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CESNUR (English: Center for Studies on New Religions, Italian: Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni), is a non-profit organization based in Turin, Italy that studies new religious movements and opposes the anti-cult movement. It was established in 1988 by attorney Massimo Introvigne.

CESNUR has been described as "the highest profile lobbying and information group for controversial religions". CESNUR's scholars have defended such diverse groups as the Unification Church ("Moonies"), the Church of Scientology (responsible for single largest infiltration of the U.S. government in history), Chinese sect Eastern Lightning (accused of ties to the 2014 murder of Wu Shuoyan), the Order of the Solar Temple (responsible for 74 deaths in mass murder-suicide), and Aum Shinrikyo (responsible for the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack).

CESNUR describes itself as an independent scholarly organization, but the organization has met with criticism for alleged personal and financial ties to the groups it studies; anthropologist Richard Singelenberg questioned in 1997 whether CESNUR is "too friendly and does not make enough critical comments about new religious movements and sects". According to sociologist Stephen A. Kent, "many scholars, however, see both CESNUR and INFORM in a favourable light, and they share its criticism of the 'sect-monitors' in France, Germany, and Belgium."

CESNUR publishes The Journal of CESNUR, a journal on new-religious movements, and Bitter Winter, an online magazine about religious issues in China. CESNUR sponsors annual conferences; its 2019 conference was attended by over 200 individuals.

Organization

According to its official website, 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 by a group of scholars who were mostly Roman Catholics, CESNUR is not affiliated with any religious group or denomination and has from the outset included scholars of various religious persuasions.

CESNUR is critical of concepts like mind control, thought reform and brainwashing, asserting that they lack scientific and scholarly support and are mainly based on anecdotal evidence.

In a 2018 history of the academic study of new religious movements, American scholar W. Michael Ashcraft described CESNUR as "the largest outlet currently supporting research on NRMs."

In 2018, The Korea Times described CESNUR as "the largest international association of scholars specializing in the study of new religious movements."

Founders and associates

Massimo Introvigne is an Italian intellectual-property attorney and sociology lecturer who also serves the group's director. He was a co-founder of CESNUR in 1988. A member of the Catholic conservative organization Alleanza Cattolica since 1972, Introvigne served as that group's vice-president until 2016.

Eileen Barker is a professor of sociology who, in 1984, authored The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing?, in which she disputed the brainwashing explanation for conversion. In 1988, Barker formed the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (INFORM). In 2000, Barker became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and was recognized by the American Academy of Religion with an award.

J. Gordon Melton received his Ph.D. in 1975 in the History and Literature of Religions from Northwestern University and is currently Distinguished Professor of American Religious History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. . Melton was known for his rejection of the concept of brainwashing as an explanation of religious conversion and indoctrination. During the 1970s and 1980s he was a prominent opponent of the controversial methods of deprogramming.

Others in the boards of CESNUR and ‘’The Journal of CESNUR’’ include Luigi Berzano, Antoine Faivre, Jean-François Mayer, and Susan J. Palmer.

Funding sources

The Italian authorities recognized CESNUR as a public non-profit organization in 1996 and were contributors to CESNUR projects. Other sources of income include book royalties and member contributions.

Activities and publications

Since 2017, CESNUR has published The Journal of CESNUR. CESNUR sponsors yearly conferences in the field of new religions. The 2019 conference at the University of Turin included over 200 attendees.

Introvigne has spoken before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. He testified on behalf of Scientologists in a criminal trial in Lyon. In 1995, Introvigne argued that Order of the Solar Temple members who died by mass suicide had acted on their own initiative as opposed to being victims of the leader's manipulations. In 1997, Melton appeared as an expert witness on behalf of the Singapore branch of the International Churches of Christ, arguing that the group was not a "cult"; The testimony garnered attention for Melton's admission on cross-examination that he had publicly made similar claims about Peoples Temple, responsible for 918 deaths in Jonestown, Guyana. In 2018, Introvigne put forth the novel theory that, despite widespread reporting to the contrary, the individuals responsible for the murder of Wu Shuoyan had never actually been members of Chinese sect Eastern Lightning. Mainstream reporting held that in 2002, members of Eastern Lightning kidnapped 34 members members of the China Gospel Fellowship and held them captive for two months, with the aim of coercing them to join Eastern Lighting; Introvigne, however, suggested that China Gospel Fellowship invented the story of the kidnapping as justification for the fact that many of its members, including national leaders, had converted to Eastern Lightning.

