Controversial New Religions

JAMES R. LEWIS
JESPER AAGAARD PETERSEN,
Editors

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Controversial New Religions
This page intentionally left blank
Controversial
New Religions
edited by james r. lewis and
jesper aagaard petersen

1
2005
1
Oxford New York
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Copyright
2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Controversial new religions / edited by James R. Lewis and Jesper Aagaard Petersen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-515682-X; 0-19-515683-8 (pbk)
1. Cults. I. Lewis, James R. II. Petersen, Jesper Aagaard.
BP603.C66 2004
200'.9'04—dc22
2003024374

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents

Contributors, ix
Introduction, 3
James R. Lewis and Jesper Aagaard Petersen

PART I: GROUPS IN THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION

1. A Family for the Twenty-first Century, 19

James D. Chancellor
2. Spirit Revelation and the Unification Church, 43
James A. Beverley
3. Reconstructing Reality: Conspiracy Theories about
Jonestown, 61
Rebecca Moore
4. Explaining Militarization at Waco: The Construction and
Convergence of the Warfare Narrative, 79
Stuart A. Wright

PART II: ASIAN AND ASIAN-INSPIRED GROUPS

5. Family Development and Change in the Hare Krishna

Movement, 101
E. Burke Rochford, Jr.
vi contents

6. When Leaders Dissolve: Considering Controversy and Stagnation in the

Osho Rajneesh Movement, 119
Marion S. Goldman
7. Soka Gakkai: Searching for the Mainstream, 139
Robert Kisala
8. Aum Shinrikyo and the Aum Incident: A Critical Introduction, 153
Martin Repp
9. The Falun Gong: A New Religious Movement in Post-Mao
China, 195
David Ownby
10. Notes on the Aumist Religion, 215
PierLuigi Zoccatelli

PART III: ESOTERIC AND NEW AGE GROUPS

11. Inventing L. Ron Hubbard: On the Construction and Maintenance of

the Hagiographic Mythology of Scientology’s Founder, 227
Dorthe Refslund Christensen
12. The Theosophical Society, 259
James A. Santucci
13. The Solar Temple “Transits”: Beyond the Millennialist Hypothesis, 295
James R. Lewis
14. From Atlantis to America: JZ Knight Encounters Ramtha, 319
Gail M. Harley
15. Heart and Soul: A Qualitative Look at the Ethos of the Movement of
Spiritual Inner Awareness, 331
Diana G. Tumminia

PART IV: OTHER GROUPS AND MOVEMENTS

16. “Come On Up, and I Will Show Thee”: Heaven’s Gate as a

Postmodern Group, 353
George D. Chryssides
17. The Raëlian Movement: Concocting Controversy, Seeking Social
Legitimacy, 371
Susan Palmer
 contents vii

18. White Racist Religions in the United States: From Christian Identity
to Wolf Age Pagans, 387
Mattias Gardell
19. Modern Satanism: Dark Doctrines and Black Flames, 423
Jesper Aagaard Petersen
Index, 459
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Contributors

James A. Beverley is Associate Director of the Institute for the Study

of American Religion in Santa Barbara, California, and Professor at
Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Canada. He is the Senior Editor of the
forthcoming HarperCollins’ Encyclopedia of Religions in Canada and
the author of the forthcoming Nelson’s Illustrated Guide to Religions.
He also worked as Associate Editor on Melton and Bauman’s Relig-
ions of the World and has written three books on Islam and two
books on charismatic Christianity.

James D. Chancellor holds an M.A. from the University of Ne-

braska, an M.Div. from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
and a Ph.D. from Duke University in the History of Religion. He
has served since 1992 as W. O. Carver Professor of World Religions
at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is author of Life in
the Family: An Oral History of the Children of God (Syracuse Univer-
sity Press, 2000).

