When Scholars Know Sin
Editor's note: On Saturday afternoon, May 23, 1998, during the Skeptics
Society annual conference at Caltech -- whose theme was understanding the
role of religion and myths in modern culture -- evangelical Christian
author Richard Abanes launched a spirited attack upon an earlier speaker,
religion scholar J. Gordon Melton. Abanes accused Melton of endorsing a
religious organization known as The Family, whose activities involving
sexual exploitation of members and their children made headlines in the
1980s. By immersing himself into numerous groups for years at a time in
order to deeply understand their beliefs and customs, Abanes opined,
Melton was co-opted by these religions not only to write positive
evaluations, but also to come to their defense in their legal struggles.
The article addresses the larger problem of scholars being co-opted by
alternative religions.
Within the past several years, questionable relationships have developed
between social scientists and several controversial new religious groups
-- most notably The Family (formerly Children of God [COG]), Church
Universal and Triumphant (CUT), and Scientology. These organizations
recognize that supportive social scientists are powerful allies in their
efforts both to gain societal legitimacy and to silence critics. For
their part, some social scientists appear to overlook their own unique
position and value as legitimizing resources in the attempts by religious
ideological groups and their oppositional organizations to secure social
recognition and acceptance. About this situation, Marybeth Ayella warns
that "co-optation of the researcher can be a major problem for the
unaware researcher, because he or she can become, without intent, a
'counter' in the ongoing stigma contests" between religiously ideological
organizations and their countermovements (1990, 574; see also Robbins and
Robertson, 1991).
With a critical eye toward recent events, this article examines research
issues involving the scholarly study and public representation of some
alternative religious. Specifically, it argues that, on crucial social
issues, controversial religious groups have courted researchers in order
to enhance their public images, and some social scientists have
participated in these efforts at the expense both of legitimate endeavors
to advance knowledge according to accepted scientific standards of
objectivity and of due attention to the use of their scientific
expertise.
One vital aspect of science is that researchers must publish their
results in peer reviewed journals or books. Research dissemination
advances knowledge by allowing others in the field to receive, accept,
replicate, or challenge the published findings. Interference in the peer
review publications process is a serious act that threatens the
principles upon which modern science depends, especially because the
appropriate scientific response to controversial research is to publish
responses to it in the same or other scientific outlets. Recently, an
academic article fell victim to publication interference by The Family
with the collusion of one scholar (and probably a second) who had never
read it.
The Family is an unorthodox Christian group based around the teachings of
its founder, the late David Berg. In its early days in the late 1960s,
members expected and even encouraged "persecution" from "the
System," which consisted on mainstream society, governments, and
traditional religions (Wallis, 1981, 120, 126). After increasing criticism
of the group during the 1980s and early 1990s over allegations of child sexual
abuse (which led to controversial raids against Family homes around the
globe), the organization undertook a campaign to represent itself as an
orthodox, but persecuted, Christian religion. In doing so it began to
protest "state sanctioned religious persecution" initiated by
"[e]mbittered apostates and anti-cult organizations." In order to
emphasize its victim status, The Family self-description stressed its
adherence to God's Word upon which it based its self-described exemplary
lifestyle and the socialization of the group's children in a positive
environment (World Services, 1993, 3)
Amidst The Family's public relations campaign, one of the authors of this
article (Stephen Kent, along with a former student) received publication
acceptance of a lengthy study on the psychosexual history of David Berg
in the annual, peer-reviewed publication, Research in the Social
Scientific Study of Religion (RSSSR). Several months before the release
of the book, the publisher (JAI Press) mailed announcements of the
forthcoming volume to academics and libraries around the world. An
unnamed researcher, probably in the United Kingdom, received the notice,
and alerted The Family.
As Kent was checking his page proofs, the publication's editors informed
him that an attorney representing The Family, a Family spokesperson, and
an American researcher all had sent letters objecting to the publication
of his article (which the objectors had not read). The lawyer and The
Family representative made vague overtures about a lawsuit. The American
researcher, Mr. James R. Lewis, alleged "questionable" aspects of
Kent's research on Berg, and also accused him of "violat[ing] professional
ethics" (in Mobilio, 1994, 17). Remarkably, after alleging ethical
problems with Kent's study, Lewis misrepresented his own credentials by
identifying himself as "James R. Lewis, Ph. D.," even though he
never completed the doctorate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill. Indeed, at least three controversial religions and a professional
colleague though that Lewis had his doctorate (Church of Scientology
International, [1994/1995?], [3], 67, 68; Church of Scientology
International, 1995a [3], 33, 35; Cult Awareness Network, [1996/1997];
Royal Teton Ranch News, 1994, 8; Scott vs. Ross, et. al. 1995a, 134).
