Cultists Anonymous

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Cultists Anonymous (CA) was a British anti-cult organization made up of ex-cultists from Family, Action, Information, and Rescue (FAIR), Britain's largest anti-cult organization. CA formed in 1985 but rejoined FAIR in 1991. [1] CA's leaders generally remained anonymous to avoid intimidation from new religious movements (NRMs). [1] However, George D. Chryssides, a British religious studies scholar, believes that Lord John Francis Rodney, 9th Baron Rodney (Lord Rodney) was the leader of the group. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Split from FAIR

CA split from FAIR at the latest in August 1985. [5] Since at least 1984, some members of FAIR believed that it was becoming "moderate" and it needed a stronger stance against "cults." [6] [7] In FAIR's 1985 annual general meeting, co-chair Casey McCann reaffirmed FAIR's stance against deprogramming, believing that it was damaging and telescopic on brainwashing. [8] As such, some FAIR members formed CA to satisfy some FAIR members who wanted more deprogramming and "hardliner" stances against NRMs. [9] McCann wrote in the Journal of Contemporary Religion (then Religion Today) that many of CA's founding members were parents of followers of the Rajneesh movement. [7]

Anti-cult activities

CA's primary anti-cult activity was hosting a 24-hour hotline telephone service for NRM members, their family members, and ex-NRM members. [5] It was launched in August 1985. [5] They were staffed by an anonymous team of women calling themselves "Mandy" or "Janet." [6] [10] There were at least six members of the staff team at any one time, and they usually connected callers to other resources and "experts." [5] Sometimes these referrals included deprogrammers and organizations that support deprogramming like the Council on Mind Abuse (COMA). [6] [7] [11]

Occasionally, CA hosted protests of NRM meetings and ecumenical activities that included NRMs. For example, in December 1985, Scientologists and Unificationists joined a multi-denominational committee to protect the freedom of religion in Britain in response to the growth of anti-cultism. CA members were barred entry from the venue. [12]

Collapse and rejoining FAIR

In 1991, CA's hotline ran out of funding and could no longer operate. [13] FAIR agreed to take over the hotline. [4] FAIR invited CA members back to rejoin their group. Scholar Elisabeth Arweck believes that few CA members rejoined FAIR; however, Chryssides argues that since Lord Rodney became chairman of FAIR in 1988 showed how much overlap between the two groups' members there was. [3] [6] [13] McCann believed that the membership of overlap was nearly exact. [14] In his book Exploring New Religions, Chryssides adds that Cyril Vosper, at the time FAIR's treasurer, received a prison sentence in 1987 for his role in his daughter's deprogramming, implying that there were strong deprogramming sentiments in FAIR as well as CA. [3] The exact number of CA members to rejoin FAIR is unknown.

Related Research Articles

Deprogramming is measures that claim to assist a person who holds a controversial belief system in changing those beliefs and abandoning allegiance to the religious, political, economic, or social group associated with the belief system. Some controversial methods and practices of self-identified "deprogrammers" have involved kidnapping, false imprisonment, and coercion, which have sometimes resulted in criminal convictions of the deprogrammers. Some deprogramming regimens are designed for individuals taken against their will, which has led to controversies over freedom of religion, kidnapping, and civil rights, as well as the violence which is sometimes involved.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New religious movement</span> Religious community or spiritual group of modern origin

A new religious movement (NRM), also known as alternative spirituality or a new religion, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin or they can be part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges which the modernizing world poses to them by embracing individualism, while other NRMs deal with them by embracing tightly knit collective means. Scholars have estimated that NRMs number in the tens of thousands worldwide, with most of their members living in Asia and Africa. Most NRMs only have a few members, some of them have thousands of members, and a few of them have more than a million members.

In modern English, a cult is a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This sense of the term is controversial, having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia, and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study. The word "cult" is usually considered a pejorative.

David G. Bromley is a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, specialized in sociology of religion and the academic study of new religious movements. He has written extensively about cults, new religious movements, apostasy, and the anti-cult movement.