Dorthe Refslund Christensen holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in the Sci-

ence of Religion from the University of Aarhus. She has taught at
the Department of the Study of Religion, Aarhus University; the De-
partment for Religion and Philosophy, Southern Danish University,
Odense; and the Department of the History of Religions, University
of Copenhagen. In 2004 she had a postdoctoral scholarship from
the Danish Research Council for the project Religion in Popular
Culture and Everyday Life: Religion in Transformation.
x contributors

George D. Chryssides studied at the University of Glasgow as an undergrad-

uate and gained his doctorate from the University of Oxford. He is currently
Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. He has written
extensively on new religious movements. His books include The Advent of Sun
Myung Moon (Macmillan, 1991), Exploring New Religions (Cassell, 1999), and
Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements (Scarecrow Press, 2001). He
has contributed to numerous academic journals and edited collections.

Mattias Gardell is Associate Professor (docent) in the History of Religions,

Stockholm University, Sweden. His publications include In the Name of Elijah
Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (Duke University Press,
1996), Rasrisk: Rastister, separatister och amerikanska kulturkonflikter (Stock-
holm: Natur & Kultur, 2003 [1998]), and Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival
and White Separatism (Duke University Press, 2003).

Marion S. Goldman is Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at the

University of Oregon. Her books include Gold Diggers and Silver Miners (Uni-
versity of Michigan Press, 1982) and Passionate Journeys: Why Successful Women
Joined a Cult (University of Michigan Press, 1999). Her current research is
about Esalen Institute and men’s spiritualities.

Gail M. Harley earned her Ph.D. in the History of Religion and Humanities
from Florida State University. She currently teaches for the University of South
Florida Religious Studies Department. She is the author of Emma Curtis Hop-
kins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought (Syracuse University Press, 2002) and
Hindu and Sikh Faiths in America (Facts on File, 2003).

Robert Kisala is a fellow at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture and
professor of religious studies at Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan. His
publications include Prophets of Peace: Pacifism and Cultural Identity in Japan’s
New Religions (University of Hawaii Press, 1999) and Religion and Social Crisis
in Japan: Understanding Japanese Society through the Aum Affair (edited with
Mark Mullins, Palgrave, 2001).

James R. Lewis is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Mil-

waukee. His recent publications include The Oxford Handbook of New Religious
Movements (Oxford, 2004), The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions (Pro-
metheus Books, 2003), and Legitimating New Religions (Rutgers University
Press, 2003).

Rebecca Moore is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at San Diego State

University. Her current specialty is New Religious Movements, with a focus
on the group People’s Temple and its utopian commune Jonestown, which
 contributors xi

ended in mass murder-suicides in November 1978. She and her husband,

Fielding McGehee III, have written and published five books and numerous
articles. Dr. Moore maintains a Web site of current resources on People’s Tem-
ple at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu.

David Ownby is Professor of History and Director of East Asian Studies at the
Université de Montréal in Montreal, Canada. He has published extensively on
the history of secret societies and popular religions in China and is currently
completing a manuscript on the Falun Gong.

Susan Palmer is Adjunct Professor at Concordia University and a tenured

Professor at Dawson College, both in Montreal, Quebec. She has written over
sixty articles on new religious movements and authored or edited eight books
on new religious movements, including Räel’s UFO Religion: Racing and Clon-
ing in the Age of Apocalypse (Rutgers University Press).

Jesper Aagaard Petersen, M.A., is a teaching assistant at the University of Co-

penhagen, Department of History of Religions. He is the coeditor with James
R. Lewis of The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of Satanism (Prometheus Books, forth-
coming) and has edited a special issue of Syzygy on modern Satanism (2002).

Martin Repp is a Professor at the Graduate School for Pure Land Studies of
Ryukoku University (Kyoto) and has been the editor of the journal Japanese
Religions since 1991. He did extensive research on Aum Shinrikyo and the Aum
incident, published in a number of articles and a book. He also teaches Japa-
nese religions and theology at Doshisha and Kyoto Universities.

E. Burke Rochford, Jr. is Professor of Sociology and Religion at Middlebury

College in Vermont. He has researched the Hare Krishna movement over the
past twenty-eight years. He has written numerous articles on the movement
and his second book on ISKCON is in preparation.

James A. Santucci teaches in the Comparative Religion Department at Califor-

nia State University, Fullerton. Professor Santucci is the author of La società
teosofica (1999), Hindu Art in South and Southeast Asia (1987), An Outline of
Vedic Literature (1976), and coauthor (with Benjamin Hubbard and John Hat-
field) of America’s Religions (1997). He has edited a quarterly journal of re-
search, Theosophical History, since 1990, as well as a series of monographs in
the series Theosophical History Occasional Papers since 1993.

