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The A to Z of New Religious Movements
Chryssides, George D.
Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2006. ISBN-10: 0810855887; ISBN-13:
978-0810855885 (paperback), $40. 420 pages.
Like J. Gordon Melton, Wolverhampton University religious
scholar George D. Chryssides has compiled an impressive and concise listing of
new religious movements (NRMs). The issue facing discerning readers is twofold.
Is the presentation fair in articulating the criticisms of a group and the harm
experienced by its participants, their families, and their communities? Is the
account balanced, including a history of legal difficulties and scandals
attributed to the group and its leaders? A response of “Yes” to both questions
is necessary to support the author’s claims of scholarly objectivity.
The author, who completed a doctorate at Oriel College,
Oxford, is senior lecturer in religious studies at Wolverhampton University in
England. He has served as a consultant on new religious movements to the United
Reformed Church in England and chaired the board of the Centre for the Study of
New Religious Movements at Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, England. Since 1988
he has written four books on the subjects of Buddhism, Sun Myung Moon,
Unitarianism, and the exploration of new religious movements.
This publication is a revised paperback edition of
Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements published in 2001. It is
the twentieth publication in The A to Z Guides published by Scarecrow
Press, seven of which focus upon particular traditions of world religions. The
publisher, headquartered in suburban Washington, D.C., and indicating offices in
Toronto and Oxford, is part of the Rowan and Littlefield Publishing Group that
focuses upon “...scholarly books that were intellectually important, yet
economically marginal,” according to its Web site.
Dr. Chryssides cites as editorial considerations he
included in compiling this historical dictionary of groups the factors of
numerical strength, media, and anti-cult publicity.
He is critical of the media for its coverage of NRMs and generally reports
anything critical of NRMs by attributing it to anti-cult and counter-cult
sources, usually with some suspicious reference to the critics. (I could not
find how he defined the difference between anti- and counter- groups; they seem
synonymous to me.) He focuses upon groups’ origins, beliefs, practices, and
internal coherence, with attention to conflicting evidence. He pays more
attention to “client cults” than to “audience cults.” The author cites W. S.
Bainbridge (whom he does not cite in his Bibliography) as the source of that
distinction, with which I have been familiar for many years, and which he does
not fully define or illustrate. I noted that he made exceptions and included
some entries that did not satisfy each of the above criteria.
“I have avoided scurrilous scandal mongering,” the author
states in the Preface, “although at times it has been necessary to mention
atrocity tales when these have affected an organization’s development, for
example by causing schism, reappraisal of beliefs and practices, or
dissolution.” But, sir, what about the effects of the atrocities upon the
victims? Aren’t such crimes and civil-rights violations worthy of your mention,
as well?
Impressive Factors
A 10-page Chronology puts the current crop of new religious
movements in a 266-year context, dating back to Emanuel Swedenborg’s first
vision. Chryssides works effectively at connecting themes from one group to
others that pick up on the same belief or practice, especially those for whom
the link is historically verifiable.
The book includes 466 definitions with cross-referencing. A
single new religious movement might include, I found, from one entry to as many
as seven. The length of each entry ranges from one concise paragraph to as much
as two pages.
Dr. Chryssides’ knowledge about religious movements is
three times more extensive than this reviewer’s. By my own count, I recognized
only slightly more than 180 of his 466 entries, most of the
difference being Eastern and Asian religions. Therefore, I have evaluated
his total efforts by my critical review of those entries about which I have
accumulated knowledge over the past 50 years through study, conferences of
counter-cult and cultic studies groups, and personal experiences of the group
and its members, ex-members, and families.
Notable in my review of the book’s historical dictionary
was the author’s inconsistency in citing sources of his encyclopedic body of
information. He sometimes cites published
sources when they help to establish his point, but he often left me wondering,
“Where did he get that?” “How does he know that?” His Bibliography lists 59
works, most of which are by founders and students of new religious movements. He
cites three publications of his own, three by Melton, three by Eileen Barker,
and one by Margaret Thaler Singer. I believe he should have included writings by
Michael Langone, John Clarke, Richard Ofshe, Robert J. Lifton, Steve Hassan, and
Louis Jolyon West, some of whom he mentions in brief references to the AFF and
CAN without citing their writings.
Categories for Consideration Involving 112 Entries
I found 112 entries I felt qualified to evaluate. The
categories and my assessments of those entries follow.
5) Chryssides’ predisposition toward the New Age
Movement. This is a major theme that emerged early in the Introduction and
one by which I chose to evaluate his publication.
1) Christianity (the reviewer’s point of origin) and
its current trends and issues (16 entries). Christianity serves Dr. Chryssides’
purposes as the launching pad for the new religious movements, particularly from
Protestantism, and specifically the heyday of missionary efforts, the rise of
fundamentalism and Pentecostalism, as well as those NRMs from Roman Catholicism
and Eastern Orthodoxy. He identifies the significance of Gnosticism,
millennialism, and reincarnation as themes among new movements. He is totally
nonjudgmental regarding the intellectual fallacies of fundamentalism and
Gnosticism. (The author is generally nonjudgmental in his reporting of belief
systems and their practitioners, although there are some exceptions, as I note
elsewhere.)
