CULT LEADER JOHN-ROGER, WHO SAYS HE'S INHABITED BY A DIVINE SPIRIT, STANDS ACCUSED OF A CAMPAIGN OF HATE

The above statement is the over-lengthy title of a lurid piece that was published in People magazine in the late eighties. Similar - though somewhat more cautious - articles have appeared in the LA Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Playboy, and others. Garry Trudeau even lampooned John-Roger in a series of "Doonesbury" cartoons in response to a congressional candidate whose wife had been linked to MSIA. As the stature of these periodicals indicates, the controversy surrounding J-R and his movement has attracted national attention. At least part of the media's attraction for MSIA's particular drama has been the manner in which the group has been drawn into the larger conflict surrounding minority religions - the so-called "cult" controversy.

We should note, however, that the media themselves contributed heavily to the emergence of this controversy as a public issue. Specifically, the journalistic penchant for sensationalism has played a decisive role in promoting the stereotype of "evil cults" to the larger society. The mass media is not, of course, motivated primarily by the quest for truth. Instead, the mainstream media is driven by market forces and by the necessity of competing with other newspapers, other TV news shows, and so forth.

This is not to say that reporters necessarily lie or fabricate their stories. Rather, in the case of minority religions, news people tend to accentuate beliefs, practices, or events that seem to be strange, dangerous, sensational, and the like because such portrayals titillate consumers of news. This kind of reporting contributes to the perpetuation of the cult stereotype. In the words of British sociologist James Beckford,

Journalists need no other reason for writing about any particular new religious movement except that it is counted as a cult. This categorization is sufficient to justify a story, especially if the story illustrates many of the other components which conventionally make up the "cult" category.

This puts pressure on journalists to find more and more evidence which conforms with the categorical image of cults and therefore confirms the idea that a new religion is newsworthy to the extent that it does match the category. It is o part of conventional journalistic practice to look for stories about new religions which do not conform to the category of cult.

Another important factor is the marked tendency of the mass media to report on a phenomenon only when it results in conflicts and problems. To again cite from Beckford,

New religious movements are only newsworthy when a problem occurs. Scandals, atrocities, spectacular failures, "tug-of-love" stories, defections, exposes, outrageous conduct - these are the main criteria of new religions' newsworthiness . . . . And, of course, the unspectacular, nonsensational new religions are permanently invisible in journalists' accounts.

Once a dramatic story on a particular group appears in a major periodical, it becomes a point of reference for all subse quent stories on the same movement. This is because - given the deadlines for most stories, plus the budget constraints of most news media - few reporters have the time or the resources to collect original information. Instead, "research" consists of calling up information from previously published stories. And, because the data contained in earlier articles remain perpetually uncorrected, the same items of misinfor mation are repeated again and again, ad nauseam. Given enough time, the original misperceptions appear in so many publications that they acquire the weight of indisputable fact.

In the balance of the present chapter I will discuss the role of apostates (ex-members) in this controversy, focusing on the post-involvement attitudes of former participants in MSIA. The latter part of the chapter will examine the manner in which specific conflicts have been responsible for MSIA's assimilation into the "cult" stereotype.

Stepping off the Path

Since the mid-seventies, mainstream scholars - especially sociologists of religion - have been steadily churning out studies directly relevant to the cult controversy. (Because of the negative connotations of "cult," academics prefer to use the expression "new religious movement.") At this point in time, a collection of the books devoted to this controversy plus books on new religions containing at least one full chapter directly relevant to the controversy - and I mean a collection of mainstream scholarly works, not popular pseudo-studies would form a stack 15 feet high. This does not include the large number of relevant articles published in academic journals. The anticult movement - by which I mean groups like the Cult Awareness Network (prior to its 1996 bankruptcy filing), the American Family Foundation, and so forth - has chosen to ignore this body of scholarly literature because it refutes the negative stereotypes they rely upon to justify their continued existence.

For example, the operative question that social scientists have asked with respect to the stereotype of cultic "mind control" is: How does one distinguish "cult brainwashing" from other forms of social influence - forms of social influence like advertising, military training, or even the normal socialization routines of the public schools? Some anticultists have theorized that members of minority religions are trapped in a kind of ongoing, quasi-hypnotic state, while others assert that the ability of members to process certain kinds of information has "snapped."

The problem with these and similar theories is that if cultic influences actually override the brain's ability to logically process information, then individuals suffering from cultic influences should perform poorly on I.Q. tests or, at the very least, should manifest pathological symptoms when they take standardized tests of mental health - but, when tested, they don't. In point of fact, such empirical studies indicate that members of new religious movements are actually smarter and healthier than the average member of mainstream American society.

Other kinds of studies also fail to support the anticultist view that new religions rely upon nonordinary forms of social influence to gain and retain members. For example, if new religions possessed powerful techniques of mind control that effectively override a potential convert's free will, then every one - or at least a large percentage - of the attendees at 'recruiting seminars should be unable to avoid conversion. However, sociologist Eileen Barker, in her important study, The Making of a Moonie, found that only a small percentage of the people attending seminars sponsored by the Unification Church - an organization many people regard as the "evil cult" par excellence - eventually joined. Furthermore, of those who joined, more than half dropped out within the first year of their membership. In another important study, Canadian psychiatrist Saul Levine found that, out of a sample of over 800 people who had joined controversial religious groups, more than 80% dropped out within two years of membership - not the kind of statistics one would anticipate in groups wielding powerful techniques of mind control.