Diana G. Tumminia studied social psychology and ethnography at UCLA and

currently teaches sociology at California State University, Sacramento. She pub-
lishes on contemporary and historical new religious movements, among other
xii contributors

topics. Her publications in this area range from the social psychology of UFO
religions to Native American millenarian movements, as well as new religions
like MSIA and ISKCON.

Stuart A. Wright is Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies and Research and

Professor of Sociology at Lamar University. He is the author of Leaving Cults:
The Dynamics of Defection (Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1987)
and editor of Armageddon in Waco (University of Chicago Press, 1995). He has
published over thirty articles or book chapters in scholarly venues and has
become a widely recognized expert and legal consultant.

PierLuigi Zoccatelli works in Turin as deputy director of CESNUR, the Center

for Studies on New Religions. He is the author of several articles and four
books on new religious movements and Western esotericism. He has been the
associate editor of the monumental Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Ency-
clopedia of Religions in Italy, Elledici, 2001).
Controversial New Religions
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Introduction
James R. Lewis and Jesper Aagaard Petersen

At the time of the Jonestown suicides in 1978, the field of new reli-
gious movements (NRMs) was little more than a specialization
within the sociology of religion. There were a few nonsociologists
active in the field (such as Gordon Melton, Timothy Miller, and Rob-
ert Ellwood), but it took a long time for the academy to accept
NRMs as part of religious studies. As I have discussed elsewhere
(Lewis 2004), it was not until after a series of high-profile tragedies
in the 1990s—the Branch Davidian siege, the Solar Temple murder-
suicides, the Aum Shinrikyo incident, and the Heaven’s Gate sui-
cides—that the religious studies mainstream truly embraced new re-
ligions as a legitimate field of study.
At the time of this writing, the NRM field continues to expand.
Some indicators of this growth are the increasing popularity of the
sessions of the New Religious Movements Group at the annual
meetings of the American Academy of Religion, the growing num-
ber of prominent academic presses publishing NRM titles, and the
emergence of NRMs as a recognized field of study in graduate pro-
grams in a number of European countries, particularly in the
United Kingdom. Additionally, an increasing number of NRM aca-
demicians are beginning to subspecialize—hence one now encoun-
ters self-identified scholars of the New Age, Pagan specialists, histo-
rians of Western esotericism, and the like. One advantage of these
subspecialities is that they focus on a reasonably well-defined sub-
ject matter. The same cannot be said for the NRM field as a whole.
Although the field of new religious movements has achieved the
status of a recognized specialty, it is a very odd field of specializa-
4 james r. lewis and jesper aagaard petersen

tion, one that lacks an adequate internal logic for determining which phenom-
ena fall within its purview. Until the development of NRM subspecialities, the
core of the field consisted of studies of controversial new religions plus analyses
of the “cult” controversy.
In many ways, NRM studies is a residual category. Though the designation
“new religions” implies that all kinds of emergent religions are part of this
field, in practice NRM scholars have tended to avoid studying movements al-
ready claimed by other scholarly specialties. Thus, to cite a few examples, Pen-
tecostalism has been left to church historians and cargo cults to anthropologists
(Lewis 2004). This boundary issue is only one of the questions that need to
be asked before new religions can become a cohesive field of study rather than
an ad hoc grab bag composed of all the groups no other scholarly specialty
wants to bother with.
Although NRM studies has been accepted as a legitimate part of the acad-
emy, in many ways the field remains segregated from the larger discipline of
religious studies, despite the fact that it is easy to make a case for the impor-
tance of researching new religions. As Susan Palmer, a contributor to the pres-
ent collection, noted in a recent interview, “If you’re interested in studying
religion, . . . NRMs are a great place to start. Their history is really short, they
don’t have that many members, their leader is usually still alive, and you can
see the evolution of their rituals and their doctrines. It’s a bit like dissecting
amoebas instead of zebras” (cited in Lester 2002). The point here is an obvious
one, namely, that the study of current new religions can deepen our under-
standing of more established religions. On the other hand, the field of religious
studies has been deeply interested in the question of the origins of religion.
Thus it seems natural to consider whether the formulations growing out of
this research might provide insights into the emergence of contemporary new
religions, though no one seems to have undertaken this task thus far.
The field of new religious movements has been significantly shaped by
the controversies surrounding a set of highly diverse religious organizations.
One could reasonably argue that the only common factor uniting them is the
fact that they are controversial. Even the relevant controversies, however, are
quite diverse. Members of Aum Shinrikyo, for instance, dramatically attacked
people outside of the group, precipitating a sharp response from Japanese
society. In contrast, the Branch Davidians—who had coexisted quite harmo-
niously with their neighbors for many years—became embroiled in contro-
versy only after being assaulted by an agency of the U.S. government. And in
yet another completely different scenario, Heaven’s Gate made international
headlines after imploding in a group suicide.
Despite these many differences, the more controversial new religions have
been perceived as constituting a common phenomenon, and have been un-
derstood in terms of a shared stereotype that has been applied to many such
 introduction 5

