CESNUR

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 since 1972, Introvigne served as that group's vice president until 2016. Zucchini is a Catholic priest, who became in 2009 professor of theology in the Theological School of the Diocese of Massa Carrara-Pontremoli in Italy and published and lectured about the Italian mystic Maria Valtorta and about the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Giuseppe Casale, a Catholic historian and Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Foggia-Bovino, was appointed as the first president of CESNUR. Later, Luigi Berzano became CESNUR's president. Reviewing the proceedings of one of the first CESNUR conferences, French sociologist Jean Séguy wrote in 1988 that most participants were Catholic and presented the traditional Catholic view of phenomena such as Spiritualism and the New Age. Other members of CESNUR's board include Luigi Berzano, Gianni Ambrosio, Reender Kranenborg, Eileen Barker and J. Gordon Melton. Berzano later became CESNUR's president.

In 1995 the French Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France, after the events of the Order of the Solar Temple, 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 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 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 a 1996 piece in Charlie Hebdo, French essayist Renaud Marhic accused CESNUR of being "a scientific screen used to relay [Introvigne's] theses to the complacent media". Scholars Stephen A. Kent and Raffaella Di Marzio have argued that CESNUR's representation of the brainwashing controversy is one-sided, polemical and sometimes without scholarly value, while anthropologist Richard Singelenberg questioned in 1997 whether CESNUR is "too friendly and does not make enough critical comments about new religious movements and sects". 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". Later on, Raffaella Di Marzio changed her mind and became a collaborator of CESNUR. According to Kent, "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 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.

In 2001, French journalist accused CESNUR of "systematic interventions in favor of sects brought to justice", naming Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientology, Order of the Solar Temple, the Unification Church and Aum Shinrikyo and opined that "all the sects know they can count on CESNUR".

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 China. Introvigne discussed in Bitter Winter the 2014 murder of Wu Shuoyan, 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, 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), [but] they had outgrown it" and were no longer part of the sect in 2014.

Mainstream reporting held that in 2002, members of Eastern Lightning kidnapped 34 members of the China Gospel Fellowship 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 with Human Rights Without Frontiers a conference supporting the right of asylum 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, had been subject to forcible deprogramming. 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 stating that, although Shincheonji made "mistakes" in its management of the crisis, the organization had also been discriminated against because of its unpopular status. The founder of Shincheonji had been prosecuted for his alleged responsibility in the spreading of the Covid, and has been acquitted on January 13, 2021.

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." 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.

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 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 described CESNUR as "the largest international association of scholars specializing in the study of new religious movements."

Activities and publications

Since 2017, CESNUR has published The Journal of CESNUR, a periodic about new religious movements. CESNUR sponsors yearly conferences in the field of new religions. The 2019 conference at the University of Turin included over 200 attendees. The journal's articles are typically sourced from CESNUR's annual conferences. The journal is open access, and Introvigne is the founder and lead editor. Benjamin E. Zeller noted in 2020 that, while too recently founded to give a proper analysis, the journal's articles tended to disproportionately focus on East Asia. The organization is regarded as an apologist for cults.

Introvigne has spoken before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. He testified on behalf of Scientologists in a criminal trial in Lyon. In 1995, Introvigne argued that Order of the Solar Temple 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 branch of the International Churches of Christ, 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, Guyana.

In 2001 and 2006 CESNUR published two editions of its encyclopedia of religions in Italy.

''Bitter Winter''

Bitter Winter was launched in May 2018 as an online magazine which covers religious 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 of the Chinese Communist Party. The United States Department of State 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 were released, and among the 23 detained in Henan, Fujian, Zhejiang and Shanxi, "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 magazine World called Bitter Winter "a thorn in the side" of the Chinese Communist Party, and reported that in a secret document "the Chinese government has called Bitter Winter an 'overseas hostile website' [境外敌对网站] and instructed its intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, to investigate the group."