In the face of these and other empirical studies, social scientists have asked the further questions of: Given the lack of empirical support, where does the brainwashing notion originate? And, what is the real nature of the conflict that the "cult" stereotype obscures? The general conclusion of sociologists (as analyzed in, for example, David Bromley and Anson Shupe's book-length study, Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare) is that the principal source of the controversy is a parent-child conflict in which parents fail to understand the choices of their adult children and attempt to reassert parental control by marshaling the forces of public opinion against the religious bodies to which their offspring have converted.

This core conflict is then exacerbated by an irresponsible mass media that is less interested in truth than in printing exciting stories about "weird cults" that trap their members and keep them in psychological bondage with exotic techniques of "mind control." Also, once an industry is established that generates substantial profits through the "rescue" of entrapped "cult" members (I am here referring, of course, to deprogramming), special-interest groups come into being that have a vested interest in promoting the most negative stereotypes of alternative religions. These special interest groups add further fuel to the parent-child conflict by scaring parents with lurid stories of what will happen to their adult child if they fail to have her or him deprogrammed. In this manner, many otherwise reasonable and well-meaning parents are recruited into the controversy.

Ex-members of nontraditional religious movements provide one of the keys to understanding the cult controversy. Groups opposed to religious minorities base much, if not all, of their attack on the testimony of former members who relate tales of manipulation and abuse. Former members who have "actually been there" and have supposedly witnessed all of the horrors about which outsiders can only fantasize, provide the cult stereotype with its most important source of empirical evidence. These narratives, anticultists would have us believe, give us insight into the real nature and purpose of cults, belying the benefic image minority religions project to the world.

In my research, I discovered that most voluntary defectors were ambivalent or even positive about their former religion, often characterizing their membership period as beneficial and enjoyable. In sharp contrast, people who had been involuntarily deprogrammed or in other ways counseled by anticultists described their membership and their former religion in terms of the popular negative stereotype of cults. The conclusion one must draw from these findings is that deprogramming is not the therapeutic intervention that it has been portrayed as, but, rather, an intensive indoctrination process in which the abductee's religious faith is systematically destroyed and replaced with anticult ideology. While I would never assert that there is nothing to be criticized in certain minority religions, a careful consideration of this conclusion should cause any thinking person to hesitate before accepting the more extreme accusations proffered by anticultists.

With respect to this controversy, one of the most striking aspects of MSIA is the manner in which it departs from the pattern of most other controversial minority religions. As I noted in an earlier chapter, membership in MSIA is not an ally or-nothing proposition, which sharply distinguishes the Movement from groups like the Moomes and the Hare Krishnas.

Largely as a consequence of MSIA's "low-demand" membership requirements (i.e., subscribing to Discourses is all that is needed to be considered an active member, and members are not required or even asked to change their lives in any way), members were rarely, if ever, viewed as brainwashed zombies by their parents and thus avoided being kidnapped off the streets and subjected to the inquisitional arts of deprogrammers. The pattern of the post-involvement attitudes of voluntary defectors, however, shed considerable light on MSIA and its relationship to the cult controversy. The Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness's avoidance (until recently) of the cult controversy is reflected in former members' general lack of awareness of the anticult movement (ACM), an ignorance measured by two questionnaire items on the ex-member survey that requested (1) how one evaluated the ACM and (2) the extent of one's contact with the ACM. The first question asked was:

How would you evaluate "anticult" groups like the Cult Awareness Network?

1. Very Negative

2. More Negative than Positive

3. More Positive than Negative

4. Very Positive

More than anything else, the pattern of responses - such as they were -indicated a general lack of knowledge about anticult organizations (Table 8.1). Before examining the results, a couple of things should be pointed out about the results reported in the table.

First, a half-dozen people answered certain questionnaire items by simultaneously marking two adjacent responses (e.g., "1-2" instead of "1" or "2"), indicating that their attitude was somewhere between the two alternatives. Rather than deleting these respondents from the batch, my relatively small sample of completed Former Member Questionnaires (53) persuaded me to utilize such responses by assigning a half-point to each of the adjacent alternatives (an assignment that produced the ".5" values recorded in Table 8.1).

Second, note that percentage points have been rounded off to the nearest tenth of a percentage. As a consequence, the percentages in each table will not always add up to exactly 100%.

Finally, note that "N/R" means "Non-Response."

Table 8.1 - Attitude Toward Anticult Movement   Count Percent 1 8 15.1 2 17.5 33.0 3 2.5 4.7 4 3 5.7 N/R 22 41.5

The most striking aspect of responses to this item was the large number of people (more than two-fifths of the respondents) who chose to leave it blank. Eighteen of the twenty-two wrote something on the questionnaire beside the item like, "I have no information about it," "Don't know them," or "I'm not even aware of the Cult Awareness Network." In a couple of cases, respondents simply put a question mark in the blank provided for the answer.

