Inform

This thesis explores the disjunction between a public, moralised discourse of natural birth and women's own more complex narratives of practical decision making and lived experience. I focus on women's negotiations of these two dimensions, which I term 'the work of birth', which includes the planning, preparation and practice in which some women are involved during their pregnancies. I argue that this work can be considered an ethical self-formation in which women work on the self in order to construct and present a particular subjectivity - of the good and responsible mother. I address questions which are not adequately answered in the sociology of childbirth literature, including how and why some women become involved in natural birth groups; why they consider investing time and money in antenatal education as a good thing to do; and why they report the need to practice for a natural birth. I approach their natural birth practices as things of 'value' or &#...

This article explores the results of an 18-month project exploring the opinions on Religious Education in schools and the religion and worldview’s proposal (CoRE 2018) with key stakeholder groups ‘outside the classroom.’ This article begins with a review of relevant academic critiques and then explores the key themes revealed by the stakeholder groups in the course of the research. We highlight three key thematic areas of challenge 1) structural and resourcing issues facing RE in schools, 2) conceptual debates about key words and areas of subject focus and pedagogical approach and 3) the perceived value of the subject. These issues are explored in some depth, noting that all groups thought that greater resource sharing and cooperation between the various stakeholders was important. It concludes by arguing that this discussion offers a unique opportunity for university engagement. Although academics in particular expressed concerns about a lack of conceptual coherence in the religion...

The ‘Cult Rhetoric in the 21st Century’ panel at the 2022 BASR conference brought together six scholars, specialising in the field of minority religion, to discuss developing trends in ‘cultic’ discourse. The panellists all argue for a nuanced, contemporary approach toward understanding the use of ‘cult’ rhetoric and have a clear focus on the lived reality of adherents and ex-members. In this article, the contributing panellists outline the dominant themes emerging in the contemporary use of ‘cult’ rhetoric, challenging scholars to move beyond the ‘cult wars’ and study of New Religious Movements to a more holistic study of everyday religion – in which ‘cult’ rhetoric is a consistent part. These reflections provide a snapshot of the discussions that were had at the BASR conference whilst simultaneously indicating what to expect from their contributions in the forthcoming volume: Cult Rhetoric in the 21st Century: Deconstructing the Study of New Religious Movements.

"New Religious Movements tend to start their lives with a number of unequivocal statements, not only of a theological nature but also about the world and appropriate behaviours for the believer. Yet these apparently inalienable Truths and their interpretations frequently become revised, ‘adjusted’ or selectively adopted by different believers.
This book explores different ways in which, as NRMs develop, stagnate, fade away, or abruptly cease to exist, certain orthodoxies and practices have, for one reason or another, been dropped or radically altered. Sometimes such changes are adapted by only a section of the movement, resulting in schism. Of particular concern are processes that might lead to violent and/or anti-social behaviour. As part of the Ashgate/Inform series, and in the spirit of the Inform Seminars, this book approaches its topic from a wide range of perspectives. Contributors include academics, current and former members of NRMs, and members of ‘cult-watching’ movements. All the contributions are of a scholarly rather than a polemic nature, and brought together by Eileen Barker, the founder of Inform."

"James A. Beckford's work is internationally acclaimed not only in the sociology of religion, but also in other fields of the social sciences. Beckford has long been arguing that the barriers that have grown up between the different sub-disciplines should be broken down, with those specialising in religion becoming more cognisant of new theoretical developments, and sociologists in general becoming more aware of the significance of developments in the religious scene.

This book is a collection of essays written in Beckford's honour, drawing on a number of religious themes that have been central to Beckford's interests, whilst also offering a significant contribution to our understanding of the wider society. A central theme is modernity (and its relation to the post-modern), and how religion affects and is affected by the dynamics of contemporary society, with the primary focus of many of the chapters being a concern with how society copes with the minority religions that have become visible with the globalising tendencies of contemporary society. The contributors, who come from America, Asia and various parts of Europe, are all internationally renowned scholars. Beckford's most important publications are listed in an Appendix and the volume opens with a short account of his contribution to sociology by Eileen Barker (the editor) and James T. Richardson.
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In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s and 1980s a wide variety of new religions became visible in the West, attracting young converts who often dropped out of college or gave up their careers to work long hours for the movements with little or no pay. Half a century or so later, those converts are now in their fifties or sixties, and approaching an age when, in the wider society, they would be considered of pensionable age; some are beginning to develop medical problems, and quite a few are anxious about what their future might hold. Few have paid into pension plans or for medical insurance.

This paper addresses some of the challenges that the new religious movements (NRMs) and their members are facing with this demographic shift from a movement consisting of enthusiastic young converts with few dependents to one in which there may be a substantial proportion of children and a growing number of ageing members able to offer only a limited contribution to the resources of the NRM as they find themselves increasingly dependent on others. A brief comparison with the arrangements of a few longer-established religions is included.

This chapter is concerned not so much with religion per se being considered a problem, but with constructions of images of ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ religions as social problems. Indeed, an integral part of these constructions usually implies the contemporaneous existence of ‘good’ and ‘true’ religion as something to be protected and clearly differentiated from bad or false religions, which, in order to avoid confusion, can be denied the label religion and, in the popular parlance of the day, branded as cults or (more commonly for Frenchspeakers)
sects.

