Talk:Apostasy/Research On NRM Apostates

This subpage created to preserve the detailed research on research into the reliability of Apostates from New Religious Movements, as I get ready to remove that excessively detailed information from the main article and replace it with a summary. Msalt (talk) 19:45, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Opinions about the reliability of apostates' testimony and their motivations
The validity of testimony by former members of new religious movements, their motivations, and the roles they play in the opposition to cults and new religious movements are controversial subjects among scholars of religion, sociologists and psychologists:

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, a professor of psychology at the University of Haifa, argues that academic supporters of New religious movements are engaged in a rhetoric of advocacy, apologetics and propaganda, and writes that in the cases of cult catastrophes such as Peoples Temple, or Heaven's Gate, accounts by hostile outsiders and detractors have been closer to reality than other accounts, and that in that context statements by ex-members turned out to be more accurate than those of offered by apologists and NRM researchers.
 * Beit-Hallahmi:

Bromley and Shupe, while discussing the role of anecdotal atrocity stories by apostates, proposes that these are likely to paint a caricature of the group, shaped by the apostate's current role rather than his experience in the group, and question their motives and rationale. Lewis Carter and David G. Bromley claim that the onus of pathology experienced by former members of new religions movements should be shifted from these groups to the coercive activities of the anti-cult movement.
 * Bromley and Shupe:

Dr. Phillip Charles Lucas interviewed ex-members of the Holy order of MANS and compared them with stayers and outside observers, and came to the conclusion that their testimonies are as (un-)reliable as those of the stayers.
 * Charles:

Jean Duhaime, a professor of religious studies and science of religion at the Université de Montréal writes, based upon his analysis of three memoirs by apostates of NRMs (by Dubreuil, Huguenin, Lavallée, see bibliography), that he is more balanced than some researchers, referring to Wilson, and that apostate testimonies cannot be dismissed, only because they are not objective, though he admits that they write atrocity stories in the definition by Bromley and Shupe. He asserts that the reasons why they tell their stories are, among others, to warn others to be careful in religious matters and to put order in their own lives.
 * Duhaime:

Mark Dunlop, a former member of FWBO, argues that ex-members of cultic groups face great obstacles in exposing abuses committed by these groups, stating that ex-members "have great difficulty in disproving ad hominem arguments, such as that they have a personal axe to grind, that they are trying to find a scapegoat to excuse their own failure or deficiency [...] Cults have a vested interest in challenging the personal credibility of their critics, and may cultivate academic researchers who attack the credibility and motives of ex-members." Dunlop further expands on the specific difficulties faced by ex-members in proving harms done to them: "If an ex-member claims that they were subjected to brainwashing or mind-control techniques, not only is this again unprovable, but in the mind of the general public, it is tantamount to admitting that they are a gullible and easily led person whose opinions,consequently, can't be worth much. If an ex-member suffers from any mental disorientation or evident psychiatric symptoms, this is likely to further diminish their credibility as a reliable informant." He concludes with "In general, the public credibility of critical ex-cultists seems to be somewhere in between that of Estate Agents and flying saucer abductees." In the article's summary, Dunlop argues that given that the apostates' testimony is ineffective due to lack of public credibility, and that other forms of criticism are also ineffectual for various reasons, cults are virtually immune from outside criticism making it very difficult to expose cults.
 * Dunlop

Massimo Introvigne in his Defectors, Ordinary Leavetakers and Apostates defines three types of narratives constructed by apostates of new religious movements:
 * Introvigne:
 * Type I narratives characterize the exit process as defection, in which the organization and the former member negotiate an exiting process aimed at minimizing the damage for both parties.
 * Type II narratives involve a minimal degree of negotiation between the exiting member, the organization it intends to leave, and the environment or society at large, implying that the ordinary apostate holds no strong feelings concerning his past experience in the group.
 * Type III narratives are characterized by the ex-member dramatically reversing his loyalties and becoming a professional enemy of the organization he has left. These apostates often join an oppositional coalition fighting the organization, often claiming victimization.
 * Introvigne argues that apostates professing Type II narratives prevail among exiting members of controversial groups or organizations, while apostates that profess Type III narratives are a vociferous minority.

