CESNUR
The Center for Studies on New Religions
CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, was established in 1988 by a group of religious scholars from leading universities in Europe and the Americas. Its managing director, professor Massimo Introvigne, has held teaching positions in the field of sociology and history of religion in a number of Italian universities. He is the author of twenty-three books and the editor of another ten in the field of religious sciences.
Contents
Aims
CESNUR's original aim was to offer a professional association to scholars specialized in religious minorities, new religious movements, contemporary esoteric, spiritual and gnostic schools, and the new religious consciousness in general. In the 1990s it became apparent that inaccurate information was being disseminated to the media and the public powers by activists associated with the international anti-cult movement. Some new religious movements also disseminated unreliable or partisan information. CESNUR became more pro-active and started supplying information on a regular basis, opening public centers and organising conferences and seminars for the general public in a variety of countries.
CESNUR
Today CESNUR is a network of independent but related organizations of scholars in various countries, devoted to promote scholarly research in the field of new religious consciousness, to spread reliable and responsible information, and to expose the very real problems associated with some movements, while at the same time defending everywhere the principles of religious liberty. While established in 1988 by scholars who were mostly Roman Catholic, CESNUR has had from its very beginning boards of directors including scholars of a variety of religious persuasions. It is independent from any Church, denomination or religious movement. CESNUR International was recognized as a public non-profit entity in 1996 by the Italian authorities, who are the main current contributors to its projects. It is also financed by royalties on the books it publishes with different publishers, and by contributions of the members. As a public non-profit entity, accounts of its projects are filed with the Region of Piedmont, in Italy.
The International Center and Library
Professor Massimo Introvigne, the managing director of CESNUR, started collecting books on minority religions and esoteric-gnostic schools in the 1970s. His collection now includes more than 20,000 volumes and complete or semi-complete runs of more than 200 journals and magazines. While remaining his personal property, it is housed by CESNUR and open to the public from Monday to Friday (except July and August) from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the International Center of Via Confienza 19, Torino. Continuously updated and fully indexed on computer, it is regarded as the largest collection in Europe and the second in the world in its field. A librarian and a research assistant work at the International Center, guiding visitors from all over the world, answering requests for information and updating files on hundreds of religious movements.
The Web Site
CESNUR International may be reached on the Internet at http://www.cesnur.org. It includes news on future CESNUR activities and a library of selected papers on a wide variety of topics.
Conferences and Seminars
CESNUR's yearly annual conference is the largest world gathering of those active in the field of studies on new religions. Each conference normally features 50 to 80 papers. Conferences have been held inter alia at the London School of Economics (1993 and 2001), the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil (1994), the State University of Rome (1995), the University of Montreal (1996), the Free University of Amsterdam (1997), the Industrial Union in Turin (1998), the Bryn Athyn College in Pennsylvania (1999), the University of Latvia in Riga (2000), the University of Utah and Brigham Young University (2002), the University of Vilnius (2003). Attendees include not only scholars, educators, and graduate students, but also lawyers, judges, law enforcement officials, pastors, mental health professionals, and specialized journalists.
Periodically, special seminars are organized on single topics by CESNUR's international network. In the wake of the controversies originated by the French parliamentary report on cults (1996), conferences were organized at the Sorbonne University on the anti-cult movement (1996) and in Paris on the shortcomings of the brainwashing model (1997). Four well-attended press conferences were also organized in order to criticize the French report, two in Paris (one at the Senate), one in Brussels, and one in Geneva, When a commission of the European Parliament started examining the issue of cults, a conference with leading scholars from Europe and the U.S. intended for members of the European Parliament and their staff was organized within the Parliament itself in Strasbourg (on May 13, 1997) and chaired by two Parliament members.
Finally every week 2-3 seminars or lectures are organized in Italy and elsewhere (including, increasingly, in Eastern Europe) in order to introduce the basic concepts of a scholarly approach to new religious movements to local scholars, priests an pastors, students, government officers, professionals, and the general public. In Italy CESNUR co-operates regularly with law enforcement agencies, supplying information and offering the services of the International Center. Although CESNUR is primarily a scholarly organization, it has never refused to co-operate with ex-members or families of current members of religious movements, offering help or directing them to specialized professionals.
Publications
CESNUR sponsors a wide range of publications, from the very scholarly to those intended for the general public. A collection of hundred-pages booklets on movements and religious trends published with a leading Catholic publisher is being extremely successful in Italy and publication in Spanish has started. English and French translations have also been published. These monographs are regarded as the standard references on a number of groups, particularly (although not exclusively) in the Catholic world, where knowledge of the Italian language is widespread. CESNUR also produced a three-videos course on new religious movements intended for Catholic schools and parishes in Italy. Its main project in Italian has been the monumental Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy (2001), which was the most reviewed non-fiction work in the Italian media in 2001.