My impression that most former MSIA members were largely uninformed about the cult controversy was reinforced by the item that measured the extent of one's contact with the ACM:

How would you describe the extent of your contact with "anticult" groups?

1. None

2. Minimal

3. Moderate

4. Extensive

Responses to this questionnaire item are tabulated in Table 8.2 below.

Table 8.2 - Contact with Anticult Movement   Count Percent 1 42 81.1 2 7 13.2 3 1 1.9 4 0 0.0 N/R 2 3.8

Over four-fifths (81.1 %) of respondents had never been in direct contact with the anticult movement, and, of those who had, not a single respondent described her or his contact as "extensive." From answers to this item and to the first item, it is clear that few ex-members feel motivated to seek out the anticult movement after leaving MSIA.

We can isolate four key assertions that capture the essence of the negative stereotype through which minority religions are perceived: They recruit people by deceptive means; once recruited, they brainwash their members; their leadership is insincere; and their belief systems are bogus concoctions of the leader/founder. Four items on the former-member questionnaire measured these attitudes. The first of these asked respondents how frequently they had described their socialization into MSIA as "brainwashing":

Do you ever use the term "brainwashed" to describe your involvement in MSIA?

1. Never

2. Rarely

3. Sometimes

4. Frequently or Always

Responses to this questionnaire item are tabulated in Table 8.3 below.

Table 8.3 - "Brainwashed"   Count Percent 1 43 81.1 2 4 7.5 3 4 7.5 4 1 1.9 N/R 1 1.9

This exaggerated pattern of response - over four-fifths of the sample asserting that they never described their MSIA indoctrination as "brainwashing" - is not surprising, given the general nonexposure of ex-members to anticult ideology. While almost everyone has come into contact with the cult stereotype via the mass media, the great majority of these respondents obviously did not feel that the stereotype fit their experience of MSIA. In other words, while many of these former members might believe that there are evil cults in society that attempt to snare innocent people and brainwash them, they clearly did not feel that they had been members of such a cult.

A closely related aspect of the negative stereotype of minority religions is that they deceptively recruit their members. The relevant item on the ex-member questionnaire requested respondents to describe the degree of deception/insincerity involved in their recruitment:

The people/events/literature that led you to become involved in MSIA was/were:

1. Mostly honest and sincere

2. Somewhat misleading

3. Very misleading

4. Completely deceptive and insincere

Responses to this questionnaire item are tabulated in Table 8.4 below.

Table 8.4 - Deceptive Recruitment   Count Percent 1 47 88.7 2 2 3.8 3 1 1.9 4 1 1.9 N/R 2 3.8

Like the brainwashing item, the pattern of response to this item presents us with a clear pattern, indicating that the great majority of these respondents do not feel that this aspect of the "evil cult" stereotype applies to their experience of MSIA any more than do sensationalistic notions of "cultic brainwashing."

What, then, one might ask, caused these ex-members to leave MSIA in the first place? Clearly their disaffiliation from MSIA rests on a significantly different basis than is expressed in the shallow categories of anticult ideology. We might well anticipate a less exaggerated pattern of responses on such items as a question asking respondents to evaluate the truth of MSIA's teachings. The relevant questionnaire item put the issue in terms of truth and falsity:

Which of the following best describes the teachings of MSIA?

1. Completely True

2. More True than False

3. More False than True

4. Completely False

Responses to this questionnaire item are tabulated in Table 8.5 below.

Table 8.5 - Evaluation of MSIA Teachings   Count Percent 1 8 15.1 2 38.5 72.6 3 3.5 6.6 4 2 3.8 N/R 1 1.9

Here we finally get something that begins to look like a statistical curve, even though more than 70% of the respondents marked the "More True than False" item. After carefully reading over the completed Former Member surveys, I came away feeling that I overstated responses One and Four. In other words, instead of wording the first and fourth choices "Completely True" and "Completely False," I should have worded them so as to read "Mostly or Completely True" and "Mostly or Completely False." Had I done so, I believe a number of the ex-members who marked response Two would have marked response One, resulting in a smoother distribution of responses.

Nevertheless, even given the response pattern recorded in Table 8.5, the attitudes of this sample of ex-members are much less rejecting of MSIA's teachings than one might anticipate. We might have reasonably expected more former members to dismiss the teachings as false. This expectation is, however, overly dependent on the model of the apostate who leaves a church because she or he has lost faith in religion altogether. By way of contrast, the typical ex-member of MSIA continues to adhere to those aspects of her or his belief system that are congruent with the larger metaphysical/occult/New Age subculture -and the area of overlap between the teachings and the general ideology of the metaphysical subculture is fairly extensive. Thus, in the great majority of cases, leaving MSIA is more like dropping out of a Baptist Church and then joining a Pentecostal Church than it is like leaving religion entirely. This explains why most ex-members would describe the teachings as "More True than False."

What, then, about former members' attitudes toward John-Roger, the founder of MSIA, whose unique spiritual role is one of the principal points on which MSIA's teachings depart from generic metaphysical ideology? Might ex-members hold more negative attitudes toward J-R than toward MSIA teachings more generally? The relevant questionnaire item puts the issue in the following terms:

Which of the following best describes John-Roger Hinkins?

