PSYCHIATRISTS AND OFFICERS IN DEFENSE OF TRADITIONAL VALUES
by Lev Levenson

Ekspress khronika, 31 January 1997

On 27 December in the building of the presidential administration, at the initiative of the Chamber on Rights of the Person of the Political Consultative Council of the Presidency of the Russian Federation, there was a round table on the subject "Observation of the Constitutional Principle of Freedom of Conscience."

"Does the Orthodox church have the right to bring back to itself, if not those who have been taken away from it, at least their children? These are the people who should be in our fold. And it is an historical injustice that they are not there. And those who carry on proselytizing work against us a promoting this injustice." This is what Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk said in an interview with Nezavisimaia gazeta, as he has fervently advocated recently the idea of "state Orthodoxy." The Moscow patriarchate has its privatized property and its gas, tobacco, and alcohol. It is striving to turn living people into historic hereditary serfs and to drive the "slaves of God" into its own "fold." "Why give the flocks gifts of freedom; they should be slaughtered and shorn."

Actually, in the Russian empire there were no Russians; there were Orthodox. And the struggle with sectarianism was conducted with zeal: "sacrilege," "heresy," "schism," "seduction" into another religious confession were all viewed as crimes against the security of the state and were punished harshly, even to the extent of capital punishment. "Sowing schism" (according to the penal code of 1845) earned beating by lashes and branding. The children of Dukhobors and Molokans were taken away for reeducation in the one true faith. The police conducted spiritual "admonition" of schismatics. That's what the traditions were.

"I will fight inexorably against various kinds of 'fishers for souls.' The Orthodox church must remain in our Russia as the chief church, as it was from time immemorial," Governor Evgeny Nazdratenko of Primorie territory recently declared.

The Moscow patriarchate does not concern itself with "fishers for souls." The population of the country simply "must be in its fold."

For those who have decided to make arrangements for their own souls without the knowledge of ecclesiastical offices, the ministry of health has provided (in a special informational letter sent to the regions over the signature of the ministry) "for the creation of medical and psychological aid centers in several Orthodox churches on the basis of an agreement with the Moscow patriarchate." People who are "suffering from destructive religious organizations" are to be sent to these places for "reprogramming." Inasmuch as one of the basic dangers of these organizations for physical and psychologocal health consists, according to the ministry of health, in their "actions against traditional religion," the civilian physicians concluded that it is necessary to create on the base of the MVD "a special structural subdivsion that deals with problems of the criminality of totalitarian sects."

An inexorable struggle with religious variety is counterproductive. Federal authorities issue documents intended to inflame further religious intolerance. MVD and the ministry of health are keen to defend the "moral health" of millions (by their calculation) of victims of "destructive cults." Psychiatric professor Kondratiev offers hysterical mothers to heal the "pseudoreligious delerium" of their adult children at the Serbsky institute. All publications, from black-brown to blue, are eager to throw fuel into the bonfire of the flaming antisectarian campaign.

In such circumstances it is impossible to stop at "monitoring" the numerous violations of the freedom of religious profession and worldviews. Freedom of conscience requires active defense. The "round table" of the Chamber on Rights of the Person confirms the existence of healthy forces who have sufficient resoluteness to oppose the police and psychiatric traditions of struggle with doctrinal deviance.

CONCLUDING DOCUMENT OF THE ROUND TABLE
President, Valery Borshchev

. . . We consider it impermissible to assign religious association to the categories of "totalitarian sects" and "destructive cults," arbitrarily and without basis in law or decisions of a court and we consider it impermissible for the Russian ministry of health to create a "specialized service for aid to victims of several religious organizations" in violation of the law of the Russian federation "On psychiatric aid and guarantees of the rights of citizens during its administration" and without scientific basis. We appeal to the president of the government of the Russian federation to review point 2.6.4 of the federal program for intensifying the struggle with crime in 1996-1997, which is without basis and unsupported by evidence of criminal activity of religious organization and violates the constitution of the Russian federation. We appeal to the president of the Russian federation to review the proposal for establishing training of specialists on state-church relations in educational institutions that educate state employees. We suggest that the Chamber on Rights of the Person of the Presidency of the RF send a declaration to the Judicial Chamber on Informational Issues of the Presidency of the RF regarding the incompatibility of a number of publications appearing in the media which are intended to inflame religious intolerance with the Russian law "On Mass Media."

