72. Beckford, James A. "Through the Looking Glass and Out the Other Side: Withdrawal from Reverend Moon's Unification Church." Archive des Sciences Sociales de Religion 45 (1), 1978c: 95-116.

The very high turnover rate in the Unification Church belies its "impressive" numbers of new recruits. In Britain there is a nucleus of about eighty loyal members; however, progress has been much greater on the continent. Even in Britain the church is financially respectable, largely as a result of success in the USA and Japan. Beckford notes also the church's many confrontations and charges of brainwashing, exploitation, and family divisiveness. The church regularly sues for defamation. It sponsors a support organization of close outsiders.

Beckford criticizes Anthony and Robbins (e.g. 1981a: see item 19) in particular for the view that membership in such movements is abnormal [it isn't? after all, it certainly isn't average, but those are not the same thing]. They claim that change has been occurring in both Western culture and "youth religion," which is seen as a reaction to the former; change is both the cause and the effect, in this situation. They assume that there used to be a time when there was no moral pluralism, hence no ambiguity, hence again no reactionary religious expressions. The eastern movements are monistic and relativistic, thus "allegedly congruent with" American society. But the Jesus movements and the Unification Church, e.g., are in reaction against these ideas, since this new moral climate cannot be reconciled with the absolutism of an earlier day. Adherents are Freudian puppets, [in effect], following the dictates of their "childhood socialization" to either of these moral codes.

Robbins et al., 1976 (see item 582) commit similar errors, perhaps especially in accepting the notion of civil religion but also in taking a supposed absence of community for granted. This is relative deprivation, of course. The UC is a revitalization of this lost code.

Beckford sees the fundamental argument in all this work being a degree of "congruence or affinity" between the movement and features of its host culture. Especially do they assume a Durkheimian view of religion as a necessary authentication and legitimization of society. They start from ideology and move backward by inference to features of social structure which can be taken to account for the "ideological change that the movements articulate" (p. 102). These new movements, whatever their orientations, are to be seen as the results of "a systematic search for stability in the newly emerging social order." So Robbins and Anthony see a need to account for the existence of the Unification Church and its continuing prosperity, which they see as being a result of adherents' socialization on one level and of social "system-requirements" on another. The Unification Church is a revitalization and should best be compared to other movements also reacting to these changes.

Robbins and Anthony are constrained to document at some pains the changes they envision, which are highly abstract in nature and are advanced without consulting the perceptions of those involved in the changes and the movements. They conducted a lot of interviews to find out why people joined but didn't even try to interpret the statements they got; they are taken at face value; what's worse, they didn't talk with anyone outside the movement or any "significant others" to discover the process of negotiation that must have entered into their informant's views. Beckford attributes this defect to Robbins and Anthony's theoretical commitment to "voluntaristic and functionalist" assumptions about their subjects, which includes a reified social structure.

Judah (1977) reports on an attitude survey, attitudes being nearly tangible in his view. They change, and the changes influence their possessors-they are quasi-autonomous and reified. Thus Judah is trying to study the effects of UC membership on attitudes; how they change during affiliation on the assumption that membership can be shown to have caused the change. So it is no surprise that Judah finds changes towards movement ideology. He takes all responses as objective reports on experience instead of the "testimonials" he, in fact, calls them and which they clearly appear to be. He doesn't seem to realize that if there have in fact been massive changes, they must affect reports of prior states. Judah's uncritical acceptance is logically based on a postulate of independent attitudes.

Beckford calls for an approach taking attitudes as a means of making "situationally appropriate" sense of experience. Judah, 1974a supports Beckford's inference that Judah assumes a static and normally self-regulating view of people and of society. Judah and Robbins and Anthony aim primarily to explain why people join the UC. Both drop any concern with history at the moment of affiliation; Judah ignores the question of length of membership in his interviews and questionnaires. Commitment to informants actively in membership deeply colors the data as does the practice of considering them in isolation from others. This in turn forces uncritical reliance on self-reports. They ignore possible and actual organizational constraints. Ultimately, these analysts are operating under a medical model approach: something is wrong with the members, but they can be relied upon to give straight descriptions of their conditions. They are passive victims of an ideological germ.

Beckford proposes that membership careers be considered as processes, a negotiation among large numbers of people, with no fixed outcome. It affects many more people than those directly involved. Points of view of the whole range of participants must be taken into account. All of these people will share some perceptions of the situation in common: commonsense cultural givens to be found in speech. Descriptions are part of the situation; their truth value is no greater than their value as cultural indicators.

