Cult Specialists Assess Nontraditional Religions in the Mid-Eighties

A number of the nation’s leading cult watchers say nontraditional religions are on the increase. None of the 14 cult specialists who responded to an informal survey said the trend toward cultic aberrations is diminishing. Ten of the respondents said it is growing, and four said it is “about the same.”

“Some [cults] diminish, some grow, new ones are formed. It’s always here,” said Lowell D. Streiker, author of The Cults Are Coming (Abingdon). “Always a fringe in society seek out bizarre and novel groups.… As social problems arise, groups arise to address the issues.” Streiker said that Scientology, the Divine Light Mission, the Hare Krishna movement, and Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church are “in decline.… The Children of God are stable. Shepherding is growing—as are deliverance/healing/prosperity groups.”

“The new cults … continue to expand,” said John E. Dahlin, editor of The Discerner, “but they are not matching any of the major cults in expansion and influence.”

Several respondents cautioned against being misled by a decrease in news media coverage of cults. “The phenomenon has become so common that it is no longer newsworthy unless ‘local color’ or tragedy [are involved],” said Betty McConahy of the Citizens Freedom Foundation.

John H. Gerstner, emeritus professor of church history at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, said the upward trend is “traceable to the decline of authentic Christianity in the mainline denominations.” Dahlin agreed with Gerstner. “Cults will continue to expand, due to the lack of evangelical emphasis by most of the leading denominations,” he said. “People who have no solid moorings are easily detached and will join the cults.”

Said a representative of Spiritual Counterfeits Project: “People have lost the grounds for any type of spiritual discernment. For example, a 1982 Gallup Poll shows that 23 percent of the people believe in reincarnation. [Of those], 21 percent claimed to be Protestants, and 25 percent claimed to be Catholics.”

The survey asked researchers to record their predictions for 1985 and beyond. Said Eternity magazine editor William J. Petersen, author of Those Curious New Cults in the Eighties (Keats): “America has a religious hunger, and it is trying to satisfy it either at quick-food drive-ins or at exotic restaurants. This will continue and probably increase.” Said Westmont College sociology professor Ronald Enroth, author of Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults (Zondervan): “Extremist fundamentalist/separatist sects will grow.” And James Bjornstad, executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Christianity, predicted “increasing interest in New Age [issues] and increasing diversity in aberrations [related to Christianity].” Robert E. Schecter, editor of The Cult Observer, said he forsees “more shepherding/discipleship and ‘pop’ therapy problems.” And Gordon R. Lewis, professor of systematic theology at Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary and author of Confronting the Cults (Baker), predicted “an increasing polarity between evangelical Christian groups holding to the Bible’s teaching as the highest authority, and new-consciousness, New Age groups holding to immediate experiences as a higher authority.”

Of the pre-1960 cults, survey respondents said the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) is the “most dangerous” to mainstream Christian bodies. The Jehovah’s Witnesses finished a distant second. Personal Freedom Outreach warned: “Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are dangerous because they are established, promote moral values and family unity, and appear to be [just another Christian denomination].… The Unification Church is working towards this same end.” Eternity magazine’s Petersen agreed: “Mormons model good old American values.… And the Unification Church is moving along the same course toward respectabilty that the Mormons have trod.”

Among post-1960 cults, the researchers cited the Unification Church, The Way International, and Rajneeshpuram as among the “most dangerous.”

The survey also solicited comments on brainwashing and deprogramming. Respondents were divided in their assessment of brainwashing. But they were unanimous in opposing physical restraint and verbal abuse in efforts to extricate young people from destructive cults. In the judgment of retired Pittsburgh Seminary professor Gerstner, “If a person is capable of either [brainwashing or deprogramming], he should be brought to psychiatrists. Otherwise, let Christians give reasons for their hope and show [the] lack of [similar reasons] in cults.”

Said Bjornstad: “I do not accept the programming claim that a person could not do otherwise but join, and thus I reject the strict opposite of programming, [which is] deprogramming.” He said he is concerned about an increase in deprogrammings of people from Christian groups.

Streiker rejected “the brainwashing hypothesis,” describing it as “the psychologizing of religious phenomena.” In his extensive study of former People’s Temple members, he said he discovered “only one or two” cases of zombie-like depersonalization. “Their bodies were controlled, but their minds were still functioning.”

What about the use of the term “cult”? Streiker said he dislikes the term because “the cult label justifies in the minds of many hate and oppression.” Petersen said he distinguishes between “cult” and “cultic.” “ ‘Cultic,’ authoritarian groups may be fundamental theologically, but dangerous socially and psychologically,” he said. “Some cults may not hurt a fly, but are spiritually devastating.”

How should Christians respond to cults? Most of the cult watchers agreed that appropriate responses include love, reconciliation, a positive Christian witness, biblical refutation of cultic teachings, and honest dialogue with cult members.

“The church has grown increasingly autistic,” said Dean Halverson, of Spiritual Counterfeits Project. “We seem to be more concerned about our own salvation than that of those in the cults.”

U.S. Catholic Church Sees Rise In Number Of Married Priests

If current trends continue, an increasing number of Roman Catholics may see their next priest arrive in town with a wife and children. Requests by married Episcopal clergymen to be reordained into the Catholic priesthood have doubled in the recent past.

In the last four years, 26 married Episcopalians have become Catholic priests. Fifteen cases are pending in Rome, and 40 additional contacts are on the books.

The numbers are small, but the trend is significant, said James Parker, an assistant to Boston Archbishop Bernard Law. Parker, a married man who was reordained as a Catholic priest in 1981, oversees the application and reordination process. The Vatican’s provisions for reordination apply only to Episcopalians in the United States.