The intervention worked. JAI Press did not have liability insurance, and
over the objections of the editors and the University of Alberta
Vice-President for Research, the publisher (Herbert Johnson) withdrew the
Berg article as well as another on Scientology that RSSSR had accepted.
Kent's university refused Johnson's peculiar offer to publish both pieces
if it "assume[d] all legal costs emanating from [Kent's] writings and
the consequences thereof" against JAI Press [in Mobilio, 19994, 18; see
Johnson, 1993, 1) The fact that Kent had passed several university ethics
reviews involving his research on the Children of God (Bridger, 1995) did
not sway the publisher's decision, nor was Johnson moved to change his
mind after Lewis withdrew his objection. The article (Kent, 1994),
eventually appeared in Cultic Studies Journal without incident.
Correspondence from RSSSR's coeditor, David Moberg, to Lewis in January,
19994, underscores the implications of researcher's alignments with
religious groups as they attempt to control (with litigious threats) the
dissemination of scientific findings in scholarly publications. It also
raises the important issue that some social scientists' co-optation by
such organizations results in their diminishing the public image of other
academics who conduct critically insightful and revealing research.
Moberg's letter to Lewis reads:
If only those materials that shed favorable light on new religious
movements (NRMs) are published, then scholarly publications cannot be
trusted to give honest reports and appraisals that include their [NRM's]
weaknesses and flaws alongside their strenghts and virtues. Before long
journalists, politicians, religious leaders, historians, and others would
discover this bias, and then all of the pertinent journals, serials, and
books with materials on NRMs would be suspected of seriously distorting
everything they publish. The integrity of the scientific study of
religion is clearly at stake in these issues of censorship. Are we
scholars/scientists, or must we become mere propagandists?
(in Editor's introduction to Kent, 1994, 137 [emphasis in original]).
Indeed, sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz expressed similar concerns in
1983 with respect to "slippage into unabashed support for [groups]"
and the quality of publications produced by academics who attended
expenses-paid Unification Church (Moonie) sponsored conferences
(Horowitz, 1983, 180).
Biased Studies
At the same time that Lewis intervened in Kent's publication process in
early March, 1993, he and various academics associated with his
organization, the Association for World Academics for Religious Education
(AWARE) were engaged in producing a publication to help The Family
cultivate a positive public image. In January, 1993, Family
representatives had contacted Lewis (as the Executive Director of AWARE)
and another unnamed academic "seeking advice on how to combat the
negative publicity and other attacks they felt certain would result from
the group's bold new public stature" in the United States (Lewis and
Melton, 1994b, vi). Already in other countries around the world, The
Family had been trying to distance itself from its controversial sexual
practices such as "flirty fishing" (religious prostitution),
sexual sharing among members, and sexual abuse of children (Ward, 1995).
The resultant collection of essays published by Lewis and J. Gordon Melton,
entitled Sex, Slander, and Salvation, became a volume that The Family
touted as proof of its legitimacy and the group has distributed copies to
media in an attempt to gain favorable press. At least one academic,
however, who reviewed the book saw it otherwise.
Robert Balch's book review identified this publication as an opportunity
to raise the vital issue of bias among social scientists who publish
similarly skewed portrayals of other groups (Balch, 1996, 72). Most
importantly, Balch recognized the study's disregard for "[Erving]
Goffman's (1959) work on impression management, which describes how group
members engage in 'teamwork' to prevent 'leakage' of potentially
discrediting information to outsiders (including, presumably, social
scientists)" (Balch, 1996, 72).
Former members of The Family, as well as some of The Family's own
publications, provide important insights into the group's "backstage"
arrangements that went on prior to contact that AWARE researchers had
with it. The Family invited academics and other "Systemites" to what it
called "Media Homes" (Kent, 1996c, 68). A former member who was familiar
with these homes described such a place as "basically a nice, squeaky
clean, polished-up home [which was] about as polished as you could get"
(Kent, 1996b, 157-158). Another former member reported that part of
making "everything look as perfect as possible" at the Media Homes
required "mega-preparation" such as moving out crowded children, removing
bunkbeds from overcrowded bedrooms, and placing single mothers elsewhere
(Kent, 1996a, 39-40). The same former member claimed that The Family
"only kept the best PR people there...the people who were, you know,
prepared to talk and, you know, knew how to talk and wouldn't, you know,
slip up or whatever" (Kent, 1996a, 39). In order to avoid revealing
sensitive information, Family spokespersons underwent intensive
rehearsals of "questions and answers -- what to say about this, what to
say about that" (Kent, 1996b, 155). The Family even produced several
booklets of anticipated questions along with appropriate answers and
maintained strict security regarding which among its publications members
could provide to "Systemites" for perusal (Family Services, 1989,
1992a, 1992b; Berg, 1983, 432-468).