1. A Great Spiritual Leader

2. A Generally O.K. Spiritual Leader

3. A Substandard Spiritual Leader with a few good points

4. Completely Deluded or Completely False

Responses to this questionnaire item are tabulated in Table 8.6 below.

Table 8.6 - Evaluation of John-Roger

Count Percent

1 11 20.8

2 24.5 46.3

3 10.5 19.8

4 2 3.8

N/R 5 9.4

Here we finally get a pattern of responses that looks something like a normal statistical curve. Nevertheless, over two thirds of the sample were still willing to give John-Roger a "Great" to "O.K." rating, despite the fact that they left the Movement. Only two former members were willing to describe J-R as "false" or "deluded," and at least one of these ex-members converted to conservative Christianity after leaving MSIA.

This surprising statistic indicates that, although all 53 respondents had left MSIA, most felt they benefited in one way or another from their participation in the Movement. Because they value the time they spent in the Movement, the majority feel no particular need to engage in self-justifying criticisms of either the teachings or John-Roger. This feeling of having benefited from involvement was explicitly measured by an openended item on the questionnaire that asked respondents if their MSIA involvement had helped or hurt them:

How has your involvement in MSIA influenced your life, for better or for worse?

Responses to this questionnaire item are tabulated in Table 8.7 below.

Table 8.7 - Better/Worse for the Experience

Count Percent

Better 3 8 71.1

Worse 4 7.8

Mixed 3 5.7

Neither 6 11.3

N/R 2 3.8

With almost three-fourths of the sample willing to assert unambiguously that they feel they are better off for having been participants in MSIA, it is easy to see how so few exmembers feel a need to castigate the Movement, the teachings, or the founder. This situation is perfectly understandable if, as I have already indicated, we realize that most of the people who have left MSIA still consider themselves "on the path," in the larger sense, and continue to participate in some form of metaphysical/New Age spirituality. Such people can thus regard their membership period as part of their larger quest, and, as a consequence, positively value the time and energy they invested in MSIA. The pattern of responses to one final questionnaire item that assessed the value of the membership period further reinforces this interpretation. This item asked respondents to imaginatively place themselves back in time at the point where they initially became involved in MSIA:

If you could be transported back to the time you began your involvement with MSIA, you would probably

1. Do it all over again with few or no changes

2. Do it all over again with many changes

3. Not get so deeply involved

4. Not get involved at all

Responses to this questionnaire item are tabulated in Table 8.8 below.

Table 8.8 - Would You Do It All Over Again?

Count Percent

1 32 60.4

2 5 9.4

3 5 9.4

4 7 13.2

N/R 4 7.5

Here once again we have an exaggerated pattern of response. In this particular case, the majority of the sample (about three-fifths) asserted that, if they had their membership period to do over again, they would "do it all over again with few or no changes."

Social Functions of the Cult Stereotype

In studying the conflict between new religious movements (NRM) and their most persistent critic - the so-called anticult movement (ACM) -sociologically informed observers have tended to focus on the efforts of the ACM to gain widespread social acceptance for its peculiar perspective on nontraditional religious groups. Because the consensus among mainstream NRM scholars is that the most dramatic claims made by the ACM against minority religions are inaccurate, many analysts have adopted a critical stance, attempting to uncover the deeper interests lying behind ACM rhetoric about brainwashing, cultic manipulation, and the like. These discussions of the ACM, and of the cult stereotype propagated by the ACM, have drawn on recent theorizing about social movements -theorizing that has tended to focus on the "macro" (in the sense of general, overall) dynamics of such movements. This tendency to emphasize what takes place at the broader levels of society has been prompted by, among other factors, a reaction among social scientists against earlier "micro" (in the sense of individualistic) theorizing that gave excessive attention to explaining why individuals become involved in social movements.

In my own research, I have become interested in understanding how particular minority religions are drawn into the "cult wars," as well as how ACM ideology is used in specific conflicts involving individuals and groups who, for the most part, have no interest in the wider ACM crusade. To understand social dynamics at this level, which lies somewhere between the "macro" level of the larger ACM and the "micro" level of individual involvement, some adaptation of earlier theorizing is called for. In the balance of the present chapter I will undertake to examine some of the specific conflicts through which the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness has been drawn into the cult controversy. For most of the people involved in conflicts with MSIA, the cult stereotype is an ideological resource, useful for eliciting support for their side of the struggle, but representing no deep involvement in the anticult cause.

The anticult movement's most powerful sphere of influence is in the arena of helping to construct and reinforce negative stereotypes about nontraditional religions in the mass media. However, the popularity of the cult stereotype indicates that there is a preexisting disposition to accept such stereotypes in American society. By attending to certain themes in anticult discourse, it should be possible to uncover some of the factors behind the receptivity of contemporary society to negative, stereotyped images of minority religions. Relevant social-psychological research also indicates that once a stereotype has been accepted, it structures our perceptions so that we tend to notice information that conforms to our image of the stereo-typed group and to neglect or forget other kinds of information. What this means for any given confrontation is that as soon as the label "cult" has been successfully applied (i.e., accepted as appropriate by outsiders not directly involved in the conflict), the information that the mass media gathers is selectively appropriated so that almost every item of data con-forms to the stereotype about cults, thus effectively marshaling moral support for the person or group locked in conflict with a minority religion. Finally, in the last section of this chapter, I will deal directly with the accusations leveled against John-Roger and MSIA that cannot simply be dismissed as a function of the cult stereotype.