“In the past … we would hear from one man every two or three weeks,” Parker said. “We now hear from perhaps three or four in a month. Now that may not sound like a lot, but it’s a very serious move.”

The married former Episcopalians make up a small percentage of the nearly 58,000 Catholic clergymen in the United States. Yet they are the most rapidly growing category of married Catholic priests. Those categories include:

• Married Orthodox or Protestant clergymen who petition Vatican officials directly for Catholic reordination.

• Married Catholic priests ordained by overseas bishops and accepted by U.S. bishops, including a Polish National Catholic priest recently hired by the Rochester, New York, diocese.

• Eastern Rite Catholic priests in the United States, including Byzantine, Melkite, and Ukranian Rite Catholics. Beginning in the twelfth century and as recently as 1936, at least 15 of the Eastern Rite communities asked for and were granted reunion with the Vatican. They were allowed to keep their customs, including married clergy. About 50 of the 700 Eastern Rite Catholic priests in the United States are married.

Overseas, it is common for Eastern Rite priests to be married. “I grew up [in Lebanon] among married priests …,” said Joseph Lahoud, pastor of Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon, Boston. “I don’t think the people questioned it.… They had no reservations, no problems at all. The community was just happy to have a priest.”

But problems can pester married Catholic priests in the United States. A bishop from Lebanon was scheduled to arrive at Lahoud’s church last month to ordain a married man into the priesthood.

“The response has been very negative, which is surprising to me,” said Lahoud, who is single. “People are calling up and asking questions. The minute he [the new priest] says a Mass people will be panicking.”

Such reluctance to accept married Catholic priests makes it difficult for those priests to find a job. Ronald Golini, director of communications for the Melkite-Greek Catholic diocese in West Newton, Massachusetts, said there is “a lot of pressure on the bishops not to hire them [married clergy]. So even if you manage to get ordained overseas, when you get back there’s not a job available.”

RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE

Canada’S Southern Baptists Form An Autonomous Denomination

Southern Baptists in Canada are the latest in a string of Protestant groups north of the border to declare their independence from parent bodies in the United States. Messengers (delegates) from 78 congregations in central and western Canada voted to form the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists.

The autonomy move came nearly a year after the 14.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) voted against extending its denominational boundaries to include Canada. Most of the Canadian Southern Baptist churches were formed in the past 30 years and were affiliated with the SBC’s Northwest Baptist Convention, whose headquarters are in Portland, Oregon. Both the SBC’s Home Mission Board and its Foreign Mission Board will assist in the development of the new denomination. The Home Mission Board will lend support to church planting efforts, and the Foreign Mission Board will help the Canadian denomination found a seminary in Calgary, Alberta.

The Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists is the latest Canadian denomination to declare autonomy from an American parent body. During the past few years the Evangelical Free Church, Baptist General Conference, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and two Lutheran bodies have taken similar steps. The Lutheran action resulted in a merger known as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

NORTH AMERICAN SCENE

Gay Nondiscrimination Order Struck Down

New York’s highest court has struck down a New York City executive order that prohibited city contractors from discriminating against homosexuals in hiring. The order, issued by New York Mayor Ed Koch, had been opposed by the Salvation Army, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and Agudath Israel of America. Those groups provide some $97 million worth of social services under contract to New York City. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that Koch, as mayor, does not have the authority to initiate such a hiring policy.

U.S. Church Membership Rises

Protestant church membership in the United States rose slightly less than 1 percent in 1983. Figures from 219 denominations, most of them Protestant, show a collective membership of 140,816,358, an increase of more than 1.2 million members. In 1984, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States saw a slight decline in membership. Last year’s U.S. Catholic membership stood at 52,286,043, a drop of 106,891 from 1983.

Court Strikes Down Creationism Law

A federal appeals court has struck down the nation’s only law requiring the teaching of creationism alongside evolution. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court ruling that said the Louisiana law was unconstitutional. The appeals court ruled that the statute violated the First Amendment’s ban against laws “favoring any particular religious belief or doctrine.”

Moon Leaves Prison

Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon has been released from a federal prison in Connecticut after serving nearly 12 months for income tax evasion. As a condition of his release, Moon will be spending his nights through mid-August at a Brooklyn, New York, halfway house. He was convicted in 1982 of failing to report $162,000 in income on his federal tax returns.

Judge Denies Retrial In Clergy Malpractice Suit

A California superior court judge has denied a request for a retrial in the nation’s first clergy malpractice suit. A retrial was requested by the parents of a man who committed suicide after receiving counseling from pastors at Grace Community Church in southern California. In May, a superior court judge dismissed the suit, saying the court had no “compelling reason … to interfere with the counseling” at the church (CT, June 14, 1985, p. 49).

Activist Pastor Defrocked

Lutheran minister D. Douglas Roth has been removed as a clergyman in the Lutheran Church in America. The church’s Western Pennsylvania-West Virginia Synod upheld an earlier finding that Roth was guilty of “willful disregard and violation” of the denomination’s constitution. Last fall, Roth was removed as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Clairton, Pennsylvania. He is a major supporter of Denominational Ministry Strategy, a group that used confrontational tactics to publicize the plight of unemployed steelworkers (CT, April 19, 1985, p. 52).

Scientology Settles A Lawsuit

The Church of Scientology has ended a Boston lawsuit against it by paying a $150,000 out-of-court settlement. The suit was filed by Lavenda Van Schaick, who said she had been harrassed by Scientologists since leaving the organization in 1979. Three weeks earlier the group lost a $39 million lawsuit in Oregon. In that suit, Julie Titchbourne charged that the Church of Scientology had not fulfilled its promises to improve her intelligence, eyesight, and study habits.

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