2) References (17) to the anti-cult or counter-cult
movement, identifying persons, concepts, and groups. The author’s treatment
of counter-cult or anti-cult groups seems spotty, inconsistent, and lacking in
completeness, even in summary form. He does broad-brush movement
generalizations, identifies specific groups such as the American Family
Foundation—AFF (updated to International Cultic Studies Association—ICSA), the
Cult Awareness Network (CAN), and others both American and international, but
leaves out what I would consider basic information and the identification of key
leaders. He names ten personalities from CAN but cites only John Clarke in
describing the AFF. He writes respectfully of the AFF/ICSA but never mentions
Dr. Michael Langone anywhere in the publication.
Chryssides has entries for brainwashing, cult,
deprogramming, exit counseling, floating, heavenly deception, love bombing, and
snapping. But there is always a criticism or disclaimer that leaves the reader
doubting the credibility of such concepts and suspecting the author of being an
apologist for groups practicing such abuses or needing such remedies. Little or
no mention was made of charges of economic exploitation, polygamy, and the abuse
of women and children by new religious movements. References to mind control by
Margaret Thaler Singer and Louis Jolyon West are countered by sources to
discredit them and their concepts.
3) Definitions of four older religious movements (12
entries). I then turned to twelve entries about older groups, four
nineteenth-century cults that I have known well to be theological deviants from
mainstream Judeo-Christian theology but not systematically abusive of civil
rights. They are Christian Science, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists,
and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons).
The author connects Mary Baker Eddy’s focus upon healing,
while the group may currently be in decline, with the revival of healing
interest to New Age thinking, a clue to his predisposition to come. The
Witnesses’ past four failed end-times prophecies are never mentioned, although
some criticisms of Joseph Rutherford are expressed. It becomes difficult to
determine why some entries are spared critical review and reports of
controversies while others are not. The Adventists are clean as reported.
Although there are three references to the Mormons with an indication of an
official entry, none can be found. Nor is there any report of the conflicts or
splits, let alone any attention to the polygamy and child-abuse issues recently
in the news around the arrest and trial of Warren Jeffs.
4) Entries (67) definitive of 27 groups with whom I
have knowledge and experience. Chryssides quickly got me into the 27 groups
familiar to my study and experience early in his Preface with his reference to
“the five killer cults“—i.e., the Peoples Temple, the Branch Davidians, Solar
Temple, Heaven’s Gate, and the Movement for Restoration of the Ten Commandments.
Why not Aum Shinrikyo (it was included later)? These discredited groups all
received the author’s critical appraisal, as well.
The author showed his preferential treatment to the
remainder of this category by acknowledging that exponents of the new religious
movements themselves had been sent copies of the entries for their organizations
for review and editing prior to publication: persons such as Graeme Wilson for
Scientology and Bill and June Thompstone for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Is it any
wonder that Scientology’s three entries are nonjudgmentally sanitized, with no
reference to the ruthlessness of its law suits against its critics and the
counter suits by its victims? Nor is there any reference to Scientology’s very
public conflicts with several European governments. The Unification Church looks
so good no one would ever know its founder is a convicted felon who served
prison time for tax evasion in the United States and has been denied admission
into certain nations of the European Common Market.
Chryssides is certainly innocent of charges of “scurrilous
scandal mongering,” but this book lacks
scholarly objectivity, fairness, and balance. In Satanism and ritual
abuse, for example, one has to look hard to find any negatives,
and then one watches as they are dismissed out of hand as unfounded
“Satanist scares.” My own pastoral counseling case histories testify to the
opposite.
A pattern of selective omissions continues to emerge as one
discerns neither mention of the murders and
child-abuse scandals within Hare Krishna (ISKON) nor of
the surviving group’s highly acclaimed reform movement in recent years.
Equally incomplete is the author’s history of the Human Potential Movement,
omitting its origins in Carl Rogers and the National Education Association’s
sensitivity training. Other historical omissions have been cited earlier in this
review.
While Dr. Chryssides knows a great deal about many
different new religions, his fascination at the time of writing belongs to
the New Age movement, as he indicates in his 23-page introduction, which he
admits is taken from an essay “The New Age: A Survey and Critique” he had
previously written for the journal Global Dialogue. Announcing his intent
to write a forthcoming historical dictionary on New Age movements, he relates
almost every new movement since Swedenborg to New Age and twice articulates that
we are in
…the Age of Aquarius, which supersedes the previous
2,000-year zodiacal Age of Pisces. Pisces, the fish, is the symbol of
Christianity, which has lasted for a 2,000-year period that is now at an end.
Consequently, the New Age can be viewed as a post-Christian movement, which
challenges the authority of the Christian Church and its concept of the male
warrior god whose will must be unquestionably obeyed… (pages 15-16, 234-235)
I believe some readers might come away from reading The
A to Z of New Religious Movements with some sense of fairness and balance,
for they will have encountered numerous objective, factual, and scholarly
entries. But fairness and balance are missing when the author intentionally
presents his information in a way that fails to unambiguously inform readers
about the adverse effects others have reported from their personal experiences
in some groups. A Consumer Reports on cults it is not. And obviously this
Christian reviewer does not interpret history in the same way as does George D.
Chryssides. This book represents an effort that is more a
selective expression of apologetics for, and an advocacy of, certain new
religious movements than it is a consistent series of discerningly fair and
balanced historical definitions.
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