References

Bibliography

References

1. (2012). "Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements". [[Rowman & Littlefield]].
2. Kent, Stephen A.. (January 2001). "The French and German versus American debate over 'new religions', Scientology and human rights". [[University of Marburg]].
3. (2020-03-18). "Human Rights without frontiers release white paper on Coronavirus". Risingbd.com.
4. (1997-08-07). "Een sektencongres kan nooit rustig zijn". [[Trouw]].
5. (2018-04-14). ""Bitter Winter", in Italia un nuovo quotidiano online su religione e diritti umani in Cina". [[La Stampa]].
6. Stausberg, Michael. (2009). "The study of religion(s) in Western Europe III: Further developments after World War II". [[Religion (journal).
7. Arweck, Elizabeth. (2006). "Researching New Religious Movements: Responses and Redefinitions". [[Routledge]].
8. Clifford, Ross. (2016-01-22). "John Warwick Montgomery's Legal Apologetic: An Apologetic for all Seasons". [[Wipf and Stock Publishers]].
9. "Alleanza Cattolica – Catholic Alliance – a deepening".
10. Ippolito, Michele M.. (2016-04-28). "Massimo Introvigne non è più il reggente nazionale vicario di Alleanza Cattolica". La Fede Quotidiana.
11. Ricci, Rita. (2016-10-16). "Alla scoperta dell'"Evangelo" di Maria Valtorta". ZENIT.
12. Picariello, Angelo. (December 12, 1993). "No alla doppia appartenenza". Avvenire.
13. "Giuseppe Casale".
14. Flint, Donna. (1990). "CESNUR Seminar on New Religious Movements". [[Religion Today]].
15. (May 2013). "Diritti Umani e Libertà Religiosa: Istituzioni Europee ed Organismi Internazionali, no. 60". Governo Italiano, Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, Servizio per i Rapporti con le Confessioni Religiose e le Relazioni Istituzionali.
16. Séguy, Jean. (April–June 1991). "Review of Lo Spiritismo". [[Archives de sciences sociales des religions]].
17. (2017-09-11). "Board".
18. Palmer, Susan J.. (2011). "The New Heretics of France: Minority Religions, la République, and the Government-Sponsored "War on Sects"". [[Oxford University Press]].
19. Schlegel, Jean-Louis. (June 1997). "Pourquoi on n'en finit pas avec les sectes". Esprit.
20. Luca, Nathalie. (1998). "Introvigne (Massimo), Melton (J. Gordon), eds. Pour en finir avec les sectes. Le débat sur le rapport de la commission parlementaire, compte rendu". [[Archives de sciences sociales des religions]].
21. Palmer, Susan J.. (February 2008). "France's "War on Sects": A Post-9/11 Update". [[Nova Religio]].
22. Marhic, Renaud. (1996-12-04). "none". [[Charlie Hebdo]].
23. (April 1998). "'Brainwashing' in New Religious Movements: clarifying some issues". G.R.I.S..
24. Maffia, Camillo. (2013-05-13). "Persecuzione e campagne anti-sette: intervista a Raffaella Di Marzio". Agenzia Radicale.
25. (1997-08-13). "Kenners van het kwaad". [[De Groene Amsterdammer]].
26. Pittman, Joann. (28 December 2018). "Sorting Rumor from Fact? Look for the Red Chop".
27. Introvigne, Massimo. (2018-09-20). "The McDonald's Murder of 2014: The Crime The Church of Almighty God Did Not Commit".
28. Salmon, Andrew. (2019-03-21). "Chinese Christians live in fear, fleeing abroad". [[Asia Times]].
29. (2014-08-22). "山东招远血案被告自白:我就是神". [[Sina News]].
30. (2014-08-22). "一个 '全能神教'家庭的发展史". [[The Beijing News]].
31. Dunn, Emily. (2015). "Lightning from the East: Heterodoxy and Christianity in Contemporary China". [[Brill Publishers]].
32. Kirk, Donald. (2020-02-09). "These Chinese Christians Were Branded A Criminal 'Cult': Now They Have to Flee". [[The Daily Beast]].
33. Introvigne, Massimo. (2020). "Inside The Church of Almighty God: The Most Persecuted Religious Movement in China". [[Oxford University Press]].
