Date Posted:01:44:52 04/28/05 Thu Author: Chris Subject: Re: JPUSA, Cornerstone Magazine, and Cult Defense In reply to:
PECAS
's message, "JPUSA, Cornerstone Magazine, and Cult Defense" on 11:17:45 04/27/05 Wed
Pecas, you're right, there is something weird about the cult apologist connection of JPUSA and Cornerstone.
I don't think that they really expose other cults. Cornerstone or CAN pretend to be cult watch organizations, but they will never expose cults. In their eyes, there are no such thing as cults, brainwashing, mind control etc. It is a lobby of cult leaders who want to make the public believe that there is no problem about cults as all, so they can do their business without being disturbed. The usual line of defense is "religious tolerance" and "ex members are always biased and full of hate, their testimonies are not credible." In case of need, cults like Scientology, Moon or Jehovah's witnesses form alliances to lobby for that position, and they benefit from each other. A good example was when a member of an abusive church whose parents had involved a deprogrammer, charged the CAN (cult awareness network) that was somewhat remotely affeliated with that deprogrammer. Scientology jumped in and provided the best possible attorney - they have enough money and attorneys of their own. They won the case, CAN went bancrupt in the aftermath as they had to pay a lot of money according to the verdict. Cult awareness organizations are few in number and poor as church mouses compared with the big cults like Scientology or Moon. And the story went on. Scientology defamed the former head of the CAN, Miss Kisser, with false claims and personal attacks. Samuel Lee repeated these false claims, but added his own twist, making them even more false. Then, when Scientology had won over CAN, he proclaimed "the season of Christ" had come (see here for the details). For some years, UBF could continue their business undisturbed. And still today, all the UBF-related dossiers and reports are kept under logs at the new CAN - all the files the old CAN had accumulated were bought by Scientology, along with everything else that the old CAN possessed, like office furniture. In this way, cults support each other. Scientology benefited from the small UBF-like church, and UBF benefited from Scientology.
In a similar way, Cornerstone defends JPUSA, not by exposing others (like UBF) as a cult, but by claiming that no group should be called a cult, and by downplaying every serious issue. Others, like Bob and Gretchen Passantino or Ruth Tucker, who never have experienced a cult from inside and abuse exerted on themselves, sing the same song. They receive love and recognition from these small cults and maybe also money from the big cults. Also, some scholars simply like to defend an unreasonable position, since they are somewhat sticking out that way. If their opinion was mainstream, they were not noticed.
The cornerstone article about UBF has also been discussed here on the voy forum last year. Luckily, the thread is still archived. By the way, that's one of the reasons why I plead for not accepting and deleting meaningless junk on the forum, so that the informative articles don't fall out of the archives too early. We only have 10 pages of archives, and most of the good and informative discussions have already gone overboard because of this. And nobody wants to repost the same things again and again.