religions. These factors have led to an unusual situation in which, without any
sense of stepping beyond the bounds of their expertise, NRM scholars can
study a theologically orthodox Christian group like the Family, a Hindu group
like the Hare Krishna movement, a neotraditional Chinese group like Falun
Gong, and so on—when in other circumstances only academicians with spe-
cialized backgrounds in theology, Hinduism, Chinese religion, and so forth
would attempt to study these movements.
Another result of the “cult” controversy is that NRM scholarship has
tended to cluster around the most controversial groups, particularly the ones
that have attracted the attention of the mass media. Thus a comparatively tiny
movement like the Family has been the subject of numerous articles and sev-
eral books. In contrast, a significantly larger but much less controversial new
religion like Eckankar has never been the subject of even a single academic
journal article. The aim of the present collection is to bring together a series
of original studies on the groups that have generated the most academic atten-
tion.
The controversy over new religions is a complex social issue that has en-
gendered an emotional and sometimes mean-spirited debate. Decades of social
conflict have left their impress on the term “cult,” which, to the general public,
indicates a religious group that is false, dangerous, or otherwise bad. The sharp-
ness of this controversy has tended to polarize observers of such groups into
extreme positions, making it difficult to find a middle ground from which to
approach the issue. Hence, rather than tackling the problem directly, it might
well repay our effort to work our way into the debate indirectly, through the
stories of two contrasting religious groups that will serve to highlight some of
the dilemmas associated with the controversy.
The story of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments
of God, the Ugandan group massacred by its own leaders in 2000, will be
used to exemplify the concerns “anticultists” bring to the controversy. The
Alamo Christian Foundation, an American ministry that has been the target
of crippling legal action, will be used to exemplify the concerns of religious
libertarians.

When Religion Goes Bad: The Movement for the Restoration

of the Ten Commandments

The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a
doomsday religious sect in Uganda that made headlines in the wake of what
was initially thought to be a mass suicide in March 2000. The number of
bodies reported by the media increased daily until it exceeded one thousand.
About 530 died in a fire that gutted their church in Kanungu, Uganda, on
6 james r. lewis and jesper aagaard petersen

