Brainwashing is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subjects' ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds, as well as to change their attitudes, values and beliefs.
Apostasy is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that is contrary to one's previous religious beliefs. One who undertakes apostasy is known as an apostate. Undertaking apostasy is called apostatizing. The term apostasy is used by sociologists to mean the renunciation and criticism of, or opposition to, a person's former religion, in a technical sense, with no pejorative connotation.
Eileen Vartan Barker is a professor in sociology, an emeritus member of the London School of Economics (LSE), and a consultant to that institution's Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She is the chairperson and founder of the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (INFORM) and has written studies about cults and new religious movements.
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, cult is usually a pejorative term for 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 and weakly defined – 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.
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.
The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) is a non-profit anti-cult organization focusing on groups it defines as "cultic" and their processes. It publishes the International Journal of Cultic Studies and other materials.
Stephen A. Kent is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He researches new religious movements (NRMs), and has published research on several such groups including the Children of God, the Church of Scientology, and other NRMs operating in Canada.
Michael D. Langone is an American counseling psychologist who specializes in research about cultic groups and psychological manipulation. He is executive director of the International Cultic Studies Association, and founding editor of the journal Cultic Studies Journal, later the Cultic Studies Review.
Benjamin Zablocki was an American professor of sociology at Rutgers University where he taught sociology of religion and social psychology. He published widely on the subject of charismatic religious movements, cults, and brainwashing.
Religious disaffiliation is the act of leaving a faith, or a religious group or community. It is in many respects the reverse of religious conversion. Several other terms are used for this process, though each of these terms may have slightly different meanings and connotations.
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.
Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field was edited by Benjamin Zablocki and Thomas Robbins. The book was published by University of Toronto Press, on December 1, 2001, and includes contributions from ten religious, sociological, and psychological scholars.
Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion is a non-fiction book on cults and coercive persuasion, written by Marc Galanter. The book was published in hardcover format in 1989 by Oxford University Press, and again in hardcover in 1999 in a second-edition work. The second edition was reprinted by Oxford University Press in March 2007.
Various sociological classifications of religious movements have been proposed by scholars. In the sociology of religion, the most widely used classification is the church-sect typology. The typology is differently construed by different sociologists, and various distinctive features have been proposed to characterise churches and sects. On most accounts, the following features are deemed relevant:
Armand Lind Mauss was an American sociologist specializing in the sociology of religion. He was Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Religious Studies at Washington State University and was the most frequently published author of Sociology works on Mormons during his long career. A special conference on his work in Mormon studies was held in 2013 at California's Claremont Graduate University (CGU), the papers from which were subsequently published by the University of Utah Press in the format of a Festschrift, where he was honored as "one of the most prominent Mormon intellectuals of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries."
Lorne L. Dawson is a Canadian scholar of the sociology of religion who has written about new religious movements, the brainwashing controversy, and religion and the Internet. His work is now focused on religious terrorism and the process of radicalization, especially with regard to domestic terrorists.
Dick Anthony is a forensic psychologist noted for his writings on the validity of brainwashing as a determiner of behavior, a prolific researcher of the social and psychological aspects of involvement in new religious movements.
John A. Saliba is a Maltese-born Jesuit priest, a professor of religious studies at the University of Detroit Mercy and a noted writer and researcher in the field of new religious movements.
