CESNUR (Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni, "Center for Studies on New Religions"), is a non-profit organization based in
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. Th ...
,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
that studies
new religious movements
A new religious movement (NRM), also known as alternative spirituality or a new religion, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin or t ...
and opposes the
anti-cult movement.
It was established in 1988 by
Massimo Introvigne,
Jean-François Mayer and Ernesto Zucchini.
Its first president was
Giuseppe Casale.
Later,
Luigi Berzano became CESNUR's president.
CESNUR has been described as "the highest profile lobbying and information group for controversial religions".
CESNUR's scholars have defended such diverse groups as the
Unification Church
The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, widely known as the Unification Church, is a new religious movement, whose members are called Unificationists, or "Moonie (nickname), Moonies". It was officially founded on 1 May 1954 unde ...
, the
Church of Scientology,
the
Order of the Solar Temple
The Order of the Solar Temple (french: Ordre du Temple solaire, OTS) and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition, or simply The Solar Temple, is a cult and religious sect that claims to be based upon the ideals of the K ...
(responsible for 74 deaths in mass murder-suicide),
and
Shincheonji Church of Jesus
Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (SCJ), commonly known as Shincheonji Church of Jesus or simply Shincheonji (; ), is a denomination of Christian new religious movement established in South Korea by Lee ...
, accused of having aided the spread of the
COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea.
CESNUR describes itself as an independent scholarly organization, but the organization has met with criticism for alleged personal and financial ties to the groups it studies; anthropologist Richard Singelenberg questioned in 1997 whether CESNUR is "too friendly and does not make enough critical comments about new religious movements and sects".
According to sociologist
Stephen A. Kent
Stephen A. Kent is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He researches new religious movements (NRMs), and has published research on several such groups including the Children of Go ...
, "many scholars, however, see both CESNUR and INFORM in a favourable light, and they share its criticism of the 'sect-monitors' in France, Germany, and Belgium."
CESNUR publishes ''The Journal of CESNUR'', a journal on new religious movements, and ''Bitter Winter'', an online magazine about religious issues in China. CESNUR sponsors annual conferences; its 2019 conference was attended by over 200 individuals.
History
CESNUR was founded in 1988 at a seminar organized by Massimo Introvigne, Jean-François Mayer, and Ernesto Zucchini in Italy.
Introvigne is an Italian intellectual-property attorney and sociology lecturer who also serves as the group's director. A member of the Catholic conservative organization
Alleanza Cattolica Alleanza Cattolica (in English ''Catholic Alliance'') is an Italian Catholic association.
Among its members are Massimo Introvigne, president of CESNUR.
An article in magazine Charlie Hebdo argued that Alleanza Cattolica is "the Italian subsidiary" ...
since 1972, Introvigne served as that group's vice president until 2016.
Mayer is a Swiss historian specialized in new religious movements. He was for a time a lecturer at
University of Fribourg and in 2012, he was appointed by the
Canton of Fribourg to prepare a report on the situation of religious communities there. Zucchini is a Catholic priest, who became in 2009 professor of theology in the Theological School of the
Diocese of Massa Carrara-Pontremoli
The Italian Catholic Diocese of Massa Carrara-Pontremoli ( la, Dioecesis Massensis-Apuana) is in Tuscany. It is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Pisa.
The historical Diocese of Massa Carrara had its name changed in 1939 to Diocese of Apuania; ...
in Italy and published and lectured about the Italian mystic
Maria Valtorta and about the
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved ...
.
Giuseppe Casale, a Catholic historian and Archbishop of the
Archdiocese of Foggia-Bovino
In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop.
History
In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associate ...
, was appointed as the first president of CESNUR.
Reviewing the proceedings of one of the first CESNUR conferences, French sociologist
Jean Séguy Jean Séguy (5 mar 1925 – 9 november 2007) was a French sociologist of religions.
He was born in a Catholic family from south-western France. In 1970, he became a doctor of Letters, specialized in English literature. Under the influence of H ...
wrote in 1988 that most participants were Catholic and presented the traditional Catholic view of phenomena such as
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...
and the
New Age
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consi ...
.
Other members of CESNUR's board include Luigi Berzano,
Gianni Ambrosio,
Reender Kranenborg,
Eileen Barker and
J. Gordon Melton.
Berzano, who later became CESNUR's president,
is a professor of sociology at the
University of Turin. Ambrosio is an Italian sociologist who became in 2007 bishop of the
Catholic Diocese of Piacenza-Bobbio. Kranenborg is a Dutch Reformed theologian. Barker is a sociologist who wrote ''
The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing?'' (1984) and formed the
Information Network Focus on Religious Movements
Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released between ...
