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SACRED TRIBES JOURNAL INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS COWAN John W. Morehead Western Institute for Intercultural Studies Dr. Douglas Cowan is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Renison College/ University of Waterloo, where he specializes in “cults,” sects, and new religious movements, as well as religion on the Internet and religion and film. He is a co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of New and Emergent Religions, and has co-edited (with Lorne L. Dawson) Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet (Routledge, 2004), and (with Jeffrey K. Hadden) Religion on the Internet: Research Prospects and Promises (JAI, 2000). Dr. Cowan has also written several books including Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet (Routledge, 2005), and his most recent work Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen (Baylor University Press, October 2008). Perhaps his most controversial book, however, at least among a segment of the evangelical community known as the “countercult movement,” is Bearing False Witness? An Introduction to the Christian Countercult (Praeger, 2003). In the study of new religions and those who respond to them, scholars have examined the secular anticult movement, but few have distinguished between this and the evangelical countercult movement. The editors of Sacred Tribes Journal believe that Bearing False Witness? presents an important thesis, as well as criticisms of evangelical countercult methodologies worthy of careful consideration. For this reason we are pleased that Dr. Cowan has agreed to participate in this interview. Sacred Tribes Journal: Dr. Cowan, thank you for participating in this interview. As we begin, please share some of your background with us. What led you into religious studies from the perspective of
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Morehead: Interview with Douglas Cowan sociology of religion? Douglas Cowan: Thanks for the opportunity. I do appreciate it. As I tell my students, I am something of a mixed bag in terms of my training and experience in Religious Studies. If a colleague has a BA, MA, and PhD in History, for example, and that makes her a purebred, I’m a reasonably well-mannered junkyard dog. I have a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature, a Master of Divinity, for which I specialized in Church History—I wrote my thesis, which became my first book, on The Cloud of Unknowing, a fourteenth-century English mystical text—and I have a PhD in Religious Studies. The benefit of this kind of multidisciplinary preparation is that I tend not to see things through any one particular disciplinary lens. Though I tend to function now as a sociologist of religion, both professionally and intellectually, I still bring a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach to everything that I do. I am also an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada, and served congregations in southern Alberta for a number of years before going to grad school for my doctorate. I spent two years training as a spiritual director—which was not my calling at all, by the way. Those experiences, as much as anything else, gave me the impetus for grad school by providing me with a topic I was passionate about researching—the evangelical Christian countercult. Since then, as you noted in your introductory material, in addition to the countercult, I have published on conservative reactionary movements in mainline Protestantism, religion on the Internet, and I am working on my second book on contemporary Paganism. Since I bore easily, I tend to work on a lot of things at the same time. Sacred Tribes Journal: How did the countercult community come to your attention as distinguished from the secular anticult movement, and why did you decide to research this movement? Douglas Cowan: I really wasn’t aware of any of it until I was ordained and settled on my first pastoral charge. I mean, I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and had been told that there were these dangerous, devious organizations called “cults” out there, but I had no real clue what that meant. Or even if it was true. Though I certainly wouldn’t consider them a “cult,” while I was an undergrad in Victoria, I did once get into a letter-writing campaign with a Jehovah’s Witness, the kind of tedious, minutiae-driven, micro-hair splitting debate you see in countercult apologetics all the time—“Is eimi in John 8:58 present tense or a past participle or a present progressive or whatever, and, more importantly, why what you believe about it makes you a heretic.” That sort of thing. I found it a completely
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unfulfilling experience, a rather sad chapter in my life, actually. We were speaking different languages, were not going to see eye-to-eye, and that became clear almost immediately. However, several years later, having survived seminary, I figured I’d had all my theological shots and felt relatively immune to whatever the real world had to offer. In my denomination, new ordinands are “settled” on a pastoral charge. Though you have some input into the decision, the Church essentially decides where you will serve first. When I got the call from the settlement committee, I was at my parents’ home on Vancouver Island. The chair of the settlement committee called up and said, “We’re thinking of Cardston and Magrath for you,” two small towns in southwestern Alberta, just north of the Montana border. “OK,” I replied, “I know where it is on a map. Tell me about it.” “Ummm, well, how do you feel about inter-faith dialogue?” “Fine... why?” “Well, there are some Mormons there.” Cardston, you see, was settled in the late 1880s by Latter-day Saints who were leaving Utah after the passage of the Edmunds and EdmundsBurke Acts—the anti-polygamy laws—and who were seeking a place where they could practice their religion free from state interference. In fact, the town of Cardston is named for one of Brigham Young’s sons-inlaw, Charles Ora Card. In 1923, the Cardston saints dedicated the first LDS temple in Canada, the only one until the Toronto temple was dedicated in 1990. When I moved to Cardston, there were about five thousand people in the town, a little more than four thousand of whom were Latter-day Saints. And I had the United Church. Since I knew very little about Latter-day Saints, I went to the Christian bookstore in my hometown and asked what they had on Mormonism. “Oh, we have the best book on the market,” the clerk replied, and handed me a copy of Ed Decker and Dave Hunt’s The God Makers. I took it home and read it that afternoon. About three-quarters of the way through, though, I looked up and said, “Mom, they’re sending me to Mars.”
