|
| |
INFORM: Watching New Religions
From: London School of Economics and Political Science
| By:
Eileen Barker |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
 How can we disentangle the facts about new religious movements from the media sensationalism and the hysteria that often surround them? In 1988, Eileen Barker (right), professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an expert in the field, set up Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (INFORM) to collect and provide impartial information about these movements. In this interview with Fathom, Barker talks about the aims of INFORM, the problems it has encountered and its relationship with the police, the media and the new religious movements themselves. |
 | |
| Eileen Barker explains the role of INFORM | |
Fathom: What is INFORM, and why was it initially set up? |
Eileen Barker: INFORM stands for Information Network Focus on Religious Movements and it was set up on the 1st of January 1988, but the idea first came to me in 1986. I had been studying new religious movements since the early 1970s and was beginning to notice rather a lot of (what seemed to me) unnecessary unhappiness due to lack of information or misinformation, and quite a lot of inappropriate actions were being taken out of ignorance. It was very difficult to get information about a lot of the new religions: parents and relatives were worried, and the government was being told they "had to do something." |
Misinformation might come from the movements themselves or from their opponents, who would select the more bizarre, strange and frightening things, whereas the movements would, of course, be saying, "Oh, we're wonderful," and locking all their skeletons in a cupboard, as you would expect. So it seemed quite important to make more dependable information available, particularly after Waco, when the FBI went in and all those children were burned, which I think was completely unnecessary--as, indeed, the FBI does now. Indeed, I and some other scholars of new religions work with the FBI quite a bit now and they are trying to take on board more of a social scientific approach in order to see and understand what some of the processes involving religions might be. |
To get back to INFORM, it did seem important to me that some more reliable information was available than that which was being supplied by the movements, the anti-cultists and the media. I went first of all to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was Robert Runcie in those days, and he was very enthusiastic about the idea. Then I went to the Home Office and persuaded them that this would be a good idea. The Home Office agreed to give us some start-up funding, and I got together a board of governors and together we worked out various things and interviewed someone to run INFORM. We initially thought we could manage this with one person, but it soon became obvious that one person was not enough. We opened shop at some Methodist accommodation in North London, then after about a year we moved down to LSE, but I founded INFORM as an entity that was quite independent of LSE, except, of course, that I was working at LSE and it was through the research I was doing as a member of the sociology department that I got all the information I had about new religions. |
 | |
| Eileen Barker explains how INFORM uses the valuable information it collects | |
Fathom: How is the information that INFORM collates used, and what kind of interest does the Home Office have in INFORM? |
Barker: The information is used in any way that people might want to use it. We feel very strongly that we have to be objective and value-free, which, of course, is impossible in reality, but, as much as is possible, we try to use the methods of social science. We are not telling people what they ought to do, or what they ought not to do, but we do say, "If you do this, then such and such might be the consequence; or when that has happened in the past, this has been the consequence, and such and such goes with what have you." |
INFORM agrees with the Home Office and the British government that you do not make special rules for new religious movements or indeed any religions. Clearly we have got an established Church in this country, but we do not separate out (or only on very rare occasions) one religion from another on grounds of belief. If a religion does something criminal, then the members are as subject to the law as anybody else, and not more or less so. We do actually work with Scotland Yard and Special Branch quite a bit, and certainly when we hear of anything that could be criminal we will tell the police and they could investigate it, but that is our decision. They generally do not ask us except when they have got a problem. We have a working relationship, but we are completely independent. But, obviously, if we hear that somebody is sacrificing virgins on an altar in South Hampstead, then I don't just write it down in a book. Social scientists tend to write a whole lot of stuff that gets lost on a dusty shelf. The point about INFORM is that we want to get the stuff that social scientists have researched so that it can actually be used. |
It is a question of providing accurate information. If something happens overseas and people want to know, then the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) might get in touch with us; immigration might get in touch if they want to know about something that is happening; the police might phone up and say, "There has been a murder and there were these strange things associated with it--does this ring any bells with you?" There are a whole lot of different examples of where they will ask us for information. |
 | |
| Eileen Barker discusses how INFORM ensures its information is accurate | |
