Articles and Conference Reports for ICSA E-Newsletter

• Atención e Investigación de Socioadicciones (AIS) & Desenvolupament Communitari (DC). Grupos de Manipulación Psicológica en Cataluña: Situación y Conceptos

• Almendros, Carmen; Carrobles, Jose; Langone, Michael; & Kropveld, Michael. Book of Abstracts: Madrid Conference – 2005

• Furnari, Leona. Born or Raised in Closed, High-Demand Groups: Developmental Considerations

• Garden, Mary. The Potential for Abuse in the Guru-Disciple Relationship

• Langone, Michael D. Academic Disputes and Dialogue Collection: Preface

• Tourish, Dennis. Cultic Dimensions of the London 7/21 Bombings
   

Latest Issue of Cultic Studies Review

Education and Research News

• Looking for Participants in Study on Gender, Sex, and Family in Cults

• Program at the Ninth European Congress on Psychology

• Leadership Conference

• Cuban Psychology Conference

• Hal Mansfield

• Dennis Tourish

• Chatauqua Presentation

• Skeptical Inquire Book Review of Janja Lalich Book

• Rabbi A. James Rudin to Head AJC Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts

• Dana Wehle

• Discovering Psychology by Dr. Philip Zimbardo Now Online / Steve Hassan Interviewed

• News from Ukraine

• News from Info-Cult/Info-Secte

• Premier Ministre, Circulaire / Circular from the Prime Minister’s Office 

• Nouveau Président de la MIVILUDES / New President of French Organization, MIVILUDES

• New Degree Program at French University

• RIP: Winifred Swope

Books, Articles, and Web Sites Brought to Our Attention

• New Journal: Social Influence

• New Book by Ron Enroth

• Report on Growing Up in Isolated Communities

• Psychiatric Times article on Falun Gong

• Of Note from Nova Religio

• From Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

• New Books of Interest from Equinox Publishing (www.equinoxpub.com)

• New Journals from Equinox Publishing

• Ecstatic Stigmatics and Holy Anorexics: Medieval and Contemporary

• Sathya Sai Baba Bibliography

• New Book: Psychotherapy and Religion

• Social and Political Attitudes of New Age Followers

• Assessing the Vatican Assessment of the New Age

• New Religious Movements and the Fear of Crime

• Review of BBC Documentary on Propaganda

• Medication and PTSD

• New Research on Placebo Effect Finds Physiological Effects

• “Bad Karma” Article in New Humanist

• Info-Cult/Info-Secte New Acquisitions

• Moving On Criticizes James Chancellor

• Scales Measuring Religious Belief and Behavior

Group News

• ISKCON Bankruptcy Ruling

• Online Timeline of ISKCON (Hare Krishna) Child Abuse Lawsuit

• Nebraska Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Metabolic Screening

• Mormons - APA Apologizes for “Brainwashing” Characterization

• Colonia Dignitdad - Book Details Crimes

• State Seizes Funds

• Buildings Disappear in Wake of Judgment

• AG Says He Can’t Prosecute Polygamy

• Another Faith Healing Death

• Girl Removed from Guru

• How Abductees Were Conditioned to Become Killers

• Guru Sentenced to Three Years for Manipulating Troubled People

• Leader Wins Defamation Decision

• Narconon Buys Hospital

• School’s Superintendent Asks Scientologists for Help

• Fear of Mass Deaths in Uganda

• University of Bridgeport Reaccredited

• Opus Dei 1950 Constitution Now Available

Name Change Reminder: ICSA (Formerly AFF)

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Books, Articles, and Web Sites Brought to Our Attention

New Journal: Social Influence

Social Influence, New for 2006. Editor: Anthony Pratkanis, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA.  Publication Details: Volume 1, 2006, 4 issues per annum. ISSN Print 1553-4510  ISSN Online 1553-4529. 2006 Subscription Rates: Institutional: US$220/£125; Individual: S$99/£57

Report on Growing Up in Isolated Communities

Friedrich Griess, with assistance from Mireille Degen, has translated into English a report from the Norwegian organization Redd Barna (“Save the Children”).  The introduction to the report states:

A couple of years ago, Save the Children ran a project called "Go On", where young people who had broken out from isolated religious faith communities received offers of help. The project revealed that we in Norway had little knowledge about children growing up in this type of faith community. The report “Regardless of faith” is a continuation of this work thanks to which people who grew up in isolated faith communities were able to tell their stories.