The anti-cult movement consists of various governmental and non-governmental organizations and individuals that seek to raise awareness of cults, uncover coercive practices used to attract and retain members, and help those who have become involved with harmful cult practices. One element within the anti-cult movement, Christian counter-cult organizations, oppose New Religious Movements on theological grounds, categorizing them as cults, and distribute information to this effect through church networks and via printed literature.

Anson D. Shupe, Jr. was an American sociologist noted for his studies of religious groups and their countermovements, family violence and clergy misconduct. He was affiliated with the New Cult Awareness Network, an organisation operated by the Church of Scientology, and had at least one article published in Freedom magazine.

The Dialog Center International (DCI) is a Christian counter-cult organization founded in 1973 by a Danish professor of missiology and ecumenical theology, Dr. Johannes Aagaard (1928–2007). Considered Christian apologetic and missionary minded, the Dialog Center, led by Aagaard, was for many years the main source of information in Denmark on cults, sects, and new religious movements (NRMs). The Dialog Center is firmly against religious beliefs of cults but promotes dialogue between cult members and their families. It rejects deprograming, believing that it is counterproductive and ineffective, and can harm the relationship between a cult member and concerned family members. It is active in 20 countries. In Asia it also tries to spread Christianity with Buddhists.

Cyril Ronald Vosper was an anti-cult leader, former Scientologist and later a critic of Scientology, deprogrammer, and spokesperson on men's health. He wrote The Mind Benders, which was the first book on Scientology to be written by an ex-member, and the first critical book on Scientology to be published.

The academic study of new religious movements is known as new religions studies (NRS). The study draws from the disciplines of anthropology, psychiatry, history, psychology, sociology, religious studies, and theology. Eileen Barker noted that there are five sources of information on new religious movements (NRMs): the information provided by such groups themselves, that provided by ex-members as well as the friends and relatives of members, organizations that collect information on NRMs, the mainstream media, and academics studying such phenomena.

<i>The New Believers</i>

The New Believers: A Survey of Sects, 'Cults', and Alternative Religions, is a book by David V. Barrett covering the origin, history, beliefs, practices and controversies of more than sixty new religious movements, including The Family International, International Church of Christ, Osho (Rajneesh), Satanism, New Kadampa Tradition, Wicca, Druidry, chaos magic, Scientology, and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Family Survival Trust</span>

The Family Survival Trust (FST) is a charity registered in the United Kingdom, established in order to support and offer counselling for members of abusive cults, religions, and similar organizations, and their families members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">INFORM</span>

INFORM is an independent registered charity located in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College, London since 2018; from 1988-2018 it was based at the London School of Economics. It was founded by the sociologist of religion, Eileen Barker, with funding from the British Home Office, Britain's mainstream churches, foundations and enquirers. Its stated aim is to provide neutral, objective and up-to-date information on new religious movements (NRMs) to government officials, scholars, the media, and members of the general public, in particular to relatives of people who have joined a new religious movement., as well as religious or spiritual seekers

Johannes Monrad Aagaard was a Danish theologian and evangelist. He was a professor of missiology at the University of Aarhus. He founded the Department of Missiology and Ecumenical Theology and the Center for New Religious Studies at the University of Aarhus. He was active in the Christian countercult movement as the founder of the Dialog Center International, an international educational organization concerned with groups it defines as cults and other new religious movements. He was a former president of the International Association for Mission Studies. He was a member of the Faith and Order Commission and was on the board of the Theological Educational Fund. He co-founded and chaired the Nordic Network for Missiology and Ecumenical Studies.

P'ikareum or p'ikareun or pigareum, literally "blood purification" or "blood exchange", is a controversial religious practice in some new religious movements of Korea. As defined by British religious scholar George Chryssides, the practice consists "of a female neophyte engaging in ritual sexual intercourse with the messianic leader [of the movement], in order to restore - either literally or symbolically - the sexual purity of the woman." Chryssides also notes that there were cases where the messianic leader was female and the neophyte male. The person so initiated will then have intercourse with his or her spouse, and the purity acquired from the messianic leader will be transmitted to both the spouse and the progeny.