Another way that The Family controlled information that researchers
acquired was by destroying controversial sexual material involving
children. In 1991 The Family's World Services department issued a
directive entitled "The Pubs Purge," which ordered an "extensive purge of
[particular] publications" by burning or blocking out portions "with ink
or white-out as well as the specific pages that should be removed from
within the remaining books" (World Services, 1991). The documents purge
was not motivated by the organization's denunciation of Berg's teachings,
but rather by the realization that these publications provided the
group's critics with evidence that child/adult sex had been allowed.
Consequently, the directive never acknowledged any harm from the sexual
practices, but blamed the need for the purge on "them that [sic] are
defiled & and unbelieving" (World Services, 1991, 2). Not surprisingly,
therefore, when AWARE researchers and others conducted their study of
media homes and examined the group's publications in other Family
facilities, they found nothing amiss. One researcher contributing to the
AWARE study, for example, stated that: "[a] study of a cupboardful of
COG to Family literature was undertaken with the assistance of a YA [Young
Adult] who pointed out important passages in the Mo Letters, the Book of
Remembrance and the children's comic, Life With Grandpa" (Palmer, 1994,
9).
Other academics wrote general letters of endorsement for The Family
(Palmer, 1993; Shepherd, 1993; World Services [1994b?]; [1994c?]) and
spoke favorably about it on a video that the group used as another form
of legitimation (The Family, 1994). Some of this questionable research is
being incorporated, uncritically, into the wider academic literature on
The Family's effects on its youth (Bainbridge, 1997, 224, 237).
During the early days of July, 1993, an AWARE-sponsored team, under the
direction of Lewis and Melton, conducted a study of another controversial
group, Church Universal and Triumphant. CUT needed some positive press,
since the armaments that the Branch Davidians used against federal agents
drew attention once more to the arsenal that CUT had amassed and on which
the press had reported (Wiley, 1990; Washington Post, 1994, A4). Indeed,
during the middle of AWARE's CUT study, local Montana newspapers carried
articles that outlined the federal government's allegations of
"[h]igh-ranking Church Universal and Triumphant staff members involved
in stockpiling, moving and guarding weapons since 1973 in violation of its
tax exempt status" (Billings Gazette, 1993; Ronnow, 1993b; 1993c).
Moreover, the IRS was investigating various financial dealings ([USA] and
Philipson v. [CUT] and Francis, 1991, 2). The AWARE scholars, therefore,
avowedly approached the study prepared "to believe many of the worst
charges leveled against Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and
Triumphant in the mass media" (Lewis and Melton, 1994a, viii). Like
The Family study, however, the AWARE team produced and published a book of
essays that was as much an apology as a social scientific product.
In an analysis of the study, sociologist Robert Balch and student Stephan
Langdon recorded in detailed notes their observations of fellow
researchers collecting and discussing data. Balch and Langdon reported
that the AWARE "study design virtually assured that if malfeasance
existed within the Church, it would not be discovered" (1998, 192). Based
upon their observations, they concluded that, for the most part, the
study "failed to dig into the issues that made [CUT] so controversial in
the first place" (1998, 198). The study failed to address such critical
issues as the organization's allegedly excessive commercialism, the use
of Church funds to pay off a civil penalty against Mrs. Prophet, and IRS
charges against the group for arms violations (1998, 198-199; Billings
Gazette, 1993, 1, 13A; McMillion, 1994, 9; Ronnow, 1993a, 1). Worth
nothing is that less than two weeks after the AWARE study concluded, a
CUT lawyer said "in a letter to [the] Justice Department [that] 'the
church wants to accept responsibility for weapons through the [IRS]
settlement process'" (McMillion, 1995, 10).
Lewis described his published scholarship as "undermin[ing] the notion
that nontraditional religions exercised extraordinary forms of influence"
over its members and, hence, he categorically rejected the idea that CUT
"brainwashed its adherents" (Lewis and Melton, 1994a, viii). Challenging,
however, to Lewis's rejection of the idea that controversial religious
groups exercise extraordinary influence over their members is trial
evidence, which revealed aspects of CUT's coercive controls over its
members ([CUT] v. Gregory Mull, 1981, 5; [CUT] and Elizabeth Clare
Prophet v. Linda Witt, 1998, 23; Balch and Langdon, 1998, 199).
