Last fall, the Illinois Senate Education Committee went on a hunting trip looking for cults.
The committee was armed with a resolution passed in May.
S.R. 448 contained a lot of frightening “whereases” about David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, up to 6 million members in 2,000 U.S. cults, “increased awareness of the destructive nature of cult activities,” and cult recruitment on college campuses.
The latter was the resolution’s focus:
“Whereas, college students who become involved with cults undergo personality changes, suffer academically, are alienated from their families, are are robbed of the very things universities were designed to encourage: freedom of thought, intellectual growth, and personal development. . . .”
S.R. 448 resolved that the committee recommend “state- or campus-level policies” for dealing with cults.
The committee went to work and scheduled hearings late last year in Springfield and Chicago. But as parents or students testified about how their families’ cohesion was ripped by mind-controlling religious cults, the committee’s mission alarmed a coalition of religious groups, scholars and civil-liberties advocates.
To them, S.R. 448 took on the imagery of a powerful weapon being used in a frightening kind of hunt.
The resolution “conjures up the chilling specter of a modern-day witch hunt” for “unconventional and/or unpopular religious groups,” sociology professor Gary Shepherd of Oakland University wrote the committee.
Nancy Ross, a leader in the coalition, said: “Labeling a group a `cult’ has the same stigmatizing effect that labels such as `communist,’ `subversive’ and `black radical’ had in past generations.”
This week, the committee issued its report. If S.R. 448 was a weapon, the report sounded like a toy pop gun.
Naming no cults and proposing no tough policies, the report concluded “there is a problem with these organizations” that “can best be resolved through public awareness.”
The committee recommended that colleges provide information about cults to incoming students and act as a clearinghouse to receive and report complaints of cult activities.
Asked how the committee defined “cults,” Sen. Frank Watson (R-Greenville), the chairman, said: “It can’t be done. Cult is a buzzword. One person’s cult may be another person’s religion. That’s the problem with doing anything legislatively about this problem.”
The committee was very blunt about that. Because of constitutional guarantees of free exercise of religion under the separation of church and state, the report concluded that “state government should have no role in debating, scrutinizing or endorsing the doctrine or beliefs of any group.”
Rather, the report offered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a model of how staff should be educated about cults and how students should be informed.
Clarence Shelley, associate vice chancellor for student affairs, said all the University of Illinois can do is offer “buyer beware” advice to those considering joining any organization.
The university does provide a brochure, “Cults: Advice to College Students,” but Shelley acknowledged, “We never use the word `cult’ to describe any particular organization. It’s probably illegal to do that.”
If anyone complains about a group, faculty or ministry representatives will contact the group to discuss the problem, he said. If parents or students inquire about a group, “we would tell them if there have been complaints,” Shelley said, “but we wouldn’t share the nature of the complaints.”
He and Watson knew of no college acting to remove a cult from campus.
Ross felt the committee report was “self-contradictory. It says it can’t define what a cult is, but it is providing information and warnings against them.”
That vagueness didn’t lessen her alarm: “If all you say is there have been complaints against a group, how do you know if they’re true or if they’ve been investigated? The only thing that should be investigated is criminal activity.”
If schools are to provide educational information and act as clearinghouses for complaints, “it has to be even-handed,” she said. “Access to counselors and academics with an opposite point of view about non-traditional religions must also be provided.”
Other than alarming some religious groups, Senate Education Committee members have little to show for the tax dollars spent on their cult hunt.
They bagged no trophies. They found the target to be elusive. They probably learned something about religious freedoms.
As a result, this is probably the best advice they can give to impressionable college students and worried parents often sending them far from home for the first time: It’s a jungle out there. Watch where you step. We can’t actually give you a map, but we can tell you that what looks like shelter is sometimes a trap.
Good advice? Probably. But is it worth all the costs of the cult hunt?