What is a stereotype? Stereotypes are generalizations about other groups of people, but they are a peculiar type of generalization, characterizing whole groups of people inaccurately. Stereotypes are also usually held rigidly, in that we tend to ignore or to dismiss evidence that flies in the face of our generalization. Such rigidity indicates that our stereotypes may be protecting our self-esteem or helping us to avoid facing up to some unpleasant fact. Thus the stereotype of certain races as "lazy," for example, would simultaneously boost the self-esteem of society's dominant racial group as well as blind one to the inequalities of existing social arrangements. It is relatively easy to perceive that most generalizations about cults are little more than negative stereotypes, but what are the social forces that make such stereotypes about nontraditional religions peculiarly attractive to contemporary society?

Unless there are groups that are consciously antisocial or criminal like the Mafia or like gangs, the deviations from the norm that a community chooses to perceive as threatening are somewhat arbitrary. The people that our culture has traditionally construed as deviants have been racial (e.g., Blacks), ethnic (e.g., Jews), and sexual (e.g., homosexuals) minorities. In recent years, however, it has become socially unacceptable to persecute these traditional groups, at least in the overt manner in which they have been attacked in the past. This leaves few groups of any significant size to persecute. One of the few minorities that liberals (traditional defenders of the underdog) have been slow to defend are nontraditional religions. This is due to a number of different factors, including the resistance of traditionally conservative religions to liberal change. The failure of normally open-minded people to protect religious pluralism has allowed contemporary witch hunters to declare open season on cults.

Groups of people that are regarded as threatening frequently become screens onto which a society projects its anxieties. If, for example, a culture is troubled by sexual issues (as is often the case), then its enemies are perceived as perverse, sexually deviant, and so forth. Racial minorities, who have often been viewed as "loose" and sexually aggressive, have suffered from this projection. This was also a dominant theme in nineteenth century anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon literature. Contemporary cults, of course, suffer from the same projection.

In his classical formulation of the notion of psychological projection, Freud, who was especially concerned with sex and violence, viewed projection as a defense mechanism against unacceptable inner urges. Thus, in a society with strict sexual mores, an individual constantly keeping a lid on his desires might perceive rather ordinary dancing, let us say, as sexually suggestive. Becoming enraged at such "loose" behavior, he might then attempt to lead a movement to have all of the dance halls in town closed down. It should be clear that this hypothetical individual's inner struggle is being "projected" outward to provide a script for an outer struggle (i.e., internally he is repressing his desires while symbolically battling the same desires in the outer world). The same process is at work in the collective mind of society, perceiving marginal groups as sexually deviant. For instance, the stereotype of the sexually abusive cult leader, routinely forcing devotees to satisfy his or her sexual whims, perfectly captures the fantasy of those members of our society who desire to sexually control any person he or she wishes.

The same kind of process occurs with respect to repressed aggressive urges. We live in a society with strict sanctions against overt violence; simultaneously, violence is glorified in the entertainment media. This sets up a cultural contradiction that can then be projected onto enemies and deviant groups, with the result that minorities are often perceived as violent and belligerent. This accusation is also regularly projected onto nontraditional religions. In particular, the violent actions of a tiny handful of members of alternative religions is mistakenly taken to indicate a widespread tendency among all such groups.

We can generalize beyond Freudian psychology's emphasis on sex and aggression to see that many other cultural anxieties/cultural contradictions are projected onto minority groups. For instance, our society gives us contradictory messages about the relative importance of wealth and material success. On the one hand, we are taught that economic pursuits should be secondary to higher moral, social, and spiritual concerns. On the other hand, we receive many messages from the surrounding society that the single-minded pursuit of wealth is the be-all and end-all of life. This inherent contradiction is typically ignored or overlooked with regard to mainstream religions where gross economic inequities exist within the same community or where religious elites enjoy favored status and privilege. Instead of being faced directly, this self-contradiction is examined only after it has been projected onto alternative religions, where it constitutes the basis of the stereotype of the money-hungry cult leader who demands that his or her followers lead lives of poverty while the leader wallows in riches.

One of the more important cultural contradictions projected onto alternative religions is reflected in the brainwashing/mind-control notion that is the core accusation leveled against such groups. Discourse that glorifies American society usually does so in terms of a rhetoric of liberty and freedom. However, while holding liberty as an ideal, we experience a social environment that is often quite restrictive. Most citizens work as employees in highly disciplined jobs where the only real freedom is the freedom to quit. Also, we are daily bombarded by advertising designed to influence our decisions and even to create new needs. Our frustration with these forms of influence and control is easily displaced and projected onto the separated societies of alternative religions.

The components of the cult stereotype that have been enumerated above, and others that could be mentioned, explain certain themes in anticult discourse, as well as why this stereotype tends to resonate with public opinion. Without this preexisting disposition to construe nontraditional religions negatively, the anticult movement would have little or no social influence. However, even this influence is limited, in the sense that the stereotype the ACM has helped to shape has taken on a life of its own, independent of organized anticultism.