Perhaps CESNUR's most well-known publishing project is the response by 22 scholars to the French parliamentary report of 1996. CESNUR's book, Pour en finir avec les sectes, went into three printings in one year and has played a significant role in casting doubts about the reliability of the French report. Criticism of other parliamentary or public reports (Canton of Geneva, Belgium) and suggestions for an alternative approach have been circulated on the Internet, through press conferences, and through the multilingual Lettre du CESNUR.
CESNUR, Religion, and Public Policy
CESNUR has conducted, in co-operation with public bodies, two of the largest surveys on religious belief and affiliation in Italy, one in Sicily and one in the province of Foggia. the result have been published in two books, La sfida infinita (1994) and Il gigante invisibile (1997). CESNUR is proud to enjoy a fruitful co-operation with a number of law enforcement agencies and public bodies. It has been able to assist members of parliaments, political parties, and law enforcement agencies by formulating suggestions on how to handle problems related to religion and religious minorities. On the other hand, CESNUR notices that, when scholars are ignored or regarded as less reliable than anti-cult activists, serious mistakes are made.
The French and/or the Belgian parliamentary reports on "cults" listed among "cults" -- to name just a few -- the Quakers, the Baha'i, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Assemblies of God and other Pentecostal bodies, Evangelical missions, the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, Anthroposophy, the Church of Christ, Zen, Theravada, Tibetan and Nichiren Buddhist organizations, the YWCA, Hasidic Jews, and Catholic groups and religious orders including the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Opus Dei, and the Work. Some of these groups have defended themselves by arguing that they accept the general category of "cult" as outlined by the reports, but claim that it is wrongly applied to them.
CESNUR think that this seems to be a very weak defense. The effective defense should be to show that the category of "cults" used by these documents is unscholarly and not acceptable. Methodologically, it is clear that these reports rely primarily on sources supplied by the international anti-cult movement, and accept uncritically the brainwashing or mind control model of conversion, a model unanimously rejected by mainline sociological and psychological science. It is this methodology that should be exposed as faulty.
CESNUR does not believe that all religious movements are benign. The fact that a movement is religious does not mean that it could not become dangerous. To the contrary, our experience shows that dangerous or even criminal religious movements do exist. CESNUR invites scholars not to ignore questions of doctrine, authenticity, and legitimacy of spiritual paths. Although questions of authenticity could not be addressed by courts of law in a secular State, the latter could and should intervene when real crimes are perpetrated. Consumers of spiritual goods should not enjoy less protection than consumers in other fields. And when suicide, homicide, child abuse or rape are condoned or promoted, we urge a strong application of criminal laws.
On the other hand "cults" in general should not suffer for the crimes of a minority of them. We are against special legislation against "cults", or against "brainwashing", "mind control" or "mental manipulation" (by any name). Any minority happening to be unpopular could be easily accused to own the invisible and non-existing weapon of "brainwashing", and special legislation would reduce religious liberty to an empty shell. Protection of religious liberty also requires that each group be examined on its own merits, comparing different sources and not relying exclusively on information provided by hostile ex-members. Experiences of disgruntled ex-members should certainly not be ignored, but they could not become the only narratives used to build our knowledge of a group.
Information supplied by anti-cult activists claims to be eminently practical but in fact is largely theoretical and anedoctical, based as it is on secondary sources, from press clippings to accounts of families of members (not necessarily familiar with the movements) or of ex-members rationalizing their past experiences. Scholars, having a direct contact both with ex-members and actual members may supply more balanced information. And balanced information is precisely what the public powers and the media need.
CESNUR's International Network
Besides CESNUR International in Torino, Italy, and other Italian initiatives, CESNUR France has a small office in Paris (c/o Avocat Olivier-Louis Seguy, 30 bis Boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, France), acting as a liaison office with CESNUR International. CESNUR U.S.A. is at the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, California (P.O. Box 90709, fax 805-683-4876, E-mail: jgordon@linkline.com). Additional CESNURs are being established in other countries. Computer cross-links allow an effective co-operation and the possibility for each CESNUR to provide state-of-the-art information supplied by leading scholars of the field, particularly when a crisis hits. 1997 incidents such as the Heaven's Gate suicide in California and the third suicide of the Solar Temple in Quebec show that the quality media in a number of countries increasingly look to CESNUR scholars, ignoring anti-cult activists whose information on these subjects is normally very poor.