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Brainwashing and Re-Indoctrination Programs in the Children of God/The Family
This article is an electronic version of an article originally published in Cultic Studies Journal, 2000, Volume 17, pages 56-78. Please keep in mind that the pagination of this electronic reprint differs from that of the bound volume. This fact could affect how you enter bibliographic information in papers that you may write.
Stephen A. Kent
Deana Hall
Department of Sociology
University of Alberta
Abstract
Most contemporary debates about the applicability of “brainwashing” as a social scientific concept involve arguments over what (if any) utility it has when discussing conversion to some high-demand, alternative religions. Some sociologists of religion use the term “brainwashing” to apply to extreme social influences. Others restrict use of the term to situations involving forcible confinement and physical coercion, presumably amidst a group-indoctrination process. Since few such conversion situations exist, these sociologists avoid utilizing brainwashing within social scientific discourse. What they have overlooked, however, is the conceptual utility of the brainwashing concept, even with their restrictive definition, for analyzing some groups’ efforts at retaining or reconverting members. This study examines an example of a brainwashing programthe camps and programs that the Children of GodThe Family developed for its teen members. These programs included intense re-education programs in the context of physical, psychological, and socio-emotional punishments, often in confined or guarded camps. As a social scientific concept, “brainwashing” has explanatory usefulness for understanding The Family’s harsh efforts to increase the intensity of teens’ commitment to the organization and to foster compliance to leadership.
Central to the lives of preteen and teenage members of The Family (formerly the Children of God [COG]) in the late 1980s was their involvement in organizationally run teen training and re-indoctrination camps and programs in various parts of the world. Hundreds of young people passed through programs that operated in Brazil, Denmark, England, Italy, Japan, Macao, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, Scotland, Switzerland, Thailand, South America, and probably other locations (for a partial list, see Ward, 1995: 135, 167). Some of these young people remained in these programs for years. It is not possible either to establish exact numbers of young people who went through them or to know what was the average length of time that they stayed in them. Likewise, thus far it has proven impossible to obtain detailed information about the imposition of these programs on adults (see COUNTERCOG, n.d.). Nevertheless, we are able to identify many of the activities that routinely occurred as part of the re-indoctrination processes that young detainees experienced in different programs around the world.
COG leadership started these programs and camps in an attempt to heighten commitment to founder, David Berg, and his directives among the children of the initial converts (often called ‘the second generation’). By operating these programs, The Family was attempting to address the classic problem that confronts sects, which involves the cultivation of commitment and devotion among a second generation born to parents who are members already. By the early 1980s it seems that a number of teens in The Family were having grave doubts about following in their parents’ footsteps, even as others considered themselves committed adherents to Berg’s instructions. Teen camps and programs, therefore, were attempts to instill a deep commitment among young people whose faith may have been wavering, or who had not made intense emotional investments to the ideology. On these grounds alone, the stories of people who went through these camps and related programs should interest many scholars.
Of greater interest to scholars, however, is that these teen training programs fit the most restrictive definition of brainwashing facilities. That is to say, these programs variously confined (and at times incarcerated) their young participants as they physically maltreated them, which are the two necessary conditions that some sociologists require for labeling and analyzing a thought reform program as “brainwashing” (Anthony, 1990: 304-305). Indeed, we even could narrow further these already restrictive requirements for brainwashing by saying they must take place amidst a program of intense ideological training consisting of indoctrination classes, social isolation, and forced confessions, often combined with extremely hard physical labor and social humiliation. Because The Family’s so-called teen “education” programs of the late 1980s meet this most narrowly restrictive sociological definition of brainwashing, scholars (especially sociologists of religion) will need to reexamine a term that has been out of favor among them for over a decade and a half.
Our purpose here is not to argue over the long-term effectiveness of brainwashing. Instead, we simply intend to support our claim that The Family instituted programs that meet the most demanding social scientific definition of brainwashing—a definition even stricter than one given in a Family publication that “’brainwashing’ implies the use of force, coercion, duress and imprisonment” (World Services, 1993: 20). We are fully prepared to consider the possibility that brainwashing programs can operate outside of settings that forcibly confine and physically maltreat (presumably as they attempt to re-educate). We do not explore, however, this possibility within the study at hand.
Not only does this study call for a reexamination of the brainwashing concept, but also it relies upon a research source–former members–that many sociologists of religion have neglected for a number of years (see Richardson 1994: 34-39). Simple triangulation, involving the collection of multiple accounts of the programs by different people, in combination with organizational publications, help ensure the basic accuracy of former members’ information (see Richardson, 1994: 37).
On the topic, therefore, of teen training programs, former members who assisted us are far more reliable than current Family members. Current members appear to have become so conscious of the benefits accruing from favorable public relations from academics that they may not give accurate descriptions of life in these programs and camps (Kent and Krebs, 1998a: 45-46; 1998b: 37-38; 1999: 21-22). Moreover, this particular group has a long-standing policy that justifies deception when protecting its collective interests (Berg, 1979), so members’ comments about a controversial subject such as these teen re-education programs are likely to be highly problematic. By contrast, former members who wish to remain anonymous have a great investment in protecting their identities, so if anything they are more likely to understate, rather than overstate, their experiences.
The study’s senior author conducted the interviews described in this paper between 1992 and 1998. These interviews build upon and grow out of his ongoing research about so-called “cults and new religions” that have affected Canada and Canadians. The interviews ranged in duration from less than forty-five minutes to several hours. They involved open-ended questions that allowed people to tell their own stories in their own words. Many of the people whom the senior author interviewed felt strongly about what they considered to have been extreme physical, emotional, and sexual abuses that they experienced in these programs, and they were pleased that an academic provided them an opportunity to speak. Moreover, the senior author did all but one of the interviews over the telephone, which prevented interview subjects from being influenced by unintentional body cues.
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