The Politics of Religious Apostasy

The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements

File:The Politics of Religious Apostasy.jpg Hardcover edition cover
Author	David G. Bromley (ed.)
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Religion in the Age of Transformation
Subject	Apostasy, Anti-cult movement
Genre	Sociology of religion
Publisher	Praeger Publishers, (now part of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.)
Publication date	1998
Media type	Hardcover
Pages	256
ISBN	0-275-95508-7
OCLC	37608170
Dewey Decimal	306.6/9142 21
LC Class	BL639.5 .P64 1998

The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements, edited by David G. Bromley, presents studies by several sociologists of new religious movements on the role played by apostates (described as individuals that leave new religious movements to pursue opposition against their former group.) The volume examines the apostate's testimonies, their motivations, the narratives they construct to discredit their former movements, and their impact on the public controversy between such movements and society.

Contents

Introduction

• Sociological Perspectives on Apostasy: An Overview by David G. Bromley
• A Comparative Approach to Organizational Exit
• The Social Construction of Contested Exit Roles: Defectors, Whistleblowers, and Apostates, by David G. Bromley

The Apostate Role and Career

• In Defense of Self: Apostasy as Spoiled Identity, by Armand L. Mauss
• The Politics of Marginal Heresy, by Eileen Barker
• Exploring the Varieties of Apostate Roles, by Stuart A. Wright
• Apostates Who Never Were: The Social Construction of Absque Facto Apostate Narratives, by Daniel Carson Johnson

The Organizational Context of Apostasy

• Apostasy, Apocalypse, and Religious Violence: An Exploratory Comparison of Peoples Temple, the Branch Davidians, and the Solar Temple, by John R. Hall and Philip Schuyler
• Apostates, Defectors, Law and Social Control, by James T. Richardson
• Apostates and Their Role in the Construction of Grievance Claims Against the Northeast Kingdom/Messianic Communities, by Susan J. Palmer
• The Changing Apostate Role in the Evolution of the North American Anti-cult Movement, by Anson Shupe

Methodological Issues in the Study of Apostasy

• Carriers of Tales: On Assessing Credibility of Apostate and Other Outsider Accounts of Religious Practices, by Lewis F. Carter

Reception

The Social Science Journal refers to the book as a "superb effort to examine in depth the complexity and significance of the apostate role, and to illuminate the processes through which subversive evil is socially constructed. Taken together, the authors contribute a diverse array of theory, data and substantive insights that add to our knowledge of the inner-workings of new religious movements. I recommend this book for classes in organizations, sociology of religion, psychology of religion, group dynamics and related subjects".

The book was reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, that found this work to be a "remarkably unified collection of high-quality essays by many leading sociologists of new religious movements."

Michael Langone argues that some will accept uncritically the positive reports of current members without calling such reports, for example, "benevolence tales" or "personal growth tales". He asserts that only the critical reports of ex-members are called "tales", which he considers to be a term that clearly implies falsehood or fiction. He states that it wasn't until 1996 that a researcher conducted a study to assess the extent to which so called "atrocity tales" might be based on fact.