Michael Thomas M. Casey McCann, commonly known as Casey McCann or M.T.M. Casey McCann, was an anti-cult activist in Britain, Sevenoaks School staff person in Kent, and headmaster of St. Paul's British School in São Paulo, Brazil. He is well-known for his co-leadership in Family, Action, Information, Rescue (FAIR) in the 1980s with Lady Daphne Vane.

Ian Haworth is a British anti-cultist. Originally from Lancashire, United Kingdom, he moved to and lived in Toronto, Canada, in late 1970s and early-to-mid 1980s. He returned to Britain in 1987 and founded the Cult Information Centre, a major anti-cult organization, of which he is "General Secretary." He also founded the Council on Mind Abuse (COMA) in 1979 in Toronto.

Graham Baldwin is a British anti-cult activist who formed and directs the organization Catalyst Counseling, commonly called Catalyst, which received charity status in Britain in 1995. Catalyst primarily provides "exit counseling" to ex-cultists, but occasionally Baldwin would be consulted for news organizations, court cases, etc. Baldwin received a Bachelor's degree in divinity from King's College and was a chaplain at the University of London. Baldwin has been called an "exit counsellor" by some newspapers like The Times and The Telegraph.

Martin Faiers is a British deprogrammer and former official in the Unification Church in Canada. He was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. His family members are publishers of This England, a quarterly magazine about small-town and country England. According to scholar Elisabeth Arweck, Faiers lives in southern France and works in the Spanish deprogramming "market." In addition to being a deprogrammer, he also organized for several years a UK organization called Council on Mind Abuse.

The People's Organised Workshop on Ersatz Religion (POWER) was a British anti-cult organisation founded in 1976. Some believe that POWER is a front organisation by large new religious movements (NRMs) meant to delegitimise other anti-cult organisations like Family, Action, Information, Rescue (FAIR). POWER functionally disappeared in 1977 but caused major controversy within its roughly one-year lifespan. The organisation published a brochure called Deprogramming: The Constructive Destruction of Belief: A Manual of Technique, which advocated for mass deprogramming of cult members, including methods like sleep deprivation, food deprivation, forced nudity, kidnapping, and "aggressive sex".

References

  1. 1 2 3 George D. Chryssides, "Britain's anti-cult movement," in New Religious Movements: Challenge and Response, edited by Jamie Cresswell and Bryan Wilson, 257–73 (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 266.
  2. ↑ "Obituary of Lord Rodney," The Daily Telegraph (London), 22 October 1992.
  3. 1 2 3 George D. Chryssides, Exploring New Religions, Issues in Contemporary Religion (London and New York: Continuum, 2000), 350.
  4. 1 2 Eileen Barker, "New Religious Movements in Britain," in New Religious Movements in Europe, edited by Helle Meldgaard and Johannes Aagaard, 99–123. RENNER Studies on New Religions. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1997. P. 116.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Walter Schwarz, "Young minds are the battlegrounds / Focus on religious cults," The Guardian (London), 21 October 1985.
  6. 1 2 3 4 George D. Chryssides, "Britain's anti-cult movement," in New Religious Movements: Challenge and Response, edited by Jamie Cresswell and Bryan Wilson, 257–73 (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 266.
  7. 1 2 3 M.T.M. Casey McCann, "The British Anti Cult Movement... A View From Within," Journal of Contemporary Religion 3, no. 2 (1986): 7.
  8. ↑ Elisabeth Arweck, Researching New Religious Movements: Responses and Redefinitions (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 131.
  9. ↑ Arweck, 130–1.
  10. ↑ Walter Schwarz, "Society Tomorrow: Tracking the single truths," The Guardian (London), 16 September 1987.
  11. ↑ Arweck, 193n20.
  12. ↑ Walter Schwarz, "Religions join forces to oppose anti-cult moves / Proposed British Council of Faiths," The Guardian (London), 2 December 1985.
  13. 1 2 Arweck, 191n10.
  14. ↑ McCann, 6.

See also

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