(INFORM) in 1988.
Melton is Distinguished Professor of American Religious History at
Baylor University
Baylor University is a private Baptist Christian research university in Waco, Texas. Baylor was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas and one of the ...
in
Waco,
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
.
In 1995 the French
Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France
The French National Assembly, the lower house of the Parliament of France, set up a Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France (french: Commission parlementaire sur les sectes en France) on 11 July 1995 following the events involving the members ...
, after the events of the
Order of the Solar Temple
The Order of the Solar Temple (french: Ordre du Temple solaire, OTS) and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition, or simply The Solar Temple, is a cult and religious sect that claims to be based upon the ideals of the K ...
, published a critical report on
cults. This was followed by similar reports by other governments. CESNUR claimed these texts relied excessively on information supplied by the
anti-cult movement and criticized them publicly, particularly through a book called ''Pour en finir avec les sectes''.
Canadian scholar
Susan Jean Palmer Susan Jean Palmer is a Canadian sociologist of religion and author whose primary research interest is new religious movements. Formerly a professor of religious studies at Dawson College in Westmount, Quebec, she is currently an Affiliate Professor ...
wrote that the title, translated as "To Put an End to the Sects", had a double meaning and was "deliberately misleading", as, rather than to sects of cults, the authors wanted to put an end to governmental criticism of them.
French sociologists Jean-Louis Schlegel and
Nathalie Luca Nathalie Luca (born 1966) is a French research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), an anthropologist and a sociologist of religions. She is director of the Center for Studies on Social Sciences of the Religious (C ...
reviewed the book critically, noting that while the authors were right in criticizing some mistakes of the Parliamentary report, CESNUR had moved with the volume from a scholarly to a militant advocacy position and to a one-sided defense of cults. According to Palmer, the book upset the French authorities so much so that one of its co-authors, French historian
Antoine Faivre, was placed by the police under temporary arrest (garde à vue), accused of having disclosed confidential details about the persons interviewed by the Parliamentary Commission, although he was detained for a few hours only and a judge later dropped the charges.
In 2001 and 2006 CESNUR published two editions of its encyclopedia of religions in Italy.
Organization
According to its official website, CESNUR "is a network of independent but related organizations of scholars in various countries, devoted to promote scholarly research in the field of new religious consciousness, to spread reliable and responsible information, and to expose the very real problems associated with some movements, while at the same time defending everywhere the principles of religious liberty."
While established by a group composed mostly of Catholic scholars, CESNUR is not affiliated with any religious group or denomination and has from the outset included scholars of various religious persuasions.
CESNUR is critical of concepts like
mind control, thought reform and
brainwashing, asserting that they lack
scientific
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
and scholarly support and are mainly based on
anecdotal evidence.
In a 2018 history of the academic study of new religious movements, American scholar W. Michael Ashcraft described CESNUR as "the largest outlet currently supporting research on NRMs."
In 2018, ''
The Korea Times
''The Korea Times'' is the oldest of three English-language newspapers published daily in South Korea. It is a sister paper of the '' Hankook Ilbo'', a major Korean language daily; both are owned by Dongwha Enterprise, a wood-based manufacture ...
'' described CESNUR as "the largest international association of scholars specializing in the study of new religious movements."
Funding sources
The Italian authorities recognized CESNUR as a public non-profit organization in 1996 and were contributors to CESNUR projects.
Other sources of income include book royalties and member contributions.
Activities and publications
Since 2017, CESNUR has published ''The Journal of CESNUR''.
CESNUR sponsors yearly conferences in the field of new religions.
The 2019 conference at the
University of Turin included over 200 attendees.
Introvigne has spoken before the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world's largest regional security-oriented intergovernmental organization with observer status at the United Nations. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, prom ...
.
He testified on behalf of Scientologists in a criminal trial in
Lyon
Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of ...
.
In 1995, Introvigne argued that
Order of the Solar Temple
The Order of the Solar Temple (french: Ordre du Temple solaire, OTS) and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition, or simply The Solar Temple, is a cult and religious sect that claims to be based upon the ideals of the K ...
members who died by mass suicide had acted on their own initiative as opposed to being victims of the leader's manipulations.