Throughout the investigation, however, both Balch and Langdon "observed
and experienced subtle pressures not to raise critical questions about
either [CUT] or the study itself" (Balch and Langdon, 1998, 203). After
Langdon "continued to raise questions about issues that were not being
investigated, some members of the research team (ironically) began to
question his objectivity" (Balch and Langdon, 1998, 204).
One reason that Horowitz warned about academics involving themselves in
Moonie-sponsored research was his fear that the groups would then use the
findings in attempts to legitimize themselves. Canadian sociologists
Marlene Mackie and Merlin B. Brinkerhoff concurred with Horowitz's
apprehension in relation to academics and the Unification Church (Mackie
and Brinkerhoff, 1983, 35-36). Moreover, sociologists have long
understood that groups such as Scientology, the Unification Church,
ISKCON, and other ideological groups solicit "endorsements from academics
who claim that that the supposedly widespread intolerance and persecution
against these contemporary non-normative organizations is analogous to
the persecution suffered by such currently accepted and generally
tolerated groups as the Mormons and the Quakers" (Kent, 1990, 402-403).
What they neglect to mention, however, is that both the Mormons and the
Quakers made dramatic adjustments in their public postures that lessened
their tension with society.
As expected, therefore, CUT used the results from Lewis and Melton's
superficial study in an attempt to gain legitimacy within the community
and among its members. Following publication of Church Universal and
Triumphant: In Scholarly Perspective that Lewis and Melton coedited in
1994, CUT's newsletter, Royal Teton Ranch News, carried a front page
headline that proclaimed, "Study Debunks Anti-Church Myths." Headlines on
following pages sound equally victorious: "Reality Wins Over Perception:
Church is Entering Mainstream" (1994, 2); and "Moving Beyond Stereotypes"
(1994, 8). In an interview in the same issue, Lewis stated his hope that
the AWARE study "will be a paradigm for future studies" (Royal Teton
Ranch News, 1994, 8). None of the articles in the newsletter mentioned
that Lewis ran the independent publishing firm (Center for Academic
Publication) that produced the study -- the same press that published The
Family study.
Nowhere does CUT or the book on it produced by Lewis and Melton mention
that CUT seemingly had a hand in the very foundation of AWARE -- an
arrangement that would have significant implications for its ability to
produce a critical study were the facts to have warranted one. In the
1992 press conference statement sent to the media that announced AWARE's
formation (AWARE, 1992), the other contact person aside from Lewis
himself was Henry Kriegel, a high ranking CUT member who ran his own
information organization -- the First Amendment Crisis Task Force
(Kriegel, 1992). Almost certainly, the list of prominent researchers and
academics who were involved themselves with AWARE, including prestigious
members of its Advisory Board, were unaware of the foundation CUT
connection.
Informational "Front" Groups
AWARE, however, was by no means the first, or the only, informational
group apparently working for a controversial religious organization that
involved academics. Perhaps the first informational "front" group was
APRL, which initially stood for the Alliance for the Preservation of
Religious Liberty and later became Americans Preserving Religious Liberty
(APRL, 1982, 1).
Beginning in late 1976, APRL was active in the United States in efforts
to counteract criticisms leveled against a number of groups calling
themselves "new religions." The often claimed relationship
between APRL and Scientology finally was established by a document
uncovered in the FBI raid against Scientology offices in Los Angeles and
Washington, D.C. on July 7, 1977. Many of the confiscated documents came
from Scientology's Guardian Office, which was dedicated to handling
public relations (sometimes through illegal means). One undated memo
entitled "PR General Categories of Data Needing Coding"
contained a list of what it called "Secret PR Front Groups."
Leading the list was "APRL, Alliance for the Preservation of
Religious Liberty" (FBI, 1977, 97, 104).