NEW RELIGIONS: CRITIQUE AND FACTS

Everyone who has seriously studied the new religious movements knows very well that they differ in the cultural origins, beliefs, organizational types, methods of winning adherents, and leadership styles. The quality of one groups is unlike the qualities of another. It is impossible to generalize from several isolated examples to the thousands. The authors of information from the ministry of health say that Russia has 6000 sects, while for proof of the negative activity of "sects" only a few groups are cited (by reference to a variety of publications). For the time being I shall set aside the question of the accuracy of the 6000 number and of the analysis of the activity of the "bad" sects. From a scientific point of view the authors have gotten themselves into a trap. If the examples are so few and "sects" so many, then doesn't it follow that the authors' fundamental premise about the "criminality" of all sects is invalid? Meanwhile a great deal of evidence (unfortunately almost unknown in Russia), based on scientific investiation of the activity of the new religious movements (NRM) indicates clearly that the criminal actions inside the sects is in any case no greater than the average for society at large. The negative image of "all sects" is constructed, as a rule, on the basis of a few really tragic example, such as the People's Temple of James Jones, the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo, the Branch Davidians, and several others. Meanwhile these groups and the dynamics of their development is clearly untypical (if it is even possible to speak about "typicality"). The People's Temple began as an absolutely respectable Christian organization and Jones was honored for his work among the poor, etc. I do not have time to describe the dynamics of the development of this group but, according to the detailed study by John Hall (Outcast from the Promised Land), an important factor in the tragedy of Jonestown was that at a certain point the group began to be subjected to systematic attacks by anticult circles. Another example is the Waco tragedy when the Branch Davidians, a millennial group (that is, a group with clearly expressed expectations of the imminent end of the world), were subjected to attack by special investigators of the FBI. In contemporary American literature this is the example of how tragic a mistake can be committed by acting on the basis of one-sided negative information produced by anticult organizations and offered as "scientific" (see, for example, the book Out of the Ashes of Waco edited by James R. Lewis). Further, about the terminology being used. The rule of science is clear, precise definitions free from any such associations as "good--bad," that is, neutral. In the documents the concept of "sect," which has no negative connotations in science, is used as a crude evaluation indicating an organization that has criminal tendencies. The authors use such concepts as "satanic" and "antichristian." If you are sure that "satanic" and "antichristian" is bad and that all sects are like this and you apply these concepts to specific groups, then how can you study them? You already know the answer.

Prof. Kondratiev, Serbsky Center for Judicial Psychiatry: --But there should be moral criteria...

