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The following article is a bit of educational fun with a decidedly odd twist; see if you can figure out just what's going on as two sociologists dissect The Tnevnoc Cult David
G. Bromley, Anson D. Shupe, Jr.
The 1970s have witnessed a profusion of new religious movements ranging from the traditional Christian-based “Jesus Freaks” to groups of oriental origin such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna), Guru Maharaj Ji’s Divine Light Mission, and Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. As these groups have grown in size and wealth there has been a parallel spread of alarm at the tactics by which they recruit and hold members. Allegations of deception, seduction, drugging, hypnosis, and brain-washing have been leveled at these groups both by distraught parents of members and former members who have “escaped” or been deprogrammed and told their horror stories (Edwards, 1979; Theilmann, 1979; Mills 1979). A number of behavioral scientists and other investigators have lent their support to these accusations and have attempted to formulate explanations for these swift and seemingly bizarre “conversions” (Conway and Siegelman, 1978; Patrick, 1976; Stoner and Parke, 1977). It is the issue of manipulative “mind control” which has been the single most inflammatory allegation running through this popular literature. These accusations create the impression that these new religions have innovated or rediscovered techniques of indoctrination which transform otherwise normal individuals into followers who resemble robots or automatons in their slavish zeal, unquestioning obedience, and lack of individuality/ free will. However, in the course of our own research (Shupe and Bromley, 1979; Shupe, Spielmann and Stigall, 1977), which has included an historical examination of the social context of these groups, we have discovered several past cases which are remarkably similar in many respects to these new religious groups. This paper will attempt to demonstrate that what is currently termed the “cult menace”(particularly as it relates to recruitment, socialization and social organization) is not a novel development on the American religious scene. On the contrary, throughout our history the appearance of new religious movements has aroused very similar fears and accusations. Specifically we shall examine the recruitment and indoctrination practices of the Tnevnoc Cult, a communal, sectarian group affiliated with a large and powerful international religious organization. Both the Tnevnocs and the larger parent body were targets of social repression in America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since we are concerned primarily with recruitment and socialization in relation to contemporary charges of manipulation and mind control, we shall focus only on the parallels between the Tnevnocs and such contemporary groups as the Unification Church and Hare Krishna, not on larger traditions or parent bodies of the groups of either era. The Tnevnocs no longer are as visible or as controversial as they once were due to a gradual trend toward accommodation both by the movement and by powerful institutions within American society. However, as we document in the ethnographic composite which follows, many of the recruitment and socialization practices of even the accommodated twentieth century Tnevnocs were rigidly segregated by sex and our data deal only with the female Tnevnoc component, we make no claim to generalize to the entire movement. A Brief Ethnography of the Tnevnoc Cult Like their modern-day counterparts in the current “cult explosion,” such as the Unification Church and the Divine Light Mission, the Tnevnocs made a point of attempting to recruit members when they were still in their teenage and young adult years. This age cohort, Tnevnoc leaders recognized, was the least encumbered by domestic and occupational responsibilities, and its members were, not surprisingly, highly susceptible to idealistic, altruistic appeals. Much of this recruitment was openly conducted in schools and on campuses. On the basis of limited contacts with cult members, young girls were induced to commit themselves totally to the cult. If the cult succeeded in gaining control over them, it subjected them to such thorough indoctrination that they became totally dependent on the cult and in many cases lacked the will to free themselves from it. Once a girl had been induced to join the cult she was immediately subjected to totalistic control. Like the Hare Krishna and the Children of God, members were forced to surrender all aspects of their former lives. Virtually all personal possessions were taken away, and individuals were prohibited from developing any outside involvements and commitments. Indeed, members were required to devote literally all of their time and energies to cult activities. The round of cult life was relentless and consuming. Members were routinely waked at 4:30 a.m. to face an arduous day of menial labor interspersed with long hours of prayer, meditation, mind-numbing chanting, and compulsory religious ceremonies. Like Hare Krishna sect members who always carry prayer beads in cloth sacks attached to their wrists, Tnevnocs carried such beads which they used in their repetitive, monotonic chanting. Members gathered in candlelit, incense-filled rooms closed to outsiders for a variety of special rituals involving chanting and meditation. One particularly bizarre observance was a type of love/unity feast involving ritualistic cannibalism. Members