APRL appears to have ceased operations in the early 1980s, but soon
another Scientology information front organization was up and running --
Friends of Freedom, under the directorship of Reverend George Robertson
of the controversial fundamentalist Christian Ministry Bible Speaks
(MacSherry, 1992, 16). Bible Speaks acquired considerable notoriety when
a former member successfully sued the founder for $6.6 million for unduly
influencing her to donate large sums of money to the group (New York
Times, 1986, 45). Apparently Robertson is guarded about revealing
information concerning his school attendance, degree(s), and personal
background (MacSherry, 1992, 18). He is less guarded, however, about
speaking out against his avowed enemy -- the Cult Awareness Network
(CAN). CAN was a privately funded, high profile organization that
supplied usually critical information about controversial groups to
concerned citizens and the media. In correspondence with Board Members
and Advisory Committee members of Friends of Freedom, Robertson states
his goal was to "do to CAN what Swartzkopf [sic] did to Hussein"
(Robertson, 1992, 2). In its newsletter called CAN Opener, Friends of
Freedom published exceedingly critical attacks against CAN, which had an
impact on one very prominent sociologist, Dr. Anson Shupe, Jr.
Shupe deservedly is one of the most respected sociologists of religion
today, having published widely cited articles on the Unification Church,
new religions, Mormon business activities, family violence, and religious
malfeasance. In 1980, Shupe was the co-author of a study of the
"counter-cult" movement, referring to the people in it as The New
Vigilantes (Shupe and Bromley, 1980). He was cognizant of APRL's ties
with Scientology, stating in a 1984 publication that "[b]oth Scientology
and the Unification Church were extremely active" in the organization
(Shupe, Bromley, and Oliver, 1984, 142). Moreover, both Shupe and Lewis
were to publish articles against CAN (Shupe, 1994/1995?); in
Scientology's Freedom magazine (Church of Scientology International
[1994/1995?] 1994a, 1995b).
In 1995, as a Scientology lawyer approached the most important court case
thus far in his organization's relentless war against CAN (Goodstein,
1996), he acquired Shupe as his expert academic witness. The case was an
unusual one, arising from the failed deprogramming of a young man from a
Christian Pentecostal group, the Life Tabernacle Church (LTC), in
Washington state. A relative of the young man's mother called a local
crisis line in late 1990, seeking advice about the mother's desire to
remove her two underage children from the group because "she believed a
church pastor ha[d] acted inappropriately toward one of her younger sons"
(Bjorhus, 1995, A6; Goldsmith, 1995, A6; Cult Awareness Network, 1995,
2).
The crisis line gave her the name and telephone number of Shirley
Landa, who had been a CAN board member in the early 1980s but who (as
best as we can determine) was not identified as a CAN contact person in
the crisis line's listing. When the mother called, Landa gave her the
names of two people whom she felt might be able to help her -- one was
deprogrammer and exit counselor Rick Ross. Ross was one of a handful of
people in the United States who still did forcible removals and
confinements. The mother contacted Ross, and he agreed to attempt
deprogrammings with the two minors. In the autumn of 1990 he successfully
removed them from the LTC.
Ross's luck changed, however, when he next attempted to deprogram the
mother's eldest son, Jason Scott. On January 18, 1991, Ross and two
associates forcibly removed Scott from his mother's Bellevue, Washington
home and took him into a dwelling in Ocean Shores. While there, Scott
"was forced to watch hours of video tapes on cults...was constantly
intimidated and was told his church was the same as the cults. He said he
was kept under watch 24 hours a day" (Jarvis, 1991, A10). Late on the
fourth day, Scott pretended to renounce his association with LTC. The
next day, Ross and his team arranged for Scoot to meet with his family
for a celebration dinner at a public restaurant prior to their scheduled
trip to Wellspring, a non-profit counseling center in Ohio.
Scott apparently left the restaurant and called police from a public phone
across the street. Subsequently, the county prosecutor brought criminal
kidnap charges against Ross, for which he was acquitted in a jury trial.
After this jury decision, Scientology representatives contacted Scott and
offered to launch a civil case against Ross on a contingency basis
(Brune, 1995, 11; Iosso, 1993, 1).
In the 1995 deposition[Off-site Link], Shupe was scathing in his
condemnation of CAN. He stated that CAN's (asserted) deprogramming
involved "an unmistakable profit motive" (Scott v. Ross, et. al.,, 1995a,
92). Shupe also claimed that he personally considered the organization to
be "a hate group" (Scott v. Ross, et. al., 1995a, 127). He repeated this
determination several times throughout his pre-trial deposition, likening
CAN to the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic groups, and, on a
small scale, the Branch Davidians (Scott v. Ross, et.al., 1995a,
127-132). He did not, however, repeat those statements during trial
testimony (Scott v. Ross, et.al., 1995b, 18-79). Interestingly, like
Shupe, a Scientology-produced "Freedom" magazine entitled "The Cult
Awareness Network: An Anatomy of a Hate Group" also states that "[l]ike
the Ku Klux Klan, the Cult Awareness Network generates violence and hated
against religious and other organizations, creating a climate in which
even murder is possible" (Church of Scientology International,
[1994/1995?], 10).
