The Politics of Religious Apostasy

The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements

Hardcover edition cover
Editor	David G. Bromley
Language	English
Series	Religion in the Age of Transformation
Subjects	Apostasy Anti-cult movement
Publisher	Praeger Publishers
Publication date	1998
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	256
ISBN	0-275-95508-7
OCLC	37608170
Dewey Decimal	306.6/9142 21
LC Class	BL639.5 .P64 1998

The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements is a 1998 book edited by David G. Bromley. It presents studies by several sociologists of new religious movements on the role played by apostates (described as individuals that leave new religious movements to pursue opposition against their former group.) The volume examines the apostate's testimonies, their motivations, the narratives they construct to discredit their former movements, and their impact on the public controversy between such movements and society.

Reception

The Social Science Journal refers to the book as a "superb effort to examine in depth the complexity and significance of the apostate role, and to illuminate the processes through which subversive evil is socially constructed. Taken together, the authors contribute a diverse array of theory, data and substantive insights that add to our knowledge of the inner-workings of new religious movements. I recommend this book for classes in organizations, sociology of religion, psychology of religion, group dynamics and related subjects". ^[1]

The book was reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology , that found this work to be a "remarkably unified collection of high-quality essays by many leading sociologists of new religious movements." ^[2]

The psychologist Michael Langone (2001) argues^{[ relevant? ]} that some will accept uncritically the positive reports of current members without calling such reports, for example, "benevolence tales" or "personal growth tales." He asserts that only the critical reports of ex-members are called "tales" — a term he considers to imply falsehood or fiction. According to Langone, it wasn't until Zablocki (1996) ^[3] that anyone had conducted a study to assess the truthfulness of so-called "atrocity tales." ^[4]

References

1. The Social Science Journal, Elsevier; "The Politics of Religious Apostasy". Greenwood Publishing Group.
2. William Sims Bainbridge, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 105, No. 1 (Jul., 1999), pp. 261-262
3. Benjamin Zablocki (1996-08-17). "Reliability and validity of apostate accounts in the study of religious communities". Presented at the Association for the Sociology of Religion in New York City. Cited in Michael Langone (2001). "The Two Camps of Cultic Studies: Time for a Dialogue". Cults and Society. 1 (1). Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-11-20.
4. Michael Langone (2001). "The Two Camps of Cultic Studies: Time for a Dialogue". Cults and Society. 1 (1). Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-11-20.