Bitter Winter

Bitter Winter was launched in May 2018 as an online magazine which covers religious freedom and human rights in China. According to the magazine it is supported by volunteer contributions and is published daily in eight languages.

Some of the magazine's correspondents were arrested in late 2018 by the authorities for their work documenting and publicizing antireligious campaigns in China. The conservative American online magazine The Federalist called Bitter Winter "supremely informative".

Criticism

In a 1996 piece in Charlie Hebdo, French essayist Renaud Marhic accused CESNUR of being "a scientific screen used to relay theses to the complacent media".

Scholars Stephen A. Kent and Raffaella Di Marzio have argued that CESNUR's representation of the brainwashing controversy is one-sided, polemical and sometimes without scholarly value. Kent further observed: "Many German and French officials working on issues related to religious 'sects' and human rights do not see CESNUR and Introvigne as neutral parties in the ongoing debates ... Consequently, other people and organizations have damaged their reputations (rightly or wrongly) among these officials by associating too closely with CESNUR".

In 2001, French journalist Serge Garde criticized CESNUR: "Created in 1988 in Turin by the lawyer Massimo Introvigne, he distinguished himself in France by his systematic interventions in favor of sects brought to justice: Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientology, Order of the Solar Temple, etc. Moon , AUM sect (responsible for a deadly attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995), all the sects know they can count on CESNUR".

CESNUR again met with controversy when one of the scheduled speakers at the 1997 CESNUR conference, who was to present scholarship on the religious group New Acropolis, was discovered to be a member of the very group she purported to study. Michiel Louter writing for Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer opined: It is difficult to believe that CESNUR-director Introvigne was not up-to-date on her membership in the group. The participation of the New Acropolis speaker to the conference was cancelled after the connection was publicly reported by Dutch publication Trouw.

Introvigne responded to the criticism about the 1997 conference by claiming that the anti-cult movement have accused CESNUR of being a front for "Freemasonry, a "Methodist cult", the Roman Catholic Church and a number of Catholic organizations, including Opus Dei and Alleanza Cattolica." He noted that one of the directors, J. Gordon Melton, was an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, and that Introvigne himself was a member of Alleanza Cattolica, which he described as "a lay Catholic organization, enjoying a good relationship with a number of Italian Catholic dioceses where it is established, about which much nonsense has been written in Germany". Introvigne stated in 1998 that CESNUR's only 'institutional funding' came from the government of the Region of Piedmont, and that it did not receive funds from any religious organization or institution.

Melton, CESNUR, and the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack of 1995

In May 1995, Aum Shinrikyo contacted an American group known as AWARE (Association of World Academics for Religious Education), founded by American scholar James R. Lewis, claiming that the human rights of its members were being violated during the investigation about the gas attack members of the movement had perpetrated on March 20. Lewis, who had been an occasional speaker at CESNUR conferences, recruited human rights lawyer Barry Fisher, scholar of religion and CESNUR board member J. Gordon Melton, and chemical expert Thomas Banigan. They flew to Japan, with their travel expenses paid by Aum, and announced that they will investigate and report through press conferences at the end of their trip.

In the press conference they held, Fisher and Lewis announced that Aum could not have produced the sarin with which the attacks had been committed. They had determined this, Lewis said, with their technical expert, based on photos and documents provided by the group. The press conference surprised the reporters who attended it, as the Japanese police had already released massive evidence of Aum’s production of the gas.