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Morehead: Interview with Douglas Cowan What I discovered when I got to Cardston, of course, is that Latterday Saints are pretty much like everyone else. In fact, over the years I was there, they were extremely gracious in offering their ward facilities—which were obviously the largest in town—when we had, for example, a funeral that our tiny church could not accomodate. When my first book came out, the one on The Cloud of Unknowing, the owner of the local LDS bookstore was quick to order ten copies—at a significant loss to him, I’m sure! When I left Cardston, the United Church had grown to the point where they were building a new church, and the Latter-day Saints pitched in on a number of occasions to help them do it. Through all of this, I began to wonder about the disconnect—what as a sociologist of religion I would now call the “cognitive dissonance,” the difference between expectation and experience—between what I read in Decker and Hunt, and what I encountered living in the heart of Mormon Alberta for five years. At one point, I mentioned The God Makers to someone, and he replied, “Oh, that’s just Christian hate literature.” And I realized he was right. I began looking deeper into the socio-literary iceberg of which The God Makers was only the tip and discovered this whole evangelical subculture dedicated to little more than countering the “cults.” I began to collect material, as much of the literature of the countercult as I could find, thinking it might make an interesting book someday. I collected backsets of Saints Alive in Jesus Newsletter, The Berean Call, Christian Research Journal, and so forth. I haunted used bookstores for anything and everything I could find—which amounted to quite a collection, as everyone who has helped move my library can attest! When I moved to Calgary in 1994, the University of Calgary was just starting its regularized doctoral program. I approached Irving Hexham, at that time probably the most knowledgeable person in Canada on new religious movements, and asked if he would be willing to supervise my work. He was, and I was admitted in the first intake to the program. I am also the first graduate of that program. I knew that in my doctoral work I wanted to write about the evangelical countercult, but at first, to put it crudely I was simply interested in “proving them wrong.” As one reviewer of BFW? noted, not infrequently, exposing the “soft underbelly” of countercult polemics is absurdly easy. I mean, so many of the arguments put forth by countercult apologists and polemicists are so obviously flawed, so logically inconsistent, and in not a few cases, so patently falsified, that in many cases it’s a wee bit like dynamiting trout. Interesting the first couple of times you do it, perhaps, but unfulfilling in the long run. Irving pushed me to explore the topic more deeply, to understand the
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“why” of the countercult, not just the “what” and the “what’s wrong.” This is not an uncommon experience for beginning graduate students. They think they know what they want to do, until they realize there are so many more interesting questions to be asked. Which is why I moved to an analysis based on propaganda theory and a sociology of knowledge. I moved from trying to “get them” to trying to understand the motivations and the methods, the theological underpinnings and the sociological pressures that drive the countercult engine. Sacred Tribes Journal: Who is the primary or intended reading audience of your book? Douglas Cowan: As a dissertation, a dissertation that was twice as long as the published book, by the way, Bearing False Witness? had a very specific purpose and a very limited audience. As a book, on the other hand, it was written primarily for academics in my field—sociologists of religion and religious studies scholars. And, it has been rather favourably reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, which is nice. But, and this has been hard for some members of the countercult to understand, it was not written with them in mind as the audience. I have had to repeat over and over to many folks, “You are the group I wrote the book about; you’re not the group I wrote the book for.” When I presented some of the research at the 2002 EMNR conference, I found that a lot of people seemed to think that my task, or my goal, was to help them do their countercult work better—which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the work, and not a little characteristic of the ego-centricity of many countercult apologists. That is, if you don’t think like us, and we can’t use what you have, why should we care about what you think? A good example of this was when I wouldn’t disclose my religious beliefs at the conference. There was quite a bit of email traffic about this following the event, and my position was (and remains): if my criticisms have validity, then it shouldn’t matter what my personal religious beliefs are. If they have validity, and I obviously believe that they do, then you can’t use the fact that I’m not an evangelical Christian to dismiss them. I think that an awful lot of the countercult folks actually know this, they simply don’t want to admit it. While they’re very good at dishing out criticism, they’re very poor at receiving it. In fact, I would suggest that these are the two areas in which many members of the evangelical countercult show the least grace: the manner in which they exercise their witness to others,