consumed food which they were told symbolically represented parts of the dead founder’s body. The time not taken up with such rituals was devoted almost entirely to menial labor such as washing clothes, preparing food, and scrubbing floors. Indeed, only one hour of “free time” was allowed each day, but even during this brief period members were forbidden to be alone or in unsupervised groups, being required to remain together and monitored by cult leaders. All luxuries and even basic amenities were eliminated. For example, members slept each night on wooden planks with only thin straw mats as mattresses. They subsisted on a bland, spartan diet; food deprivation was even more severe than the meager diet implies, members being permitted to eat sweets only once a year and often being placed under considerable pressure to fast periodically. This combination of limited sleep, draining physical labor, and long hours of compulsory group rituals and worship, all supported by a meager subsistence-level diet, left members without sufficient time or energy to preserve even their own senses of individual identity. All the members’ former sources of emotional support also were severed upon joining the cult. During the first year members were forbidden to leave the communal (and often remote rural) setting in which their training took place and could receive no outside visitors beyond one family visitation. It thus became virtually impossible for parents and friends to maintain regular and frequent contact with members. For example, members were permitted to write only a minimal four letters per year. Further, just as do Unification Church leaders, Tnevnoc cult leaders deliberately disrupted family ties by creating a fictive kinship system in which they assumed parental roles intended to replace members’ natural parents and siblings. Any other relationships which threatened cult control were also strictly forbidden. For example, sexual attachments of any kind were , without exception, tabooed. Lone Tvenocs were never allowed in the presence of individuals of the opposite sex and they were forbidden to maintain close personal friendships with each other or even to touch physically. All loyalty had to be channeled to the cult, and its leaders, in authoritarian fashion, enforced those strictures. Leaders went so far as to assert that they were God’s direct representatives on earth and therefore due absolute obedience by all members. This subservience was formalized in each member’s written promise of absolute obedience for three years, after which time individuals often were led to make similar commitments for the remainder of their lives. Perhaps most striking was the emergence of cult-induced personality changes. This began with the alteration of each individual’s exterior appearance. Like the Hare Krishna, Tnevnoc cult members immediately upon joining had their hair cut off and were dispensed long flowing garments specifically designed to render members indistinguishable from one another. This concerted effort to wipe out any sense of individuality was carried to such extremes that members were never permitted to own or even look into mirrors. The cult literally attempted to destroy the old individual, her identity, and her former life’s associations by assigning a new cult name and designating the date of her entry into the group as the individual’s “real” birth date. Of course such identity changes were more difficult to monitor than behavioral conformity. One way cult leaders maintained close surveillance over the most private aspects of members’ lives was to require members to reveal publicly and to record in diaries even the most minor infractions of elaborate cult rules, as well as improper thoughts and wishes. This totalistic environment, with its rigid, all-encompassing code of behavior that individuals could not possibly follow without some minor infractions, engendered within members constant and inescapable feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, anxiety, and guilt. Cult leaders deliberately exacerbated these nagging feelings by instituting a series of humiliating, ego-destructive punishments for even the most trivial infractions of cult rules. For example, daydreaming or entertaining “improper” thoughts, however fleetingly, called down upon members ceremonies of public degradation. Members were forced to prostrate themselves in front of the cult leaders and kiss their feet or, alternately, were denied food and reduced to crawling from member to member on their knees begging for the dregs of other member’s meals. Such punishments became more severe as time went on, and members were expected to punish themselves regularly for these deviations. The cult went so far as to issue each member a ring to which were attached several lengths of chain with barbed wire points on the ends. Members were required to return alone to their beds at night at regular intervals and flagellate themselves with this cruel device as atonement for their infractions. Not surprisingly, the grueling demands of cult membership and the ever-present feelings of guilt and anxiety created the potential for members to “give up” or defect. In addition to the docility created by the harsh conditions of the daily round of cult life, members were constantly pressured by cult leaders for greater personal sacrifice and evidence of complete commitment. Indeed, members competed with one another to express total selflessness and dedication. These constant exhortations and punishments designed to destroy any vestiges of individuality were reinforced