--We are not talking now about moral criteria or good and evil. We are talking about scientific concepts that help us understand social phenomena. And for this you should work out maximally neutral definitions. I am not saying that "satanic" or "antichristian" is good; I am saying that this concept cannot be applied as a scientific one and it does not allow one to give a scientific explanation of a phenomenon. Besides, I may as an individual have a negative attitude toward atheism on moral or other bases, but the rights of atheists in a democratic state are constitutionally guaranteed. It is very difficult to find in the documents under discussion anything like a scientific methodology. It is characteristic that the authors make a selection (that is, they lay out the totality of cases under investigation and then select from them). Here is a typical example: "The commission on the basis of analysis of letters and statements sent to the "Committee for the Salvation of Youth," and to editors of a number of newspapers, the procurator, MVD, and other offices on the basis of immediate observation of persons coming to the psychiatric hospital in a psychotic state with symptoms of a pseudoreligious character brought on after attending a sect, and also on the basis of conversations with members and leaders of sects, has come to the conclusions...." If teachers of the social sciences need an example of scientifically incorrect procedure, then it will be hard to find a better one. The authors admit that their conclusions are based on negative reactions (that is, not cases studied but "letters and declarations"), several negatives incidents and "conversations." How many cases were studied? What proportion of the total of participants in the group do they represent? And what proportion of registered cases of "rupture of child-parent functions" permitted talk about the typicality of this phenomenon? And was it demonstrated that the psychiatric deviations were absent before joining the sect? And was the quantity of negative (or abnormal) cases compared with the statistical average of the country? Or with religious groups? If one compares the number of "sectarians" in the country (the author claim three to five million) and the number of cases they mention (incidentally, including "wandering" from publication to publication), then we reach the extremely ironic conclusion that the proportion of "deviations" in the new religion is not more, but less, than in the country as a whole. If, of course, we do not evaluate the conduct of their members as questionable, using the formula of "pseudoreligious content" taken from the terrible times of religious persecution instead of scientific criteria used in sociology and psychology. This irony has its own standards. Concrete investigations of the new religions in the world show that there are no bases for stipulating the psychological and physical danger for those who participate in the absolute majority of them (studies by Prof. Richardson, Galanter, Levin, and other leading authorities in sociology, psychology of religion, and psychiatry). Here it is appropriate to observe that according to the position of the American sociology and psychology associations the courts in the USA do not accept expert opinions of active advocates of the idea of the harmful effect of "destructive cults" of M. Singer and R. Ofshe, since they have no scientific substance. But these are the authors who are frequently cited by our domestic anticultists, with or without quotes. No less absurd is the claim that only one out of a thousand participants in the NRM can leave the "sect" on their own. Actually scientific data give a completely different statistic: only one in a hundred of those showing interest in a sect stay with it. Of this number, more than half leave the NRM within the first year (studies by E. Barker, S. Levin, S. Wright). My own studies of the "Krishna Consciousness Society" (a new movement in the organizational but not theological sense) and the Church of Unification in Russia give approximately the same numbers. I am far from suggesting that there are no problems association with NRM. There are problems, and they really are serious. But these problems are far from those that the authors of the documents under discussion talk about. Unfortunately, the most substantial problems associated with participation in NRM are not even mentioned in the documents, which says something about the incompetence of the authors. While at the same time the critical questions remain about what drives young people to strive for intense nontraditional religious experience and what social consequences this leads to, including matters of familial relations and the social career of a young person, and about how to help those who have "found themselves" in "nontraditional" groups while retaining normal relations with society. These problems are well known by those who have studied cases of intensive conversion to traditional religions (for example, joining a monastry; cf. Lk 14.26). Of course there are problems which are peculiar to new religions, or at least some of them. Moreover, there is no basis to claim that individual members of NRM or their leaders could not be engaged in criminal activity. Of course, they can. And to deal with such cases there is the court. But we have no basis to extend the guilt of individual members to the whole movement or the guilt of particular groups to the entire NRM. We have two choices. Either concrete scientific investigation of the problems of NRM and comparisons with foreign scientific studies (a not with anticultic publications). Or creation of a new myth of the "criminologenic" sects and prohibitions that inevitably lead to our creation of a new religious underground. The documents speak of a "sectomania," and the necessity of sorting out people according to their response to the influence of "totalitarian sects," and of the creation of "rehabilitation centers" on a country-wide scale. All of this is not innocent. Besides the great sums of money that this will cost this creates troubles within society--and only increases the real problems.

Let me share just two of the inevitable consequences of these approaches which appear in the documents. First, I have talked a great deal with parents whose children (in most cases adult children) are in NRM. I saw their pain. But this pain is only intensified by the avalanche of negative information which literally floods our press and comes from anticult circles. What can be felt by parents of a person who has become, say, a member of the Society of Krishna Consciousness if they are impressed with the idea that the society is a semifascist organization? Information coming from anticult circles is not the solution but a part of the very problem connected with new religions. Unfortuately, in Russia this "information" frequently acquired the status of science and is used uncritically even in publications that claim to be academic.

Second, one-sided negativism only intensivies the alienation of participants of NRM and their social surroundings. It just confirms that "we" (who know the way to salvation) are right inasmuch as "they" (who do not know this way) unjustly persecute "us." I have in mind not informed criticism that takes into account the peculiarities of religious consciousness but just that kind of "information" which we are discussing here.

(trans. by PDS)