All the stories are based on growing up in Christian free-church communities, communities which traditionally are part of the Norwegian cultural and religious reality. It is important for Save the Children to emphasise that their choice of the focus is not, in any way meant to criticise religion. We want to attract attention to the limitations and violations of the law which often characterise growing up when communities hinder free thought and opinion and withdraw from the natural environment. The independent right of children to freedom of speech and religion must be discussed and assessed against the freedom of parents to decide for them, and their rights and duty to accompany and set limits for their children. History tells us that these isolated environments greatly hinder the possibility of securing children’s rights regarding freedom of thought, belief and speech, as stated in the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in Norwegian law. For “Save the Children”, an organisation which wishes to protect children’s rights, this is a reason for serious concern. The rights of children must also be considered in the light of the schooling available to children living and growing up in faith communities, schooling which is based on these communities’ biased view of the world,

We thank “Health and Rehabilitation” for their economic support of the project. We thank the witnesses for their clarity, honesty and courage. These case histories give us increased insight on childhood in isolated environments. This is important knowledge.

We hope that this report and the witnesses’ clear opinions and experience will create a basis for reflection and discussion.

Gro Brækken

Secretary General

March 2005

http://www.reddbarna.no/default.asp?FILE=items/2210/109/DOCS-34940-v1-Til%20_tross_for_tro.pdf
 

New Book by Ron Enroth

Enroth, Ronald (Ed.). (2005). A guide to new religious movements. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity press. ISBN: 0808-2381-6.  Includes chapters on what is a new religious movement, Jehovah’s Witnesses, yoga and Hinduism, Unification Church, Latter-day Saints, astral religion and the new age, Tibetan Buddhism, neopaganism, Baha’I, the Nation of Islam, and evaluating new religious movements.

Psychiatric Times article on Falun Gong

Stone, Alan A. (2005, May). The China psychiatry crisis: Following up on the plight of the Falun Gong.  Psychiatric Times, 22(6).

Of Note from Nova Religio

Ashcraft, W. Michael. (2005). Field notes: A history of the study of new religious movements. Nova Religio, 9(1), 93-105.

The study of New Religious Movements (NRMs) has evolved over the last thirty to forty years by both design and chance. Beginning in the 1970s, scholars interested in NRMs studied specific groups, read one another's work, and ultimately met one another to fashion a "coalition of the mind," or scholarly yet interdisciplinary field of study, focused upon NRMs. The story of this development largely depends on the accounts provided by NRM scholars in interviews conducted by the author.

Dorman, Benjamin. (2005). Pana Wave: The new Aum Shinrikyô or another moral panic? Nova Religio, 8(3), 83-103.

Since the Aum Shinrikyô affair of 1995, the Japanese authorities have been quick to demonstrate that they are firmly in control in situations involving religious groups that espouse millennial ideas, or other groups rumored to be acting against social norms. In April 2003 the Japanese mass media began reporting intensely on a virtually unknown new religious movement named Pana Wave. A massive police investigation was launched immediately on the premise that the group appeared to resemble Aum Shinrikyô in its early days. Although the press coverage and police involvement again raised the public's fears over dangerous religious groups, the media dropped the story quickly after the investigation yielded little more than vehicle violations. The Pana Wave affair represents a post-Aum Shinrikyô moral panic in which the reaction to the perceived threat far outweighed the reality of the situation.

Robbins, Thomas. (2005). Perspective: New religions and alternative religions. Nova Religio, 8(3), 104-111.

A degree of incoherence has marked discourse about "new religions." This is partly related to the tendency to equate "new religions" with "alternative religions," as if they were identical phenomena. Intrinsic conceptions of "new religious movements" emphasize internal properties such as first generation membership. Extrinsic, relational conceptions shift the focus to the group's lack of alignment with dominant sociocultural patterns. But some "misaligned" groups may not be chronologically "new," while some "new" groups may actually be well aligned. Lack of alignment should be treated as the hallmark of "alternative religions," which may or may not be (intrinsically defined) "new religions." However, in the relatively tolerant United States, persisting religions tend to become aligned quickly, such that it is mainly organizationally new religions which lack alignment.

Salter, Richard. (2005). Sources and Chronology in Rastafari Origins. . Nova Religio, 9(1), 5-31.

