Bromley, D. (ed.) 1988. Falling from the Faith
  Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy.
• Bromley, D. (ed.) 1998. The Politics of Religious
  Apostasy The Role of Apostates in the
  Transformation of Religious Movements.

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Apostasy

• Deprogramming
• Ted Patrick (1970s)
• When you deprogram people, you force them to
  think.
• I keep them off balance and this forces them to
  begin questioning, to open their minds
• controversial methods
• kidnapping
• Cult Awareness Network (CAN)
• bankruptcy due to unsuccessful deprogramming
• Exit counselling
• strategic intervention therapy
• less intrusive form of intervention
• persuasion