Daniel Carson Johnson, in his Apostates Who Never Were: The Social Construction of Absque Facto Apostate Narratives, refers to the stories told by apostates, to be stories of captive involvement in the past with the targeted religious group, and stories of rescue and redemption in the present. He asserts that these narratives is what confirms the apostate role, and that the stories are not recitations of real-world experiences and happenings but are social constructed and shaped along the lines dictated by an established literary form called "apostate narrative". He advises social scientists studying the subject to consider the possibility that substantial portions, and perhaps entire accounts have nothing to do with real world happenings or experiences.
 * Johnson:

Dr. Lonnie D. Kliever (1932 - 2004), Professor of Religious Studies of the Southern Methodist University, in his paper The Reliability of Apostate Testimony about New Religious Movements that he wrote upon request for Scientology, claims that the overwhelming majority of people who disengage from non-conforming religions harbor no lasting ill-will toward their past religious associations and activities, but that there is a much smaller number of apostates who are deeply invested and engaged in discrediting, and performing actions designed to destroy the religious communities that once claimed their loyalties. He asserts that these dedicated opponents present a distorted view of the new religions and cannot be regarded as reliable informants by responsible journalists, scholars, or jurists. He claims that the lack of reliability of apostates is due to the traumatic nature of disaffiliation, that he compares to a divorce, but also due to the influence of the anti-cult movement, even on those apostates who were not deprogrammed or did not receive exit counseling.
 * Kliever:

Michael Langone argues that some will accept uncritically the positive reports of current members without calling such reports, for example, "benevolence tales" or "personal growth tales". He asserts that only the critical reports of ex-members are called "tales", which he considers to be a term that clearly implies falsehood or fiction. He states that it wasn't until 1996 that a researcher conducted a study (Zablocki, 1996) to assess the extent to which so called "atrocity tales" might be based on fact.
 * Langone:

Gordon Melton, while testifying as an expert witness in a lawsuit, said that when investigating groups one should not rely solely upon the unverified testimony of ex-members, and that hostile ex-members would invariably shade the truth and blow out of proportion minor incidents, turning them into major incidents. Melton also follows the argumentation of Lewis Carter and David Bromley (above) and claims that as a result of this study, the [psychological] treatment (coerced or voluntary) of former members largely ceased, and that a (perceived) lack of widespread need for psychological help by former members of new religions would in itself be the strongest evidence refuting early sweeping condemnations of new religions as causes of psychological trauma.
 * Melton:

Bryan R. Wilson, who was a professor of Sociology at Oxford University, writes that apostates of new religious movements are generally in need of self-justification, and seek to reconstruct their past and to excuse their former affiliations, while blaming those who were formerly their closest associates. Wilson utilizes the term atrocity story, [a story] that is in his view rehearsed by the apostate to explain how, by manipulation, coercion or deceit, he was recruited to a group that he now condemns. Wilson also challenges the reliability of the apostate's testimony by saying that "the apostate [is] always seen as one whose personal history predisposes him to bias with respect to his previous religious commitment and affiliations, [so] the suspicion must arise that he acts from a personal motivation, to vindicate himself and to regain his self-esteem, by showing himself to have been first a victim, but subsequently a redeemed crusader."
 * Wilson:

Stuart A. Wright explores the distinction between the apostate narrative and the role of the apostate, asserting that the former  follows a predictable pattern in which the apostate utilizes a "captivity narrative" that emphasizes manipulation, entrapment and becoming a victim of "sinister cult practices". These narratives provide a rationale for a "hostage-rescue" motif in which cults are likened to POW camps, and deprogramming is seen as a heroic hostage rescue effort. He also makes a distinction between "leavetakers" and "apostates", asserting that despite the popular literature and lurid media accounts of stories of "rescued or recovering 'ex-cultists'", empirical studies of defectors from NRMs "generally indicate favorable, sympathetic or at the very least mixed responses toward their former group."
 * Wright:

Benjamin Zablocki, when analyzing leaver responses, found the testimonies of former members as least as reliable as statements from the groups themselves.
 * Zablocki: