L'évolution du “mouvement contre les sectes” chrétien 1978-1993

Abstract

This article distinguishes between a secular anti-cult movement and a religious counter-cult movement, and explores the changes within the counter-cult movement between the tragedies of Jonestown (1978) and Waco (1993). While at the time of Jonestown the anti-cult and the counter-cult movements could have been easily confused, religious counter-cult activists have increasingly noticed that their alliance with the secular anti-cultists could only be uneasy and superficial. Counter-cultists, in fact, challenge the relevance of the distinction between deeds and creeds which lies at the very heart of the anti-cult argument. The paper surveys the developments within the counter-cult movement in the last 15 years in four main areas. The first area concerns the definition of “cult” and the selection of the most important targets. Here, increasingly, the theological (rather than social) definition of “cult” by the counter-cult movement has emphasized the importance as targets of Mormonism and Freemasonry, virtually ignored by secular anti-cultists. The second area is related to strategies and to the progressive rejection by counter-cult ministries of both deprogramming and exit counseling as sponsored or tolerated by secular anti-cultists. The third development - the controversy about the satanist scare and, more generally, about the theological relation between Satan and the cults - has caused a bitter division within the counter-cult movement itself, between a “rationalist” and a “post-rationalist” wing. The fourth area of development concerns the relations between the counter-cult movement and the Churches, which in recent years have been less easy than outside observers normally believe, as evidenced by the 1993 controversy between counter-cultists and the Southern Baptist Convention on the question of Freemasonry.