In 1997, Melton appeared as an expert witness on behalf of the
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
branch of the
, arguing that the group was not a "cult". The testimony garnered attention for Melton's admission on cross-examination that he had publicly made similar claims about
Peoples Temple, responsible for 918 deaths in
Jonestown
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, a U.S.–based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationall ...
, Guyana.
''Bitter Winter''
''Bitter Winter'' was launched in May 2018 as an online magazine which covers
religious freedom
Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freedom ...
and
human rights in China.
[ According to the magazine it is supported by volunteer contributions and is published daily in five languages.]
Some of the magazine's correspondents were arrested in late 2018 by the authorities for their work documenting and publicizing antireligious campaigns in China.[Arrestati in Cina 45 giornalisti, trasmettevano notizie al magazine italiano "Bitter Winter"]
. '' La Stampa'', 28 December 2018. The United States Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...
in the chapter on China of its 2019 Human Rights Report noted that, among 45 ''Bitter Winter'' contributors the magazine reported had been arrested in 2018, in 2019, 4 of the 22 detained in Xinjiang
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
were released, and among the 23 detained in Henan
Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...
, Fujian
Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its c ...
, Zhejiang
Zhejiang ( or , ; , also romanized as Chekiang) is an eastern, coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by ...
and Shanxi
Shanxi (; ; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-lev ...
, "several had been released after indoctrination training," while "online media reported that police tortured" those arrested in Fujian.
The same United States Department of State quoted repeatedly ''Bitter Winter'' as "an online magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China" in the China section of its 2018 International Religious Freedom Report. The American evangelical
Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual exp ...
magazine ''World
In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
'' called ''Bitter Winter'' "a thorn in the side" of the Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Ci ...
, and reported that in a secret document "the Chinese government has called ''Bitter Winter'' an 'overseas hostile website' 外敌对网站and instructed its intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, to investigate the group."
Criticism
In a 1996 piece in '' Charlie Hebdo'', French essayist Renaud Marhic accused CESNUR of being "a scientific screen used to relay ntrovigne'stheses to the complacent media".
Scholars Stephen A. Kent
Stephen A. Kent is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He researches new religious movements (NRMs), and has published research on several such groups including the Children of Go ...
and Raffaella Di Marzio have argued that CESNUR's representation of the brainwashing controversy is one-sided, polemical
Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics ...
and sometimes without scholarly value. Kent further observed: "Many German and French officials working on issues related to religious 'sects' and human rights do not see CESNUR and Introvigne as neutral parties in the ongoing debates... Consequently, other people and organizations have damaged their reputations (rightly or wrongly) among these officials by associating too closely with CESNUR".
In 2001, French journalist Serge Garde accused CESNUR of "systematic interventions in favor of sects brought to justice", naming Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved ...
, Scientology
Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. The most recent published census data i ...
, Order of the Solar Temple
The Order of the Solar Temple (french: Ordre du Temple solaire, OTS) and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition, or simply The Solar Temple, is a cult and religious sect that claims to be based upon the ideals of the K ...
, the Unification Church
The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, widely known as the Unification Church, is a new religious movement, whose members are called Unificationists, or "Moonie (nickname), Moonies". It was officially founded on 1 May 1954 unde ...
and Aum Shinrikyo and opined that "all the sects know they can count on CESNUR".
CESNUR again met with controversy when one of the scheduled speakers at the 1997 CESNUR conference, who was to present scholarship on the religious group New Acropolis, was discovered to be a member of the very group she purported to study. Michiel Louter writing for Dutch magazine '' De Groene Amsterdammer'' opined: "It is difficult to believe that CESNUR-director Introvigne was not up-to-date on her membership in the group". The participation of the New Acropolis speaker to the conference was canceled after the connection was publicly reported by Dutch publication Trouw.
Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack of 1995
In the aftermath of the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, CESNUR board member J. Gordon Melton and occasional CESNUR conference speaker James R. Lewis flew to Japan at the expense of Aum Shinrikyo; they then held press conferences in Japan stating their belief that the group did not have the ability to produce sarin
Sarin (NATO designation GB G-series, "B"">Nerve_agent#G-series.html" ;"title="hort for Nerve agent#G-series">G-series, "B" is an extremely toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound.[scapegoated
Scapegoating is the practice of singling out a person or group for unmerited blame and consequent negative treatment. Scapegoating may be conducted by individuals against individuals (e.g. "he did it, not me!"), individuals against groups (e.g., ...]