Rastafari began in Jamaica in the 1930s and has since spread to many other countries. As it spread it drew on local sources and traditions to develop in distinctive new ways. Though most scholarship on Rastafari deals specifically with Jamaican forms of the religion, it often does so without recognizing the variety of local histories and forms that the movement actually takes. Consequently there has been an ongoing trend for Jamaican Rastafari to be normative for the movement as a whole, thus homogenizing what is really a diverse movement. This arti-cle explores the history and sources for a local form of Rastafari, the Dreads, in the eastern Caribbean island of Dominca. Particular attention is paid to how the Dreads formed, what their relationship with other, more normative, forms of Rastafari has been, and how they continue to negotiate a separate identity for themselves within the movement.

Shepherd, Gary, & Shepherd, Gordon. (2005). Accommodation and reformation in The Family/Children of God. Nova Religio, 9(1), 67-92.

This article presents a case study analysis of recent institutional changes occurring in The Family, a well-known international movement originally called The Children of God. The Family is now flourishing well into its third generation in spite of intense external opposition that portrays it as an insidious cult. During the past ten years since the death of its founder, David Berg, The Family has dramatically changed many of its organizational modes of operation. These new developments have rational democratizing, and worldly accommodation implications that enhance organizational viability and prospects for success, while simultaneously threatening the group's internal standards and moral identity. Family leadership has imposed several retrenchment campaigns on Family homes worldwide to offset what are seen as the corrupting consequences of too much worldly accommodation. Tensions generated by these changes and reactions to them are analyzed in this article within sociological models of religious accommodation. The data for this article were obtained from extensive interviews with Family co-leaders Maria and Peter, and from close readings of key Family documents.

Walliss, John. (2005). Making sense of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.  Nova Religio, 9(1), 49-66.

In March 2000, approximately 540 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTCG) died in what initially appeared to be collective suicide. Subsequent police investigations, however, discovered the bodies of an additional 240 members who showed signs of having met a violent end prior to the apparent suicide. As well as discussing the history and apocalyptic beliefs of the MRTCG, in this article I focus particularly on the various theories that have been put forward to account for the murder-suicides. In doing so, I argue that although various facile similarities may be drawn between the MRTCG and other recent examples of "cult suicides," the MRTCG traversed a radically different "apocalyptic trajectory" prior to its denouement than its most obvious contemporaries. In particular, I will highlight the role of internal factors within the MRTCG in precipitating the deaths.

Book Reviews (Vol. 9, Number 1)

• Alternative Religions: A Sociological Introduction – by Stephen J. Hung

• Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion – by David H. Brown

• Cults, Religion and Violence – by David G. Bromley & J. Gordon Melton

• The Rise and Fall of Synanon: A California Utopia – by Rod Janzen

• Aliens Adored: Raël’s UFO Religion – by Susan Palmer

• The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth Century America – by Sarah Barringer Gordon

• Doomsday Prophecies: A Complete Guide to the End of the World – by James Lewis

• Keepers of The Flame: Interviews With Elders of Traditional Witchcraft in America – by Morganna Davies & Aradia Lynch

• Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism – by Mattias Gardell

• Sexuality and the World’s Religions – by David W. Machacek & Melissa M. Wilcox

• The Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant – by Edwin Bryant & Maria L. Ekstrand

• Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco – by Stephen Hunt & David Martin

Book Reviews (Vol. 8, Number 3)

• The End time Family: Children of God – by William Sims Bainbridge

• Understanding New Religious Movements – by John A. Saliba

• Seventh-day Adventism in Crisis: Gender and Sectarian Change in an Emerging Religion – by Laura L. Vance

• Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion – by Hugh B. Urban

• Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition – by Yvonne P. Chireau

From Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

Bierman, Alex. (2005). The effects of childhood maltreatment on adult religiosity and spirituality: Rejecting God the Father because of abusive fathers? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44(3), 349-359.

Current theories can support conflicting accounts of the effects of childhood maltreatment on adult religiosity. However, in the relevant empirical research there are few examples of probability sampling or a focus on nonsexual forms of abuse. It is also uncommon to control for risk factors for abuse, which may themselves also affect adult religiosity. This study attempts to overcome some of these limitations by examining the effects of physical and emotional abuse on adult religiosity and spirituality in a U.S. probability sample of adults at midlife. Neither maltreatment from mothers nor from outside the family has an effect on religiosity, but abuse committed by fathers is related to decreases in religiosity, and abuse from outside the immediate family is related to increases in self-ratings of spirituality. Possible explanation for these results may be related to the image of God as father, which leads victims of abusive fathers to distance themselves from religion.

