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Apostates and New Religious Movements
Posted by Lev/Christopher on October 28, 2008 at 6:53am in Prophecy & End Times
Professor Bryan Ronald Wilson is the reader Emeritus in Sociology at
the University of Oxford. For more than 40 years, Professor Wilson has
conducted studies of Scientology, Christianity and many other beliefs.
He is one of the most well-known British scholars of religion and
provides here a thought provoking study on the subject of apostates and
apostasy.
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Every religion which makes claim to a definitive body of doctrine and
practice which it regards as exclusively its own, is likely to be faced
with the fact that from time to time some erstwhile members will
relinquish their allegiance and cease to subscribe to the formalities
of the faith, in at least some, perhaps all, of its teachings,
practices, organization, and discipline. Apostasy has been a common
phenomenon in the history of the various denominations of the
Judaeo-Christian-Muslim tradition. Each new schism from an already
established organization of faith has been likely to be seen, by those
from whom the schismatics have separated, as a case of apostasy. There
have been dramatic instances on a large scale, as in the so-called
“great schism” of the eastern (Orthodox) and western (Catholic)
churches, and in the emergence of Protestantism at the Reformation. (It
needs to be added, if only for the record, that the dissentient and
departing parties have generally no less often accused those remaining
in the earlier established body of apostasy from some earlier putative
standard of faith and practice.) Given the number of religious bodies
in Christiandom which originated in schism, it must be clear that
apostasy has been of widespread and common occurrence.Not every
incident of apostasy results in the formulation of a deviant and
separate religious party or sect, however. Apostasy may be considered
no less to occur when a single erstwhile believer renounces his vows
and his former religious allegiance. In the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, at a time of crisis in Christian belief, there
were some celebrated cases of apostasy from the Roman Catholic Church.
They were represented as occurring in that church because of the rigour
of its requirements of belief and practice; because of its resistance
to modernism; and in particular because it encouraged the most devoted
of its votaries to join monastic orders or congregations. Some of the
lurid stories of monastic life, purportedly related by apostated monks
and nuns — the celebrated case of Maria Monk was widely publicised —
turned out to be largely fictional, but were much used by the
anti-Catholic propagandist media of the day. In the present age of
religious pluralism, in which a spirit of ecumenism prevails among many
of the major Christian denominations, and in which the so-called
“switching” of allegiance from one of these movements to another is not
uncommon, the charge of apostasy is less frequently heard. But since c.
1960, with the appearance in western society of various new minority
movements which have distinctive religious teachings and which require
a strong sense of specific commitment, a member who departs is likely
to be regarded as apostatizing, and all the more so, of course, if that
member then proceeds to ridicule or excoriate his former beliefs and to
vilify those who were previously his close associates.In recent
decades, given the emergence of so many new religious bodies which make
strong demands on the loyalty of their members, instances of apostasy
have become matters of considerable attention for the mass media. The
apostate’s story, in which he is usually presented as a victim, is seen
as good news-copy for the media, particularly if he offers to “reveal”
aspects, and perhaps secrets, of the movement to which he formerly
belonged. In consequence, apostates receive perhaps an unwarranted
amount of media attention, particularly when they are able to present
their previous allegiance in terms both of their own vulnerability and
the manipulation, deception, or coercion exercised by the leaders and
members of the movement into which they were recruited. Because these
accounts are often the only information normally available to the
general public about minority religions, and certainly the most widely
disseminated information, the apostate becomes a central figure in the
formation (or misformation) of opinion in the public domain concerning
these movements.Academic scholars interested in religious minorities,
and in particular sociologists, in whose field this subject matter
particularly lies, normally pursue their scholarly enquiries by a
variety of well-recognized methods. They gather their data not only by
archival research and the study of printed matter and documents, but
also by participant observation, interviews, questionnaire surveys and,
directly to the point at issue here, from informants. Apostates are
often very willing informants, but sociologists generally exercise
considerable caution with respect to this possible source of evidence.
As I have written elsewhere, in discussion of the sociologist’s
techniques of inquiry:
Informants who are mere contacts and who have no personal motives for
what they tell are to be preferred to those who, for their own
purposes, seek to use the investigator. The disaffected and the
apostate are in particular informants whose evidence has to be used
with circumspection. The apostate is generally in need of
self-justification. He seeks to reconstruct his own past, to excuse his
former affiliations, and to blame those who were formerly his closest
associates. Not uncommonly the apostate learns to rehearse an ‘atrocity
story’ to explain how, by manipulation, trickery, coercion, or deceit,
he was induced to join or to remain within an organization that he now
forswears and condemns. Apostates, sensationalized by the press, have
sometimes sought to make a profit from accounts of their experiences in
stories sold to newspapers or produced as books (sometimes written by
‘ghost’ writers). [Bryan Wilson, The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, p.19.]