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Morehead: Interview with Douglas Cowan and the manner in which they respond to criticism of that witness. Unfortunately, when BFW? came out, it came out in a very expensive edition, and I am contemplating a revised edition that would be much more affordable, and which would take into account changes in the countercult, such as the incarnational approach modeled by the folks at Sacred Tribes Journal. Sacred Tribes Journal: I hope further dialogue and reflection on our approach more appropriately locates us in the missions category rather than a variation of the countercult, but we’ll keep the dialogue going. In your book you rely on a theory called “the sociology of knowledge.” Could you briefly explain the main premises of this view? Douglas Cowan: Sure. A sociology of knowledge asks some fairly basic questions: how do we come to think the way we do about something? Why do we think particular ways and not others? And how do we keep thinking that way in the face of disconfirming evidence? It is not so much interested in “knowledge as objective Truth,” as it is in “what passes for ‘knowledge’,” to quote Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, in a given culture. For example, on what basis do countercult apologists make the claims they do? How do they support their particular vision on the religious traditions they target? What happens when they’re proven wrong about something, or challenged in some very fundamental way about what it is they believe? How do they resolve the “cognitive dissonance” that represents? Sociologies of knowledge are predicated on the concept of social construction. That is, all knowledge is constructed knowledge, it’s manufactured by communities using the raw materials and conceptual tools those communities have available to them. Obviously, one of the tools for the countercult is the Bible. But, more than that, their often very particular and idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible. The argument runs that their interpretation is more accurate, more valid, more faithful, and therefore more correct than an interpretation offered by, say, a Jehovah’s Witness or a Oneness Pentecostal. That’s why one of the very common things one finds in countercult literature is the concern to demonstrate facility with the Bible, and the necessary superiority of one’s own interpretation—which is most often done through challenging the interpretations offered by others. What they lose sight of, of course, is that their interpretations are also just that—interpretations—and have no more prima facie validity than those offered by anyone else. For example, a number of popular countercult authors have come to the conclusion that there cannot be life on any other of the unimaginable
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number of planets in the universe. Why? Because the Bible doesn’t say that there is, and to paraphrase one such apologist, one would think that God would include such an important detail in the Bible if it were true. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is logically absurd, and monumentally arogant—and easy to demonstrate in both cases. However, rather than simply countering the argument, a sociology of knowledge asks, “OK, how did you come to this conclusion, as opposed to another? What is it about your understanding of the Bible that leads you here? And how do you support that conclusion in the face of challenge and disconfirmation?” For example, the Bible says nothing about the Internet, but countercult apologists have wasted no time making good use of it. What this kind of analysis led me to relatively quickly is that the vast majority of material resources produced by the countercult is not meant for adherents of alternative religions. It is not intended, really, to convert anyone. Rather, by and large, it is meant for evangelical Christians who already share the basic worldview of the countercult apologists, and who want to be confirmed and reinforced in their beliefs. They’re hymn books produced for the choir, not for those they would like to join the choir. Now, this is not to say that nothing is ever produced for adherents of other religions, or that literature is not designed to assist evangelicals in their interactions with these folks. Of course, there is. But, for the most part, countercult apologetics is about reality maintenance, maintaining and reinforcing the security and the superiority of one’s own evangelical Christian worldview. Sacred Tribes Journal: Is the sociology of knowledge generally accepted as a valid approach by sociologists of religion? Douglas Cowan: Absolutely. And the great thing about it is that there is no community to which its theoretical principles or methodological approaches cannot be applied. Sacred Tribes Journal: Why did you decide to apply the sociology of knowledge approach to your analysis of countercult apologetics? Douglas Cowan: For me, the sociology of knowledge approach addresses the most