Lu, Yufeng. (2005). Entrepreneurial logics and the evolution of Falun gong. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44(2), 173-185.

This article documents the shift of Falun Gong from a primarily secular healing system to a new religion centering on salvation. Emerging as a qigong organization in China in the early 1990s that provided immediate healing treatments to practitioners, Falun Gong eventually developed into a salvation-oriented religious firm. Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, played a vital role in promoting the movement's transition. Facing the competitive qigong market, Mr. Li decided to differentiate Falun Gong from other competing qigong movements by offering a theory about salvation. He also adopted other organizational and doctrinal mechanisms that are useful in sustaining practitioners and preventing potential schisms. These strategies partly accounted for the growth of Falun Gong in the 1990s. This case study indicates that the religious economy model is helpful in understanding the evolution of Falun Gong, a new religion in contemporary China.

Book Review: Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet (Edited by Lorne L. Dawson & Douglas E. Cowan).  Reviewed by Richard Flory.  In Vol. 44, No. 3, p. 364.

New Books of Interest from Equinox Publishing

• Von Stuckrad, Kocku. (2005). History of Western astrology. London: Equinox.

• Von Stuckrad. (2005). Western esotericism: A brief history of secret knowledge. London: Equinox.

• O’Leary, Stephen, & McGhee, Glenn (Eds.). (2005). War in heaven / heaven on Earth: Theories of the apocalyptic. London: Equinox.

• Karaflogka, Anastasia. (2005). E-religion: A critical appraisal of religious discourse on the World Wide Web. London: Equinox.

New Journals from Equinox Publishing

• Fieldwork in Religion.  Editors: Christopher Partridge and Ron Geaves. Reviews Editor: George Chryssides. ISSN 1743-0615 (print); ISSN 1743-0623 (online). 3 issues/year. Individual rate $80.00  “. . . a new, peer reviewed, interdisciplinary journal seeking engagement between scholars carrying out empirical research in religion. . . A further important aim of the journal will be to encourage the discussion of methodology in fieldwork either through discrete articles on issues of methodology or by publishing fieldwork case studies that include methodological challenges and the impact of methodology on the results of empirical research.”

• Implicit Religion.  Edited by Edward Bailey.  ISSN 1476-8690 (print); ISSN 1743-1697 (online). 3 issues/year. Individual rate $65.00  “Implicit religion refers to those aspects of ordinary life which seem to contain an inherently religious element within them—whether or not they are expressed in ways traditionally described as ‘religious.’”

Ecstatic Stigmatics and Holy Anorexics: Medieval and Contemporary

This paper by Sharon Kalyman Farber, Ph.D., B.C.D., was originally published in Journal of Psychohistory, 31(2), 2003, 182-204. It is also available at www.psychematters.com (click on papers and scroll down to Dr. Farber’s name). Dr. Farber is the author of: When the Body is the Target: Self-Harm, Pain, and Traumatic Attachments.  As has been shown and explained, the stigmata and other mortifications of the flesh can serve as survival tools for someone who has been severely traumatized, devout Christian or unbeliever alike. When Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed, this nonreligious woman came to be regarded by her admirers as a popular saint who wanted nothing more than to help and serve others. Despite her wealth, she became a waif in the popular imagination, and like many others who suffered great psychic pain, she too inflicted further pain and suffering on herself through starving herself, bingeing and purging, and cutting herself. This suffering was her visible stigmata, inspiring great popular devotion. When she died, millions cried, carrying candles in the streets as they listened to Elton John’s song to this suffering woman whose light flickered “like a candle in the wind”.  

Sathya Sai Baba Bibliography

Brian Steel has informed us that he has posted an Annotated Working Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba, in Three Parts.

New Book: Psychotherapy and Religion

Jason Aronson Publishers, Inc. (A Division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.) has announced this new book, edited by Marcella Bakur Weiner, Paul C. Cooper, and Claude Barbre.  Chapter titles include: The Spiritual Self in Psychoanalytic Therapy; Buddhism and Psychoanalysis; Psychotherapy and the Sacred; Sufi Meditations on Psychotherapy; A Christian Self Psychological Perspective.

