Church, State and Cult

Abstract

The operation of highly cohesive and authoritarian “cults” in a pluralistic and normatively ambiguous cultural environment raises serious social and legal issues. The problems posed by cults must be understood in terms of the social conditions which facilitate the growth of these movements, and in particular, the decline of traditional “mediating structures” in American society. Cults meet genuine needs, but in doing so they may perpetrate abuses. Many cults are diversified and multifunctional collectivities which provide a range of services to participants; thus they elicit from devotees a diffuse obligation and a strong dependency, which may encourage exploitation. Actively proselytizing multifunctional communal sects inevitably come into conflict with a number of groups and institutions including families, churches and licensed psychotherapists. Conceptualizing cult issues in terms of “brainwashing” obscures the underlying sources of conflict and has implications for an inquisition over consciousness, although such medicalized conceptualization is functional in terms of building a coalition against targeted groups. Primary emphasis on “mind control” in cultist indoctrination processes also obscures the relationship between issues concerning cults and a more general crisis of church and state relations. As the state increasingly regulates “secular” organizations, the exemptions of “churches” take on heightened controversiality.

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