Beckford's own research aims to discover the scenarios by which people account for the stages of their participation. Interestingly, there are no scenarios for withdrawal; apostasy seems unthinkable [but see Shupe and Bromley's (1981a and b: item 626) studies of apostasy accounts for a suggestion to the contrary.] A result is the persistence of ambiguity about the movement and one's attachment to it. The commitment usually made in joining makes apostasy especially difficult: it offers a lot to lose, where joining usually didn't. The rhetoric of brainwashing needs exploration.

73. ---. "Sociological Stereotypes of the Religious Sect." Sociological Review 26, 1978d: 109-23.

Beckford finds stereotyping and folk beliefs prevalent in sociological thought about new religions. Sects, for instance, are seen as dramatic and exotic; else why give them so much attention? The typology itself rests on a notion that sects deviate from churches, who alone establish religious norms [this position seems to me correct. Whatever else they may be, churches are more heavily populated than sects. Perhaps a better term for the latter would be something like "minority religion" except that, too, carries an onus.] Sects are explained in negative terms, for the most part.

This prejudice begins with Weber (1965) [at least], who wrote insightfully but inferentially about some religions of the disprivileged; his views have since been broadened to accommodate all such groups. Consequently, most sociologists trivialize their questions and the groups as well. Ideal types can explain nothing. Unique attributes [and contexts] must be taken into account. Sociologists often overlook the rudimentary step of asking churches the same questions they address to sects. One study which did do so found that many of the same factors seen as affecting sect membership also apply to churches.

Beckford examines prejudice against the Jehovah's Witnesses and usefulness of conventional sociological explanations of sectarian membership careers. The sociological stereotype is that the Witnesses are poor, but while most of the membership at present is lower- to lower-middle class, it has always been led by middle-class people. Checking occupational status, Beckford found that most were lower-middle class. The range includes senior management and professional down to the unemployed. The extremes are lacking; the Witnesses do not seek out the wealthy, and they make demands the destitute cannot meet. Furthermore, there are no class-related "styles of participation." Other measures of SES confirmed these findings. Beckford found no evidence whatever of painful deprivation motivating these people to join or of rebelliousness. The Witnesses are not, in practice, millennialists, despite their doctrine.

Beckford finds the logical coherence of the doctrine more appealing to the Witnesses than its apocalyptic content; the doctrine is absolutist, internally coherent, practical and action-oriented, and urgent. It is crucially important that no one learns Witness doctrine except in the officially sanctioned manner: from a supervised Witness.

74. ---. "Beyond the Pale: Cults, Culture and Conflict." In New Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society edited by Eileen Barker. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982.

Every "new religious cult" must provoke some hostility. They are seen as attacks on civilized society. Beckford's intent is to analyze this hostility, which sees all NRMs as the same. The data is drawn from the media, interviews, and conversations. Society's "cultural and social structures" are revealed by this opposition. Members are supposed to be brainwashed, harmful to themselves, controlled, infantile, adrift, fanatical, artificially committed and indifferent to their families [in sum, uncritical, or they wouldn't make these commitments]. He concludes that all these objections cohere around the brainwashing "issue" and are based on ideals of independence and rational criticism. The evidence to support these claims is chosen rationally in view of cultural basic assumptions. The cultural limits to the expression of religious feelings, actions based on them, and the place of religion in society are revealed.

75. ---. "Introduction." In New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change edited by James A. Beckford. Paris and Beverly Hills, CA: UNESCO and Sage Publishers, 1986: ix-xv.

Beckford argues for a broad definition of religion, especially in a multi-context study like this one; they all "evoke and cultivate concerns with the ultimate significance of human life" (p. ix). Whether a group that rejects this label can be so called depends on whether it has the same social characteristics as "actual" religions. A religious movement implies "an organized attempt to introduce change in religion" (p. x). [Exclusively? If that's what he means, this will make problems for him, for by no means all movements aim to promote change; there are various movements within Catholicism, for example, which devote themselves to resisting the changes of Vatican II. An appropriate statement of the issue is that movements negotiate change.] This will always be accompanied by conflict. Unorganized components of religious activity need also to be studied as there may be broad shifts in religious points of view outside organized activities. Indigenous tradition should be considered in studying NRMs. The book assumes that NRM activity is greatest at times of rapid social change, but this requires specification of what kinds of movements, what kinds of change account for them, and how the effects come about. There is little study of the contexts of decline.

NRMs tend to be specialized because they reorder priorities in their older traditions, as revitalizations. They are democratic, that is, the laity is highly involved. They tend to encourage practical, worldly action. Beckford suggests that the distinction between the material and spiritual is being redrawn.


Return to Indexes