Social and Political Attitudes of New Age Followers

Hollinger, Franz. (2004). Does the counter-cultural character of new age persist? Investigating social and political attitudes of new age followers. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 19(3), 289-309.  From its beginnings in the 1960s up to the present, the New Age movement has undergone considerable change. Originally, it was a counter-cultural movement, interacting with other counter-cultural movements of that time, such as the ecology, hippie, and commune movements. During the last decades, spiritual and esoteric methods have been popularized and commercialized by an expanding market of literature and workshops. This has made New Age a socially accepted phenomenon and it has thus lost much of its anti-modernist and culture-critical character. In this article, I will show by means of quantitative empirical analyses that in spite of the transformations, the affinity between New Age activism and culture-critical attitudes persists to a certain degree. This is particularly the case for persons aiming at self-perfection by means of spiritual exercises and alternative health methods. Among persons who are primarily interested in esoteric methods, such as astrology and Tarot cards, hedonistic and authoritarian attitudes are, however, more widespread.

Assessing the Vatican Assessment of the New Age

Dinges, William. (2004). The new (old) age movement: Assessing a Vatican assessment.  Journal of Contemporary Religion, 19(3), 273-288. This article examines the recent Vatican document "Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the 'New Age' ". This official Catholic response to a diverse and polycentric religio-spiritual phenomenon reveals problematic conditions and core institutional concerns surrounding religion in the culture of postmodernity. These concerns--which are both cause and effect of the diffusion of Catholic identity--include pollution motifs, the impact of relativism, pluralism, privatized religiosity, and waning institutional control of religious symbols. Attention is also directed to the efficacy of doctrinal formulations as a boundary maintenance mechanism and to the way in which the Vatican response to the New Age movement exemplifies church/sect dynamics within contemporary Catholicism.

New Religious Movements and the Fear of Crime

Possamai, Adam, & Lee, Murray. New Religious Movements and the Fear of Crime.  Journal of Contemporary Religion, 19(3), 337-352. Anti-cult movements have had a significant influence on the creation of the 2001 Anti-Cult Law in France. For the first time, a state apparatus has been put into place against new forms of religion with the possible consequences of limiting religious freedom and tolerance in France. Even though the socio-political situation is different in Australia, the French case might serve as a platform for the anti-cult network to pursue a strict governance of cults via state agencies. By bringing a theory of the fear of crime to the cult/anti-cult debate, this article hopes to shed more light on this issue.

Review of BBC Documentary on Propaganda

Mandell, Charlie.  (2005, March 16).  Engineering reality: A century of self.  Get Underground.  The psychological methods for understanding and controlling the masses is the meat of what is explored in the four-part BBC documentary "Century of Self". Directed and produced in 2003 by filmmaker Adam Curtis, the film traces the emergence of Freudian psychoanalysis and the expanding role psychoanalysis played in American propaganda throughout the 20th Century.  Freud’s revelations in psychology provided the tools for American propagandists to effectively mold American culture into the world’s dominant culture. While "Century" pays Freud his due, he plays only a supporting role. The star of the documentary is Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who used Freud's psychological analysis in service to propaganda, ultimately fathering the field of public relations and becoming a chief architect of how we Americans perceive ourselves and the world around us. 

Medication and PTSD

Begley, Sharon. (2005, August 19). A spotless mind may ease suffering, but erase identity.  Science Journal.  “Recalling a traumatic memory, scientists now think, does something even worse than trigger the disabling physiological response the woman suffered: It "reconsolidates" the memory, wiring it more strongly into the mind.  Emerging evidence that remembering a trauma strengthens that memory is inspiring controversial studies in which people take a drug that may block memory reconsolidation, leaving the memory intact but weakened, and extinguishing the emotion associated with it. That raises a troubling question: Will the drug rob people of an essential, even defining, aspect of their selves?” 

New Research on Placebo Effect Finds Physiological Effects

Cowen, Robert C. (2005, August 31). Science plumbs placebo effect. Christian Science Monitor (in “Science Notes: An Occasional Column”).  “When an inert placebo acts like a drug, is it just a psychological illusion? Or is it a real biological effect? Research reported last week suggests that it's both. The mere belief that they had received a pain killer was enough to release the brain's natural painkilling endorphins in the patients tested, scientists say.”  See Aug 24 study in Journal of Neuroscience by Jon-Kar Zubieta et al.

“Bad Karma” Article in New Humanist

Garden, Mary. (2005, July). Bad karma. New Humanist. Article on child abuse in ISKCON.

