I am writing this on the eve of my departure for the States for the annual four-day conference of the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA). This has now become for me an annual event. Its location switches between Europe and the States. The path that led to my participation in this organisation is a bit complicated, but the short reason for my involvement is that ICSA is the only group that I have discovered that is in the least bit interested in the work I have been trying to do over the years to research power dynamics in churches. Of course, the fundamentalist churches I am especially interested in are not technically ‘cults’ but the patterns of leadership that exist in many conservative congregations have some features in common with cultic groups. One of the things that I value in the conference is the chance to have conversations with individuals who have been through the most extraordinary adventures within these groups. They have finally arrived at a place (the conference) which allows them to review and understand what they have been through. Through workshops and meeting with sympathetic listeners they can continue a journey of recovery that they have begun elsewhere.

Many of the lectures at ICSA are technical and are only really suitable for academics/therapists with quite specialist interests. But I am slowly beginning to penetrate the jargon to make sense of some of it. Each year the organisers have accepted my offering of a paper containing my observations on some facet of this large subject.

One of the sad things about ICSA is that there are so few British people involved in the organisation. Last year when the conference was held in Bordeaux there were barely a dozen of us from the UK. This year there will be still fewer because of the distances involved but it does reflect a low level of academic and professional interest in cultic matters in our country. We have of course enormous UK resources invested in combatting Muslim extremism but these ‘experts’ do not appear to be interested in the international efforts that have been going on at ICSA over the past 20+ years. Part of the problem is a ‘political’ one. The study of harmful religious groups (cults) has been bedevilled by a discussion as to whether the ‘c’ word is ever appropriate. An influential group of academics around the world have wished to preserve what they believe to be neutrality. These high demand groups, they claim, should be described as ‘New Religious Movements’. Such a description will leave aside the question as to whether there is potential harm involved in membership. The ‘neutrality’ on the part of these academics is however sometimes so pronounced that they are described by others as ‘cult apologists’.

The readers of this blog will know that I am quite clear about describing some behaviour by Christians as harmful, whether spiritually or emotionally. I am not here thinking about sexual abuse which is of course clearly criminal as well as immoral. I have criticised, for example, bullying, inappropriate exorcisms and ostracism as deeply damaging to the victims. There is no room for neutrality in these situations. Harm is being done even though the Bible is being used to justify such behaviour. When the Bible is used in this way as a tool of abuse, there is something blasphemous going on. Fortunately, there are many individuals in ICSA who agree with my approach. Bad religion whether in the cults or churches needs to be identified and called out for what it is.

In the six years that I have been attending ICSA conferences, there has been a definite movement towards identifying bad religion in what are outwardly respectable faith organisations hitherto untouched by cultic tendencies. We have not yet started to discuss the Church of England but, it could be argued, our national church is going through a severe crisis not a long way from some of our typical cultic concerns. ICSA has for years been studying the dynamics and psychology of groups and the nature of power. I personally have had a long-term interest in narcissism in churches and their leaders and this has now become a commonplace in discussion. Daniel Shaw, a psychotherapist from New York has coined the expression ‘malignant narcissism’ and this seems to describe quite a lot of what can erupt in churches which have no proper oversight. He is giving a lecture at the conference.

The harm that can take place in a religious setting is not always the result of deliberate evil intent. Much of what was set out in our own IICSA process over the Diocese of Chichester illustrates the way that well-meaning individuals, from archbishops down, had little insight into their own motivation for thinking and acting in the way they did. Still less did they show understanding of the coercive processes that will almost inevitably happen when an individual gets caught up as part of a large organisation. Those who study cults are familiar with the individual as well as the group processes that can so easily end up involving harm to others. For several years now, I have found myself (hypothetically) critiquing church groups like PCCs or Team ministries from a ‘cultic’ perspective. When I do this exercise, what strikes me strongly is the way that all the participants are caught up in internal dynamics from which they cannot escape. They are temporarily locked into a process every bit as controlling as the experience of being involved in a cult. Recent events over safeguarding have made me want to interrogate the processes involved at the meetings of the House of Bishops. If they are, as I suspect, also caught up in processes over which they have no control, then the rest of the church will also be victims of this malfunctioning dynamic. Some bishops are at present being accused of protecting the reputation of the whole church above the welfare of abuse survivors. If this is true to the point where lies have been told and truth supressed, then the whole group, i.e. the entire national Church, is affected and damaged.

I had intended telling the blog about the paper of Joan of Arc that I am presenting to the Conference. Space and time means that I will have to write again from Philadelphia on this topic. I hope the air-conditioning in the hotel is up to the mark as reported temperatures in the city are in the high 30s!