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Morehead: Interview with Douglas Cowan interesting and significant questions about a group—not so much how and when a group develops, but why it develops when it does and why it evolves in the way that is does. Since I am also interested in the role of the “movement intellectual,” those who claim to speak with a certain measure of authority for different groups and the effect those movement intellectuals have, this allowed me to investigate the ways in which evangelical countercult propaganda has shaped and influenced Christian perceptions of new religious movements. Though I was a member of a very liberal Protestant church in Canada, remember my reaction to reading The God Makers—not that Decker and Hunt were propagandists who should not be believed if their tongues came notarized, but that the religious group they were describing were actually as described. The printed word, especially the word that is published and sold commercially, is an especially powerful tool in our society. The sociology of knowledge allows me to investigate the effects these words have, which is why I chose to concentrate on publicly available works, and then locate them in the analytical framework of propaganda theory. Sacred Tribes Journal: How would you define propaganda? Douglas Cowan: The definition that I developed then, and that I hold to now, is: Propaganda is a systematic, ideologically driven, action-oriented manipulation and dissemination of information, which is intended for a specific target audience, and which is intended to intended to influence the beliefs and behaviour of that audience in manners consonant with the aims of the propagandist The particular value of this definition is that it does not rely on subjective characteristics such as “good” or “bad” propaganda, or that what “we” (the good guys) give out is “information” and what “they” (the bad guys) do is propaganda. My analysis is not dependent on whether or not one agrees with the information one is investigating. It also provides a more systematic way of looking at information and information management that is open to empirical investigation. For example, three of the most important components of this definition of propaganda are that it is systematic, that is, it not simply one pamphlet, one lecture, one whatever, but that the information can be tracked and investigated across a coherent body of data. Second, it is a manipulation of information. Some scholars have argued that all information is propaganda, but I disagree. I argue that there is an inherent manipulation in propagandistic discourse that shapes, moulds, and manages the information in ways that support the aims and intentions of the propagandists. To take a couple of simple examples, using the word “cult” to describe a religious movement when one knows the very negative connotations that word carries in our culture is a way of
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manipulating the information one disseminates. Or, simply inventing information about a group, lying about them, or, at best, only revealing partial truths. The third component that is important to note is that propaganda is not for everyone, it has a specific target audience. You could not use the vast majority of evangelical countercult material on adherents of new religions. The moment you call Mormons satanic, or say that all other religions than one’s own are from the Devil, you’ve pretty much stopped any reasonable chance at dialogue. In broad terms, the most successful propaganda is propaganda aimed at people who are most likely to be sympathetic to it already. Sacred Tribes Journal: Evangelical readers who are not sociologists or trained in religious studies, may struggle to understand your argument. Are there any non-technical texts you could recommend for evangelicals to start with in grasping the sociological theories you draw on? Douglas Cowan: Hmmm, that’s a tough one. Although it is a bit dated, one of the best is Peter Berger’s The Sacred Canopy. For a good introduction to the kind of propaganda analysis that I am talking about, though they take a slightly different approach, would be Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, The Manufacture of Consent, a very well-known study. Sacred Tribes Journal: A member of the countercult movement might casually dismiss the thesis and resulting criticism of the countercult movement in your book, but what positive insights might be gained through critical self-reflection on your book’s ideas? Douglas Cowan: While the critique that I offer might sting a bit, I do think there are benefits. For example, I alluded earlier to the ease with many countercult arguments can be defeated or dismantled. And I wasn’t exaggerating. It really is a simple matter. By paying attention to some of the criticisms I make in the book, perhaps countercult apologists might come up with arguments that are not so easy to challenge. Also, to go back to what I suggested is the real motivation behind an awful lot of countercult apologetics—reality maintenance for people who already believe they have the only true interpretation of this, that, or the other thing—then I’m not sure they’ll really get much out of this. They are more likely to