Info-Cult/Info-Secte New Acquisitions

The most recent (June 2005) acquisitions can be found at: NEW ACQUISITIONS
For an integrated list of recent and past acquisitions please go to: SELECTED HOLDINGS

Les acquisitions les plus récentes (Juin 2005) se retrouvent à la page suivante: NOUVELLES ACQUISITIONS
Pour la liste complète et à jour de nos acquisitions, veuillez aller à: EXTRAITES DE LA COLLECTION

Moving On Criticizes James Chancellor

Moving On, a Web site of second-generation ex-members, has an interesting exchange of comments between former members of the family and Dr. James Chancellor, author of Life in the Family: An oral history of the Children of God. 

Scales Measuring Religious Belief and Behavior

The June, 2005 issue of Religion Watch includes a note on recent work with measures of religious belief and behavior: “As more social scientists study religion, there has been a significant growth of new scales and measurements to gauge religious beliefs and practices-- enough to make it difficult for scholars to communicate with each other. Science & Theology News (June) reports that it is especially in the burgeoning field exploring the connections between faith, spirituality and health where these “spiritual scales” have proliferated. Popular measures include the R-COPE scale, which gauges how patients use religious beliefs to cope with illness and trauma, the “daily spiritual experiences scale,“ which evaluates spirituality in people’s everyday life, and the new SpReuk scale, originating in strongly secular Eastern Germany and designed to capture non-theistic and non-institutional beliefs. These attempts to make the scales as broad as possible may not allow them to capture much of anything of value concerning how religion and spirituality impacts people’s lives, says Thomas Plante, who founded his own “Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire.“ The more scales will make it harder for researchers to share data effectively, and eventually they may be consolidated into a smaller number, writes Julia Keller. (Science & Theology News, P.O. Box 5065, Brentwood, TN  37024).”

Send information on noteworthy new books, articles, and Web sites  to Dr. Langone at mail@icsamail.com.

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Group News

ISKCON Bankruptcy Ruling

ISKCON (Hare Krishna) press release on the organization’s bankruptcy (includes statement from judge).

Online Timeline of ISKCON (Hare Krishna) Child Abuse Lawsuit

Nori Muster has posted a timeline of the Children of ISKCON vs. ISKCON lawsuit, which was recently settled.  It lists all the important dates and events, along with documentation.

Nebraska Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Metabolic Screening

The newsletter of Children’s Healthcare is a Legal Duty, Inc. (CHILD) reports in Number 1 of 2005:

On March 25, the Nebraska Supreme Court unanimously upheld a state law requiring metabolic screening without an exception for religious beliefs.  Douglas County v. Anaya, 269 Neb. 552, is the nation’s first reported court ruling on whether a state has the right to require a health screening over religious objections.

Nebraska requires all babies to be tested for six metabolic disorders within 48 hours after birth. Birth certificates are not issued until the tests have been done.

CHILD filed an amicus brief supporting the law.

Mormons - APA Apologizes for “Brainwashing” Characterization

The American Psychological Association (APA) has apologized to the Utah Psychological Association for saying the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) uses “brainwashing,” “mind control,” and “powerful psychological techniques” to retain members and motivate missionaries. The statements about the major Mormon denomination in the U.S. were made to promote the documentary, “Get the Fire,” screened at the annual APA meeting last year. (Carrie A. Moore, Deseret Morning News, Internet, 4/30/04)

Colonia Dignitdad - Book Details Crimes

A forthcoming book by two Chilean journalists, detailing the sexual abuse and other crimes of Paul Schafer’s paramilitary religious commune, Colonia Dignidad, indicates that the number of young victims may number in the thousands, including the children of the German immigrants who settled there as well as the children of local Chilean farming families who attended the settlement’s agricultural school. The book will also say that every branch of the Chilean state is “guilty of omission” in preventing Schaeffer’s arrest for four decades. Human rights groups say that the commune served as a secret torture and detention center during the Pinochet dictatorship. The book is to be published this fall by Random House Mondadori.

Author Claudio Salinas says commune members “were under a spell cast by a leader who is neither a psychopath nor brutish, but a charismatic man, and also a homosexual who only likes boys.”  Co-author Hans Stange says Schaeffer “did not allow the commune members to have a private life or freely associate among themselves, and they had to work between 12 and 14 hours a day without speaking with anyone.

The authors say the youngest members of the commune can’t go to school bec