Alternatives to deprogramming.
The announced retirement of Ted Patrick, the father of the modern anticult movement comes at a moment when the movement he founded is undergoing significant changes and his technique of coercive deconversion (deprogramming) of cult members is becoming increasingly obsolete. Patrick became the focus of the legal, financial, and emotional pressures that are forcing anticultists and other cult critics to seek a more effective response to the visible presence of so many diverse religions some so bizarre that it is difficult to recognize them as religions.
The growth of cults, those groups that either champion traditional Christian heresies (primarily Gnosticism or Arianism) or operate totally outside the Western religious tradition, experienced a quantitative leap after 1965 when the Oriental Exclusion Act was repealed and many Asian religious teachers took the opportunity to migrate. Korean Sun Myung Moon made his first visit in 1965, and Swami Prabhupada came in early 1966. Thus new forms of Eastern religion were already established when the great revival of the early 1970s swept the country. While evangelical Christianity, particularly the Pentecostal and Jesus People movements, gained the most from the revival, the Eastern faiths were strengthened by a flood of new adherents, and America experienced a significant increase in religious pluralism.
As these strange and unfamiliar forms of faith emerged, angry, frightened parents of the mostly youthful converts formed the first anticult groups. Patrick appeared to provide a practical program of action, one that could, they believed, not only retrieve family members but also destroy (or at least outlaw) the cults.
But the cults could not be destroyed so easily. Certainly some have withered, but their demise has been due to poor leadership, shallow theology, and weak organization, not opposition from anticultists. Quite the contrary, the more noteworthy cults such as the Unification Church are continuing to grow slowly and to institutionalize, with only minor modifications of their timetable due to anticult pressure.
Moreover, the practice of deprogramming has come under increasing condemnation. (Because of the growing number of violent incidents associated with him, Patrick had frankly become an embarrassment to his former supporters.) As early as 1974 the National Council of Churches denounced the practice. When legislative attempts to legitimize it arose, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and both liberal and evangelical Protestants spoke with one voice against it. Evangelical church leaders and people speaking for the black community, in particular, saw the potential for their constituents to become targets for deprogrammers.
The church’s voice, which became the decisive factor in the steady defeat of anticult legislative thrusts, has found a new ally in the critique of deprogramming by its victims. Though many former cultists acknowledged that deprogramming had accomplished its assigned task, they resented the manhandling they received and have demanded modification. Christian leaders such as Ron Enroth have criticized the deprogrammer’s neglect of the spiritual needs that led people into the cult experience. In response, some anticult groups have moved toward a more noncoercive method of “exit counseling” that abandons the more unacceptable features of deprogramming—kidnaping and physical restraint—and allows a freer climate to develop, one within which counselors can address the very real spiritual crises of former cult members.
Meanwhile, in the face of the failure of the anticult movement to alter or curb the cult phenomenon, interpreters have suggested new approaches to interaction with cults, their leaders, and their members. People speaking for the religious community who hold a wide variety of opinions about the cults agree that education concerning cult life and belief is essential. Such education can allay the fear (often bordering on hysteria) many people have of cult growth, and at the same time it can remove the aura of the exotic and mysterious that initially attracts many young members to the groups. Lutheran Ballard Pritchard sees the success of new religions as a warning that the church must reexamine and improve itself. Fr. John Saliba, a Roman Catholic, agrees: “The response of the Christian church should be to develop a greater awareness of the variety of needs people in our age have, and create practical ways in which these legitimate desires can be met.”
Some religious scholars have called for dialogue with the cults. Such dialogue, while acknowledging the right of the new religions not only to exist but also to seek converts and grow, would nevertheless seek to correct abuses (such as deceit in recruiting and fund raising).
Finally, Christians who regularly work with cultists are calling evangelicals to shift the emphasis in our approach to members of cult groups from arguments about doctrine—the overwhelming preoccupation of our books about cults—to a sharing of the love of Christ for the cultist and the confession of the claims of Christ upon each life. What argument can never do, the good news of Christ’s power to redeem the life can.
J. GORDON MELTON1Dr. Melton is director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, author of the two-volume Encyclopedia of American Religions (McGrath, 1978), and coauthor of The Cult Experience (Pilgrim, 1982).