In their role as "moral entrepreneurs," ACM spokespersons have effectively marketed their negative stereotype of minority religions to the general public. Because of the preexisting fit between this negative image and the persistent social anxieties outlined in this section, our society has overwhelmingly bought into the stereotype (or purchased the moral commodity, to continue the entrepreneurial metaphor). Because of widespread acceptance of the stereotype, the ACM could disappear tomorrow and anticult discourse would still continue to shape public perceptions of minority religions.

Once a stereotype is in place, a variety of different kinds of studies have shown that it becomes self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing. Thus, in a study by Snyder and Uranowitz, for example, students were asked to read a short biography about Betty K., a fictitious woman. Her life story was constructed so that it would fulfill certain stereotypes of both heterosexuals and lesbians. In Snyder's words, "Betty, we wrote, never had a steady boyfriend in high school, but did go out on dates. And although we gave her a steady boyfriend in college, we specified that he was more of a close friend than anything else." A week later, they told some of the students that Betty was currently living with her husband, and another group of students that she was living with another woman in a lesbian relationship. When subsequently requested to answer a series of questions about Betty, they found a marked tendency on the part of students to reconstruct her biography so as to conform to stereotypes about either heterosexuality or homosexuality, depending on the information they had received.

Those who believed that Betty was a lesbian remembered that Betty had never had a steady boyfriend in high school, but tended to neglect the fact that she had gone out on many dates in college. Those who believed that Betty was now a heterosexual, tended to remember that she had formed a steady relationship with a man in college, but tended to ignore the fact that this relationship was more of a friendship than a romance.

More directly relevant to the case at hand is an important article by Jeffrey E. Pfeifer reporting the results of a similar study that compared responses to a biography in which a fictitious student, Bill, dropped out of college to enter a Catholic seminary, join the Marines, or join the Moonies. The short biography incorporated elements of indoctrination often attributed to cults, such as:

While at the facility, Bill is not allowed very much contact with his friends or family and he notices that he is seldom left alone. He also notices that he never seems to be able to talk to the other four people who signed up for the program and that he is continually surrounded by [Moonies, Marines, Priests] who make him feel guilty if he questions any of their actions or beliefs.

When given a choice of describing Bill's indoctrination experience, subjects who thought Bill had joined the Catholic priesthood most often labeled his indoctrination "resocialization"; those who were told that he had joined the Marines most frequently labeled the process "conversion"; and those who were under the impression that he had become a Moonie applied the label "brainwashing." On various other questions regarding the desirability and fairness of the indoctrination process, subjects who were told that Bill had joined the Moonies consistently evaluated his experience more negatively than subjects who were under the impression that Bill had joined either the Marines or a priestly order. The implication of this analysis is that minority religions lose their chance for a fair hearing as soon as the label cult is successfully applied to them. After that, the news media selectively seeks out and presents information that fits the stereotype. It is then only a matter of time before the group in question is completely "demonized."

While the cult stereotype has come to dominate public discourse about minority religions, and while groups like the Unification Church and People's Temple seem to have become integral parts of that stereotype, there is enough ambiguity in the cult label to make its application in particular cases a matter of negotiation. Occasions for such negotiation arise in the context of social conflicts. For individuals or groups locked in certain kinds of struggles with members of minority religions, the cult stereotype represents a potent ideological resource which - if they are successful in making the label stick marshals public opinion against their opponent, potentially tipping the balance of power in their favor.

Situations in which this strategy can work are not restricted to the kinds of conflicts that are picked up by the news media. For example, the stigma of the cult stereotype has been effectively deployed in child custody cases, in which one parent's membership in a minority religion is portrayed as indicative of her or his unworthiness as a parent. For such "limited domain" legal conflicts, however, it is difficult to deploy the stereotype unless there is some larger, earlier conflict that led to press coverage in which the particular minority religion in question was labeled a cult. Lacking earlier "bad press," the cult label can still sometimes be made to stick on the basis of testimony by disgruntled former members.

For the most part, individuals involved in such relatively limited conflicts do not become full-time ACM crusaders. While they may enter into a relationship with the ACM, they normally drift away from this involvement within a short time after the termination of their particular struggle. To refer back to the entrepreneurial model, these people are not so much moral entrepreneurs as they are consumers of a moral commodity - they have "purchased" a prepackaged cult stereotype and brought it to bear as one tool in their array of resources. They may, of course, still have to exercise persuasive skills in getting the public or the court to accept the applicability of the stereotype, but otherwise they are not invested in the product per se. If anticult rhetoric fails to accomplish their end, but some other tool works in their particular conflict, they are usually quite ready to dispose of the cult stereotype and adopt an entirely different angle of attack.

For example, in the mountains overlooking Santa Barbara, California, the Foundation for the Study of Individual and World Peace (or IIWP, an organization founded by John-Roger) purchased some property -later named Windermere - for the purpose of building a peace retreat facility. Bordered on one side by a national forest, their property is also directly adjacent to a semirural neighborhood populated by individuals who moved away from the city for the purpose of enjoying country living. Some of these people view their new neighbor with concern. When they heard about plans to build a facility that, they imagined, would attract large numbers of outsiders from the Los Angeles area who would disturb their peaceful rural setting, some were upset. Eventually some neighbors organized the Cielo Preservation Organization (named after the main road in the area) to oppose the construction of the retreat - construction that cannot proceed without approval from the county.