When asked about how he gathered his evidence against CAN, Shupe admitted
that he had never attended a CAN meeting, did not know the names of its
officers, had not conducted formal research on the organization since
1987, and had not formally interviewed anyone on the "countercult"
movement since 1979. Moreover, he had never subscribed to CAN's
newsletter, although he "was able to obtain copies now and then from
various people around the country" (Scott v. Ross, et.al., 1995a, 83-87).
Shupe claimed, however, that he had kept informed about CAN's activities
-- through contact with his colleagues, one of whom was J. Gordon Melton,
through mailings that he received from Robertson's Friends of Freedom and
publications from the "countercult" organization called American Family
Foundation. He also claimed that he kept informed about CAN through
"miscellaneous newspaper articles". Shupe also mentioned that he had
belonged for a period to the Friends of Freedom and currently was on
AWARE's board of directors.
In deposition he stated that he thought Friends of Freedom "was a
good source of information," but in trial testimony indicated that
he had "a certain amount of skepticism" about its material
because he realized that its director, George Robertson, "was not
what I would call a neutral party in all this." CAN portrayed the
sources upon which Shupe relied as "inadmissible hearsay" evidence,
and challenged unsuccessfully his admissibility as a CAN expert by
stating that "Dr. Shupe has admitted that he has no personal knowledge
that would allow him to testify factually one way or the other" on the
allegation that CAN was involved in violent deprogramming (passim, (Scott
v. Ross, et.al., 1995b, 56-57; 1995c, 2-3).
Although Shupe's testimony may have provided information beyond the
general knowledge of jurors, Shupe did not read the full statements of
the plaintiffs and defendants when formulating his opinions for
deposition about the events in the case. Instead, he read excerpts from
them supplied by the prosecuting lawyer, Kendrick Moxon. When asked if he
had considered whether the depositions "may have been taken out of
context" Shupe answered that he "trusted Mr. Moxon" to
provide a "pretty good sample of the depositions" (Scott v.
Ross, et.al., 1995a, 109).
As a result of the trial, the court ruled that Ross and CAN had violated
Scott's civil rights, and CAN, Ross, and Ross's hired accomplices owed
Scott in excess of $4 million in damages. CAN went into bankruptcy.
Scientologist Steve Hayes purchased the rights to use CAN's name, logo,
and phone number, and soon Scientologists were answering CAN phone calls
(Goodstein, 1996, A22). Former CAN critic George Robertson became the new
CAN's Chairman (The Board and Officers, 1997). The Jason Scott trial was
a vehicle for Scientology to attack its avowed enemy (Bjorhus, 1995, A6),
even though the national CAN office had not been involved in any of the
conversations between Ross and the mother who hired him.
Shupe's trust in Moxon's judgement, however, about providing a "pretty
good sample" of depositions about CAN may have been misplaced. Years
earlier, while acting in a legal capacity for Scientology, Moxon was a
member of Scientology's Guardian Office, "working in the very office
where massive covert operations against the government were being run at
the time" (Horne, 1992, 79). In 1992, Moxon misrepresented his actions on
behalf of his organization during the U.S. government's criminal
investigation of the Scientologists' burglaries into U.S. government
offices, denying (to The American Lawyer "knowledge of the criminal
operations being run out of the office" (Horne, 1992, 80).
Five years later, the same publication erred when it reported that federal
prosecutors never "named him as a party in their case" (Hansen, 1997,
65). Yet the grand jury for the case "had" named him an "unindicted
co-conspirator" ([USA] v. Mary Sue Hubbard, et. al., 1979a, 7). Both
sides agreed in the "Stipulation of Evidence"[Off-site Link] that in
response to an October 14, 1976, "Grand Jury subpoena for all original
known handwriting exemplars of Michael Meisner and the employment
application and personnel records of Mr. Meisner in the possession of the
Church of Scientology," Moxon had:
Moxon, therefore, knew about the Guardian Office's illegal activities
because he acted on direct orders to participate in the cover-up. Indeed,
a 1976 letter from the Guardian Office's District of Columbia Security
Office had identified "Rick Moxon" and four others as "either hav[ing]
full data or almost all of it" about the government break-ins, and
indicated that they were under a "Covenant of Non-Disclosure; 'Doomsday
Agreement'" preventing them from disclosing what they knew about such
operations (under penalty of a $50,000.00 fine per breach). The Guardian
document instructed a Scientology official to inform Moxon and the others
that "if they do talk, then they will be expelled forever, hounded by the
GO [Guardian Office] until doomsday, and left to rot in the Physical
Universe" (Security Off[ice], D.C. 1976, [3.1]).