by ceremonies intended to bind the individual inextricably to the group. One particularly ghoulish example was a macabre nuptial ceremony in which members were required to become living brides of the dead cult leader. Overall these extreme and often bizarre tactics were extremely successful. Although on occasion individuals did manage to extricate themselves from the cult, most were permanently stripped of their individuality and autonomy and lived out their lives in subservient obedience.... [And now for a Cornerstone-inserted aside: In case you still wonder what's going on, spell "Tnevnoc" backwards. Ponder it, then back to our text, already in progress....] Thus, if the practices of promoting total commitment in members are similar for various historical and contemporary religious groups, the different societal reactions to them cannot be explained solely in terms of those practices. Instead, societal response depends on the degree of legitimacy, defined in terms of the number and power of supporting groups, accorded a given religious body. The lower a group’s legitimacy, the less resistance it can muster to counter social repression and the less control is has over its own public image. The major difference between the current social reactions to the Tnevnocs and the Moonies, Hare Krishnas or Children of God, then, is that the Tnevnocs have now been accorded legitimacy, the persistence of at least some of the commitment maintenance practices described in this paper notwithstanding, while the latter groups have not. Yet, as even a cursory review of American history reveals, virtually every major denomination and religious body was met initially with some degree of skepticism, ostracism or persecution. Indeed, the parallels with contemporary religious groups are striking. Much as the Unification Church, Hare Krishna, Children of God, and People’s Temple are currently labeled “cults,” the Tnevnocs once were pejoratively lumped together with groups such as the Mormons and Masons despite their enormous doctrinal and organizational diversity. The stereotypes and litany of charges leveled against contemporary “new religions” also are remarkably reminiscent of allegations against the earlier “new religions”: political subversion, unconditional loyalty of members to authoritarian leaders, brutalizing of members, sexual indiscretions, and possession of mysterious, extraordinary powers (Swatsky, 1978; Davis, 1960; Miller, 1979). And the atrocity stories told by apostates from earlier groups (Hopkins, 1830; Monk, 1836; Young, 1875) read much like the lurid tales told by former members of contemporary “new religions.” It is not our intent to argue that all of the accusations leveled against contemporary “new religions” are false. Groups with lofty ideals frequently assume airs of moral superiority and engage in duplicity and deception on the assumption that “the ends justify the means.” But it also is true that groups which seek to initiate sweeping social change become the focus of hysterical reactions well out of proportion to the real threat they present. It is easy to be drawn into simplistic calls for repressing current religious “cults,” either through anti-cult legislation or more vigilante-style actions such as “deprogramming,” on the basis of caricatures like that presented here. Yet it should be kept in mind that contemporary scholars view the repression of religious movements during the nineteenth century as the result of undisguised xenophobic zeal and religious bigotry rather than a legitimate response to any serious threat. It should also be kept in mind that all social movements encounter enormous pressure, both internal and external, to accommodate to the larger society. While it is premature to forecast the nature and degree of the accommodation of the latest group of “new religion,” the past history of now established religious groups, the existing literature in the sociology of religious organizations (Weber, 1964; Niebuhr, 1929; Wilson, 1978) and already emerging trends within the new religions themselves (Bromley and Shupe, 1979a; Wallis, 1977) suggest that these groups may follow a parallel accomodationist course. One of the factors which would be most likely to impede this process would be prolonged, severe social repression. Thus not only does the current anti-cult movement constitute an abrogation of American religious pluralism, but ironically, it also may well have the effect of blocking the opportunity for these movements to follow the very course of accommodation which the anti-cultists profess to support. This paper reproduced by express permission of Anson Shupe; no copies either virtual or otherwise may be made without Dr. Shupe's express permission. It originally appeared in Sociological Analysis 1979, 40, 4:361-366; what appears here is a slightly shortened version of the original article. This paper is the product of a joint effort. The order of authorship is random and does not imply any difference in the importance of contributions. The authors wish to thank Jeffrey Hadden, Theodore Long, Patrick McNamara and Horace Miner for their contributions to the development of this paper. Bromley, David G., Anson D. Shupe Jr., and Joseph C. Ventimiglia. 1979. “The role of atrocities in the social construction of evil.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Boston, August, 1979. Forthcoming in James T. Richardson (ed.), Deprogramming Controversey: Sociological, Psychological, Legal, and Historical Perspectives. Transaction Press. 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