Not long after a negative article about MSIA appeared in the Los Angeles Times, almost everyone in the neighborhood received a copy. This slanted article immediately became a centerpiece in some of the neighbors' opposition to IIWP's retreat plans. By 1994, the Times' report had been superseded by the considerable publicity Arianna Huffington's MSIA connections were generating in the southern California media. Thus, in a December 1994 article in the local Santa Barbara paper on the conflict between Windermere and the neighborhood, Huffington and her cult connections were brought up and discussed near the beginning of the article:

His [John-Roger's] teachings drew national attention during this year's California Senate race between incumbent Diane Feinstein and Rep. Michael Huffington because the Montecito congressman's wife, Arianna, had ties to the John-Roger organization, which some critics claim is a cult. Arianna Huffington has said it is not a cult, and described her past connection with MSIA as a casual one.

Despite the cautious wording of this passage, the net effect of mentioning such accusations is that otherwise uninformed readers may conclude that the "cult" label is probably appropriate for MSIA, thus influencing them to side with the retreat's opponents.

I happen to live just down the mountain from Windermere, and, to judge from my conversations with local residents, this labeling enterprise has been highly successful in generating anti-IIWP/anti-MSIA sentiment in Santa Barbara county. The point here, however, is that the Cielo Preservation Organization is less concerned about the ranch owners' religious persuasion than about preventing, in the words of a local organizer, hordes of "L.A. cowboys" from invading the area, thus spoiling their rural privacy. The claim that the Windermere Ranch is populated by "weird cultists" is what I have termed an ideological resource or a moral commodity simply one among many accusations hurled at IIWP in an all out effort to short circuit their retreat plans.

The mention of the Huffingtons in the Santa Barbara paper alludes to an entirely different type of struggle that provides yet another example of the marshaling of the cult stereotype for deployment in a conflict not directly involving the ACM. The Feinstein-Huffington campaign for the U.S. Senate was a particularly bitter fight, with both camps relying heavily on expensive, negative TV ads. For a number of reasons, however, the media seemed to take more offense at Michael Huffington's bid for Senator than at Diane Feinstein's efforts to defend her seat in Congress. For one thing, and this may have been his biggest "sin" in the eyes of reporters, he consistently refused to be interviewed by what he felt to be a biased liberal media. Instead, Huffington attempted to bypass the news media altogether, appealing directly to voters through television advertisements. Rebuffed by the Huffington camp, the news media responded by characterizing Michael Huffington as a wealthy outsider attempting to buy a Senate seat, and, more generally, sought out and reported whatever negative bits of information they could find on this Republican challenger.

When Arianna Huffington's connection with MSIA was discovered, the mass media in southern California immediately jumped on the information. Uncritically repeating accusations from the 1988 Los Angeles Times piece, reporters quickly transformed Michael Huffington's senatorial bid from an outsider trying to buy his way into the U.S. Senate, into the machinations of an evil cult leader working behind the scenes through the candidate's wife to gain political influence for himself and his cult agenda. This absurd accusation was repeated (though sometimes subtly and by implication) in a number of articles, including important pieces in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Few reporters bothered to look more deeply into John-Roger and MSIA, much less question the appropriateness of the cult stereotype. Neither did they tend to emphasize that Mr. Huffington never had anything to do with MSIA.

Instead, as one might have anticipated, reporters' preexisting disposition to perceive Huffington negatively led them to accept accusations of his "cult connection" without further reflection. It was then almost inevitable that, as prior research into the self-fulfilling nature of stereotypes would have predicted, any new information gathered on MSIA would be filtered through the cult image.

However, while the news media is not particularly interested in uncovering the truth about minority religions, neither is it particularly interested in joining with the ACM to undertake a protracted campaign to destroy minority religions. Ultimately, the mass media is primarily concerned about making a profit and, to the extent that the cult image helps them to accomplish this end, the media buys into -and, in turn, propagates - the stereotype as a moral commodity.

To conclude this overview of MSIA-related conflicts with one final example, I have already mentioned that the "cult" stereotype has been effectively deployed in some child custody cases. In the words of Michael Homer, an expert in legal cases involving minority religions:

Religious practices and beliefs have also become the subject of child custody cases where nonmembers attempt to highlight nontraditional aspects of a spouse's or ex-spouse's religion to obtain custody of a minor child. Nonmembers seek to show that the religion deviates from social normalcy and, therefore, adversely affects the child's behavior. It is argued that the church's influence is mentally, physically, and emotionally detrimental to the child's well-being. Nonmembers have been successful when the court determines that the practices complained of are not merely religious but are detrimental practices that harm the child.

In one case of which I am aware, a parent's association with MSIA was effectively used against her by the other parent in a dispute involving their mutual offspring. In, this particular case, a divorced mother petitioned the court to permit her to relocate in order to take a position in an MSIA-inspired organization offering human potentials seminars. The ex-husband argued that he did not want his son involved in a cult, and dragged up all of the old rumors about John-Roger and MSIA in an effort to prevent his ex-wife from leaving the state. Perceiving that not only would she have a difficult time winning her case, but also that her husband might undertake further actions that could result in her son being taken from her, she dropped the case.