Shupe, consequently, was unwise to have trusted Moxon to provide accurate
information concerning CAN. When, for example, CBS's 60 Minutes did a
report on Scientology's takeover of CAN, reporter Lesley Stahl discovered
that two affidavits Moxon relied upon (one about Cynthia Kisser and the
other about deprogrammer Mark Blocksom) were false (CBS, 1997, 18-20).
Likewise, a private investigator whom Scientology had hired to
investigate CAN "couldn't find any evidence" that CAN was involved in
illegal deprogramming (CBS, 1997, 20).
One must wonder, therefore, about
the quality of information that attorney Moxon passed along to his
academic expert - an academic expert predisposed to accept it because of
the filtered information that he had been receiving about CAN from
Friends of Freedom, Melton, and probably Lewis. Consequently, when CAN's
lawyer got him to read (on the witness stand) a 1988 CAN Board of
Directors minute which stated that "[n]o officers, Board Members or paid
staff of the Cult Awareness Network or its affiliates may participate in
involuntary deprogramming,"
Shupe remained firm in his "sense" that CAN
encouraged illegal deprogramming for interested parties (Scott v. Ross,
et. al., 1995b, 49, 63; see Cult Awareness Network Board of Directors,
1988, 12). Unfortunately, a respected academic facilitated Scientology's
attack on CAN by becoming an unwitting participant in an information
loop, in which he probably received "facts" of dubious quality
about the countercult organization from biased sources.
In the Scott case the evidence against CAN actually was very weak, since
all discussion about "illegal" deprogramming took place outside the
knowledge of CAN members or volunteers. Indeed, it seems highly unlikely
that community resource person Landa was acting as a CAN contact person
when she passed along Ross' telephone number to Scott's mother. Yet in
1998, a U.S. Court of Appeals supported a lower court's decision to
assign vicarious liability on CAN for the actions of Landa because she
had acted as its agent. The dissenting judge, however, argued that no
trial evidence established that Landa, in referring the mother to
deprogrammer Ross, acted as CAN's agent "in respect to the particular
transaction out of which the injury arises" (Scott v. Ross, et. al.,
1998, 15, 19).
Many scholars of religion were not sorry to see CAN close its doors. The
organization almost never referred to scientific findings about
controversial groups, except perhaps to some psychological findings that
most sociologists ignored or rejected (Dawson, 1996, 141-143; Shupe,
[1994/1995?], 64-65). CAN also emphasized the manipulative or abusive
aspects of many controversial ideologies that received little attention
in social scientific circles.
Academics and Doctrinal 'Secrets'
In what may be the most remarkable example of academics forming alliances
with religions in a manner that hinders basic social scientific research,
J. Gordon Melton organized three sociologists and seven religious studies
scholars and/or theologians in a November, 1994, amicus curiae submission
supporting Scientology's efforts to keep secret its upper level teachings
(Church of Scientology International v. Steven Fishman and Uwe Geertz,
1994). Defendants had submitted these teachings as evidence in a
Scientology-initiated court case.
These teachings were Scientology's "OT"
(Operating Thetan) levels, which Scientologists read only after three
years of doctrinal study, behavioral conformity, and (at least) tens of
thousands of dollars (Beggar, 1991, 52-53). In attempts to justify
Scientology's efforts to control the dissemination of these teachings,
these scholars cited examples of secrecy within numerous religious and
secular traditions -- early Christianity, Gnosticism, Mormonism,
Kabbalistic Judaism, Tantrism, industry, government and the military,
etc. None of them, however, acknowledged the critical issue about the
propriety of academics involved in efforts to restrict information.
Researchers investigating social control within organizations, for
example, require access to material that groups wish to restrict, simply
because this material provides glimpses into behind-the-scenes activities
that often escape the public eye. Nevertheless, the respected
sociologists of religion, Bryan R. Wilson, argued for Scientology's right
to restrict its upper level material. Over a decade earlier, however,
Horowith -- in debate with Wilson and others -- presented the position
that "[s]ocial research [must] open up to the public scrutiny and
criticism the innermost secrets of religious organization. This is the
inevitable ground upon which sociological and religious analysis must
differ" (Horowitz, 1983, 181).