The paper describes how the author‟s research into a new religious movement in the 1970s led to her finding herself a player in the „cult wars‟, with a variety of different groups competing to have their constructions of images of the movements accepted by policy makers and the general public. The main players were the movements themselves, their opponents in the form of various “cult-watching groups”, and the media. Critical of the selective nature of the images, and concerned about the impact that these were having on „the cult scene‟, the author founded Inform, an independent NGO that draws upon the methodology of the social sciences to provide information about minority religions that is as reliable and objective as possible. The paper describes some of the battles that ensued, focussing on methodological issues that have confronted her as she has pursued her research outside the Ivory Tower.

Global processes present a challenge for scholarly work on religion, necessitating new concepts, theoretical and analytical models, intellectual sensitivity, and imagination. This calls for focusing on (1) cross-border interpenetration of religious organizations, beliefs, and practices; (2) variations in the potential for religious beliefs and institutions to be transported; and (3) the use of multiple frames of reference to examine the dispersion of religious cultures and communities. A presidential panel presents the need for generating new research questions, improving measurement tools, and updating methodological techniques so that social scientists of religion accurately and authentically portray the nature and expression of religion in the 21st century.

The relative opening up of China following the ‘Ten Lost Years’ of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) has offered Western sociologists of religion a fantastic opportunity to observe and learn about new (to us) ways of being religious (and of being not religious) within a particular kind of atheistic regime.1 Those who are most likely to benefit from this opportunity are, obviously enough, sinologists who are familiar with the languages and understand the cultures of China. But this does not mean that scholars with little or no knowledge of China cannot learn much either directly or indirectly about its people and their religions. An exploration of China and its religions can, moreover, enrich the Western scholar’s perception of the religions with which they are more familiar by helping them to recognise what these religions are not – which can, perhaps paradoxically, help them to obtain a deeper understanding of what they are. As Kipling (1891) wrote: ‘And what should they know of England who only England know?’ This chapter begins with some introductory background information that I have found helpful as an orientation to the context within which religion is practiced in China. It then discusses a few basic methodological points concerning comparative approaches to the concept of religion. As a Western sociologist of religion, just about my only qualification for this endeavour, pressed upon me by the editors, is that I am not an expert. I do not speak the language and have spent no more than seven relatively short visits in the country. Yet, for this very reason, I have found myself on a steep learning curve, becoming aware of some of the issues and aspects of China and its culture that might be taken-for-granted by those better acquainted with the scene, and thus perhaps less likely to communicate such matters to those with little or no familiarity with the subject.

The perception of religion as “out of place” rests on an underlying assumption that there is a way in which religion could (and should) be in place.2 The concepts of both civil religion and nationalism can suggest that there is a place for religion that is closely tied to a particular society or nation. There are, however, several other ways in which religion and society might be related, just as there are several ways they might not be related. At a time when the diverse processes associated with globalisation are increasingly crossing, penetrating, negotiating and undermining the integrity of national boundaries, it is not surprising that what can be seen as “religion in place”, from one perspective, can be seen as “religion out of place”, from another perspective.

Using Max Weber’s (1949) concept of “ideal types”, this chapter considers a variety of ways in which religion might be located with reference to the state, the society and the individual. These relationships fall into three broad groupings: the criteria determining whether religion is “in place” or “out of place” are based on responses to three related but separate questions. What is the legal/political relationship between church and state? What are the socio-cultural relations between religion and the society? What are the different theological criteria for conferring a religious identity upon an individual?

In this article I consider some of the ways in which those with religious authority might exercise their power by persuading believers to perform actions that they (the believers) would not have dreamed of performing had not justifications been presented to them in the name of religion. There are, of course, reasons other than religion – love and money, to take but two obvious examples – that lead people to do things that they would not otherwise have done, but religion would seem to add that extra something (for good or evil) that can inspire people to believe and act with an added fervour, an extra commitment, and an extra disregard for other considerations. If we really believe that it is God who wants us to do something then we are more likely to do it (or at least feel more guilty if we do not do it) than if George or Tony or even our guru asks us to do it – unless we believe that our guru is God, or is the only one with a direct hotline to Him (or Her). We may even be prepared (in both the active and the passive senses of the word) to kill ourselves and others for what we have come to believe is ‘the cause’, as happened in a situation described in this article.

Resort has frequently been made to the term ‘brainwashing’ to explain the control that religious leaders have exerted over their followers. Most scholars have argued against the use of such a term as an explanation of why people join or stay in new religious movements or ‘cults’. This is because they see it as little more than a metaphor that expresses the speaker’s distaste for the end result of a process of conversion, without actually explaining the process itself. This, however, is not to suggest that people cannot be strongly influenced by others – indeed, the whole exercise of sociology assumes that, to a greater or lesser extent, we are all affected by the social situation in which we find ourselves; we have to take others into account, consciously or unconsciously, in most of the things we do in our everyday lives (Weber 1947: 88). The problem is not usually to declare either that a person is totally free of society or that (s)he is totally controlled by it, but to asses the degree to which the position of each is negotiable as part of an on-going process of interaction that affects both the individual and the social environment (Barker 1995a, 1995b, 2003).