Church, State and Cult

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

Authoritarianism · Conceptualization · Cult · Democracy · Environmental ethics · Ideology · Indoctrination · Law and economics · Obligation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Law · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies

• Paradoxes of Freedom and Regulation

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• Dying to Self

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• Government Regulatory Powers and Church Autonomy

  Thomas Robbins•Journal for the Scientific Study…•1985

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• Families and Cults

  Stuart A Wright, Elizabeth S Piper•Journal of Marriage and the Family•1986

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• Unification Church and Japan

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• Social theory and religion

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• Social Theory and Religion

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• Deprogramming, Brainwashing and the Medicalization of Deviant Religious Groups

  Thomas Robbins, Dick Anthony•Social Problems•1982

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• The Road to Total Freedom

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• The New religious consciousness

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• Religious Movements in Contemporary America

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• To Empower People

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• In Gods We Trust

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• Ideological Primary Groups in Contemporary Cultural Movements

  Josef Marx, John H Marx et al.•Sociological Focus•1975

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• The State Takes Over A Church

  Open Access•Sharon L Worthing•The Annals of the American…•1979

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• Governmental Attempts to Define Church and Religion

  Open Access•Charles M Whelan•The Annals of the American…•1979

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• The Current State of the Law in the United States and the Separationist Agenda

  Open Access•Leo Pfeffer•The Annals of the American…•1979

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• Mediating Structures

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• Patients and Pilgrims

  Open Access•Dick Anthony, Thomas Robbins et al.•American Behavioral Scientist•1977

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• Religious Deprogramming and Subjective Reality

  Byong-Suh Kim•Sociological Analysis•1979

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• Changing Perspectives in the Scientific Study of Religion

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• Evil eyes and religious choices

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• Crossroads of Crisis

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