34. Henderson, Alex. (2015-04-07). "6 modern-day Christian terrorist groups our media conveniently ignores". [[Salon.com]].
35. Massimo, Introvigne. (2018a). "Captivity Narratives: Did The Church of Almighty God Kidnap 34 Evangelical Pastors in 2002?". The Journal of CESNUR.
36. Porfiri, Aurelio. (2018-07-06). "EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MASSIMO INTROVIGNE – A Bitter Winter".
37. Introvigne, Massimo. (2020). "Inside The Church of Almighty God: The Most Persecuted Religious Movement in China". Oxford University Press.
38. (June 24, 2019). "CHINA: Chinese religious persecution, harassment of refugees abroad denounced in Seoul".
39. . (2019-12-01). ["International Experts Urge Democratic Countries To Pay Attention To Religious Suppression Of Minorities In South Korea"](https://www.uaetoday.com/news_details_ad/27731/international-experts-urge-democratic-countries-to-pay-attention-to-religious-suppression-of-minorities-in-south-korea). *UAE Today*.
40. (2020-03-31). "Mener kristen sekt er utsatt for jakt på syndebukk for koronautbruddet". [[Vårt Land (Norwegian newspaper).
41. Shin, Hyonhee. (2021-01-13). "South Korea church leader acquitted on charge of blocking virus effort". [[Reuters]].
42. "About CESNUR - Cosa è il CESNUR".
43. Clarke, Peter. (2004). "Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements". [[Routledge]].
44. Fautré, Willy. (2006). "Non-State Actors in the Human Rights Universe". [[Kumarian Press]].
45. (2018). "A Historical Introduction to the Study of New Religious Movements". Routledge.
46. Dong-hwan, Ko. (2018-11-14). "Hundreds of Chinese religious asylum seekers rejected in Jeju". [[The Korea Times]].
47. Zeller, Benjamin E.. (2020-04-17). "New Religious Movements: A Bibliographic Introduction". [[American Theological Library Association]].
48. Lewis, James R.. (2014). "Cults: A Reference and Guide". [[Routledge]].
49. (2019-09-03). "A Torino oltre duecento studiosi al convegno del Cesnur sul nuovo pluralismo religioso". [[La Stampa]].
50. (2018). "Modern-Day Crusaders in Europe: Tradition, Family and Property". [[University of Zagreb]].
51. van der Velde, Koert. (1997-08-05). "Sekte-onderzoekers verblind door eigen inlevingsvermogen". [[Trouw]].
52. Ooi Boon, Tan. (1997-07-17). "Church not a cult, says expert witness". [[The Straits Times]].
53. (1997-11-11). "Why church wasn't considered cult". [[The Straits Times]].
54. Lemaître, Frédéric. (2019-12-31). "En condamnant un pasteur, la Chine réprime le protestantisme, en plein essor". [[Le Monde]].
55. Tatad, Francisco S.. (2018-10-05). "Can the Church survive China's embrace?". [[The Manila Times]].
56. (2018-04-24). "About".
57. Cielo, Settimo. (2018-12-29). "Christmas Behind Bars In China, For the Martyrs of the Free Press".
58. (2018-12-28). "Arrestati in Cina 45 giornalisti, trasmettevano notizie al magazine italiano "Bitter Winter"". [[La Stampa]].
59. Lipes, Joshua. (January 31, 2019). "Media Outlet Monitoring Uyghur Persecution in China Vows to Continue Work Despite Ban, Arrests". [[Radio Free Asia]].
60. (August 7, 2018). "Chinese ministry of state security takes over the campaign against Bitter Winter".
61. U.S.Department of State. (2020). "China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau) 2019 Human Rights Report".
62. U.S.Department of State. (2019). "China (includes Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Macau) 2018 International Religious Freedom Report".
63. Cheng, June. (2019-12-20). "Watchdog on the web". World Magazine.
64. (2018-08-03). "Chinese Ministry of State Security Takes Over the Campaign Against Bitter Winter".