Tribal Instinct and Religious Persecution: Why Do Western European States Behave So Badly?

This paper presents the author's opinion on an article about new religious movements in certain European countries. Richardson and Introvigne convincingly show that European reports have borrowed the American cultural product of ideas about brainwashing and mind control but have failed to look closely at the scholarship in the U.S., and elsewhere, that challenges the use and logic of those metaphors for new religious movements. There is general agreement that when the exercise of religious freedom by one group has the effect of endangering the health or safety of others or of significantly disrupting the smooth functioning of life lived in society, the claims of religious freedom must yield to the welfare of the broader society. What is more controversial, but less fully developed in their fine essay, is why governments respond in such a way to new religious movements. At times the authors hint that there is something endemic in the psychology of a political culture--democratic or otherwise--that leads inexorably to the persecution of new religious movements. We know, however, that polities differ in how they treat new religious groups. The thesis briefly presented is that institutions and individuals with a vested interest in moral panics use brainwashing-based arguments to deny rights to new religious movements.