Fathom: How do you go about ensuring that your information is accurate? |
Barker: Well, that is very difficult, and, of course, that is very much what social science is about. We have a lot of different methods (triangulation makes it sound a bit short), but we collect information from as many sources as possible, from fellow academics, obviously, but also from the movements themselves. Of course, we do not always believe everything the movements tell us, but we do try to get as much information as we can about them and indeed to know them and study them. In my own work, I spend a lot of time living with them, observing them, interviewing them, giving them questionnaires, reading their literature and all sorts of different things. |
We also collect information from members who have left. They are a very good source of information. Sometimes, of course, you have got to be careful because they might be very negative towards the movements, but not necessarily. And I have been doing this research for so long that I know a lot of people from when they were in their movement as well as from after they had left. So we have built up relationships, and such people are especially useful sources of information. Then there are the media, and, of course, one has to take what they say with a pinch of salt, because they just select the more sensational stuff. |
We always try to make it clear where the information has come from, so that people can judge for themselves. We will say: "This is something that the movement said"; or "This is something that is contradicted by somebody else"; or "There are different experiences and we haven't confirmed this to be true, but they claim it is"; or "This may be true, but we don't know." So what we try to do is not give one picture and say, "This is the truth," but say, "These are the different truth claims that are on offer, some being from more reliable sources than others." It is fairly easy to say some things like "this is the address," "this is who founded it," "this is when it was founded," "these are how many members there are," "this group goes in for sex," "this group goes in for taking your money," "this group goes in for celibacy," "this group has been known to carry out child abuse," "this group seems to be perfectly OK and everybody is very happy with it," or whatever. |
And the information that we provide does, of course, depend on the questions and concerns that enquirers have. I once spoke to a father who was very worried about his son because, he said, the son had stopped sleeping around, wasn't taking drugs any more, had cut his hair, his fingernails were clean and, you know, obviously this cult had some terrible influence over him. He, the father, hadn't been able to bring about such changes--clearly the son must have been brainwashed! |
 | |
| Eileen Barker considers the links INFORM has with religious movements | |
Fathom: What kind of links does INFORM have with new religious movements? |
Barker: Quite a lot whenever it is possible. Some of the movements' strong opponents, the anti-cultists, think this is terrible and that I am either a Moonie or a Scientologist or a Hare Krishna or else I have been deceived by them or I am in their pay or what have you. But, of course, as a social scientist one has to look if at all possible at what it is one is studying, and you have to get to know them, and INFORM tries to make as many links as possible, for a number of reasons. |
One is the obvious one of getting information, and I also believe it is only fair that they should have their say, as long as we are fairly sceptical and critical about what they say. They give us a whole lot of their literature, which is information in itself--pretty well anything is data of a sort. Another reason is that quite often parents will ask us to mediate. It is sometimes very difficult for them to communicate directly with their children (I use the word "children," but these are adults, you know, perhaps in their twenties, thirties or even older), possibly because they are so emotionally involved. So, with their permission (we would not do it without their permission), we might contact the movement if we have got fairly good relations with it. We have been able to arrange for parents to get in touch with and sort out at least some of their problems with their children; we might arrange for meetings or arrange for the convert to go back to college or university, and we have helped some people to get money back from a movement after they had decided not to pursue a certain course. We could not do such things if we were not, to some extent, trusted by some of the movements. |
Some of the movements won't have anything to do with us. I have been threatened to be sued by them on occasion, and it may yet be that I am. There is an anti-cultist threatening to sue me at the moment, but that is all part of the game, I am afraid. On the whole, the movements are willing to cooperate with INFORM partly because they feel the anti-cultists and the media say such horrific things about them. Even if we are saying bad things, they say, at least we try to be fair and honest about it. So movements tend to cooperate with us up to a point. But we do also find them checking up on what we say behind their backs. In fact, we find both sides checking us out. People are quite likely to phone up and say, "Oh, I am a worried parent," when they are actually somebody from the group seeing how much dirt we will dish out, or they are the anti-cultists seeing how much we are cult apologists. It is a bit scary, but actually it is also rather good, because it means everything that we say we have got to be accountable for and we have got to know we can defend what we are saying, whichever side it is. So it keeps us on our toes! |
|
| |