What is especially ironic about this case is that for several decades the father has been deeply involved in est - a human potentials group that has very frequently (far more frequently than MSIA) been labeled a cult. As someone whose participation in est has likely sensitized him to the cult controversy, the ex-husband's utilization of the stereotype is clearly little more than a tactic intended to win support for his side of the case, rather than a reflection of deeply held views about the dangers of sinister cults. As the mother said to me in a telephone interview, she feels that her former spouse was advised to "shoot her where you think you can hurt her," and that her involvement in a MSIA-related organization was simply a convenient target.

The chances of this gentleman becoming a full-time ACM crusader are practically nil. Here, as in the other instances we have examined, it is clear that the cult stereotype is an ideological resource, used without a deep investment in the stereotype per se. This way of understanding the cult image's role in particular struggles represents a variation on earlier theorizing. As I have already indicated, most recent theorizing has focused on the ACM's campaign to win acceptance of both its ideology and its agenda by the greater society. By shifting the point of focus from this broad level to more particular struggles, we were able to see that, in the context of grass roots conflicts, the cult stereotype becomes a moral commodity - an ideological resource that can easily be set aside if it is not persuasive, or if some other tactic better suits the situation.

As earlier sections of this book have demonstrated, participants appropriate the teachings and practices of MSIA, integrate them into their lives, and experience authentic self-transformation. With the exception of certain secularists who feel that all forms of religion are bad, and the exception of exclusivistic religionists who believe that only one religion leads to salvation, I think any reasonable observer would have to conclude that MSIA fulfills all of the criteria for a genuine religious movement.

Some people will, however, continue to ask questions along the lines of, What if John-Roger just "made up" the teachings? And, what if John-Roger really did sexually exploit some of his personal staff members? Questions like these cannot, in the final analysis, be answered to everyone's satisfaction. So, rather than defending or accusing John-Roger, let me turn these questions around and instead ask: If these accusations were true, what difference would it make? In other words, if we knew for certain that John-Roger just invented MSIA's teachings and committed acts like sexually exploiting some of his followers, would that indicate - as some critics imply that the whole religion was therefore inauthentic and should be abandoned?

If we examine the historical record, we find that the question of a religion's authenticity has rarely been decided on the basis of the good or bad intentions/actions of a religious group's founder. I was, for example, raised in the Episcopal Church, which originated as a schism from the Anglican Church. The Anglican Church, in turn, was originally founded by the king of England primarily because the Pope had refused to allow him to divorce his wife. Few people would be prepared to denounce Episcopalianism as bad or inauthentic because of the less-than-noble motives of its founder. This is at least partially because the Anglican Church continued a preexisting religious tradition with few changes.

Most new religious, in fact, begin as variations on preexisting religions. As a consequence, such religions draw on time-tested ideas, practices, and values. Thus, even so-called false prophets tend to preach messages containing more light than darkness. In the case at hand, it is clear that John-Roger has drawn heavily from the universal storehouse of religious inspiration. Whatever his intentions, his teachings resonate with universal truth. In my ongoing contact with Movement participants, I have, furthermore, experienced noble individuals following a noble teaching that has transformed many people's lives for the better. If the test of the authenticity of a religion deals with how people live their lives, then I would classify MSIA as an authentic religion. And I would stand by this judgment even if I became convinced that John-Roger had made up MSIA from whole cloth.

As for the allegation of sexual exploitation, there has been revelation after revelation in recent years about Catholic clergymen using their position of authority to sexually exploit boys and young men. In spite of this documented abuse, no one stands up and seriously proposes, on the basis of such incidents, that Catholicism is not an authentic religion which should therefore be abandoned. Nor is anyone prepared to assert that all of the marriages, baptisms, and so forth performed by errant priests are invalid because of the clergymen's deviant activities (and must henceforth be redone). Why should the criterion be any different for leaders of small, nontraditional religious movements? Whatever personal "sins" John-Roger might have committed - and none have been proven - they would not, in themselves, invalidate MSIA.

To shift away from John-Roger to his organization, I must say that, when compared with other movements stigmatized as destructive cults, MSIA is one of the most innocuous groups I have ever studied. MSIA does not, for example, ask members to quit their schooling or to quit their job. Members do not abandon their families, nor do they spend their spare time fundraising and recruiting new members. Their diet does not change upon joining, they do not have to cut their hair in a certain way, and they do not have to wear distinctive clothing in order to participate fully in MSIA. On the contrary, MSIA specifically states that all of these things and anything else relating to a person's physical life (what J-R has called the "10% level") is up to each person to decide for himself/herself. In fact, as with joining any mainstream denomination, almost nothing changes in one's lifestyle when one becomes involved in this church.

Given the lack of outward requirements, I have a difficult time imagining how the organization would go about operationalizing "destructiveness" even if the group's leadership decided it wanted MSIA to start acting like a destructive cult - it would be like the Elks Club trying to transform itself into a destructive cult. There are, in other words, few arenas within which one could exercise abusive power unless one completely reorganized the group.

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