SPEAKERS

Several years ago, scholars of religion abandoned the word “cult,” arguing that it was being consistently used to discriminate against unpopular minorities. They, however, recognized that not all religious groups are benign. The word “cult,” in the meantime, kept being used by the media, the anti-cult movements, and regimes looking for a justification for their discrimination of new religious movements, such as Russia and China. Recently, I tried to introduce a new category, “criminal religious movements,” including groups that either (or both) consistently practice and justify common crimes such as terrorism, child abuse, rape, physical violence, homicide, and serious economic crimes, as opposite to the vague or imaginary crimes of “being a cult” or “brainwashing members.” The use of drugs is a test case for the new category. Are movements using drugs criminal? The paper argues that, while trafficking in drugs for monetary enrichment makes a religious movement criminal, the entheogenic use of drugs for religious purposes doesn’t.