Indeed, in arguing for Scientology's right
to restrict access to doctrinal material, Wilson and his sociological
colleagues seemed to have forgotten comments that a founding figure of
their discipline offered nearly nine decades earlier. Georg Simmel spoke
insightfully in his 1908 essay when he observed that "the secret is
often ethically negative..." (Simmel, 1908, 331). Sociologists such
as Wilson must realize that groups can use secrets to control, manipulate,
and harm, which means that they and other researchers should be opposing
rather than defending efforts to restrict access to information that
becomes available in legal and ethically defensible circumstance.
Conclusion
Linkages between some social scientists and the controversial groups they
study have interfered with or influenced fundamental aspects of the
social scientific enterprise. Interference or influence has occurred with
the publication process, the selection of research topics, the
acquisition of research information, and the use of that information in
contentious social disputes. In the process, social science has suffered,
and the reputation of the social science of religion has been placed at
risk (Esquire, 1997; Radio 4, 1989; Straits Times, 1997). Peer reviewed
research has been blocked, published accounts seem tainted with bias,
former members' information has been ignored or summarily dismissed, and
both political and public relations agendas have been interwoven with the
social scientific study of religion.
Some of the most respected scholars
involved in the academic study of religion have let down their guards,
and groups with agendas have only been too willing to draw them in. A
consequence of this is that these scholars provide support for ideologies
whose rigidity and intellectual narrowness threaten the necessary climate
of openness and exchange in which scholarship thrives.
There are straightforward corrective responses to this regrettable
situation. Academics should be exceedingly careful about aligning
themselves with researchers who operate outside the boundaries of the
academy. The academy, with its ethics reviews of research with human
subjects, scrutiny of research funding, rewards for peer review
publications, and collegial system to which aggrieved parties can appeal,
provides an infrastructure for research that may help curb some of the
excesses that have developed among scholars in recent years. Reviewers at
all levels of the publication process should insist upon explicit
statements about the funding that fueled the research. (For the record,
neither author received external funding to carry out this study.) While
the complete elimination of biased research may be impossible, its
exposure remains a desirable goal.
Finally, social scientists of religion have a special responsibility to
raise the stature of their studies among their colleagues. We concur with
the conclusion that Buddhist scholar Michael Pye reached, which was that
"there are numerous religions all over the world which cannot be studied
in detail because of inadequate research funding" (1996, 270). Despite
the salience of religion within popular culture, in academic culture few
jobs in the social sciences and humanities advertise for applicants with
expertise in contemporary religions. Consequently, too few students take
up the task of researching what surely must be among society's most
interesting fields of study. With few students who have examined various
groups and topics moving into academic life, only a handful of
established scholars maintain the image of expertise. In reality, they
are stretched thin, with too much information to process about too many
organizations and their personnel.
Whatever the larger research community of researchers does (individually
and collectively) about the issues of academic compromise and co-optation
within the sociology of religion, we must do something, because the
credibility of an entire social scientific subdiscipline is at risk.
Researchers have not heeded the warning that sociologist of religion
Thomas Robbins issued in the early 1980s, which was that "the concern
over sympathy for cults in the sociology of religion cannot but ramify
into a broader concern with the precariousness of objectivity in the
study of religion" (1983, 211).
Toward the end of increasing researcher
objectivity, Religious Studies professor Catherine Wessinger organized a
meeting of scholars prior to the Academy of Religion meeting in 1994. The
meeting provided a forum for the objective discussion of religious
movements. It was so successful that she has continued to organize them
in successive years. These forums provide one important opportunity for
researchers who are conducting objective and responsible research to
speak critically about ethical practices and appropriate methodologies.
Historians and sociologists of knowledge will look back upon this era and
use examples of our excesses to illustrate the constricted nature of the
supposedly objective dimension of social research. Surely those of us now
doing research wish to leave as our legacy something other than examples
that future generations will judge to be seriously flawed and
compromised.
Bibliography
Return to The Skeptic Tank's main Index page.
Alternative Religions and Their Academic Supporters
by Stephen A. Kent and Theresa Krebs
Interference with academic publishing
submitted an affidavit with nine pages of handwritten material. In the
affidavit, he stated that he was unable to locate a personnel file for
Mr. Meisner, and that the nine pages of appended handwriting were those
of Mr. Meisner. However, as the defendant [Cindy] Raymond stated to Mr.
Meisner in a meeting in late September 1976, Mr. Moxon had been directed
to supply the government with fake handwriting samples in lieu of Mr.
Meisner's true handwriting exemplars
([USA] v. Mary Sue Hubbard, et. al., 1979b, 212-214).
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