439. Lofland, John. Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. New York: Irvington, 1977a.
A synopsis of Lofland's analysis of the three processes of conversion, proselytization, and maintenance of faith: In order to become a convert, one must
"1) experience enduring, acutely felt tensions; 2) within a religious, problem solving perspective; 3) which lead to defining [oneself] as a religious seeker; 4) encounter the cult at a turning point inÊ.Ê.Ê.Êlife; 5) wherein an affective bond to adherents is formed (or pre-exists); 6) where extra-cult attachments are low or neutralized; 7) and where, to become a `deployable agent,' exposure to intensive interaction is accomplished" (p. 7 ff.).
Proselytization (recruitment) involves 1) strategies of access (how do and in what contexts can missionaries meet prospects and then get them to listen?) and 2) tactics of conversion (how can prospects, once found and listening, be persuaded to accept what they hear?) Strategies can be carried on face to face or can be mediated. The Unification Church's (UC) mediated strategies, as observed by Lofland, were "massive failures." They had marginally better luck with face to face approaches, the most successful of which were "covert presentations in religious gatherings," largely because of the open interaction rules and presumption of sincerity that characterize them.
There are two faces of access: outside "pickups" and appearance at a UC residence, where promotion could occur, via "briefing sessions" (listening to interminable tape recordings) and study sessions (listening to UCs read from their book). Tactics involved promoting friendship, deliberately showing a moral front; encouraging "intensive interaction" with adherents and using other sources of spiritist ideology to promote intellectual acceptance of UC belief.
Maintenance of belief is a matter, not so much of structuring the movement so as to avoid disconfirming knowledge but of an intellectual closed system, i.e., one which can account for any and all contradictions in its own terms: bad luck, failure, etc. is Satan's work and shows that the end is in fact approaching.
In conversion Lofland's seven accumulating factors act as successively graded filters to choose those who will become converts. They need not occur in the order given. Lofland distinguishes verbal from total converts, though the UCs did not necessarily do so; total conversion meant active work for the cause.
Lofland gives a set of life histories illustrating his seven factors: "Miss Lee's" is perhaps most significant and typical. She was an isolated depressive who sought and found spirit contact ("hallucinations"), which convinced her she was a religious virtuoso. She was displeased with Methodist seminary life, and influenced by Swedenborg. She was refused ordination and became a professor. Further theological training also alienated her. Her behavior became erratic, nearly insane. A period of chronic ill health was healed by Moon. This was her "turning point."
Other histories of the first converts are not dissimilar: all seem to have been astonishingly inept socially and pragmatically, losers, loners, and near psychotics. Their choice of conversion seems to have been contingent upon the rhetoric of problem solving they adopted; those who thought of their problems as psychiatric or political did not make the same choice. It also seems necessary for other possible choices to fail.
Seekership (exploration of many religious alternatives) seems to entail belief in spiritual beings intervening in the world and in a general teleology no more specific than this. This gross level of congruence with previous belief seems to be all that is necessary. [However, we should observe that the UC promised an extraordinary reward: eternal demigodhood.] The friendship element seems to have been crucial in every case of successful conversion. It probably must precede intellectual acceptance of the message. Outside friendships with other seekers support conversion; other friendships have to be either tenuous or broken off. For total conversion, at least daily contact with adherents is necessary. Co-residence is perhaps a necessity.
To form a core group, a prophet will be greatly helped if (s)he finds an established network to convert more or less together; they require "intensive interaction" with the prophet and with each other. Lofland argues forcefully for the study of interactions like these as well as macrosocial "hard times." Lofland describes a series of invariably complete failures to proselytize using amateurish mediated propaganda: lectures, newspaper ads, flyers, and a soundtruck.
Lofland critiques both lay and sociological analyses of the maintenance of faith and hope for ultimate reliance on common sense, finding severe "cognitive dissonance" and organizational efforts to obviate or overcome it. By contrast the UC system was logically impossible to refute [being a closed system, where all disagreement and disconfirming facts were explicable in terms of the system]. In order to construct one of these what is required is "super- or non-empirical" postulates; a spirit world of good or evil beings fighting for control of the world, a struggle that is now decisive and will be won by God. All events in this world are caused by the spirits, whose purpose is to forward their struggle; each side helps its mundane supporters and hinders its opponents (including, of course, the UC). Experience can only confirm these views; [the system is self-sustaining]. The believer cannot lose, and, in fact, reality is more meaningful for him than for adherents of common sense. Everything confirms it. The only problem was the concrete choice of a date for the millennium: it encouraged hard work but provoked despair.
Their failure to attract converts meant that Satan was busy opposing them, which meant that he must be threatened, which in turn meant that they were actually close to success. The excuses offered by those who failed to return to hear more propaganda (deaths in the family, illness, broken water pipes) were accepted at face value as Satan's interference. His successes meant that the UCs had to work that much harder. Rejections allowed them to compare their struggles with Christ's and Moon's.
Living in community supported the maintenance of faith, even in the face of presumably disruptive internal events like Lee's authoritarian stance with converts. This was rationalized by her "advanced" holiness [charisma]. She was the "mother in faith," they her "children." Their understanding was imperfect; she "had to" test and discipline them. Inexplicability and unpredictability confirm charisma. Inter-convert squabbles were, of course, Satan's work and were resolved by making him go away. Irritations were God's tests. They wisely treated doubt as acceptable, giving them control over it. [This could also become an attention-getting device, since support would be enlisted.]
Group migration is a "first" strategy for rebuilding hope in despair. Another is to sustain hopes of the arrival of the prophet (when he is remote). It also helps to define the present as precursor to and preparation for good times. In despair, dispersal into new fields gives a sense of expansion.
440. ———. "Becoming a World Saver Revisited." American Behavioral Scientist 20 (6), 1977b: 805-19. Reprinted in J.T. Richardson, ed., Conversion Careers: In and Out of the New Religions. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1978.
A critique of Lofland & Stark (1965, item 438) and a review of work based on it. Lofland describes the Unification Church's "ingenious, sophisticated and effective" conversion efforts following his original report on the movement (Lofland, 1977a: item 439, which can be found in that work): "lovebombing" (see item 673) came to be the major and highly successful technique. [Incidentally, Lofland takes at face value the account of an apostate of his own "culture shock" on reentering the world from prolonged lovebombing. It seems to me that this amounts to the familiar phenomenon of "apostate's rationale" (cf. Shupe and Bromley, 1981: item 626) and should not be taken literally.]
The earlier model is criticized for generality; Lofland observes that the new data permit more sophisticated analysis. The notion of the "turning point" is not useful, since it can be applied to any point in anyone's life; similarly, "tension" is a human universal. Converts now do not have seekers' careers, indeed many join who have no prior religious background; this may be an effect of a generalized "seeker chic" (p.815). The model was intended as "qualitative process theorizing" (p. 816) and as such has seen little follow-up. Lofland sees his own attempt to generalize the model as incorrect and urges that it not be adapted to fit whatever conversion process is found; instead, these should simply be described. Further, the model is insufficiently interactionist, holding people inaccurately to be mere passive receptors of process, rather than active and self-willed participants in it.
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