Sociologists and other investigators into minority religions have thus
come to recognize a particular constellation of motives that prompt
apostates in the stance they adopt relative to their previous religious
commitment and their more recent renunciation of it. The apostate needs
to establish his credibility both with respect to his earlier
conversion to a religious body and his subsequent relinquishment of
that commitment. To vindicate himself in regard to his volte face
requires a plausible explanation of both his (usually sudden) adherence
to his erstwhile faith and his no less sudden abandonment and
condemnation of it. Academics have come to recognize the “atrocity
story” as a distinctive genre of the apostate, and have even come to
regard it as a recognizable category of phenomena [A.D. Shupe, Jr., and
D. G. Bromley, “Apostates and Atrocity Stories”, in B. Wilson (ed.),
The Social Impact of New Religious Movements, New York, Rose of Sharon
Press, 1981, pp. 179-215.]
The apostate typically represents himself having been introduced to his
former allegiance at a time when he was especially vulnerable —
depressed, isolated, lacking social or financial support, alienated
from his family, or some other such circumstance. His former associates
are now depicted as having prevailed upon him by false claims,
deceptions, promises of love, support, enhanced prospects, increased
well-being, or the like. In fact, the apostate story proceeds, they
were false friends, seeking only to exploit his goodwill, and extract
from him long hours of work without pay, or whatever money or property
he possessed.
Thus, the apostate presents himself as “a brand plucked from the
burning,” as having been not responsible for his actions when he was
inducted into his former religion, and as having “come to his senses”
when he left. Essentially, his message is that “given the situation, it
could have happened to anyone.” They are entirely responsible and they
act with malice aforethought against unsuspecting, innocent victims. By
such a representation of the case, the apostate relocates
responsibility for his earlier actions, and seeks to reintegrate with
the wider society which he now seeks to influence, and perhaps to
mobilize, against the religious group which he has lately abandoned.
New movements, which are relatively unfamiliar in their teachings and
practices, and the beliefs and organization of which are designed in
terms that are new or newly adapted, are most susceptible to public
suspicion; If they have secret or undisclosed teachings, or appear to
be exceptionally diligent in seeking converts, or have a distinctive
appeal to one or another section of the community (e.g., the young;
students; ethnic minorities; immigrants, etc.) or if the promises of
benefit to believers exceed the every-day expectations of the public at
large, then they may easily become objects of popular opprobrium or
even hostility. The atrocity stories of apostates, particularly when
enlarged by the sensationalist orientation of the press, feed these
tendencies, and enhance the newsworthiness of further atrocity stories.
Newspapers are will known to recapitulate earlier sensationalist
accounts when locating new stories in similar vein about particular
movements — a practice designated by some sociologists as the use of
“negative summary events.” [”This refers to the journalistic
description of a situation or event in such a way as to capture and
express its negative essence as part of an intermittent and slow-moving
story. An apparently isolated happening is thereby used as an occasion
for keeping the broader, controversial phenomenon in the public mind.”
— James A. Beckford, Cult Controversies: The Societal Response to New
Religious Movements, London, Tavistock, 1985, p. 235.]
By this means, the dramatic import of each apostate’s story is
reinforced in its significance, to the detriment of objective and
ethically neutral enquiry into religious phenomena of the kind
undertaken by academic sociologists. Contemporary religious bodies,
operating in a context of rapid social change and changing perceptions
of religious and spiritual belief, are likely to be particularly
susceptible to the disparagement and misrepresentation which occurs
through the circulation and repetition of the accounts of apostates.
Neither the objective sociological researcher nor the court of law can
readily regard the apostate as a creditable or reliable source of
evidence. He must always be seen as one whose personal history
predisposes him to bias with respect to both his previous religious
commitment and affiliations, the suspicion must arise that he acts from
a personal motivation to vindicate himself and to regain his
self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim but
subsequently to have become a redeemed crusader. As various instances
have indicated, he is likely to be suggestible and ready to enlarge or
embellish his grievances to satisfy that species of journalist whose
interest is more in sensational copy than in a objective statement of
the truth.
Bryan Ronald Wilson
December 3, 1994
Oxford, England
http://www.religiousfreedomwatch.org/religious-experts/credible-exp...
http://www.neuereligion.de/ENG/Wilson/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_R._Wilson
http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol28I2/page34.htm
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Updated on 5 May 2010
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