Study Reveals Cultic
Group's Abuses
Boston Church of Christ/International Churches of
Christ movement
by
Michael D. Langone, Ph.D.
This study, which forms part of a series of studies my colleagues and I are
conducting, investigates the nature and level of psychological distress of former members
of the Boston Church of Christ (International Churches of Christ) movement and their
evaluations of the psychological abusiveness of that group. (The movement has been very
controversial on many campuses in the United States, and in Europe. It is often considered
one of the fastest growing cultic groups in the world.) The study had two components, one
in which subjects were seen face-to-face and one in which subjects received questionnaires
through the mail.
Testing Instruments
The study attempted to overcome some serious methodological limitations of
previous empirical work in this field through the use of: (1) a standardized battery of
psychological distress and background measures, compiled by a research team at Ohio
University and Wellspring Retreat and Research Center (only subjects seen face-to-face
received this test battery); (2) and objective measure of psychological abuse (a kind of
"cultism" scale), the Group Psychological Abuse Scale, which my colleagues and I
reported on in Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 11, Number 1; (3) a measure that asked
subjects to rate their personal experience and opinions about a long list of concrete
practices for which the Boston movement has been criticized (only subjects receiving
mailed questionnaires completed this measure); and (4) two mainstream comparison groups --
graduates of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (a campus ministry) and former Roman
Catholics.
Comparison Groups
The former InterVarsity subjects were expected to have viewed their group
experience favorably, whereas the former Catholics were expected to have more negative
views of their group. Comparing the Boston movement group to former Catholics tests the
hypothesis that former members of cultic groups rate the group negatively simply because
they are disaffected. If this hypothesis were true, former Catholics and former Boston
movement members should be equally critical of their groups. My hypothesis was that,
although departure from a group may bias one's perceptions to some degree, this bias is
not so great as to prevent former members of abusive groups from providing relatively
objective opinions on these groups. I also hypothesized that former members of the Boston
movement would exhibit higher levels of psychological distress and would show considerable
agreement about having experienced many of the concrete practices for which the Boston
movement has been criticized.
Heightened Distress Shown
The results, which involve statistical analyses too complex to go into here,
supported my hypotheses. Boston movement subjects scored higher ("higher"
meaning the results were statistically significant) than InterVarsity subjects on five
measures of psychological distress (general symptomatology, depression, anxiety,
dissociation, post-traumatic stress) and higher than former Roman Catholics on two
measures of psychological distress (depression and post-traumatic stress).
Former Boston movement subjects -- in both components -- rated their group much
higher on the Group Psychological Abuse Scale than did either former Roman Catholics or
InterVarsity graduates. Not surprisingly, former Roman Catholics rated the Catholic Church
as less benign than InterVarsity graduates rated their group. I say "less
benign" because the average global rating of former Catholics on the GPA Scale was
still well below the score separating abusive from non-abusive ratings. The GPA mean
(average) scores for the two Boston movement groups were 105.60 and 108.50. The means for
former Catholics and InterVarsity graduates were 65.26 and 46.91, respectively. The
abusive/non-abusive midpoint score is 84; that is scores above 84 indicate the subject is
rating abuse items as generally characterizing the group and below 84 as generally not
characterizing the group.
Former Boston movement subjects also disclosed extensive personal experience
with concrete practices for which the group has been criticized (this measure included 120
ratings, so only a small number are reported on here). In a section of the measure that
inquired into recruitment deception, subjects gave an average rating of 1.82, with 1.00
indicating the statements reflecting deception were definitely true and 2.00 indicating
the statements were probably true. Members' subservience to leaders/disciplers was
especially conspicuous. For example, 92.5% of subjects said they had personally been told
to "trust the groups and its leaders over the members' own thoughts and
opinions;" 57.5% said they had to "get permission from your discipler before
going on single dates when beginning a dating relationship with someone" (this 57.5%
probably doesn't include those who did not date and for whom the question was not
applicable); 27.5% had been told "to break up a dating relationship with a
nonmember;" 77.5% said they had been "admonished or rebuked for making an
important decision without seeking advice from their discipler;" 87.5% said they had
been told that "to question, criticize, disobey or distrust group leaders is to do
the same to God;" 87.5% had been told that "if a person is not being discipled
he or she is not a Christian;" 82.5% had been "chastised because they fail to
imitate their discipler or other leader."
Variation in Negative Evaluation
On the other hand, the negative evaluation of the movement, though strong,
showed some variation. Although 45% were told that "to be especially close to their
family is to be sentimental," 25% said they were not told this; 27.5% said "they
changed their life goals in order to conform to the group's goals," but 32.5% said
they did not; 55% said that "members experiencing any emotion or psychological
distress are told that nonmember professionals should not be consulted," but 20% said
this statement was not true. These variations probably reflect: (1) the capacity of former
members to make discerning judgments in rating scales (very few paint a stereo typically
negative picture of the group); and (2) objective differences is the local environments of
different Boston movement centers. One former leader of the movement, for example, says
"We tried not to repeat any of the abuses we had seen in Boston or Nashville and we
think we were successful. ...The newspaper articles constantly talked about the abuses of
Crossroads and Boston, but they could never actually pin anything on us and we intended to
keep it that way" ("Diary: "Why I Left the Boston Movement" by S. M.
Condon, 1991).
This study is by no means definitive. We do not know how representative the
volunteer subjects were of the wider population of former Boston movement members. We have
not studied current Boston movement members. We do not know if similar studies of other
controversial groups would produce similar results. The study's sample sizes, though
adequate, should be larger. Therefore, I caution readers not to do what some cult
apologists have done, that is, to make more of research results supporting one's point of
view than the science warrants. This study is one brick in a promising edifice of
empirical research studies that are underway, planned or dreamed about. I hope that in a
few years my colleagues and I will have supplied several more bricks for that research
edifice.
Acknowledgments
This brief essay provides a non-technical summary of the study's major finding,
in part for the benefit of subjects who requested a report on the results. I am deeply
grateful to these subjects for the time they gave to this research. I also want to thank
the people who assisted in the formulation, implementation, or reporting of the study:
Drs. Carole Bohn and Ann Kelley of the Danielsen Institute; Drs. Arthur Dole, Paul Martin,
and Steven Lynn; the Reverends Robert Thornburg and Harold Bussell; Jeff Davis, Leanne
Pellegrini; Blair Smith; Melissa Kelley; InterVarsity staff members Ming Wei, Colin
Tomikawa, Rich Lamb, and the Rev. Doug Whallon; and Jodi Aronoff and Nataliya Zelikovsky,
whose own research is closely linked to this study. I owe a special debt of gratitude to
Carol Giambalvo for her help in developing one of the measures used in this study and to
Dr. William Chambers and Peter Malinoski for their expert data analysis and assistance in
report writing. Professional journal submissions based on this study will certainly have
multiple authors.
The author is Executive Director of
ICSA (formerly AFF), which publishes
The
Cult Observer, and editor of AFF's
Cultic
Studies Journal. In 1995, Dr. Langone received the
Albert V. Danielsen Visiting Scholar Award from Boston University's Danielsen Institute.
The Award helped to support his research and writing on the Boston Church of Christ.
©Copyright by Carol Giambalvo,
June 1995 except where noted
Carol Giambalvo
P.O. Box 2180
Flagler Beach, FL 32136
Phone: 386-439-7541
Fax: 386-439-7537
carol2180@aol.com
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