.["Tokyo Cult Finds an Unlikely Supporter", '']The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'', T.R. Reid, May 1995.[, '' Nova Religio'' 3, no. 2 (April 2000): 368-82.] Melton later revised his judgment. A paper mentioning the investigation was presented at the 1995 CESNUR conference.
Though CESNUR director Massimo Introvigne defended what he termed the "much maligned" investigation, others in the field felt that the scholars' defense of Aum Shinrikyo led to a crisis of confidence in religious scholarship when Aum's culpability was proven. Scholar Ian Reader disputed Introvigne's defense, writing "the case in hand certainly shows that some scholars are capable of saying what those who call on them want them to say, even when the evidence points the other way".
Eastern Lightning and the murder of Wu Shuoyan
In 2018, ''Bitter Winter'' was criticized for its sympathetic coverage of Eastern Lightning, a group regarded as a cult
In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal ...
in China. Introvigne discussed in ''Bitter Winter'' the 2014 murder of Wu Shuoyan
The murder of Wu Shuoyan, sometimes called the Zhaoyuan McDonald's cult murder, occurred on May 28, 2014, in a McDonald's restaurant in Zhaoyuan, China. Footage of the murder was widely distributed and the crime generated considerable attention i ...
, attributed by Chinese authorities to Eastern Lightning. He supported the position first presented in articles of the Chinese daily '' The Beijing News'' in 2014, then advocated in 2015 by Australian scholar Emily Dunn,[Dunn, Emily (2015). ''Lightning from the East: Heterodoxy and Christianity in Contemporary China''. Leiden: Brill, p. 204. .]
that the perpetrators were not members of Eastern Lightning at the time of the murder. This position was described in 2020 by reporter Donald Kirk as common among scholars. However, while Dunn wrote that the two leaders of the group that committed the murder "started out as members of Eastern Lightning (in 1998 and 2007 respectively), utthey had outgrown it" and were no longer part of the sect in 2014.[ Introvigne, based on a different interpretation of the same Chinese sources quoted by Dunn, argued, both in ''Bitter Winter'' and in his 2020 book ''Inside The Church of Almighty God'', that they had never been members of Eastern Lightning.
Mainstream reporting held that in 2002, members of Eastern Lightning kidnapped 34 members of the ]China Gospel Fellowship
The China Gospel Fellowship (Chinese language, Chinese: 中华福音团契), also known as the Tanghe Fellowship (唐河团契), is one of the largest Evangelicalism, evangelical Christian religious movements in China, and is a Chinese house church ...
and held them captive for two months, with the aim of coercing them to join Eastern Lighting. Introvigne, however, suggested in 2018 that China Gospel Fellowship invented the story of the kidnapping as justification for the fact that many of its members, including national leaders, had converted to Eastern Lightning. In his 2020 book, he adopted a more nuanced position, suggesting that China Gospel Fellowship members described as "kidnapping" what was in fact "deception," as they were invited, and went voluntarily, to training sessions without being told that they were organized by Eastern Lightning.
In 2019, CESNUR's ''Bitter Winter'' co-hosted in Seoul
Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the Capital city, capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea ...
with Human Rights Without Frontiers a conference supporting the right of asylum
The right of asylum (sometimes called right of political asylum; ) is an ancient juridical concept, under which people persecuted by their own rulers might be protected by another sovereign authority, like a second country or another enti ...
of Eastern Lightning and Uyghur refugees from China living in South Korea. Members of Eastern Lightning and the Uyghur diaspora also spoke in the conference.
Shincheonji and spread of COVID-19
On November 29, 2019, CESNUR co-organized a seminar in Seoul claiming that thousands of members of Shincheonji, a group many in South Korea regard as a cult
In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal ...
, had been subject to forcible deprogramming
Deprogramming is a controversial tactic that attempts to help someone who has "strongly held convictions," often coming from cults or New Religious Movements (NRM). Deprogramming aims to assist a person who holds a controversial or restrictive b ...
. Introvigne was among the speakers.
Regarding the Shincheonji organization's association with a coronavirus outbreak in 2020, CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers released a joint white paper
A white paper is a report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. A white pape ...
claiming that, although Shincheonji made "mistakes" in its management of the crisis, the organization had also been discriminated against because of its status unpopular status.
References
Bibliography
*
External links
CESNUR official site
{{authority control
Research institutes in Italy