British scholar of Japanese religions Ian Reader, in a detailed account of the incident, reported that Melton claimed he "had few doubts by the end of his visit to Japan of Aum’s complicity" and eventually "concluded that Aum had in fact been involved in the attack and other crimes" In fact, the Washington Post account of the final press conference mentioned Lewis and Fisher but not Melton. A Christian anti-cult Web site called Apolegetic Index quoted the Washington Post article and implied that Melton had spoken in the press conference. Melton was, however, not mentioned in the Washington Post original account of the event. Lewis, on the other hand, maintained his opinion that Aum had been framed even after the trip.

CESNUR entered the controversy by mentioning it in a speech by Introvigne during the 1997 CESNUR conference, which was later published as an article in Nova Religio. Introvigne wrote that the “much maligned investigation” was “cited by anti-cultists in the European debate as the ultimate evidence that scholars are hired guns for the cults” but “proved in fact quite the opposite. The fact that two scholars , both with return tickets to Japan paid for by Aum, reached opposite conclusions on Aum’s involvement in terrorist and criminal activities is strong evidence that funding from the movements may influence but does not necessarily control the results of research.”

Reader, writing in a subsequent issue of Nova Religio, stated that, while he might agree with Introvigne on the general principle, Aum’s was a special case of a criminal group, on which Introvigne’s conclusion was not “especially plausible: the case in hand certainly shows that some scholars are capable of saying what those who call on them want them to say, even when the evidence points the other way.”

Reader stated that, "The visit was well-intentioned, and the participants were genuinely concerned about possible violations of civil rights in the wake of the extensive police investigations and detentions of followers." However, it was ill-fated and detrimental to the reputation of all those involved. While distinguishing between Lewis' and Melton's attitudes, Reader observed that Melton was criticized as well by both Japanese media and some fellow scholars. Using stronger words, Canadian scholar Stephen A. Kent chastised both Lewis and Melton for having put the reputation of the whole category of scholars of new religious movements at risk.

References

1. ^ Chryssides, George D. (2012). Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-8108-6194-7.
2. ^ Kent, Stephen A. (January 2001). "The French and German versus American debate over 'new religions', Scientology and human rights". Marburg Journal of Religion. 6 (1). University of Marburg: 15. doi:10.17192/mjr.2001.6.3742.
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5. Introvigne, Massimo (2018d). “The McDonald’s Murder of 2014: The Crime The Church of Almighty God Did Not Commit.” Bitter Winter, September 20.
6. "Asia Times | Chinese Christians live in fear, fleeing abroad | Article".
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38. Introvigne, Massimo (2018a). “Captivity Narratives: Did The Church of Almighty God Kidnap 34 Evangelical Pastors in 2002?”. The Journal of CESNUR 2(1):100-110. doi:10.26338/tjoc.2018.2.1.6.
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43. Magister, Sandro "Christmas Behind Bars In China, for the Martyrs of the Free Press" L’Espresso, 29 December 2018.
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48. Charlie Hebdo , n. 233, 04.12.1996., "paravent scientifique servant à relayer ses thèses auprès des médias complaisants."
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52. ^ Reader, Ian (April 2000). "Scholarship, Aum Shinrikyô, and Academic Integrity". Nova Religio. 3 (2): 368–382. doi:10.1525/nr.2000.3.2.368. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
53. Watanabe, Teresa (May 6, 1995). "Alleged Persecution of Cult Investigated: Japan: U.S. activists visit Tokyo. They're concerned about treatment of sect suspected in subway attack". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
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55. Hein, Anton (2005). "Aum Shinrikyo". Apologetics Index.
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Bibliography

• Introvigne, Massimo (2016). CESNUR: a short history. In: Gallagher, Eugene V, (ed.), 'Cult Wars' in Historical Perspective: New and Minority Religions. Routledge. pp. 23–31. ISBN 978-1-317-15666-6.

External links

• CESNUR official site

• Research institutes in Italy
• CESNUR