Witches, moonies and evil

Abstract

A S sociologist Andrew Greeley observed in his recent book Unsecular Man and as others have since reaffirmed, the 1970s have not witnessed the continuation of the secularization process projected by observers during the 1960s. On the contrary, the current decade has been one of widespread religious ferment. Estimates given in the media of evangelical participation alone range as high as thirty to forty million Americans. An NBC newscast recently reported, on the basis of a national opinion poll, that one out of every three Americans was "born again" and returning to fundamentalist Christianity. Thht a number of public figures from Charles Colson to Eldridge Cleaver to Larry Flynt have been among the converts has served to dramatize the influence of the movement. Alongside this resurgence of conventional Judaic-Christian religious activity, there has been a proliferation of marginal or "new" religious groups such as the Unification church, the Children of God, Hare Krishna, the Divine Light Mission, Scientology, and numerous other less well known groups. While this myriad of marginal religious groups taken together includes only a fraction of the number of Americans who are born again Christians, such groups have commanded as much or more public attention and concern. Much of this negative publicity can be traced to the loosely organized but highly vocal members of a conservative countermovement which has been alternately christened the "anticult" or "deprogramming" movement. (Deprogramming refers, in its coercive extreme, to the abduction and restraint of marginal religious group members for the purpose of pressuring them to recant their new faiths.) The members of this countermovement, most of whom are disgruntled former members or relatives of members of these marginal religions, have charged that these groups gain converts through the use of coercive, manipulative mind-control techniques. The spectacular charges of Svengalian brainwashing methods used by these groups create the impression that these religious organizations constitute a rare social aberration. However, even a cursory examination of American history reveals that marginal religious groups have always existed in substantial numbers. For a variety of reasons these groups sometimes become more visible and are regarded as threats to the conventional order. When members of conventional society perceive them to be a clear and present danger to cherished values, there follows a tendency to attach to them beliefs and powers which, in whatever the terms of that culture, constitute evil. From the perceived danger is initiated a process of locating, identifying, and neutralizing that evil.