Friday, March 17, 2000. In the days following the tragedy, police discovered
innumerable other bodies at different sites. These others had been murdered
prior to the group holocaust, apparently at the behest of the leadership.
The movement was founded by excommunicated Roman Catholic priests,
Joseph Kibweteere, Joseph Kasapurari, John Kamagara, and Dominic Katari-
babo; two excommunicated Roman Catholic nuns; and Credonia Mwerinde,
an ex-prostitute. Most of the group’s members were originally Roman Catholic.
The group taught that the Catholic Church was badly in need of reform. Their
own rules came from the Virgin Mary, as channeled through Mwerinde. The
leaders taught that the Ten Commandments needed to be restored to their
original importance.
Before the tragedy, Kibweteere allegedly claimed that he overheard a con-
versation between Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. Mary stated that the world
would come to an end unless humans started to follow the Ten Command-
ments closely. The group initially believed that the end of the world would take
place on December 31, 1999. During 1999, members sold their possessions
in preparation for the end times, when they would be transported to heaven.
They slaughtered cattle and had a weeklong feast. When the end did not come,
Kibweteere changed the date to December 31, 2000. Later, he taught that the
Virgin Mary would appear on March 17 and take the faithful to Heaven. Dev-
astation would then descend upon the world and the remaining six billion
people in the world would be exterminated.
The membership appears to have anticipated being taken to Heaven by
the Virgin Mary on March 17. They also expected the end of the world to occur
at that time. They slaughtered some cattle, and ordered seventy crates of soda
for a feast on March 16. They said goodbye to friends and relatives beforehand.
Most of the deaths occurred in Kanungu, a small trading center, about 217
miles southwest of Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Although there may still
be some sources that continue to assert that the parishioners committed sui-
cide, the consensus opinion is that the group leader, Joseph Kibweteere, mur-
dered the members by luring them inside the church and then setting it on
fire. The church’s windows had been boarded up; its doors were nailed shut
with the members inside. They sang for a few hours. Some witnesses reported
the smell of gasoline at the scene, an explosion that preceded the fire, and
some screams from inside the building.
There was one initial report, never confirmed, that members had applied
gasoline and paraffin to their skin before the explosion and fire. However, it is
difficult to see how the observer could have witnessed these preparations if the
windows and doors of the church had been nailed shut. It is now almost certain
that the tragedy was a mass murder, not a mass suicide. The fact that the doors
of the church were nailed shut seems to indicate that the leadership wanted to
confine the full membership within the church in order to murder the entire
group. The discovery of additional bodies of members who had been murdered
 introduction 7

and buried in latrines near the church gives weight to the mass-murder theory.
The discoveries of many hundreds of murder victims at other locations also
point toward mass murder.
The murders seem to have been precipitated by failed prophecy. When the
end of the world did not occur on December 31, 1999, some members of the
sect demanded their money and possessions back. This, in turn, may have
triggered the mass murders.
The deaths of members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten
Commandments were part of a series of dramatic incidents that involved mem-
bers of nontraditional religions. Other incidents include the Jonestown
murder-suicides (1978), the ATF/FBI raid on the Branch Davidian community
(1993), the Solar Temple murder-suicides (in 1994, 1995, and 1997), the Tokyo
subway poison gas attack (1995), and the Heaven’s Gate suicides (1997). In
the wake of these events, the mass media sought out a variety of “cult experts”
in an effort to make sense of seemingly irrational behavior. Most of these
experts offered the public an explanation in terms of the notion of cultic mind
control, colloquially known as “brainwashing.” The seemingly crazy actions of
“cult” members were not difficult to explain, this group of experts claimed, as
long as one understands that megalomaniacal cult leaders are able to control
the thought processes of their followers; under the influence of mind control,
members of such groups are capable of anything because they have given up
their wills to the leader.
According to spokespeople for “cult watchdog” groups, our society is pop-
ulated by hundreds—perhaps thousands—of cult groups, many of which are
capable of extreme actions. Beyond mind control and the imputation of sinister
motives to the leader, standard accusations leveled against minority religions
unfortunate enough to be labeled “cults” include deceptive recruiting practices,
financial and sexual exploitation, food and sleep deprivation of members, var-
ious forms of illegal activities, child abuse, ritual abuse, and so forth. Because
of the interest the mass media have taken in this issue, this stereotype has
become widely accepted in contemporary society.
Putting aside the problematic notion of “cultic brainwashing” for the mo-
ment, there are or have been groups for which some of these accusations are
or were appropriate. In particular, children have been abused within a few
religious communities. Members of certain organizations have been financially
and/or sexually exploited by the leadership. A handful of minority religions
have taken the law into their own hands. And at least one group consciously
deceived potential recruits by systematically hiding their identity until after
workshop attendees had become de facto members.
There are, however, obvious dangers in unreflectively applying the cult
stereotype to every religious group that strikes one as strange or unusual. The
situation is not unlike that of viewing a race or an ethnicity in terms of a
generalization derived from the minority group’s least reputable members. The