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Morehead: Interview with Douglas Cowan ignore the critique—which is exactly what has happened. On the other hand, if there are people who are genuinely interested in dialogue with members of new religions, and, to be honest, I’ve met far fewer of those, then the kind of arguments they make could be modified by the critiques I offer. What is important to recognize about that, though, is that dialogue is not monologue, and in countercult discourse the two are often used as though they are synonymous. Real dialogue only occurs when there is (a) an exchange of ideas that occurs on an equal footing, and (b) equal potential for each partner in the dialogue to be changed by the process. This doesn’t mean that an evangelical Christian would convert to Mormonism, for example, though I suppose that’s a possibility. What it means is that the evangelical is as open to changing his or her mind about the LDS Church as, hopefully, the Latter-day Saint is to changing perceptions of evangelicalism. There have been some significant and well-reported events of this kind recently, though those have tended to draw trenchant criticism from much of the countercult, so I guess I don’t hold out much hope. Sacred Tribes Journal: To the best of your knowledge, have there been any substantial interactions with your thesis by evangelicals, or by the countercult movement? Douglas Cowan: Only from the good folk at Sacred Tribes Journal. Most others go on and on about how “somebody really needs to take Cowan on,” but to date no one has stepped up. Various people have been huffing and blowing for a couple of years now about writing an in-depth review or refutation, but I haven’t seen anything yet. Sacred Tribes Journal: What have been some of the reactions from members of the countercult? Douglas Cowan: As I pointed out, there has been some huffing and blowing that someone should sit down and really take me to task for what I’ve written. But, to date, no one really has. Mostly, with the exception of the odd mention on email lists, my work has been pretty much ignored by the countercult. One of the more absurd reactions was from a couple of the people I discuss briefly who thought that because they were mentioned in the book I ought to be sending them free copies. Fortunately, that level of response was fairly limited. Sacred Tribes Journal: In 2002 you were invited to make a presentation to the annual conference of Evangelical Ministries to New Religions. You wrote a paper after this experience that you presented to the Center for Studies on New Religions http://www.cesnur.org/2002/slc/cowan.htm. What are your current
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thoughts on this encounter with the countercult community, and have there been any continuing reactions to your presentation? Douglas Cowan: What’s interesting about the 2002 EMNR conference is that, though many of the participants dismiss the importance of my work, the presentation I made there was still being talked about three years later. I would be surprised if very many other presentations have that kind of shelf life. I had though that the EMNR might organize an author-meetscritics roundtable for one of their conferences—something I suspect would be quite a draw. I understand, though, that that suggestion was soundly rejected. Too bad, I’d certainly be willing to do it. Sacred Tribes Journal: Some of the countercult characterizations of your thesis we have heard include the notion that all apologetic activity is propaganda, and that you are advocating some form of epistemic relativism. Would you consider these accurate representations of your thesis? Douglas Cowan: I’ve heard that, too. Also that I’m “postmodern,” which, in a very soft way, I suppose that I am, in that I reject overarching metanarratives as adequate explanations for human history, society, and behaviour. In terms of “epistemic relativism,” I don’t know that I’m advocating anything so much as (a) pointing out that epistemologies are relative; if they weren’t, there would be a much narrower range of beliefs available and evident, even within Christianity. (b) Rather than advocating a particular position, I also calling attention to the logical shortcomings of the apologetic system that currently characterizes much of the evangelical countercult movement, and asking how often very intelligent people can hold to epistemological positions that are so patently tenuous. In terms of what this indicates about their understanding of my thesis, I feel a bit like one of the religious groups they target. There has been very little attempt to understand what I’ve written, but no shortage of commentary that what I’ve written is wrong, ill-informed, and so forth. Perhaps if a more affordable paperback is released, more people will be able to interact with the material, and some substantial responses will be offered.
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